Molly & Jim Denton Shelter

June 20th, 2004

My 3-Month AT Anniversary

Aerosmith on the little yellow box in my pocket this morning sings

Sweet Emotion and I'm feeling all that. Boy Scout Troop 30-strong

camped all around half we half dozen thruhikers holed up in the

shelter, under siege by a teen scout tent city. Not really, but last

night around 10-ish when sleep seemed like a good idea, there was no

having it for them boys. I hopped up, took a cold shower from the

spring-fed gravity douche box out back, and having no towel availed

myself of the scout's fire to dry off. When they discovered I was a

hiking from Georgia to Maine, they asked many questions. I answered,

feeling suddenly heroic and grand and Buddha-like in that

Massachusetts-born bean-eating, port-swigging hobo Kerouac kinda way.

Their eyes were full of incredulous wonder and wowness. Once dry, I

said my goodnights, returned to my loft bed in the swanky-built Denton

Shelter (the first heading north outa Port Royal), popped a few

Excedrin PM, plugged into Skynard's Freebird on the radio at peak

volume, and passed clean out, Party Girl & Spice snuggling tight in the

bed beneath me.

I awoke snug and warm and hearing the complaints of all those who froze

in their summer bags in the 40 degree night. Ha! After so many

sleepless nights cold and uncomfortable in my summer fleece and that

damn hammock tent, I made the wise choice to keep reclaim my 20 degree

REI bag from the post office (and wash it four times!) and pack the

hammock tent and (grudgingly but a must due to weight concerns) my Mtn

Hardware sil-nylon tent as well, keeping only the rain fly and the

stakes, an adequate shelter weighing less than a pound instead of the

four pound tent. BUT I KEPT THE BAG! YEAA! Not to celebrate the

frozen-ness of my compadres this past night, but thank God I kept my

warm bag. This boddisatva sleeps cold, baby, and I need the

snuggle-bug warm biscuit groovy gravy goose down of my REI bag. Amen.

On that note, I'd meant to shoot out a note this morning to briefly

encapsulate the events of the past weeks. I realized that my some-8000

words of rants just sent out on Post #10 lack some basic factoids and

time frame stuff.

Essentially, I returned to the AT at Daleville, VA on June 6, hiked

like a madman doing 90 miles in 4.5 days, pulled offtrail at Montebello

for a rumored and much-enjoyed free lunch at the Dutch Haus B&B

courtesy of the hiker-friendly owners, then, instead of returning tot

he trail for the last 40 miles of hike into Waynesboro, I caught the

tailwind of a coupla hitchhikers heading that way by car and voila! was

in Wb Friday afternoon whilst the whole world (except of course the

head-off-chopping Muslims) mourned Ronnie's passing. The local YMCA

provided showers and a grassy field in which to camp. I spent Saturday

there collecting supplies both that I'd mailed myself from California

and another $100 worth of shit from the local Dollar General store,

drank a 12-pack and parlayed quite pleasantly with new friends Flatbed

and Whiskey there in the YMCA park, got fed a great BBQ by angels Gravy

& Korpi around noon and headed out Monday morning to make up the miles

I'd missed coming early into town Friday. Monday night, back at Camp

Smelly Hiker out back the Y, I'd all but given up on finding anyone to

accompany me on my much-dreamed of "Aqua Blaze." The idea was to river

raft or canoe a stretch of the Shenandoah River equidistant to the

length of the Shenandoah Mtns, as the one parallels the other from the

valley to the west. It was a super cool idea, but everyone I asked just

wasn't interested. Well, they WERE interested and envious but all hung

up on being religious about stickin' to the White Blazes. Fine. I

gave up.

When Monday night Party Girl arrived at Camp Y and with her a new beau

named Spiceman. The rest is history, and the subject of the following

several dayze of rants.

Enjoy! -RSM Jester the Duke

Early 700s

June 8th

Back on the trail with a vengeance. Feeling somewhat retarded both in

my pace and in my brain after 10 Zero days on Carolina beaches, I hit

the Appalachians hard on Sunday, cranking out 40 miles in the first 48

hours of my return. It is now Wednesday. On Sunday, I was looking at

130 miles to Waynesboro, VA, my next mail & supply stop and the

southern portal to the Shenandoahs. On Monday morning, I had delusions

of making it to Waynesboro by Saturday morning, before the post office

closed at 11 a.m. After a humbling day of grueling ascents yesterday,

fully 5400 feet in total spread out over an insane 21.7 miles, I am no

longer delusional. Just dead on my feet.

Ascents and "big miles" aside, I'm not sleeping at night. Three nights

now, I lay awake most of the night. I joked to Jess & Eric that I had

just gotten used to sleeping in a hammock tent when they abducted me

and made me sleep in plush comfy beds for over a week. But it's no

joke. Though I recall nearly acclimating to the odd sleep of the

hammock two weeks ago, I now hate the fucker. If I had Mr. Hennessy

handy, I'd make him eat it.

