Difficulty

Blogger's system is being modified. There might be a bit of a delay before I can post again.

 

Since I was thinking of sending the Palm home with Monica this weekend, this is not too much of a crisis.

Stress

Dalton, MA
Mile 1555

The feeling of suddenly being under a closing deadline is a strange one after so many months of just walking. It's amazing I used to spend every hour of my life under not one or two but scores of closing deadlines, each one flexible in either direction.

To be honest, I miss stress. Not the stress of meetings, but the stress- and reward- of doing a task well, under pressure, in less time than thought possible. It's what I call "good" stress. It makes life red-blooded and fun. In kung-fu movie terms, you start the day with five masked men trying to feed you into a Troy-Bilt chipper/shredder, and you end the day with one guy in a laundry hamper, one in the cement mixer (legs hanging out amusingly), and three on the messy end of the Troy-Bilt. You go home, wipe your pants off and get ready for the next day. Occasionally you have to put one of the masked men in your trunk to work on at home, but that's okay, then it's a revenge-kung-fu movie. You killed my free time! You're gonna die!

As everyone learns, however, doing things successfully under deadline leads to unpleasantness. In the surreal corporate world, if you are doing things quickly, you don't have much to do. Your tasklist quickly grows off the monthly calender and onto the multi-year calender. You have to decide which tasks to do half-ass, and which tasks to be done seventy-percent ass, and which ones to ignore completely. You have to decide which boss sits higher on the totem pole, and which boss everyone ignores. To do this, you get involved politically, to determine whose horse to tie yourself to. This is what I call "bad stress".

No matter how rewarding the job is, if there is too much bad stress in it, the job stops becoming rewarding very fast. This is because dealing with bad stress is something usually called "management". It's why managers make that mad money. When you are doing a job and find too much bad stress puddled around your feet, you start asking yourself, "Where in the hell are those high-priced janitors to clean this crap up?". Seven times out of ten you can see it's a lot less trouble to just stop working and wait for management to eat itself, since you'll get in trouble working on anything any one person assigns you.

In a lot of ways, an employee wants to work at a task just like he or she wants to work at an email application. The employee does not want to craft MIME, or hard code IP addresses, or solder wires, just to send an email. Similarly, an employee does not want to go to management meetings, finance meetings, operational meetings, and work Project Plans just so he can write ten lines of SQL. He just wants to do the job. Like a good email application, good management hides all the bad stress and lets an employee get on with his kung fu ass-kicking.

Making a good manager, however, is a lot more complicated than making a good email client. Being a good manager is probably something a lot more like being a good athlete than being a good coder, or artist, or writer. It's confidence, moxie. It's panache. It's some unquantifiable quality that we don't have a lot of these days, something no software can replicate, and which is detectable only by others with some of that same quality.

Leadership.

Prelude

Near Mt Greylock, MA
Mile 1572

When I think of mountains, I think of the southern Appalachians, where steeper generally means higher, and flowing water slows as it gets lower. This sense of the land is no longer applicable. This far north, deep inside the old icesheet, swamps and bogs can appear on mountaintops, and the lower slope of a mountain can be a sheer cliff. Ridges run helter skelter, completely unaware of the streams running around them. It is an environment shaped not by the running water of the present but by forces of the distant past. I sometimes yearn for the stream-shaped mountains of my childhood vacationland, but reject the cowardice this implies, the infantility. This place is new, it holds a mystery, and the mystery is growing stronger, as the mountains again begin reaching for the sky. It is the labyrinth that dreams.

The past- the invisible, implacable past- is what shapes these northern lands. I wrestle with both the ghosts of the land and the ghosts inside my own mind. They know each other, they work together. These are what frighten me about this place: the dead powers. The north is their place.

At the end of this thing I must pass inside myself and emerge whole, shaman and scholar. This thing is big. I don't know if I can do this. I am so frightened I can taste iron on the back of my throat. Season of ghouls.

The closing months are upon us. Summer is over. Fall is coming, and in Maine, winter is on its very heels. A golden time, then the day of trial. It is almost here. They are coming. It's time to meet them.

"There is only ever one day, and that is the Day of Nine Dogs."

Cabin of Rest

Upper Goose Pond Cabin, MA
Mile 1535

JoAnne, the caretaker of the Upper Goose Pond Cabin, is a quiet, kindly schooteacher who is somewhat older than my parents. She rows to the cabin to take care of the place and of the various hikers.

I can't get over the physical shape of her and the various older people I've met on the trail. I always thought, hell, sixty and you're done. But she's got shoulders big as mine, lifts forty or fifty gallons of water up a couple of hundred feet from the pond each day. She looks ten, twenty years younger than her age.

