Date: 2004-03-27
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 40.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Day 6Cheered from a grumpy slumber this morning by the four voice song ofthe Von Trapp Family, three children from ages 10-14 (roughly) hikingwith their parents. They sang a song about shaving cream, or at leastone in which shaving cream was inserted every time the word should havebeen shit. Very funny stuff. In other news:-Six days, no blisters.-Temp in teens two mornings so far.-Most every step of the way so far has been as through dead forests,all deciduous and bare in the dregs of winter.-Cooking is hard when your hands are frozen and your brain is meatPopsicle from hoofing it all day.-I'm out of hot cocoa already on Day 5.-Spent an additional $45 on stuff sacks at Neel's Gap - the result puremagic: everything once strapped to the outside of my pack now fitsinside. -One of the biggest subjects of conversation is pack weight. and I amwell ahead of the game with a pack fully loaded with food and water: 35lbs. Many hikers, some of them girls half my size are still carrying50.-I took a self-portrait photo of my bare belly against the backgroundof the AT route map from Georgia to Maine (my belly hung somewhere inGeorgia). Why? Because when I reach the top of that map, I will haveno belly and will have muscles in places I never thought possible.-I will happily accept any and all snail mail April 16 at:Richard McKinneyc/o General DeliveryHot Springs, NC 28743 Lark lay in her tent asleep. its all-screen walls afford the passerbya full view of her reclining there angel-like on her back, closed lidsskyward. And I think to myself, "It's Sleeping Beauty on nutballthru hiker terra-stomping Appalachian Trail `medical leave' and doesn'tshe look peaceful. I met Lark on the evening of Day One as she fumbledwith her gas stove before a macho and unhelpful audience of hiker men. The stove was a blazing mess, seemingly uncontrolled fire spilling outof it everywhere and though everyone seemed to know how to work thething, no one got down on hands and knees to help her. I didn't knowthe stove. Mine is of the propane canister variety. But I got downthere with her anyway and did my best. Later with the stove undercontrol and her dinner cooking, I chatted her up a bit and learned thatshe had dropped out of Harvard to come and do the trail. Wow, Ithought. What balls. But when I showed her my little pocket stove(that looks so much like a little lunar lander) and said I like itbecause it "was sexy," she gave me such a dirty look that I decided itbest to leave her be. I mean, what was she 18? 17 maybe? I was 17when I went off to Pepperdine U., and dropped out myself just onesemester later. God Bless Lark and her hike. If only I'd had such alofty and cleansing goal at a young 18. Today I sit atop a hill at some shelter whose name escapes me nappingand telling this tale in the sun and the relative warmth of a March 25at three thousand feet in the northern Georgia mountains. I hiked,driven on by Elly's unflagging pace, seven miles today, an easy day inthe parlance of this rugged trail mile-ripping crowd of Thoreaueans oncrack. Some of these people really move. This is my sixth day andI've done 50 miles. I'm told the three young men who just arrived areon their third day. I just don't have the stamina or the training tomove that fast. And the knees are a constant source of pain andpsychological terror. If I stop longer and rest them, I lose Elly, thewarm cherry pie at the end of grueling day. So I have "crutched" theknees with $129 pair of trekking poles like ski poles that balance youand, in my case, bear a lot of the brunt of weight I place on my kneeswith every downhill step. In one day I have become quite proficient atthis. I feel at times like Scrooge's Tiny Tim eagerly "four-stepping"(or did he only have one crutch?) toward Christmas turkey. More thanonce I've said to Elly, "Tiny Tim is ready for his morphine." The painis that bad. It's down there, somewhere down this hill whose synclineis killing me, sending dagger-like stabs into my legs with every step. Is the turkey down there? Or am I the turkey? Better be careful withthis metaphor. Turkey hunting season just opened in these parts andcontinues for another coupla weeks. It's strange that it turned out tobe knee problems. I've never had