[Random thoughts and notes never expounded upon in the mad dash of 90

miles in 4.5 days:]

Spiders and visions

Giant ones descending on me

I've a clear vision of stepping outside to webs everywhere

This hammock like a spider's wrap, unnatural position

White daddy long legs spiders recall Matrix

Giant millipede on my morning socks

Bright night of moon doesn't help reassure me in the spinning webs of

my mind

Sweet babbling brook helps

Heebie jeebies from insects surrounds me

Crying hysterically at close of 22 mile day

Screaming pain in feet, cold water

Drugs for pain but can't take em w/o water

No water to drink until the MIOX purifier does its job: 45 minutes to

kill viruses

4 miles short of goal..

Waynesboro by Sat no way

5400 feet climbed today, madness

I'm gonna shoot for half the trail, quit at 1000 miles=fuck it!

Half off!

Swollen gums last night around my on-and-off abscessed tooth.. fuck!

Party Girl regards my Tinkerbell, says I have issues

I'm sick, from lack of sleep

Glasgow, don't wanna go, but might

60-something Froggy Pete says "don't know what I wanna do when I grow

up," sweet

I want my tent back!

Oh, no, now nature calls, 5 a.m. sleepless

Two snakes on trail today

Millipedes on Eric’s back

Fuck you ray jardine the bugs are driving me nuts!

Out here on the trail, after years of feeling like a second class

citizen, out here I'm a 1st class AT citizen again!

Renegade tells tale of putting peanuts in his Coke as a boy.. wow!

never heard of such a thing

Watermelon wine, a country song, very funny

Shopping list: plastic lemon, pnut btr, restaurant packs mayo, jar of

frostinq

[Closing irony:]

Deputy Director of Military Operations in Iraq on the radio being

interviewed when suddenly (as so often happens on these ridges, another

station cuts in, a rock station, splicing in exactly on target with

Sublime singing,

"crooked spine" nice irony. -RSM

Mile 772

John's Hollow Shelter

Somewhere near Glasgow, VA

I saw Sarge today, the cool old black dude who dubbed me "Jester" one

night over beers in the Nantahala Outdoor Center, what feels a lifetime

ago (just two months). I inquired after Little Engine, and to my

surprise he said she was still on the trail. "Oh, yeah, she's

slackpackin down around Daleville. She's got problems with her back, I

think. But she's got money, her family's got money. She could walk

the entire trail without carrying a pack, if she wanted." Sarge went

on to tell me that Little Engine inquired after me once and awhile, but

denied any interest in me. I like hearing that. Too bad she smokes

like a chimney and is way behind me. She's a fine looking woman. But

it sounds like she needs to marry a sherpa.

Seeing Sarge got me thinking about Jersey Doug. I wonder how he's

doing. I wonder if he's still hammerin' down the trail, diggin' in

with his poles like there's no tomorrow. I miss Doug. Hell, I miss a

lot of people. So many, many people I've met on the trail are now well

ahead of me. Many are behind. Sarge says he's getting off soon and is

gonna bus it up to Vermont, then flip south. Listening to the

reasoning of man who has done the whole trail once and continues to do

chunks of it every year, I begin to think that might be the thing for

me. The Flip-Flop. Hike north to Harper's Ferry (roughly the halfway

point), then catch a ride or bus north to Maine, do Mt. Katahdin in

July instead of October, then hike south through the summer. This

eliminates the dangers of hitting early winter storms in northern New

England, gets you out of hot Pennsylvania and New York in the dead heat

of summer, and insures that you don't miss getting to climb Katahdin.

The "deadline" for a northbound hike is Oct. 15 when they close

Katahdin for the winter. Sarge says last year there was ice on the

rock-faced mountain in late September, and a lot of people went home

disappointed when the rangers called an early close to the season.

For my part, I'll be cutting it close now if I try and stick to my

northbound course. Very close. But if I flip, I get to walk through

Maine and my beloved New Hampshire in summer allowing family and

friends there to come join me for a section if they like in good

weather. And one other thing, and here's the reason Sarge likes

flipping: to see all the friends he made on the trail that year,

friends that he has since fallen far behind. Great idea! I can see

Maine Sail again! And Elly, too, for better or worse.

Last night wide awake at 4 a.m., I decided it was high time to break

into my coveted stash of Klonipin, all of ONE 2 mg pill I have left. I

ran out of my daily, Prozac, a week or so ago, the Klonipin even

further back. I squirreled away one K, for dire emergency, you know,

when its nearly nuthatch time, that sort of thing, when only a dose of

knockoff valium stand tween you and a straight jacket. Both the Zac &

the K are supposed to be mailed to me monthly from Houston Ground

Control to keep me from spinning out of orbit out here in deep space.

"Houston, we have a problem."