I am incredibly grateful to Joanne and AMC for keeping up Goose Pond Cabin. I have been hiking with a pretty light food bag, and the summer sleep system I have been using since Sugar Grove VA is just not warm enough to let me sleep well. The cabin has piles of warm comforters, and mattresses, a big fireplace with a chimney that passes through the bunkroom, and a pancake breakfast. It seems as good a place as any to hold on a day for Monica to get to Dalton. Besides, if I hurried into town I'd be stuck there, anyway, bleeding money, sharing a motel room with six other people. Here in the cabin it's a bit more like home.

Oh, and now complete with hollering children. They're busy tying each other into the hammock. Oh God, I haven't laughed like this in years. Better than cable.

Bear Dance

Connecticut has turned out to have some of the more "friendly" bears I've seen on the trail. Looks like the infamous Jersey Death Bears are migrating north.

At Pine Swamp, I heard something jostling my food bag, tied in a remote branch near the shelter (I was tenting because of the bugs). Went outside, surprised the bear off the tree, where it was hanging upside down trying to figure out how to reach the food bag. Returned to bed, only to be awakened hours later by the TWANG of one of the tent lines springing free, and a furry moonlit sillouette on the tent wall. "WAAUUUGGHH!", I said. "Snurt!", said my would-be tent mate, followed by the sound of something very big running off a cliff. Crunch, run, crash . . . . CRASH! Thump thump thump. I slept like hell the rest of the night. "Not again", I said to myself. Do I give off some kind of smell that attracts these things?

A few days later, I saw a bear on the trail near Great Falls of the Housatonic. I did the usual, maybe still a little jumpy from the Pine Swamp of Horrors episode. "RAAAAUUGH!", I yelled, waving my poles around. He sauntered off the trail thirty yards, allowing me to pass. He gets promptly back on, and Mother of God, starts following me. "WAAURRRR!", I yell, a nice spurt of adrenaline allowing me to heft a torso size rock and blast it against a rock face. It shattered into a million tiny pieces with a very satisfying crash, which did the trick. The bear turned tail and ran away very quickly. Terrified, I hurried into town.

Bluffing bears is a show-act, but when it's following you on the trail there's some very real fear and anger there (let me sleep you furry clown from hell!). It's still all a show. Aside from the pepper spray, there isn't the least thing I could do against the speed and power of these animals. I can pretend, and that's about it. Thank God bears are horribly nearsighted. It makes me wonder how many tribal costumes and dances are based on scaring away predators. Maybe I should get a big shaman's wig and mask, until I get through Connecticut anyway, and dance the Bear Dance before I go to bed.

Damn Yuppies

Salisbury, CT
Mile 1485

Salisbury CT is an evil cash-sucking vampire of a town, but it's the first place since Vernon NJ where I could get a shower for less than a hundred dollars.

Isopropyl alcohol is five dollars. A loaf of bread is four. This is insane. What do all these people do, making this kind of money in the middle of nowhere? More importantly, how do you get rich in the first place if you are willing to spend four dollars for a loaf of bread? If I was a multi-millionaire I'd be damned if I would set foot in a store that charges those kind of prices and STILL doesn't have a cheese selection worth a damn. Not only are they yuppies, but they are uncultured yuppies.

Blasting off this morning for the Birdcage in Dalton MA, 75 miles up the trail. The Birdcage is a "hostel" run out of the house of one very nice Ron Bird, who also runs the Shell station. I will be meeting up with Monica again around then, for a good visit to see me off into the endgame of this thing.

Between here and there we are finally going over the 2000 foot contour, for the first time in a couple of hundred miles. The mountains of Massachusetts loom impressively, unlike the tame hills we've been zooming over.

LOOM!

Mile Slave

NY/CT border
Mile 1441

One through hiker- I'll call him Freight- is one of those type-A folks cleverly disguised as a hippie. He's very Deadhead laid back, but push the right buttons, and watch the hell out. I saw this in person in an exchange with a not terribly friendly local.

LOCAL (leering at hiker girls): I bet it's like a big party up in the woods, right? Like Woodstock.
FREIGHT: Yeah, it's just like Woodstock, except you pull twenty miles every day in the snow, rain, heat, mud, over these goddamn mountains, and rest maybe one day in fourteen. You want to hike this hill today? (Freight offers the local his hiking poles)
LOCAL: (looks appalled) No!
ME: But it's still a lot of fun! Ha ha! Boy!

My attempt to break the tension proved futile. But Freight was missing the idea that this whole thing is a voluntary endeavor. It doesn't feel like it sometimes, but when it stops being fun it's time to slow down.

Unfortunately, you can only slow down so much. They do close the mountain at the end of this thing on October 15. At some point, every through hiker becomes a mile slave, and it's just something you have to accept. It takes grit, but by now we have plenty of that, mixed with the various foul effluvia coating our bodies.

Landgeist

Telephone Pioneers Shelter, NY
Mile 1430

New Jersey was as far south as the glaciers managed to come. The two thousand foot thick sheet of ice parked there, scraping out Sunfish Pond and God knows what else, while the freeze and thaw cycle turned Pennsylvania into rubble (which it remains to this day).

