Mile 666

Mile 666
Sarver Cabin, VA

If an old through-hiker walks up to you and tells you that Virginia is flat, he or she is lying. The mountains here are flat-topped ridges that all run in the same direction. When you are going in that direction, all is good with the world. When you are going across that direction, God help you.

Sarver Cabin is a relatively new shelter, with a supposedly haunted privy. I look forward to challenging their stinky spirits. I only regret I didn't get to stay here on 6/6/06.

Pearisburg, VA

Mile 621

Rolled into town late last night, trying to get errands run with enough time to make it into the woods again by this afternoon. I really don't want to spend another night at the Holiday Motor Lodge. Its "24 Hour Tanning Salon" has a surprising number of pasty white day laborers as clientelle, and employs a number of twitchy deaths-head women. The poor South is awfully depressing.

On the plus side, it's now less than a month before I get a visit from my wonderful girlfriend Monica. It's a good reason to haul serious butt through Virginia.

Burke's Garden

Burke's Garden, VA
Mile 570

Burke's Garden is a huge, almost completely circular valley with its own microclimate. The trail follows the ridgeline that surrounds this feature for almost 60 miles, which is harder than it looks on the map, because the ridgeline is some of the rockiest trail I've encountered yet.

The rocks of the ridgeline are pretty fascinating. They look like volcanic flows, but the Appalachians are far too old for that. I wonder if Burke's Garden is an ancient impact crater?

Little Pink Houses

Knot Maul Shelter
Mile 550

Leaving the interstate after Sugar Grove, VA, the Trail in Virginia plunges into quite a few scenes of pastoral beauty. Rustic farmhouses dot the gentle hills with such profusion that I began to think I was being stalked by John Cougar Mellancamp. There he was, prancing across the fields, strumming his one chord as if beating someone to death with his fists.

After being continuously haunted by this specter I began to wonder: how can I detect John Cougar Mellancamp before he surprises me with mildly socialist lyrics? Using the amazing technology encapsulated in my Palm, I have developed a computer program that detects John Cougar Mellancamp before he begins annoying my social conscience. Let's ask a test question from what I call the Mellancamputer. . .
Me: Mellancamputer! Arise!
MELLANCAMPUTER: WHAT IS THY BIDDING?
Me: Why is John Cougar Mellancamp surrounded by supermodels when he has what is arguably one of the homeliest faces in the music business?
MELLANCAMPUTER: IT IS CALLED "CULTURE SLUMMING". IT IS THE SAME REASON YOU SOMETIMES WATCH PRO WRESTLING.
Me: I hate you Mellancamputer.
MELLANCAMPUTER: IT COULD BE WORSE. A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, PEOPLE LIKE HIM WERE LEADING ARMED REBELLIONS AGAINST THE SOCIAL ORDER.
Me: <delete mellencamputer>

I guess there was a reason I left the IT business. I just don't understand these computer things.

Totem

In 2002, at a New College party, an unidentified girl walked up to me and asked, "I know this sounds like a weird question, but have you ever been attacked by a black bear?"
"Why yes," I said. "I guess you saw the video."

I am asked about this story so often I decided to write it down once and for all. For corroboration, feel free to contact the Great Smoky Mountains National Park or, if you happen to be in the area, see me in the Bear Safety video displayed in the Sugarlands Visitor Center near Gatlinburg.

In the last week of July 1995, I set out from Deep Creek campground for backcountry campsite #53, "Poke Patch" in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP). I slept poorly the night before I hiked out, unwisely experimenting with a camping hammock in unseasonable fifty degree weather. At dawn I swallowed a few ephedrine pills (another bad habit from college) and started walking. The day was pretty miserable, one of those all-day Smokies downpours where the raindrops are so massive that they feel like hail. I also lacked a decade's backpacking savvy, so my load was probably somewhere in the 50 or 60 pound range. By the time I got to #53, 16 miles in and up, I was wasted. I ate dinner, tied up my food bag (out of the reach of bears, of course), and went to sleep at 6:00.