a knee problem in my life. In thefirst two days, I went down twice on a turned left ankle. I'vetwisted ankles before and thought sure this would be the weak point. But aside from straight fatigue and major adjustments being made on thepart of my lungs, I'm fine. Ankles now fine. Feet=fine, not oneblister. Pray for my knees, would you? On the evening of our resupply day Tuesday (Day Four) in Neel's Gap, Iactually had to excuse myself from my hostel company friends to go outback and ball my eyes out. I cried for fear that this weird and suddenanomaly would stop me short, would rob me of this great journey I am onand the family of like-minded misfits from mainstream society that Ihave quickly come to love. The poles are helping. I leave the rest toGod. I came to hike the AT knowing full well I would need a trail name, thateveryone has one and so should I. It is a way of separating ourselvesfrom the people we were in the outside world, in crazed and sicklymainstream society that all of have somehow, miraculously and throughgreat effort, have managed to escape for a time. But I didn't want toname myself. Well, now nearly a week in, I am proud to have been"gifted" several names from which to choose. They are: Hammerhead(based on the hammerhead shark-shaped fleece hat I made myself);Tinkerbell (given me by the children of the Von Trapp family) based onthe little Tinkerbell in a plastic lamp I have hanging round my neck,property of Duke's dash but pilfered to bring me luck on my trip;Malcovich (explained yesterday), and Inspector Gadget, a name given meby Kristen due to the presence on my hip of this very device on which Inow write. Before we got well ahead of them, Sam and Larrisa werecalling me Jack, after Jack Sparrow, Depp's character in "Pirates." Ifound that both ironic and flattering. I have temporarily dubbedKristen "flower pants" by her flower-patterned shorts, though surelyshe is deserving of something better.-RSM    An Appalachian Trail song, by me: (to be sung to tune of Sunshine on myshoulders makes me happy)Mouse turds in my coffee cupmake me happyMouse turds give you hantivirus and make you die.So throw some water in, boil em up good, ya-dee ya-dee.Mouse turds in my coffee get me high. [repeat] Morning and the coffees on. Sleeping Beauty is now Dawn of the Dead,the fire round which we sat yacking is out, and last night's distantmonkeys have been identified as turkeys (we think). I have manipulatedcarebeeners (sp?) to lower the cable lines which suspend our food highabove nocturnal bear aspirations, and now, whilst others are chowingdown carbos in preparation for "Big Miles," I am cooling my fingers onthis keyboard to bring you, the reader, the latest from the Great GonzoAT Romp. Elly, master of birdsong, gardener and graduate ofBio-Chemistry, is a snuggler. She laughs and smiles a lot in the tentat night, and thus far has stuck with me during the day, but I have noidea what she really thinks of me. I have asked much about her lifeand she offered still more, but not once that I can think of has sheresponded with a similar or related question about me. I find this oddand a little isolating, but have chalked it up to her somewhat reservedElly-ness, her quiet and angular beauty. I've even managed for themost part (so far) not to be hurt by her apparent total lack ofinterest in my stated goal of writing about this journey. It is nodoubt odd having someone run around following your actions with pen &paper, but it IS what I DO and I figure anyone sufficiently bothered byit will do well to just get the fuck away from me. This is myblessing. This is my curse. But to the obvious and rigid goal ofeveryone in these mountains - getting to Maine, I have the added goalof churning out a tome to match the trail in length and spirit. I maysoon lose my thus-far ad hoc hiking family because of this, because ofthe need to go a little slower, to smell the flowers, to stop andscribble. But I'll do whatever has to be done. Just as thru hiking thetrail is really no more than a grand idea made real, so is this idea. And now for a handful of granola, striking the tent, and hitting thetrail. Walk and walk and walk some more, this seems to be the onlyreal trick of the trail. And a trick it is. For an entire businessday we walk, and at day's end there's very little time before night. When the sun goes down in the forest, you go to bed.   