Here in New York, the ice sheet was more robust, and the differential torque between the area under the ice and the area over the ice sheared off the mountaintops over the two thousand foot contour. As the sheet retreated, the wandering tops and associated rubble ground their way to a halt on the remains of the mountains, like Noah on Mt. Ararat. These geological formations have an assortment of amusing names like "erratic" and "drumlin", but they are caused by the same underlying phenomenon, ice grinding, lifting.

It's worth noting that ice ages can come and go with incredible rapidity; from a geological point of view, climactic changes are practically instantaneous- ice cores in Greenland indicate that the planet once went from glacial to interglacial in five years. Seven meters of sea level in five years . . . thoughts to keep you warm at night. But then again, so does the thought of a greater trans-Caucasus war. Or, if you are a real cold sleeper, both.

Anyway, in terms of hiking, all this means that from north Jersey on through, you have a bunch of very smooth, easy hills topped with hundred foot boulder piles that apparently dropped from the sky. The AT, laid out by consummate sadists, wanders through this zone gleefully. One formation was known to us only as "The Lemon Squeezer". No more information was provided until we "walked" through it.

Moving north into New York the trail grows more mild, however, probably because we have entered an area where the trail maintainers are not quite so mischievous. Soon it won't matter how mischievous the trail maintainers are, because we will be above the timberline, and everything will be sere and wild.

The weather is quite cool, and I take my time to enjoy the rolling climbs and steady pace. Not many town stops (that anyone can afford) in this area, and I miss Monica a great deal, more than I can say in this limited and rather public space.

But if I rush too much, all I will remember is missing and torment and sweat and blood. Lifting my head and seeing the wild reminds me that hiking the AT is something that is only done once. Life outside.

Southbounders

Passing an increasing number of southbounders (or sobos) on the trail. They started in early or mid-June at Katahdin, which means I should be able to finish in two months or so. Possibly faster, since the sobos were on fresh legs when they started, while I will be entering the challenging north with two thousand miles on these legs.

It's heartening- I might not have to flip up. I can make it straight through.

Here we go.

Garden State

Vernon, NJ
Mile 1348

Incredibly, New Jersey is gorgeous. The trail is well-graded and comparatively rock-free, with a few exciting climbs thrown in to keep the daydreaming hiker awake and focused. Views from the ridgeline are like the best of Virginia, but without the endless subdivisions (which are, for the most part, unoccupied, according to the laments of a local real estate agent). This part of NJ seems almost entirely undeveloped, more wild than anything since the far South. It's peculiar. I expected mountains lost in an ocean of urbanism.

The people are also surprisingly friendly. Folks in PA were . . . Odd. It didn't take much to remind you that you walked through the home state of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Flavoring all these observations, of course, is the fact that the weather has suddeny turned Olympian. Highs are down in the eighties, with colder weather rolling in over the course of the next week. Cooler temps mean fewer stops and a faster pace. With luck, I can get into some higher mountains by the time this cool snap is done with.

Water Bottles

Delaware Water Gap PA
Mile 1280

There's a finality in filling up the water bottles. It's the first stage of departure. It represents the most crucial of my supplies, the one thing I need out there. With water I could make it to the next town, though hungrily. Filling the bottles is the definitive statement to myself: I am filling up this most precious commodity and walking on. It's hard when a town has been so generous.

The church hostel potluck was everything I imagined. It was held in the fine old Christian tradition of "if we act really nicely, the heathen will get curious". They were wonderful people, and we talked about the Presbyter movement for hours, and whether or not the people of northern England and Wales were ever truly Catholicized. They were probably Presbyters from the get go, considering that the Arian missions frequently converted congregations to have elected clergy. Then we talked about Arius and Fox and all sorts of good things, and snorted at some of the people that pass for Christians these days. I wished them good luck in their mission. They wished me good luck to God.

A Changing World

Delaware Water Gap, PA
Mile 1280

A week of record temperatures has afficted this area of Pennsylvania near the NJ state line. In a few generations this forest will die, in fact has already started dying, as the interglacial period continues into its warming period. Whether or not the warming is human-related, it (and the impending energy crisis) will be a test of how well we have built our culture. Can we adapt in a changing world? Can people live and do without, or will they savage each other for the last pint of Ben & Jerry's? I like to think that people are generally nice, but I'm pragmatic enough to steer clear of the freezer section.

In any case, this is the hardest part of the trail so far. The grade is gradual (although the chaotic landsape of sofa-sized boulders makes things interesting), but hundred degree temperatures combined with Florida-esque humidity makes walking a torment, and dangerous. Pouring sweat, even when sitting, combined with very sparse watering holes, means you have to slow down, or risk suffering through a voluminous textbook of heat-related maladies. The heat is much worse for you than the cold, it seems.