At this point it's probably a good time to mention that at 19 I was absolutely terrified of bears. I dreaded the snuffling, snorting approack of an enormous creature that not fifty thousand years ago preyed on megafauna. One of the reasons I started backpacking in the first place was to confront the paralyzing terror, this childhood nightmare. The sniffing gets closer, and something, not quite a branch, definitely a nose, pushes in on the side of the tent.

At 8:00 PM I was still convinced that I was in the depths of a nightmare. This assumption was broken by a broad paw coming down, somewhat gently, on my face. The tent came down around me. Without seeing the animal, I could feel its jaws closing on my right bicep, then I felt myself being dragged and lifted through the air.

After what seemed like an eternity, I came to my wits. I yelled. Being a 19-year-old, I naturally slept with an enormous knife, with which I battered the blunt snout now mounted on my right side. Realizing that there was a living creature inside the tent, the bear withdrew. Sorry about that, it seemed to say. I thought you were a huge upholstered bag of Snickers.

For another subjective eternity, I balled into the fetal position in the remains of my tent, waiting to feel my flesh stripped from my back and buttocks. I made the decision to rise from my tent and check on the bear's activity (in actuality, it was probably only a few seconds since first contact). The adrenaline in my body had made it impossible to unclench my fists to work the tent zipper. Slitting the tent fabric with the blade of my knife, I stood up, and saw Ursus Americanus, fifteen feet away, standing on his hind legs.

The bear was reaching up toward my food bag, comically just out of reach of the animal's claws. "Scram!", I yelled. The bear regarded me, went back down on all fours, and made as if it intended to poke around for a while, utterly unimpressed with my presence. Not even a huff or a bluff charge from this one.

I did some thinking. Blood was dripping from my elbow and down my right side from the tooth puncture marks in my bicep. The animal was hungry, not terribly afraid of people, and a dozen feet away. It wasn't going anywhere. The road was 3.4 miles up the trail, uphill. There was still light. I decided to try for the road.

I backed from the bear, very slowly, until I reached the trail leading from the camp. I continued backing up for another few yards, then started jogging, barefoot, clad only in boxers and dried blood. The light began to fail. I began noticing that I had left the trail and was running in a creek bed. I had a little talk with myself. John, I said, people are not killed by bears. They are killed while running naked down creek beds in the middle of the night with a knife in their hands. I would not make the road.

I buried myself in a layer of rotting vegetation, remembering something about how it is warmer from the microbe action. It was actually quite a bit warmer. It was in the low forties and raining, but I've been colder in the mountains than I was that night. If it weren't for the fact that, in the back of my mind, I was still worried about being eaten alive. This won't kill me, I thought. Other people have done this. I can do this. It can't kill me.

I made it to the road the next day. Unsurprisingly, passing motorists did not stop for the mud-covered long haired naked guy waving a knife on the side of US 441 near Newfound Gap. I ditched the knife and got picked up by a trio of park maintenance workers, who took me to a ranger station. I filled out paperwork, ate an entire cherry pie, traded bear stories with the rangers, received seven different injections, and caused my parents to start smoking again. After a few days I was interviewed by a video crew.
"The last flesh wound we have from a bear in the park is from the early 80s," he said, "Mind if we interview you?"
"Sure," I said.

The morning I made the road was the finest morning of my entire life. I fell in love with a woman that day. Even now, when times become difficult, or when the pulse quickens, I can still feel the coarse hair pushing out from beneath my skin, claws gripping ground, muscles under sagging skin, as ground passes faster below me. With that bear I had found my totem.

Throwaway

Last night at the Mill Creek pub in Damascus, I found myself listening to the life story of a very sad young man. I'll call him Jason. His father, a brutal alcoholic, attempted to provoke the miscarriage of Jason's younger brother, kicking Jason's mother in the abdomen repeatedly. It was not the only episode of violence, not by a long shot, but it was the most memorable. It also failed, as Jason's brother was born healthy.

Jason's father eventually got into a head on collision with a rock truck, drunk, with his two sons in the car. Jason's arms and ribs were broken, but his brother's femur was driven into his heart and he died. Jason's mother and father were divorced overnight. When Jason woke in the hospital, there was no one at his side but nurses and doctors. His parents had fled their ruined lives, leaving Jason behind, in agony, alone in a hospital bed.