Prozac is Prozac is for depression in case you've been asleep for the

past decade. And the K, that I take on occasion, as one takes an

aspirin, but this for anxiety, not a headache. But you my loyal

readers already know I'm on crazy meds. You probably know I'm a

fan of pharmaceuticals in general. Love em. Give me a whack of

heavy doctor dope (in the form of a little yellow horse pill called

oxycodone - Think Rush Limbaugh?) over a joint any day. What's good for

the big fat goose is good for the Jester.

Mile 785

Later that day..

I made it! I can't believe it, but I did it again! Another big mile

day, this one 19 miles, and most of it in the afternoon and early

evening. After not getting going this a.m. until 10:30, then stopping

and shooting the shit a half an hour with Sarge when I ran into him

down by the James River, then typing for another hour at some other

shelter, I hiked till dusk! I was inspired by a rumor of trail magic

here. And good thing I was the last man on the trail at 8:30 p.m., cuz

I rolled in here just in time for a coupla cheese sandwiches and two

Nestea's! So what if i missed dinner of sausages and beans and bell

peppers and stuff. I made it!

Breakfast this morning courteously of Renegade and Tomboy. From their

little outdoor kitchen setup came the biggest meal I've had in days:

two eggs over medium (my favorite w/o even asking), two sausage links,

two sausage patties, two strips bacon, two cups of coffee and a juicy

juice. Yum! Yeah, so Kerouac and Snyder had yabyum, and I could

certainly use some of that nowadays, but yum yum works, too!

And so I expected to come out of the gate this morning like a rocket

roaring down the trail with a full tank. Strangely, however, this was

not the case. I have lagged inexplicably all morning, barely putting'

one foot in front of the other for hours. Came upon a beautiful

swimmin' hole just before noon. Man, I can't pass up a swimmin' hole,

no matter what kinda make-believe schedule or haste I got myself hooked

into. So in I went, into a churning liquid pool beneath a waterfall,

and not in a minute I'm giggling silly, dancing a jig as a hundred

little fishes nibble on me, probably snacking on the salt of my sweat,

all four pounds of it that I carried into their pool with me. Then

along comes Fred, 19-years old with a 19-pound food bag and (speaking

of four pounds) the gigantic 900 page Cervantes classic "Don Quixote,"

just about the only two things in his otherwise thin pack.

Most times we carry about ten pounds of food at a time, tops. This

boys a big eater. "Don't you carry a change of clothes, a tent,

anything else?" I ask him. "Just a fleece sleeping bag," he says. He

goes from shelter to shelter. Okay. Fair enough. The way I'm feeling

about my frikken spider's-wrap hammock tent, I just may start doing the

same. Fred heads for the pool, and as I make my way on up the trail, I

hear him giggling.

A mile or two later, and I'm just dying. Thermometer says it's 90, but

it's got to be 80 percent humidity to boot. A goddamn fly buzzes my

head incessantly, one of those low-frequency dumbass buzzers that

circle your head for a full minute or two, then vanish, only to return

to do it again a minute later. Seems like it's the same damn fly time

and again, but if so he's been with me for seventy miles and four days.

Today in the dead zone center of the Blue Ridge Mountains, there is but

one choice on the radio: country. At least in days past I was getting

R&B and hiphop stations, too. Ridge walking Virginia, I begin to

imagine a whole society of Crackers and Afreak-ans living together in

some kinda weird harmony down in the cities below. Crackers are

crackers, white people, you know. Afreak-ans, I imagine, are both

black and white people, all gettin' their freak on to Dr. Dre and

Shante and Eminem and them. Afreak-ans. Yeah. Whatever.

Near the intersection of U.S. Route 60 and the Blue Ridge Parkway, I

come across Moose Killer. Here is one funny old dude, older than dirt

and plagued by bad knees, heart attacks, and, yeah, you guessed it,

Moose’s. And still he hikes on. I knew I was talking to a character

when I saw his hand-carved walking stick with the names of all the

states on the AT, the I.A.T (or International AT) and some other branch

of the AT to the south into Florida and Alabama the initials of which

I've already forgotten. Beside every state he's finished there sits

the head of a flathead screw he's driven in the stick.

How did Moose Killer get his name, I inquire? "I got attacked by a

moose! Twice! I'll never hike in Maine in September again," he says,

and my mind immediately does the calculation. Yes, on my present

course I will be in Maine in September. "That's when they in rut.

They got poor eyesight, so a male moose, he'll charge anything that

moves if it gets in between him and his woman." Unknowingly, he did.

And the moose charged. "You got an 1800 pound freight train coming at

you, and it'll scare the shit out of you."

What did you do? "I sprayed him with pepper spray, and man, he laid

down skid marks THIS long!" Was that it, I wondered? "No, he backed

away, shook it off and came at me again. This time I hid behind a

tree, and thus ensued about a fifteen minute standoff. The only thing

I had in my favor was that his antlers were so big he couldn't get

around the tree at me. I told my friends later, I got home and didn't

have to shit for three days!" -RSM

Mile 808

June 10, 02

Surreal romp through the fast forest of morning today stomping the

terra double-time to reach a road crossing and a rumored ride to town.