Well, that's not quite true, but death by cold is quicker, more merciful. The heat toys with you like a physical interrogation. It makes you think that YOU are the weak one, YOU are the one so out of shape that you need to stop every hour. I'm not making you lie down on that cold rock, says the heat. You're the one that's stopping. Like a prisoner, the hiker must always remind himself that the heat is responsible, not himself. The heat is what makes him weak and nauseated- the heat makes it necessary to cool the body core against a rock. The heat is the enemy. It is trying to trick me. It will not defeat me.

In spots the mosquitoes are as bad as anything in the Everglades. We are not even in the serious bug country yet, the swamps of New Jersey and New York. Staying in shelters is no longer an option; sleep would be impossible without bug netting. Between the bugs and the awesome heat, I feel like I am doing a dramatic interpretation of At Play in the Fields of the Lord. Any moment I expect curious Yanomamo to peer through the tent door, speaking strange words and asking for cargo.

Tonight the heat is supposedly going to break a little bit. Until then, I will be at the DWG's hiker potluck, sponsored by the local Church, where locals bring vats of food and watch in horrified fascination as we eat. We eat a lot. There's no polite way to say just how much is a lot, but I'd like to say that I have never before seen "horrified fascination" so clearly expressed in people's faces.

Speaking of which, the Sycamore Grill here in town has a hamburger that has knocked the current #1 trail burger, the Hillbilly Burger at the Barn Restaurant in Sugar Grove, VA. The current top three trail burgers are now:

1) The Bar Angus at the Sycamore Grill, DWG PA
2) The Hillbilly Burger at The Barn in Sugar Grove VA
3) The Wesser Burger at the NOC in Wesser NC

Congratulations to the Bar Angus!

Pardon this somewhat scattered log entry, but I daresay that the heat is affecting my concentration as an essayist. Time to loiter somewhere air-conditioned!

The Capitol Ltd

Another post from the past that didn't get published.

Lesson learned with Blogger's email-to-post function: wait a while between posts. It takes the blogspot software a bit of time to publish, and there's no queueing. Posts coming in between are lost to the ether.

EDIT: Another lesson learned: this function is worthless. Either that or blogger's email server is ridiculously overwhelmed. It's probably an aging MMX sitting under the water cooler.

Date: Sun Jul 23, 2006 7:24 pm

AMTRAK Capitol Ltd
en route to Harper's Ferry

Coming into Washington DC as a native Floridian and AT hiker was shocking in a number of ways. One was the public transit system. We Floridians eschew things like public transit, emergency rooms, and schools as being part of the global communist conspiracy, so Metrorail seemed like Great Stalin's Ghost himself. It's amazing getting from point A to point B without having to sell your firstborn children to insurance companies.

Second was the fact that, in spite of all the warnings about DC, the bad areas just didn't look that bad, at least as I sped above them on Metrorail. By "that bad" I am thinking of 14th Street in Bradenton. The only place I've seen that looks like 14th Street is currently being blown all to hell by the Israelis. I've only seen Beirut on the news, so I do not know if the bombing is an improvement or not, but in the case of upper B-town, I can say that intelligent munition is just what the area needs.

As a tourist destination, the museums in DC could eat up a week. Monica and I literally raced through three museums, but the American Museum of Art alone would take days to digest fully. Add to that the various monuments, the National Archive, and God knows what else, and you could have a very tiring, very rewarding weeklong family outing. I am pro-tiring and pro-rewarding, and if I had kids, I would be especially pro-tiring when it comes to vacations. Wear earplugs during the day to drown out their exhausted cries, conk those little suckers out.

If you do not care to have a family with you and don't care about things like private bathrooms or air conditioning, I'd also strongly recommend a hostel for the stay in the downtown area. Hilltop Hostel, booked by my fantastic girlfriend Monica, was a very handy 22 dollars per person, and a hundred feet from a Metrorail station.

I am glad to return to the woods. The city was, at times, almost overwhelming, both in the sheer number of people and the annonymity. On the trail, you generally don't pass a single person without having a little chat. It took some conscious thought to not chat up every person I bumped into on the Metro. "Oh, sorry bout that. Say, heard what the weather's going to be doing for the next few days?"

I am also sad to return to the woods. Having been with Monica for five years, it's been difficult being away from her. Reunited, it was astonishing how it felt as though I had never been away. Now, parted again, it is doubly difficult, without even the woods around me. I will see her again in four weeks. During those four weeks I will be flying across the relatively flat mid-Atlantic, twenty mile days being the rule rather than the exception. First I have to get away from the city.

Every hurt that the city inflicts is calculated: such-and-such highway system should inflict so many deaths and mutiliations; that train can discomort only so many; medical treatment is available only for so-and-so but not for such-and-such. I am, for the next hour, still a cell in this vast and malevolent machine. I have been once crushed in the workings of this beast, and now, alone, with a great war brewing, with every kind of evil looming over the Republic, I am apprehensive about its workings and its intent.

Already, though, steel and stone have given way to the countryside. From thousands of feet up, the human world looks the way it truly is, as it exists in Creation. It is so very small, so fragile, that peace and spread of knowledge among all peoples seems inevitable. With a few world wars along the way, of course.