Now Jason's father has remarried and turned to Christ and away from liquor. His mother has also remarried. Both parents pretty much ignore Jason, even through stints in jail and a suicide attempt. I do not know how a parent can ignore the fact that a son was sucking on a 12 gauge alone in the woods. The scale of that kind of denial can only be described as evil.

Now Jason has been sucked into a charismatic megachurch congregation. He relates how he felt the Spirit inside of him as the preacher laid hands on him before thousands of worshippers. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it wasn't the Holy Spirit. It was the feeling of not being throwaway.

The horror of this story is that his friends in the church are from nearly identical situations. Throwaways, once innocent, now so very vulnerable. These are the legions of hate, just now mobilized, filled with dire anger at the secular culture that has abandoned them.

Jason offered me liquor and cocaine for listening to his story, in between exhortations of the Spirit. I declined, and went to the Hostel for a troubled sleep.

Damascus VA

Mile 458

Damascus after Trail Days shows its true identity: a semi-rustbelt little town whose churchgoing community lives in weird coexistence with the itinerant hiker population. I have a lot of respect for the people of Damascus. They are unfailingly polite, not even two weeks after the notorious "Panty Dance" at the Hiker Parade. Their attitude, insofar as I have been able to gather from conversations with locals, is that the trail experience is a lot healthier for young people than college. From personal experience, I'd have to say that they are right.

To do the hikers justice, they do bring in a fair amount of cash. It doesn't replace all the industry jobs gone to China, but it helps. And the thru-hikers, though hairy and smelly, are almost always polite and articulate. Most of the trail crazies have dropped out already.

As for me, I am blowing out of town after a nice, 4 dollar bunk at The Place, a church hostel. Normally I'd stay a day, but I am meeting my folks at Grayson Highlands State Park, 3 days or so up the trail.

Demiurge, Titans, and Johnny Cash

Kincora Hostel
Mile 407

Not long ago, I remembered a critic saying that Hurt, as sung by Johnny Cash, was the song sung by God to Christ on Gethsemane. The funny thing about this memory is that it is a false one. I later went to the critic's article and found no such comment. I probably liked the article so much that I associated it with an idea I had about the song. Not unusual at those times when I could hear the fuses in my mind blowing.

This interpretation of "Hurt" casts an interesting light on the book of Job as well. Just because God is testing you does not mean that he is going to stop. If God is making you hurt, there is no guarantee that it is ever going to stop, or even that God will ever repay you for your efforts. "I will let you down . .", he sings.

As with most things, this complicates the relationship between God and The Adversary. The origins of the word Satan (as I remember, since I can not look it up on the Internet at this time) is related to the root for Titan- as well as other culture's elder gods-, from "tester" in Indo-European (literally, the anvil of earth against which sky-gods smash things to see if they break). Satan tests Job's faith by bringing hardships; how does the God of "Hurt" challenge Christ's faith in his own fate? And if the Satan of Job is challenging faith at the behest of Jehovah, who is the God of "Hurt" working for?

In full-blown Gnostic wackiness, the God of Hurt is working for himself, trying to subvert the universal personal salvation that Christ represents. By downplaying the meaning of existence, i.e., by reducing all existence to himself, the God of Hurt wants to make personal salvation irrelevant. Ah, gnostic weirdness. Esoteric religions can suck you in, like all good conspiracy theories.

Magic Bourbon

Beauty Spot
Mile 350

On the way to my appointed campsite I ran into some amazing "trail magic", courtesy of former AT through hikers Crispy Critter, Funky Monkey, and The Dude. Camped out on the unimaginatively named Beauty Spot (a huge bald with commanding views in all directions and cushy grass everywhere), there were supplies of hot dogs, chili, beer, bourbon, some sort of moonshine, and various unmentionable party type substances. The weather cooperated in making this a fantastic stop, although it's worthy to note that no one was making big miles the next few days. Mugged by magic bourbon, undoubtedly.

6000 Feet

Mile 385

The most beautiful stretch of the trail to date is the string of balds from Carver's Gap to US 19E. Also known as the Roan Highlands, this stretch is very closely managed by the Forest Service, as it is home to several severely threatened species.