Surreal music, that is. Or voice/music overlay. Ronnie Reagan and Ray

Charles, suddenly married in a weird mournful tribute montage of Ray's

song and Ronnie's rockem-sockem "Don't tread on us!" rah rah America

drama club champion oratory overlayed. Very strange. And I'm very

near D.C. now and all I can think is: Yesterday the old coot's corpse

flew over my head on its way to the rotunda, and this afternoon they're

gonna wheel his old bones back on another armor-plated stealth jet and

roar over my head again on route to Simi Valley Cali-Cali and stick him

in the ground just as the final green flash goes, "Ffffllllppppuut" and

the Pacific goes dark and mournful forever more. Dead President flying

over my head, and old Ray Charles finally gettin' his sight back on the

streets of Heaven and me? I've been humpin' the Blue Ridge with all

the gonzo conviction and masochistic foot-mashing, bone-crunching

slam-dunk drive of Attila the Hun on a rotgut homebrew binge & tear,

stomping out 90 miles in just 4 & 1/2 days. Madness. And the result?

Well, hell, it was suddenly announced to be a national

holy-day-of-mourning, so, why should I work? Hiking from dawn to dusk,

some 12 hours a day for close to a whole work week. I quit.

-RSM

Morning.

Awake.

Shake dreams from your hair my pretty children, my sweets, my Powder

Finger, my Whiskey, my Flatbed, Yovo, Wife & Beater, and me. Whiskey

(of Whiskey & Flatbed from New Hampshire), true to her namesake,

brought an Old Crow to the DuPont downwind Lycra-scented riverbend park

where we all sat last night `round the picnic table drinking, beer

mostly, and swapping AT war stories in the gentle dancing light of

fireflies abundant. We carry passes in our pockets, call em "noble

hobo visas" signed by YMCA desk personnel to prove to the cops that we

are indeed of the "2000-mile masochist" variety and not just grifter

opportunist who happened by the open field between YMCA and factory to

pop a squat awhile on questionable motives.

There are a few such folks out here in the field. The cops, if they

came by, would need not do a tent by tent check. They would need only

ask us. We thruhikers can spot our own kind in a heartbeat, and thus

spot interloping posers, too. They walk through and no one knows them.

They don't give their names or say much of anything, unless prompted.

And their tents are a dead giveaway: Wal-Mart specials, huge and silly

and structurally poor, they stick out amidst a dozen of our smaller,

stealth tents, hitech & expensive every one. I look out across the

field here by the river and just in the dozen thruhiker tents, (not

counting equipment stowed inside like $300 packs, $100 MSR alpine-ready

cook stoves, 2 & 3 hundred dollar sleeping bags, $75 Thinsulate ground

pads) I see a couple thousand dollars.

It is a Sunday morning in mid-June and this is Camp Zero, Waynesboro (I

spell it Waits-burro) Virginia, population I don't know, but apparently

the largest town we will pass through on the entire AT. It is the

southern gateway to the Shenandoah’s, a hundred miles of ridge during

which the AT more or less parallels a commercial section of the Blue

Ridge Parkway where restaurants and tourist kiosks allegedly abound and

the trail crosses the highway an alleged 42 times. I have just walked

90 miles of a pristine (no shops or cafes) section of the BRP in 4 &

1/2 madly-driven days, and am not looking forward to the Shenandoah’s.

So here I sit, resting my mashed-potato feet and bullfrog-bloated

knees, tendering a slight Yungling Black & Tan 12-pack hangover and

contemplating my future. My immediate future. Aqua-blaze? My

choices, as usual, are many. And for this I feel deeply blessed.

I spent my first night back in my beloved Mtn. Hardware Wayfarer II

tent after weeks of ugly sleep in the airborne cocoon of my Hennessy

Hammock. After waiting out a postal day off thanks to old Ronnie

Raygun, I at long last collected my tent & REI mummy bag from the

Waynesboro PO, where I had mailed it ahead in time and space to myself,

for possible pickup or forwarding on to New Hampshire if all had worked

well with my summer bag and hammock tent. It did not.

So I picked up my so-called "bounce box" and gleefully ran back to the

YMCA "Distance Hikers Only" refugee camp to crack it open. Zip-zap

went my knife down the packing tape seams. I lifted the folds of the

box open and WHOOOOSH! A noxious wave of ammonia leapt out of the box

and hit me full face and I thought, "Oh, no." I knew immediately what

I was smelling.