Pizza and Convicts

Again, here's another post that didn't make it through Blogger's system. Here it is, somewhat past its freshness date.

Date: Sun Jul 23, 2006 7:24 pm

Pen-Mar Park, MD
Mile 1050

A local pizza joint delivers to Pen-Mar state park, right on the AT, and I couldn't help myself. I ordered a large white pizza and relaxed, chatting with a convict on work crew. He found both my ability and desire to walk a thousand miles ludicrous. I found his desire to perform multiple violent crimes likewise. He was seated at a scenic viewpoint, wilderness and escape not sixty feet away.
"They must trust you guys an awful lot," I said, reminded of the escaped killer in the Senandoahs.
"I'm out pretty soon," he said, "Two months". Looking over his shoulder at the other members of the work crew, he added, "Don't know about them"
I asked him about prison.
"Too many fucking coons", he said, still looking over his shoulder.
I just nodded and tried to look understanding. This was, after all, a violent criminal. But the look on my face must have said something.
"Once you're in, you hook up with the KKK people. It's just what happens. I wasn't prejudiced before I went to prison."
"Same thing happens to public school teachers"
He laughed. Coughing trashy laugh.
If I didn't know this guy had a habit of using his wife as a punching bag and sometime fencing dummy, I might've played a game of pool with him. Hell, I probably have played many, many games of pool with people exactly like him.
My stomach turns, not for the first time, as I realize how much I hate Bradenton. I regret making a joke with the guy.
I saw the pizza car coming, and wished him good day.
"Good luck," he said
"Likewise," I replied.
It was the biggest lie I've told on the trail.

Bulletproof

Palmerton, PA
Mile 1245

What will we miss when we're not through-hikers anymore? According to Hiker X (GA-ME 1996): "You'll miss feeling like you do now. You know. Ten foot tall and bulletproof".

He's right, we do feel bulletproof, but not for the reasons he's remembering. That's a lot of romantic nostalgia in his voice. We feel bulletproof because we aren't afraid of bullets anymore. We aren't afraid of bullets because they would probably hurt less than Pennsylvania. Northern Pennsylvania. I know a few hikers who might actually welcome hot lead over the dawning of a fresh, new, rocky 98 degree day.

I was so wrong when I said the rocks here aren't worse than anywhere else. I hadn't been north of Port Clinton yet. I hadn't gone through BMECC's jurisdiction (BMECC is a "climbing" club, not a hiking club, and they route the trail accordingly), and I hadn't touched the Superfund area, which looks exactly like the area depicted in "Road Runner" cartoons. Complete with electric blue rivers, from the contamination. Luckily, so far it is free of plummeting bodies coming to a messy end, concealed by a tiny white "puff". I loved those cartoons.

It's pretty breathtaking too. It's the first time I've felt daredevilish on the trail- I'm not naturally afraid of heights, but some of these boulder scrambles test my nerve. It's its own place.

And what the hell, leaping from boulder to boulder over endless chasms, we might as well feel just a little adolescence.

Just a little bulletproof.

State of Annoyance

Port Clinton, PA
Mile 1203

People complain about the rocks in PA, but really, they are no worse than a lot of Virginia. What gets you about PA is that this is the state in which all the trail annoyances gather to attack you en masse.

1) It's as hot and buggy as the mid-Atlantic. It's making us kind of crazy.
2) Some of the worst climbs on the entire trail (I'm looking at you, Lehigh Gap)
3) Rocks like New Hampshire (sharp enough to cut deep if you are foolish enough to walk to the privy barefoot . . .ahem)
4) Towns are as mean as New England (no showers)
5) Twenty miles of toxic waste. The forest service has considerately covered the AT Superfund sites with Ecoloam, a product containing real human feces. Mmm!
6) For the love of God it's as boring as Virginia.

Put all those things together and you get a state that kicks out as many would-be through hikers in two hundred miles as Virginia kicked out in five hundred fifty. Yellowblazing (i.e., hitchhiking) has gotten to be very popular.

From here it's seventy-six miles to Delaware Water Gap. Might as well get out of here. DWG has a free hostel, and please, Jesus, let it have a shower.

On the bright side, all the recent rain means there is plenty of water. In addition to rocks, PA is also known for thirst. Not so for the class of '06.

Well, less than a thousand miles (971.4) to Katahdin!

The Doyle

Duncannon, PA
Mile 1141 (the mileage in the post from Boiling Springs is not correct- it was obtained from an out-of-date datasheet)

When I was just starting this hike in Georgia, Monica and I ran into a former through hiker who had completed the trail in 2005. His trail name was Porter. When pumping him for information about the Doyle Hotel, he responded, lugubriously, "Oh. The Doyle. It's a hostel with a bar. That's all you need to know"

He was right. A bar is all it's got going for it. I've had better accomodations at trail shelters, for a lot less money, to say nothing of the wonderful free hostels out there. If I didn't have town errands I'd be out of here. Again, beer and liquor color through-hikers' reflections on what is good and not good.