Just so. Andawaken, as I have this morning, to the first rising of the sun,sometimes a little before. And the woodpecker hammers: getup, getup,getup! -RSM Point:A man sits trailside with a heavy pack and a four-pound bible in hishands. "Lotta people on the trail this time of year," he says. "They're gonna hafta put in a superhighway here. The good news isthere's about 150 ahead of you. The bad news is only about 5 of themare gonna make it. Jesus is the way and the truth, the only way. That's all that matters. Bible stands for Book of Instruction BeforeLeaving Earth." Typically garrulous and responsive, none of us haveanything to say in response to this man. All I can think is leave itto a Christian Zealot to give us the grim news of how many of us will fail.Flowerpants says she had to resist telling the man that Jesus was toomuch pack weight. The man stays behind awaiting the next hiker. Wewalk on. As an afterthought somewhere up trail, I say aloud, "God, Sir,is living in me every step of the way. I've got Jesus in my knees! Counterpoint:At the trailhead at Indian Grave Gap, we descend to a road and to thesight of Claire, "Hobbes on Catnip" and their dog Matty recliningroadside in matching blue lawn chairs. Hanging from a tree just attrail's end hangs an Easter Basket full of colorful plastic eggs. Ineach egg, a handful of chocolates, sweet tarts and other goodies. Claire and Hobbes hung there goodie basket the night before and havereturned to fetch the leavings. Our arrivals have coincided. Theypass out Frescas and we exchange laughs and, from us, gratuitousexpressions of gratitude. Such a simple and selfless act, is theirs. These are incidences of "Trail Magic," an apparently common phenomenonthat strikes us as anything but common. Wonderful rather. Alreadytoday another man was hiking a segment of the trail and handing out"Cokes" the southern term for soda of any kind. He gave me a Pepsi. Hobbes has come from Clearwater, FL and will begin his thru hike in Maysection hiking with his wife pacing him in an RV. "I'm lucky to be ableto go at all. It's taken two years of planting seeds," he says,nodding back toward his wife and winking at us. We laugh and share asmile. As we ready to move on up the trail, another car pulls up andout steps "Queen Diva," a local shuttling hikers around. She, too,offers us sodas and candy. We gratefully accept Oreos and Rice Kris pieTreats and head on our way. An hour later up the trail, the sugar rushmust still be on me. We've made today's goal, Tray Mountain Shelter,but it's early and I can't imagine stopping now. Elly is game to hikeon. But Underground Radio is complaining of sore shoulders and wantsto stay. The one I've been calling Flowerpants has her shoes off andis tendering a nasty ankle blister. She's having knee problems, too. Together, they stay. Together, Elly and I move on. Once again thefamily is broken, though almost certainly temporarily. I've suggestedseveral trail names for Flowerpants, and finally she has found one toher liking: "Tumbling Tumbleweed." I don't think I've ever met abigger female fan of The Big Lebowski. Two hours later Elly and I stopwith the setting sun at Addis Gap, 61.5 miles north along the AT. Itwas a 13 mile day, my longest yet.Seventy degrees in the shade at 2:15 p.m. That represents a 50-somedegree variance in just one week out here on the trail. I'm sweatinglike a dog, the flies are on me and it's only March. I can't evenbegin to fathom what hiking will be like in the dead heat of summer 100degrees, insects in full force, the trail closer to cities and trashand tract homes. Jesus. This tough early stretch must be appreciatedevery moderate step of the way, then. Hiking you see a lot less of thelandscape than one might imagine. What you do see is a whole lottadirt. Earth, rocks, dead leaves, sticks. I have lagged behind thegang to rest a moment. A small black fly bites into my leg. Theclink-clink of my trekking poles takes me in my mind to a ski slope ofmy youth, legs dangling from a chair lift, ski pole duels with thefriend beside me. I imagine in this endless stepping rhythm and tranceof the trail, I will travel to many places in my mind, see much that Ihaven't seen in years, all the while fully present in my slowly movingAppalachian world.-RSMFor the full story of Rick's journey, visit Jigglebox.com