Seems back in Damascus in the thick of Trail Daze, I, in my drunken

daze, washed and only half-dried my $300 down bag, mummy wrapped it in

Hefty garbage green, and packed it away in a tight little box. And

there it sat. For damn near a month. Rotting. Oh, the horror. -RSM

Shenandoah River, VA

Early miles of a 75-mile trip

Tuesday

I'm sitting in the stern of a 17 foot canoe gently sliding down the

Shenandoah River with AT thruhiker Spice Man & Party Girl. With us, a

30-pack of Miller High Life, half a gallon of Jack, a half gallon of

Evan Williams bourbon, a case of generic Coke, a fifth of Mescal, five

gallons of drinking water, a bag of pharmaceuticals for emergency sedation, a

quarter bag of special spice, and our brains - each so wild-eyed and

googly that it oughta be licensed as a concealed cerebral weapon in the

everlasting gonzo fight of the free & the brave.

Spiceman was reticent about this whole gig, but he's getting into it

now. Granted, we're only moving at perhaps a mile an hour on the

slow-flowing Shenandoah’s.

At about Mile 3, we gotta pull out and portage the canoe around a dam.

It is the first of three dams we will conquer on our trip. I've got

poison ivy on my right arm in a kind of slice-pattern, as though I slit

my wrist laterally, the wrong way. That ain't bad. The bad spot is on

my left arm, just inside the elbow, such that every time I fold my arm

the shit spreads itself. Another of the joys of nature.

This stretch of the Shenandoah River is ideal for our little

half-cocked threesome in a canoe. Every ten minutes or so there come a

sweet little stretch of rapids, a narrowing of the river with rocks to

dodge and trees to duck. There isn't a soul out here. Just us. And

we laugh like children as we take on a rapid, zooming through, the boat

jiggling up and down, water spraying over the gunnels, Spiceman up

front taking most of the splash over the bow.

We cruise along sighting out rope swings, sizing them up, comparing

them. Most are ropes tied to random trees on a forested edge, no

houses around. We pick one, a blue and white rope, strong and thick

like a climbing rope. I scale up the tree which reaches far out over

the water, in itself a sweet diving platform. I pull the rope up and

Spiceman follows, swings, arcs far out and drops with a splash. PG is

inspired. She leaves her throne in the center of the canoe and is in

the water and up the tree. Later in the boat we talk about how our

journey would make a nice board game, each stop along the way a

mini-adventure unto itself.

Last night it was Spider Island. We'd spent the late afternoon rowing

in light showers, alternately relaxed, then wired with the approach of

rapids, always on the search for the perfect isle to call home for the

night. An island because it assured us of some privacy and in all

likelihood no accusation of trespassing. We found one, a long narrow

isthmus that I liked but had to admit, as romantic as it looked, twas

too narrow to tent on with anything but a hammock.

A few fun little rapid runs later, we came upon Spider Island, a tiny

jungle in the center of the river that we so-named for its

preponderance of arachnids. I hit the beach like a hurricane, feeling

great, and in rare form took up a paddle in hand and wielding it like

scythe & machete, cleared all the mad lush viney jungle creepers to

form a nice sandy patch of beach. This would be our home for the

night.

By now, Spiceman, who had lost his jar of spice earlier that day and

proceeded to drown his sorrow in half a gallon of southern whiskey and

2 mg Klonipin donated by yours truly, did a fine job collecting stones

from the shore and building a fire pit. Nay, twas more than a fire

pit. It was a work of art, smallish stones piled and fit together

puzzle-like into a towering well.

Up ahead we meet our first "fellow canoers," a family or two in three

canoes, mostly kids. On the river since Tuesday, we'd been totally

alone for 40 miles. Several Budweiser’s and a shot or two of Mescal in

me, I spy a great jump spot, a tree jutting out over a deep section of

river at a less than a 45 degree angle, thus easy to clamber up, and

great for jumping. At its peak, that is to say as high as one could

climb amidst its branches without snapping one off, it's about a

40-foot drop. We race ahead of the kids and pull up to the base of the

tree. I climb out and straight up it, as always with an almost uncanny

sense of balance I am up and away and ready to plunge in no time. The

kids notice. They tune in and pretty soon everyone on the river is

watching. It should be a perfect 10, a bold and beautiful leap from

great height to the amazement of all. But I'm too confident. Or was

it the Budweiser? I dunno. I lower myself down and hang from the

branch, increasing the tension below by putting myself in a position of

"no turning back." Then I make my mistake. I start swinging. I let

go on a back swing and plummet 40-feet to the stone-hard surface of the

water in full belly flop posture. In an instant, I rediscover my (of

late) sedentary balls. Later, I climb and jump again to avenge myself.

But it's too late. The kids are gone.-RSM

Shenandoah River

Midway along 75-mile trip

Wednesday

Midday we pass beneath a bridge and come to the obstruction created by

the old bridge, sitting right at water level, left there long after it

was outmoded. I try and swing the canoe far to the right of it, to

what appears the easiest take-out spot. PG is shouting to go the other

way. But it's too late. Suddenly the canoe slams sidelong into the

water level concrete bridge. Immediately it threatens to barrel roll as

the oncoming water hits us, trapped. I leap out and with bare feet in

waist deep water keep the canoe from flipping. But I can't do much

else. The pull of the current is strong. I feel something slice my

left foot. Broken bottle, likely.