But there's errands to run and laundry to do, so it's best to make them snappy so I don't spend more time at the Doyle than I absolutely have to.

The rest of PA is a hot, rocky, and mean hundred miles, and it won't be punched through as easily.

Stars and Bars

Harper's Ferry, WV
Mile 1008

Harper's Ferry is the most beautiful trail town I've seen yet, largely because it is an historic artifact preserved by the Park Service. Mighty rivers join right at the foot of a commanding church steeple, and cliffs loom like the ghost of history itself from three sides.

I ran into Cud at the Outfitter where we shared some good-natured Southern guffaws. "We're about to enter enemy territory," I said
"Hell yeah," Cud replied, "Comin up out of Virginia they got this big flag, Lincoln all over it, all kinds of stuff like that. Shee-it." Even in his wicking fabrics and lightweight backpack, he looks like he is wearing a gray wool uniform. Cud's southern Georgia accent and overall courtliness overrides the Johnny Reb in him, but it's always there for a true son of the confederacy. Which Cud really is not, thankfully (he's a Good Guy through and through), but it did get me thinking.

On the surface it is peculiar that folks emblazon their homes and vehicles with the flag of America's most dire enemy, the Confederate States of America. It's not so peculiar when you reflect on the fact that the Confederacy, in the minds of many, never really lost. The state song of Maryland ("Maryland, my Maryland") quotes Maryland son John Wilkes Booth- specifically, the words he cried out on shooting Lincoln. Sic semper tyrannis. Virginia should not call in vain.

Then you have a particular Missouri senator who remarked, in an interview with the laid-back white supremecists of Southern Partisan magazine, that we need to fight the idea that "Southern patriots" were "defending a perverted lifestyle". Slavery seems pretty perverted to me, but apparently former Senator and Attorney General John Ashcroft disagrees. If only he could keep his kinky slave fetish in the closet, because it's sort of disturbing reading about public officials being into this kind of thing. It's like finding a vibrator on your grandparents' bedstand. School voucher programs, preposterous drug sentencing (compared with sentencing rules for violent offenders), and pants-height laws all efficiently spell out what John Ashcroft, Trent Lott, and countless others so very much want to say: we don't like the Negroes very much.

So, as Osama bin Laden once observed in a 1998 interview, America is still a nation very much divided. Heaven help us if the Bad Guys get their ministry into the hideous US prison system. Actually, heaven won't help us, but maybe the Aryan Brotherhood will. When I left for the trail, an investigation into AB "stacking" of Florida state prison guards was underway. A federal attorney apparently began wondering why all the guards at Sanford had shamrock tattoos and carried nooses on their keychains. Hey Mr. Fancy Pants Federal Attorney, you ever consider that the AB may be our front line against terrorism?

This divided state . . we haven't even gotten into the sex thing yet, largely because feminists don't know how to point a gun or mix up plastic explosives. Which is a shame, because they're about to repeal the Enlightenment. So long marriage for love. Say hello to marriage for reproduction and, oh, needing a spouse's signed letter to buy condoms or birth control. Or going to jail for selling same. All of which will be revisited by newly sworn reactionaries, courts in power for the next few decades. It'll be a jolly old time when all those Lakewood Ranch soccer moms need a letter from hubby to go to the gynecologist.

But those fair ladies need not worry. They have enough money to hire their own doctors, doctors who won't give a damn about some cockamamie law saying what they can and can't treat. Seventy percent of the country consistently polls as against abortion, but eighty percent of the country wants the choice available to them when their teenage daughter gets knocked up. Instead of being anti-abortion, how about being "anti-letting-your-daughter-go-out-drunk-until-3AM"?

So Harper's Ferry sent my head spinning until I began unconsciously looking for the nearest liquor store. I came back to my senses and headed again into the woods, away from history and those accursed cliffs, at least for the time being. The town was a deathtrap for any force trying to hold it. It is a deathtrap for any hiker who gets too caught up in what it represents. I must focus. Defending the American Way is not what I am doing today. Today I walk.

Tomorrow I visit Monica in Washington, DC.

The Last Mighty

Terrapin Station Hiker Hostel, VA
Mile 950

I am looking ever more forward to three days with my lovely girlfriend Monica in Washington DC. I have put the mighty Shenandoahs (aka 'Shennies' or 'Doahs') behind me with a brace of twenty-plus mile days, the mileage made easier by the Shennies' gentle terrain and the unseasonable cold front we've had come through the area. And, of course, by the fact that Monica waits on the other side.

The Shennies are the last string of 3,000ft+ ridges I will be mounting for some time. There are prominences between here and the Whites that will rise above this altitude, but no sustained ridges. I'm about to enter the dreaded "Deli Country", with its spiralling costs, lack of water, bugs, and Jersey Death Bears. The Shenandoahs are the last mighty, until the Whites rear their feared peaks above my head. Those mountains will present challenges I've never faced, but on the plus side, they're still five hundred miles away.