Bald mountains are still a mystery to scientists. No one knows why some high peaks refuse to grow forests while others do not. They are amazing, each peak affording 360 degree views of the surrounding ridgelines.

The Roan Highlands also mark the spot where I leave the 6000' contour for the last time - until I get to New Hampshire, where it will be above the timberline. I'll miss the fairy-tale spruce forests, but I won't miss the early summer frost.

Trail Runners

Erwin TN
Mile 338

Breaking in new trail runners purchased in Hot Springs. Trail runners are basically stiff running shoes with heavy treads for gripping rock and such. They have no ankle support, but with my light pack I don't really need it. They weigh about a tenth as much as boots and, unlike boots, they actually dry out when they get wet.

Unfortunately breaking in any new footwear involves a period of blisters. This is why journal entries have been somewhat scant of late- I spend my spare time in the evenings pampering my feet.

Erwin TN is a case-in-progress of how to ruin a rural community. Someone somewhere must be happy that poverty-level families need cars to get groceries or to do damn near anything. That someone being the Sauds, actually.

I didn't linger there, and this journal won't either.

Hot Springs NC

Mile 271

Hot Springs is a heck of a trail town. Elmer's Sunnybank Inn is run by the best of hippies, the sort that have their poop together. Smart and energetic. It's been too long since I hung out with good smart hippies, as opposed to the meth-snorting Bradenton variety.

Max Patch is absolutely stunning, as well, It's close to the Smokies and has a road practically running to the top of it. I recommend taking a look if you are in the Smokies/Davenport area. It's reminescent of pictures I've seen of the Scottish highlands, or of the default desktop image for Windows XP Home Edition.

The Remains of the Day

Standing Bear Farm has an open library. I've stayed up far too late reading The Remains of the Day by Ishiguro. It's a brilliant novel, one of the best I've read in recent memory.

Unfortunately, since I've been a reading glutton, I now need to choose among A Canticle for Leibowitz (which I've read too many times), a Stephen King book about a little girl lost on the AT and pursued by horrible monsters, or any number of romantic novels. I think the King novel will test my nerve.

EDIT, 2 DAYS LATER

SPOILER WARNING

After thinking about the novel for a few days on the trail, I still am convinced that the novel is a beautiful book, but I am increasingly convinced that it is an immoral one. Every step of the way Stephens could have made a difference in what turned out to be the Death of the West. He could have but he didn't, and he has the nerve to warm his toes in the light of the pier lamps at the end of the book, imagining that he's had a life well done. Hogwash!. "Remains of the Day" indeed. Guess what Jeevesie those pier lamps are Europe burning, and it's burning because you and everyone like you let it happen. Burn in hell you spineless bastard.

I think Ishiguro is aware of this element in his work, to some extent, but is more of the opinion that we should let these bad judgements slide off like sulfuric acid off a duck's back. It's a bad message for a vital culture. It's a message for old ladies.

When we mess up, we should agonize about it. We should torture ourselves with it until we figure out a way to make it better. That is moral. That is the message for a vital, living culture.

Still a darn tootin good book though, even though the moral is for old ladies.

Itinerary

Some dates . .

May 18 Hot Springs NC
May 23 Erwin TN
May 30 Damascus VA
Jun 11 Bland VA
Jun 15 Pearisburg VA
Jul 11 Harper's Ferry VA

Standing Bear Farm

Standing Bear Farm hiker hostel
Mile 237.5

Pulled my first twenty mile day from Peck's Corner to Davenport Shelter yesterday. My boots are morbid and yearn for their journey into a peaceful afterlife - as soon as I reach the outfitters at Hot Springs, 32 miles up the trail. Just thirty more miles, boots, then a choir of pristine socks will carry you to the halls of your fathers.

Standing Bear is no resort, but it's cheap and charming in a sort of hippie-commune way. The store operates on the honor system, and is stocked with soda and pizza. I wish I pulled more cash out of the ATM at the NOC, because that was the last time I saw a cash machine. If I had a few more tenners I'd buy four of those damn pizzas.

But what's this? Curtis can drive me to an ATM so I can give him more money? Pizza sickness awaits.