We AT thruhikers zealously pack in and out our own trash, and even now

here on the river are collecting every empty, every cigarette butt,

every wrapper, for later disposal. But not so of the rest of the

world. Every time the AT crosses a road in the forest, someplace where

car campers can come, there's a mound of trash.

We manage together to sidle the canoe to the edge of the river and

clear the old bridge. I check my foot. A good sized gash. Nothing

another day or two of water and shoeless canoe living won't cure. We

move on.

And suddenly I'm startled awake by the sound of rushing water. Have I

slept? Sprawled on my life jacket against the rear of the canoe, I was

out cold for who knows how long. When I come to there in the sunshine

and heat and doldrums of midday, I notice that both PG and Spiceman are

also asleep. A rock is dead ahead. I grab my oar and jam it in. Tea

for the tillerman. The boat turns just in time and we miss the rock.

"PG! Where were you?" She rolls out of a siesta haze. She is point

man, after all. It was a close one. But it was fun, too. I gotta

admit. I don't know how we all fell asleep at the same time.

Party Girl walks down a lonesome country road away from our camp by the

river. "Hey PG," I shout after her. "If you get in any trouble down

the road, anyone try to molest ya, just squeal like a pig and we'll

come running to your aide." Deliverance jokes abound down here.

But Virginia is beautiful, no question. Colossal castles of cumulous

rise up into the heavens, there bottoms blue as oceans, their tops

gilded in the late afternoon sun, already set behind the mountains for

us but still shining on way up there.

The river wends its way on and on and when we ask folks along the way

where we are, no one seems to know. It's like a dream and we're all in

it together, PG, Spiceman, me, the young girls swimming in the

shallows, the boys swinging from the rope swing, the old dudes standing

waist deep in the water fishing, fishermen on boats as well. No one

quite knows where we're at. But Spiceman asks the same two questions

for days. To the fisherman, "Catch anything?" and always the answer

no. To everyone and anyone, "Where are we?" No one knows.

And the little bastions of human life come and go. Most of the time on

the river we are alone. I stand up, first in the canoe and later right

up on the rear plank playing master balancer, the circus performer,

showoff.

I have astounding balance. Standing up as we drop into a shallow

trough of rapids without falling or needing to sit, I am an Indian

scout on birch bark canoe. I begin to hum and moan and wail like a

possessed man, like a blues man, like a freed slave still bound by

sharecrop servitude. I sing an old slave song at the top of my lungs.

I don't know any old slave songs. But the spirit is in me, and the

river waters are thick with voices of the past. I tap into them, toss

in a handful of amen’s and "oh my lords" and "Jesus gonna save my souls"

and it's sounding real good.

I keep it up for hours, irreverent of who's listening and oblivious of

the apparent disinterest in my singing from my canoe mates. I'm having

fun, and so far no one's complaining.

-RSM

Shenandoah River

Midway along 75-mile trip

Thursday

Walked hardly a mile today

But man o man did we have a blast.

Right out a the tent and onto the river and straight into the most

gnarly rapids on this stretch of river this morning. Class 2? Class

3? Maybe not that high, I dunno. But I can say with some confidence

that one wouldn't want to take a canoe over whitewater of any greater

intensity.

"Stay to the right," some guy told us a while back. When you see the

train trestle on the right, them rapids just ahead, if you're on the

left you're dead."

Train crossing the high high trestle, iron, majestic, levitating in an

open patch of forest just as the early light of dawn sets a white fire

to the haze of morning river. Long, long freight train of boxcars old

and authentic, like Boxcar Bertha and Kerouac and every hobo for a

hundred years. I think of Thoreau and his crotchety bitchin' about

the iron horse invading his natural world, and us now, in the age of

cars and jet planes saying, "Wow!" at the sight of it roaring by,

filling up the river canyon with sound of thunder.

And those southern boys fishing off that bright blue pontoon boat,

fishing quiet and we lolling by in empty beer can loaded canoe yelling,

"Hey cow!" to some fat smelly fly-sieged clan of black cows standing

belly deep in the river, no doubt blowing it for those fisher boys, for

the moment anyway. And passing them Spiceman asks them what they've

caught and it's nothing, just little things they been tossing back.

But yesterday and now again today just up ahead giant fish leap from

the water, flash in the sun and splash back down which only means

something bigger's chasing `em. We could just hold out nets as we

cruise languidly north toward Port Royal, beer in one hand, and catch

us a mess.

And all the time thinking `bout where we should be, where we could be,

up there walking the BRP through Shenandoah land, following the blazes

from hot dog stand to vending machine. Ahh, who knows. that's just

what I heard about the `doahs. Too civilized. Too many cars and road

crossings.

Out here on the green green river there is forest aplenty but parted

for us like Moses parts the Nile, a wide path of golden sun on churning

water, choppy, now calm but always moving making rowing an easy thing.