Shennies Overview
The southern half of the Shenandoahs are pretty darn boring, but very easy hiking. The second half is a bit more difficult, but has some of the best views in Virginia. Why are the Shennies supposedly the most popular stretch of trail among thru-hikers? The answer is beer. Well, beer, restaurants, road access, and honest-to-God trailside full-liquor bars. You can't hike seven miles without coming near a store, and the road is never more than a mile off. Too much civilization for me. I felt a bit like a piece of the wilderness myself. "Look at this guy honey! He's walked all the way from Georgia! Get the camera!"

Bears
I saw seven bears in the Shennies, one of them being the second-closest bear encounter I've had in my life. It's hard to beat the first closest, as the closest bear encounter I've ever had was the bear's teeth being inside of me (see the entry titled 'Totem'). I suppose if I was partially digested by a black bear that would beat it, but I've lost enough limbs for a lifetime, thank you very much. Anyway, this close encounter involved me rounding an uphill switchback near Jarman Gap and almost colliding with the animal, a big lone male, damn near in arm's reach. We scared the crap out of each other. I said, "Awk!", he said, "Gurk!". In the time it took for my hand to reach my pepper spray holster, the bear was out of sight. He ran with such power that he sprayed me with clay and rocks from thirty feet away.
Coming off Loft Mountain, I saw another notable bear, halfway up a dead tree, rocking violently back and forth in an effort to bring it down (and presumably to eat the grubs inside). I never knew bears of that size could climb. It also indicated a level of planning I didn't think bears posessed. They're a bit smarter than I thought. Overall, bears in the Shennies are also quite a bit bigger than their relatives in the Smokies.

Slashers
An escaped killer made his way to the Shenandoah National Park yesterday, and was attempting to pass through the area disguised as a section hiker. Rangers with assault weapons and helicopters canvassed the area. One well-armed ranger seemed pretty casual about it. "He'll get hungry and come in, they always do after they run in the woods". I complimented his choice of rifle sight. He complimented my choice of hairstyle. "No one's gonna come near you looking like that". I got my head shaved bald in Waynesboro. Explains how I always get so much shelter space. That, and the snoring.

Madkeeper

Waynesboro, VA
Mile 842

DISCLAIMER: Some of this post may contain disturbing material.

There's a fellow I met on the trail a few weeks back, whose name I will be keeping from this account, as he has quite a few aquaintances that are off their freaking rockers. I'll call him Trackless, or Track, for short.

A former through-hiker, Track feels the need (as many former AT hikers do) to help fellow hikers. Lord knows Track's charges need it.

There's Marge, the paranoid schizophrenic who, after hiking the trail, decided that she was the real reason behind Edward's abdication in the middle of the last century. Something about being a lost lovechild or queen of England. The Lindberg baby was also involved, but as I was not writing the whole story down as Track recollected it, I've completely forgotten how that tied in. I regret my decision to not take notes, because the whole thing was incredible. Track has frequently had to rescue other hikers from Marge's . . . Accusations.

MARGE (seemingly normal): Did you see the photo montage on Reagan last night? They must have had that all made up, just waiting for him to pass away. How awful!
HIKER: Actually, one of my best friends works for CNN, and she can . .
MARGE: HOW CAN YOU LET HER LIVE KNOWING WHAT SHE KNOWS!!!??

Track was worried about poor Marge, as she was not in her usual hideyholes. I shared his worry. Given our nation's enlightened attitudes on mental illness, chances are Marge is in jail. It could be worse, I said to Track. At least she's white.

Another guy I'm not even going to try hiding the identity of, because he sounds like a jerk. Leonard something. Bill Bryson featured him under a pseudonym in his AT classic, "A Walk in the Woods", but heaven help me if I can remember the pseudonym.

One of Leonard's standard shenanigans was walking up to people's tents in the middle of the night, unzipping doors and shining his flashlight in their faces, proclaiming, "You're not gonna make it" . . ."You'll make it" . . . "You're not gonna make it". Supposedly, Track said, he was passing judgement on who would or would not complete the trail. I mentioned that it sounded like a good way of getting a few hollowpoints in the chest.

This Leonard character goes by the name "HEELED" now, as he's spent several months in a mental institution after spraying female hikers with his own semen. Unsurprisingly, HEELED is also a former through-hiker.

The good thing is that all these wards of Track were probably terminally unhinged before they made their hike. At least now they can live semi-peacefully in the Virginia woods, watched over by Track.

Mind them well, Madkeeper.

The Missing

Rusty's Hard Time Hollow, VA
Mile 828

Rusty's Hard Time Hollow is run by none other than a man named Rusty, who someow has direct private road access to the Blue Ridge Parkway. He had made noises about selling his land, as he is getting older and poorer, and is less able to maintain the place. It'd probably help if he didn't have a couple score of different livestock scattered around, or if he didn't insist on doing his own welding. God did not intend for molten metal to be used in toilet repair, for example.