D&D Guide to Hiking Equipment

For those not prepared to geek out utterly, please skip thos post and pretend that you never saw it here. Please. I was a man once.

That said . . .

Titanium Trekking Poles +2

Resembling a long and slender pair of cross-country skiing poles, this piece of equipment allows the user to add his Strength bonus to any Endurance skill check. The tungsten tips provide a sure grip while worsening the effects of trail erosion, providing a +2 Diplomacy skill bonus when speaking with Republicans. The titanium pole bodies are strong enough to deflect a machete blow from a moonshine-addled hillbillie, but light enough to bestow a +2 to attack rolls. Unfortunately, the poles do as much damage as a blow from a wet cereal box. Clutching them protectively against your chest provides a +2 Will saving throw bonus versus being terrorized by harmless animals at 2:00 AM.

Pepper Spray of Enraged Bear Summoning

This three inch cylinder contains a magical spray that transforms a target 3 HD black bear into a beserk bear with the Fiendish subtype. The enraged fiendish black bear immediately attacks the wielder, but is blinded and confused, taking -4 to all attack rolls and unable to distinguish targets. May attack the spray wielder's companions, which also makes it a "Pepper Spray of Hostile Hiker Summoning".

Gnomish Gnorl's Everfull Bag of Mashed Potatoes

This 24" by 8" waterproof bag resembles a normal waterproof stuff sack, but when a questing hand is thrust into its depths, Gnomish Gnorl's Everfull Bag is always found to contain 3 bags of randomly flavored instant mashed potatoes. The bags are replenished as they are used with a random flavor of instant mashed potatoes. No one knows how Gnormish Gnorl's potato magic works, whether it be Crowlian mysticism, simple voodoo, or because these potato bags are alive. This magic is starting to freak me the hell out. I swear the things are breeding in there.

Beaucoup's Buoyant Backpack

This slim backpack can fit up to 4000 cubic inches without weighing anything at all. This item is exceptionally rare. In fact, this item does not exist at all. If it did, there would be only as many backpackers as there are Beaucoup's Buoyant Backpacks. All other hikers would be dead. Such is the dramatic and fatal lure of Beaucoup's Buoyant Backpack.

May Snow

Mt Collins Shelter
Mile 199.3

The mercury has plummeted here above the 6000' contour, and we got about two inches of snow. Daytime temps are parked at around 30-40 degrees Farenheit in the shade. The snow-loaded treetops drop icy loads of slush on hikers throughout the day, as the sun hits the treetops, causing an awful lot of profanity.

Walking uphill in these temperatures is a real pleasure, as it is the only time during the trip I am not sweating like a rented horse.

A Visit from Prometheus

Mollie's Ridge Shelter
Mile 174.1

Do you remember fire?
I had forgotten it. In fact, I had forgotten it so utterly that I denied its existence. Its remnants were ephemera, brilliant little mayflies that would not survive the next day at the office. Moments alone with Monica. Little sparkles in the gym that made me think, "That was a good workout". Writing a tight essay, or doing an especially good animation. Fire, I had determined, was something stupid and young.

Climbing these mountains and thinking about where my life is going to lead, I can see how incredibly wrong I was. Massively, horribly wrong. Fire is all there is. If what you are doing does not burn a great fire in your belly then something is seriously wrong. Time without purpose is worse than being dead, because you suck all the same resources as you did when you were alive. Eating, sleeping, but unfeeling, undead and unaware.

If there is one word of advice the trail has for me today, and for the rest of my days, it's this:

Burn.

The Samurai Hillbillies

May 9, 2006 (I think . . Last post must have been dated later than it was)
Mile 163, "The Fontana Hilton"

There's a family hiking the AT this year, at least to Harper's Ferry. At first known as "The Family of Six", they have since taken the group name "The Samurai Hillbillies". The name stems from the fact that 1)the lady of the household (with subsequent spawn) are asiatic, and 2) there are practically zero minorities on the trail- an African-American person hiking the trail would probably also get an ethnic sobriquet, something equally sensitive to stereotypes, like "Runnin Home Joe" (southbound) or "Watermelon Lad".