Started Tuesday night when we put in near Elkton to Mike's wide-eyed

amazement and childlike enthusiasm and spun the canoe immediately

plunging backwards into our first small rapid with Mike passing by up

on the bridge waving and honking and no doubt getting one hootin' good

laugh out a that.

Tuesday night about five river miles, easy and camping drunk and stoned

at dark in some field. Wednesday another 25 miles perhaps and a stop

in some hamlet, a ride to the store with two scary looking' but

ultimately harmless white boys full a muscle and big tattoos and drunker

than us on any day. Me staying with the canoe in the rain, PG and a

very stoned Spiceman going with and returning unharmed and bearing case

of PBR and three "special beers" tall pint-sized Yuengling lagers, a

beer that claims to be the oldest in America. Then Spider Island that

night and hacking out our place in the jungle, searching out dry timber

in the bug and spider infested underbellies of fallen tree roots and

under logs where the day's rain hasn't reached. Big fire that night.

And on the river great blue herons, turtles plop-plop-plopping from

every exposed stone and branch sticking out. And we three cooking like

lobsters and loving it after the dense and shady woods of AT ridges

where in point of fact the shade is gratefully enjoyed on heavy romps

in 90 degree heat and high humidity, trekking hard and fast all day

with Maine in the periscope spyglass of our downcast eyes, our trail

focused mind.

Today then the end likely in Bentonville after another 25 miles or so

yesterday and a dozen today. Yesterday weird with widened river going

shallow and lots a rocks beating out a jangling jungle beat on canoe

bottom and all of us hot and PG hotheaded not wanting any special

treatment from Spice or me and finally just dropping overboard like a

suicide and splashing in and feeling better, all of us feeling better

with every swim and dip and swing from rope or drop from high tree

branch into water. Water water water.

Sacred water of life, even given that we wouldn't drink it to save our

lives and cows swimming in it and agricultural runoff, none of it

appealing, but water, sweet cooling water. We jump in and it just

doesn't matter. It cools and the whiskey shines, flashing caramel

brown going down with knock-off cheap brand Cokes, the whiskey shines

and smiles and we are all high on the river, making miles and saving

our poor beaten feet. Now it's shoulder pain and sunburns but all of

it beautiful and soaked through with the magic of Shenandoah, the

river, the floating trail where Spiceman, PG and me became fast

friends. -RSM

Shenandoah River

Final stretch of 75-mile river trip

Friday

I'm asleep face down in a field by the river, my nose and cheeks

pressed against a laminated Virginia state map, laid out to keep the

grass and bugs from itching my face whilst I sleep. I'm hot and tired

and happy as a bovine up to her teats in cool flowing river water. I

awake with a start and Spiceman hands me a cool Coke, a big smile on

his face.

Yesterday far downriver from Spider Island, he discovered his trekking

poles missing. One hundred-forty dollar Black Diamond poles, M.I.A.,

left on Comatose Beach after a night bleary in memory from a full day

of whiskey and pills and sun and fun and beer, well, thus our gonzo

given name for our 8x12 patch of island sand. Spiceman recalls little

of the night, including failed attempts to erect his Beta Light tent, a

tarp-like tent that uses a hiker's trekking poles as tent poles. The

next morning in the pale light of new day dawn and spider-bite

hangovers and the ever-pressing junkie-like urge to move, Onward! the

poles easily escaped a lackadaisical inventory of the beach and were left

behind forever.

When you're hiking the trail, you know very quickly if you've forgotten

your poles. Not so out here on the river. Ten miles or so later,

their absence was at last noted. I don't know how. For by then we

were drunk again. Or maybe just I was drunk?

Poor Spiceman, I thought. First he loses his special smoking spice, a

fat baggy left in some field the first morning. Then his poles. I

don't deal in spice, don't even smoke it. So I don’t know which loss was

more costly.

So now up comes Spiceman with a big grin and a coupla Cokes and he's

got through on the phone at Down River Rafting, the only phone for

miles kindly provided by owner John whilst his prick competitor across

the highway told us we'd have to hike another miles to the state park

for a phone. And anyway, Spiceman got through to Garret at Black

Diamond to see about replacement poles. I'm just dying to hear what

story he gave the company rep.

"I told him I'm off the trail, doing a little aqua blazing, giving the

feet a rest, brought my poles along to set up my Beta Light tent (also

a Black Diamond product - hear the smooth pitch?), and well, there was

bourbon involved and a lot of beer and well.. and then Garret says,

`You lost them.' And I say yeah."

Black Diamond, via their rep with a good rap Garret, is FedXing

Spiceman a brand new set of poles.

Wow. I guess it's true what I've heard along the trail. The gear

companies really are eager to please the long-distance hikers. They

know how word travels on the trail, and a bad rap, well, they don't

want it.

But wow, man! To replace a guy's poles when he comes right out and

honestly admits losing them in some gonzo mad river re-enactment of

Fear & Loathing in Vegas! Olympian Thruhiker's poles lost in an

off trail drunken haze! You gotta love it! God Bless America, and

Black Diamond, too.