Lately he's been trying to send out the message that he's looking for a protege. Young, responsible hard worker to work for room and board and eventual inheritance of an 18 acre estate on the Virginia Blue Ridge. There's no takers. Everyone is either already tied up in the larger world or is so feckless there's no hope in entrusting them with anything more than maintaining the pig trench. From my various employer friends I've talked to, it's a common failing in young men these days. They're not dumb or lazy, they just don't seem to care about what they are doing.

And really, who can blame them for not being interested in participating in this country's economy? With a third of the money supply owned by the Chinese, another quarter by the Sauds, and the American capital manufacturing capacity running at around the same level as the Vatican's, you're left with spending the rest of your life as a stockboy at Wal-Mart. Oh yay. Instead of looking back on a day's work and saying, "I helped build that automobile", or "that plane flew because of me", our young worker can say with pride, "I brought low, low prices to Backofnowheresville, Virginia". Gah.

Unsurprisingly, our young workers say, "No, thank you"- that is, the ones not already sucked into the global marketplace. Perhaps, someday, when the Arabs and the Chinese yank their support for our currency (making the US economy look like Weimar Germany on a bad day), and the shiny happy global capitalism movement is shown to be the farce it truly is (the Chinese don't 'globalize'- the Chinese 'sinofy'), there will be a whole crop of energized Americans, working for their country and other things that matter. As opposed to pumping oceans of money into the festering pieholes of the Saud regime.

I'm betting that on that day there will be some young Rustys in that crew, working the Hard Time Hollow, and slopping that damn pig outside the outhouse. We await our young men, the prodigal, the missing, and we will greet them when they return.

Trail Recommendations

Dutch Haus B&B
Mile 808

Everyone says that the Homeplace restaurant in Catawba VA is the best restaurant on the trail. I'm sorry, but no. Homeplace gives you an infinite amount of fried chicken and other good country things, but nothing to write home about. Certainly not worth the hellish two mile walk along a busy road.

Three Lil Pigs BBQ in Troutville, however, is sublime. It's a decent southern BBQ joint that had a front-end collision with a bistro. The vinegar pork was pretty much perfect, as were the ribs, although the pitmaster at 3 Pigs prefers to smoke the meats a little lighter than what I am accustomed to. Gazpacho fresh and tasty, but needed a touch more sour and a touch more spicy (both of which were corrected with Tabasco). Onion straws . . . These little shreds of joy were perfectly batter-dipped onion fragments that somehow managed to not have a drop of greasiness or pasty onion texture- just a puffy onionness, and a cajun garlic aioli to dip them in. Chicken salad touched with fresh sage, the leaves blanched to a brilliant green. Sigh. Only a half mile from the trail, as well.

Dutch Haus in Montbello, VA is, well, fantastic, but pricey for a hostel, at $25. The food is well-prepared, simple stuff, but Earl and his family are so wonderful that it tastes much better. And being out of the elements is always nice for a night.

Best of the 80s, and more!

Mile 788
Brown Mountain Creek Shelter, VA

Imagine: you are walking the Appalachian Trail.

Yesterday the temperature reached one hundred and two degrees. Today the heat is breaking, and a muscular thunderstorm broaches the horizon. It comes out of nowhere while you are on a rocky outcrop at the bad end of a three thousand foot climb. BOOM. Lightning shakes the mountain from under your feet, and eleven inches of rain falls in less than four hours. The trail is an ankle-deep creek filling your shoes, and the tiny stream that was once a water source is now a raging torrent, waist-deep water smashing a cliffside far below. What comes into your mind at times like this?

Carribean Queen!
Now we're sharing the same dream!
And our hearts will beat as one
No more love on the run!

Yes, I am the walking eighties station. When the going gets tough, the tough get Phil Collins. I've plagued so many shelters with "Easy Lover" that I should probably send Phil royalties. And let's not forget "Lucky Star", "Take My Breath Away", and God knows what other musical trainwrecks that have haunted my uphill pace since I entered Virginia.

It's time for Zatarain's Red Beans and Rice tonight, to which I am adding some homemade smoked peppers I purchased at a roadside stand near Buena Vista. Tomorrow's walk to the privy, I might be taking the "highway to the danger zone"

Heat

Daleville, VA
Mile 712

It's going over 90 degrees today here in Daleville, somewhat cooler in the woods. My pack straps and shirt are white with salt, and I am filling my reserve water bottles as well as the 3 liter Camelback. The heat beats you up worse than any uphill, and it beats you no matter how many miles you are doing that day.

Some of the folks I've been hiking with are making dropping-out sort of noises. The "Virginia Blues" are in effect. It's that time when thru-hikers realize that they are not just on a very long vacation, that they are actually on an expedition to walk across the country. And there's the heat. Virginia Blues.

I will walk through them.

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.