I've run into TSH a few times now. The last time at Cable Gap was not so pleasant. A thru-hiker companion was pretty incensed that TSH made no attempt to make room in the shelter in the pouring rain. He got confrontational; I set up my tent and had a cold supper. I can see the argument from both viewpoints. On the one hand, you ALWAYS make room in a shelter in the rain, even if you have to sleep back to stomach with strangers. On the other hand, I'm not sure I would want a bunch of hairy, exceptionally stinky strangers rubbing up against my wife and kids.

All in all I like them. They have some sort of home schooling thing with the kids where they are taught courses on the trail. If they're anything like asian kids anywhere, the teachers are probably glad to be rid of grade schoolers who need college level textbooks and who actually listen.

They're taking to the outdoors well. Dynamite and The Asian Lady head such characters as Supersnack, Anti-Cat (so named because she always lands on her back), Firecracker, and another rugrat whose trail name escapes me. They're all good people, but I'm glad they're leaving this shelter after I do. Shelter space in the Smokies is at a premium without The Samurai Hillbillies.

Fontana Village

May 9, 2006
Mile 161

Taking a near-zero day tomorrow, spending the night tonight at the very nice Village Inn at Fontana Village. Thru-hikers get a swank 2 bed room for 35 bucks. Stretch and I are sharing a room, and enjoying the wifi internet, cable, heated pool and other amenities. As much as I like the NOC, this place takes the cake as a place to spend a zero day before the Smokies.

Tomorrow night I am spending at the Fontana shelter, then I am going into the Smokies with about eight days of food. More rain forecast for this week, but that's alright. I had a hiking epiphany day before yesterday, and I am ready for anything.

Looking forward to doing touristy things around the dam tomorrow. It's pretty amazing how a four-hundred and eighty foot pile of concrete can be so interesting.

Mash

Looks like my trail name is Mash. The origin of the name was me bitching something like, "I realize that instant mashed potatoes are something like the perfect trail food, but I swear to Christ on a burning cross I am going to beat someone to death with these sticks (I gesture with hiking poles) if I have to eat another bag of mashed!"

It was also agreed that the name suited my hiking style. I am very slow on the downhills but rather quick on the uphills- when poling uphill I supposedly "mash" violently with my arms. Probably trying to make some use of my upper body.

Anyway . . . Mash it is.

Wesser, NC

May 5, 2006
Mile 134

This is my second visit to the Nanatahala Outdoor Center (NOC) in Wesser, and I am glad it is under better circumstances. During my 2004 section hike, I holed up here after blowing out my left knee. Now, thirty pounds lighter and properly equipped and braced, my knees are a hundred percent. I'll need them for the climb tomorrow.

A few folks I've gotten to know have dropped out since Dick's Creek. HaHaFun (I think), Dave (no trail name), and a pair whose name escapes my mind at the moment. Sometimes it's tricky to say who's dropped out and who hasn't. Some folks take weeks of zero days to heal knees, blisters, fevers. Some people never leave. I've heard of more than one through hiker that settled down in some trail town. Luckily I have life and love off the AT.

Before I began this hike, I resolved to write only interesting, witty things in my trail blog. I'm not sure this is possible. While many fascinating things occur to me while climbing mountains, I am far too busy fighting for breath to write them down. By the time I come to rest, I've forgotten them.

Or perhaps they were never that clever- they just seemed very clever to someone who is using most of his blood oxygen walking. So please do not be disappointed if there are fewer intelligent things in the record. In the meantime, I promise to make freezing rain, bad food, and endless climbing as amusing as possible.

And it is amusing to complain, because this is one of the most beautiful experiences of my entire life. I always thought Heaven would be a bit like this.

The Scene

May 2, 2006
Mile 103: Rock Gap Shelter

Even at this relatively late date, the trail is an intensely social activity. Here at Rock Gasp, there are 10 through-hikers. Some of them I met on my southbound leg I did with Monica. We greeted each other like old friends.

North Carolina, like raw corn whiskey, grows on the northbound through-hiker, Albert Mountain nonwithstanding. Albert had some sections that, while not technical climbs, were still hand-and-foot affairs, where I was glad for my arboreal ancestry. The remainder of the climbs and descents have been very civil. Either that or I am growing stronger.

At lower elevations, the trees are a bit more full of green. Here at Rock Gap, it seems less like a dry spring and more like the Appalachians I know. Two springs feed a creek running down below the shelter. The rhododendrons, while not blooming, are teasing with tiny buds. It is somewhat troubling that I have not yet passed a healthy adult rhododendron. They all seem to have something gnawing big chunks out of their leaves. Many are down . . Unusual.

Ah, it's time now for me to stop typing. I should talk now with these people whose experience I share.

Fwd: Whistlin dixie

May 2, 2006

Waking up here in my tent at Carter Gap, mile 90.7. It's my second night on the trail without Monica. I miss her. I have to get up very soon, before the forecast rains roll in. Notable mentions from the past two days:
>>The AT in Georgia brings to mind Southern hospitality, mint juleps, and gospel music. The first few miles of the AT in North Carolina brings to mind homicidal moonshiners maddened by day old whiskey.
>>I had never before yesterday encountered sleet. Sleet, meet John. John, meet sleet.
>>I also met a fellow Novo Collegian- Elmer from the class of '81. We chatted for a bit just past Bly Gap (the GA/NC state line)

Backwards Walking

Mile 67: Dick's Creek Gap to Neel's Gap


I started the Appalachian Trail with my wonderful girlfriend this past week, walking backwards into Georgia from the GA/NC border. As previously mentioned, I am skipping the Springer-Neel's section, as I had hiked it in 2003.

With the exception of a few days, we had wonderful weather. The interesting part was watching the terrain get milder and milder the further into Georgia we went. By the end of the hike we could see well into the Piedmont.

Tray Mountain was fantastic, and Blue Mountain Shelter (although cold, as everyone mentions) had a fantastic view.

We met a stray dog at Deep Gap shelter. It followed us out in the morning for about a mile, then tore off after something in the woods. We heard barking, then growling, then yipping. The stray tore back to the shelter. Apparently it met a critter that didn't feel like playing. It's no mystery how this pup got lost. We hope Bubba from Tampa or another northbounder got him to Hiawassee.

Monica picks her way over some rocks.







I'm sort of wet in this picture.

Tomorrow Monica drops me off at Dick's Creek Gap to continue north. I return to walking. Tomorrow will be very hard.

Test

This is a test entry using my Palm and the collapsible keyboard it uses. It is a fairly small 4 row keyboard and takes some getting used to.

Battery life on the unit is supposedly good, though, and you can get used to any keyboard in a few days. I thought I'd never get used to a laptop keyboard, but now it seems pretty natural.

Being There

Athens, GA, April 21, 2006

I left home for the last time yesterday, and am spending three days in Athens for my girlfriend's sister's wedding. On the long drive I wondered, what makes me be here? In this car, heading up to the trailhead via a wedding? Why am I not, say, in the star-realm of Kosmexx, where macrointelligences manipulate superclusters of galaxies into big-bang- defying shapes? The reason I am here and not there can be summed up in one word: bandwidth.

An entity's location (defined in any number of dimensions; spatial, temporal, or probabilistic) may be practically defined by where the majority of its information comes from. I am pretty sure that I am an entity (forgive me Gautama Buddha), and, as it turns out, the fattest pipe for this me-entity comes through my body's senses. My body exists in a pretty narrow range of probability: you can't change much about the world without changing yourself beyond all recognition. So my mind tends to like these senses because it's the best data provider.

Nothing is actually tied down to one possible universe, however. Time is not a line. I actually can be in Kosmexx, or, with the help of a computer, wander off to be a superhero, or an Orc, or what-have you. Our minds are not as limited as our bodies in this sense. But our data rates to and from these alternate universes is an inestimably small fraction of the data rates we get from our senses in this world. We creative types need to remind ourselves of this occasionally. Focusing too much on the possible cuts you off from the real. And there ain't nothing like the real thing.

As technology advances, however, and the bandwidth of the senses is matched by our artifice, we may find ourselves living in a different kind of universe. Just as the aircraft opened up the third spatial dimension, and written language opened up the temporal fourth dimension, hacking the senses may open the gates to parallel universes. It's not that farfetched. You're reading this. You're already there.

Enplaned goes dark

Enplaned, my favorite airline news site, has gone dark. Blogger says the site can not be found. I hope he hasn't been fired or killed by rabid airline CEOs gone mad from board meetings and tiny little liquor bottles.

Whoever he was, he was a great analyst and a funny writer.

We'll miss you, Enplaned.

Ultrastructures

Why is there a drive in the universe towards order? The most simple explanation is that if there wasn't, I wouldn't be able to be writing this. This argument smacks of solipsism, and solipsism does not make for good science. The fact remains that the current cosmology tends towards order- but does it do so regardless of the sophonts' ability to record it? Is there order without the observer?

In short, yes. In the multiple-universe interpretation of quantum physics, it makes sense for named entities to get as big and complex as possible. The more particles and complexity soemthing has, the more possible universes it may occupy. It's got a world -multiple worlds- open to it, and can choose the one it sees fit. Complex universes win.

Other possible universes, say, where fermions never glued together, would have no entity larger than a ray of light. Heat death on methamphetamines. So the entities from these universes don't have a very large span into other possible world. Massless, they can draw nothing to themselves, sort of like existentialism.

But this is, to some extent, rot. When you make everything out of photons the scale of complexity gets very small and very fast; compare, for example, the electric impulse to the neuron's action potential. A creature made out of photons and gravitons would see a rapid heat death universe as marvelously complex, or, would be horrified by the spectre of a solar mass. Only recently have we stopped making the same assumptions ourselves. My old anthro texts always declared base-10 mathematics as the stepping stone to civilization, when all it means is "I have 10 fingers and 10 toes". The perception of order is dependent on the existence of an internal order within the observer. Our inhabitants of the photonic universe live faster and smaller, but they may achieve greater levels of complexity due to the ease of information transfer from entity to entity.

So the drive to complexity remains somewhat mysterious. It's built into the fabric of four and five dimentional space. How did it happen? Or, taking this a step further, what if someone, somewhere in the future, had made sure that all possible universes had a tendency towards order, so that all possible universes would be knowable by the mysterious someone in Dimension X.

What if the organizing principle of the multiverse were somehow predicate on the existence of sophonts?

It's not that farfetched. Imagine you are an incredibly advanced civilization in a very distant possible universe, separated by incredible amounts of probability. Photonic unicorn land. You've built systems that span solar systems and galaxies or their equivalent. You've noticed, though, that the universe has a chronological end. It stops at some point. What do you do? Maybe you start experimenting on the fabric of space outside of the temporal dimension. What if, you think, I can modify myself so that I don't only exist here, but in all possible worlds?

Come get me now, Big Crunch.

To some extent everything exists in a number of multiple worlds. The bigger it is the more inevitable it is. Black holes exist in all possible universes from the moment of their creation. Primordial black holes exist in all possible universes for the duration of the universe. They are everywhere possible. It would be interesting to see a map of them, and perhaps divine the existence of structure and ultrastructure.

A Modest Experiment

For legal reasons, I've decided to reveal a modest experiment being run by some of my "friends", so I am not indefinitely detained by the not-at-all merciless iron fist of the GWOT. It's painfully post-modern, so it will tickle some of my friends while irritating others. I'm just enough of a self-hating liberal that I can find this concept amusing, though I still avoid seminars like "Washing the Laundry: Examining Subtexts in Early 20th Century Feminism".

The idea was that these "friends" would read my real trail journal (this one), then post another journal, ostensibly by me, on a myspace site. A sort of metajournal, roughly corresponding to my real adventures but deviating in some very particular and unforgettable ways. We went over a couple of these but frankly I don't remember the whole exchange.

Examples:

Real Journal Entry: Beautiful Sunrise on Roan Mountain
Metajournal Entry: Rain Death and Fire on the Cities of the Infidel

Real Journal Entry: Girlfriend visiting tomorrow!
Metajournal Entry: Forced Sodomy and Canoists: A Guide

Real Journal Entry: First Bear Sighting
Metajournal Entry: Herr Goebbels is my Spirit Shaman

So, if "I" take "credit" for anything "terrible" that "happens" on my through-hike myspace journal, it's probably just my drunk friends trying to get me sent to Gitmo. It's good to have friends.