Well, looks like some Class Two rapids up ahead. Better pack up the

keyboard and Palm Pilot, slap em in their little triple-thick Ziplocs

and throw em in the dry bag, as I have done a hundred times in the past

few days. Gonzo journalism on the water. Bet HST never did that!

-RSM

[Postscript: Almost all of the preceding Shenandoah River chapters were

in fact written while underway in a heavy-laden canoe full of booze &

450 pounds of hard hiker meat and bedeviled on all sides by splashing

crashing waves, diving turtles and swooping terradactile-like blue

herons, all moving at incredible speed downstream in the good,

God-fearing, backwards ass antigravity and illogical direction of

NORTH! Yes, folks, we're still going to Maine, but we're coloring

outside the lines a bit and loving it, every league, every liter, every

mad gonzo blaze of the way.]-RSM

Mile 954

Friday, June 18

Front Royal, VA

Now it's the Center City Motel, a slightly seedy siesta and oral sex

room-by-the-hour joint in Front Royal, courtyard-style with a fifties

neon sign announcing in blinking pink and green "Yes! We have air

conditioning!"

Here in Room Four, Spiceman & PG and I have all the trimmings, the

unintentional M.C. Escher-esque pattern bedspreads and damn-near burlap

towels and spackle patches in the wallboard where some one or another

punched through and the Pakistani management has yet to catch up with

beige semi-gloss paint. Altogether not a bad place for a ragged-out

hiker in need of a wall plug to charge digital camera batteries and lay

on the floor typing, feeling every bit a beached whale with PBR in easy

reach and all naked but for silk SpongeBob Squarepants boxer shorts.

But not a whale anymore. No! A man unrecognizable to himself, a

"ripped" man, a model of wiry male musculature like some found object

sculpture, a man of wound wire and a head of rigid, razorback hog hair.

PG on the phone to New Hampshire tells folks at home how she's thinking

about hiring someone to carry her pack for her the rest of the trail.

"'A little Incan warrior, perhaps," she says.

Me on the bed writing incessant, trying to crank out this story before

the next chapter begins, I chime in, singing a knock-off INXS tune,

"Your own!.. personal!.. sherpa! Someone to heft your pack, someone to

smack!" Party Girl ignores me and goes back to her phone call.

I keep forgetting that probably half my cultural references are lost on

PG & Spiceman, as both were in diapers whilst Duran Duran and The

Bangles were blinding adolescent me with science and strange Eighties

synth-pop tuneage fish. Whatever.

Out here on the AT we are all ancient and immature, all sages and silly

punch-drunk saints, all lost boys and lovers and angels and outcasts,

all growing and stumbling and trying, trying, trying, some dying on

their feet, most dying to beat the if-nots and no-ways and

good-luck-you'll-never-make-its heaped upon us by a world of unceasing

doubt. Young and old, we the trekkers of this and other long-distance

pathways in America and across the globe are ageless giants and heroes

in our time.

Though few of the general populous have any idea the AT even exists and

even fewer Wal-Mart shoppers will ever know that Spiceman or PG or

Mainesail, Mockingbird, Sox, Flatbed or Whiskey or me once stood upon

the cold stone pinnacle of Katahdin and said, "I did it!" it just

doesn't matter. I now know after three months of constant proximity

with vagabond giants that I, too, am a giant and the most regal of

vagabonds. And no home no matter how palatial will ever compare to

this 2000 mile living room we walk through and sleep in everyday. Not

ever. (Not at these prices, anyway!)

But all that philosophical hogwash aside, I had a few facts to impart

tonight. And they are as follows. For the record:

- Yours truly got it in his head (after hearing the term from another

thruhiker weeks ago) that "aquablazing," if for no other reason than it

is such a cool sounding word, that aqua blazing the Shenandoah Mountains

(rather than hiking them) would be really, really cool. He, that is to

say I, got it so firmly in his head that he quizzed and queried and

lobbied every hiker within 50 miles of the Waynesboro YMCA in hopes

that someone or ones would be interested in joining him on said

adventure.

- One Mike "Gravy" Brubaker (after first serving up a killer pro-bono

hiker BBQ with his friend Korpi last Sunday) bent over backwards and

forwards and performed logistical contortions of a superhuman kind to

help me realize my river-blazing dream. Mike is a trail angel of the

highest order, one who not only comes out for a day and gives of his

food and time to hungry hikers, but goes far beyond that. Mike drove

all over hell & back to get us a canoe and get us on the river and

ferry us around for ample supplies and pick us up 75 river miles later

and deliver us to Fort Royal, leaving us at last with beer and Gatorade

and grapes and bananas and Pringles chips. His parting words to me:

"Doing things like this, keeping up with you guys on the trail, it

helps build the anticipation for my trip two years from now. It's like

it allows me to do the hike from work." Many, many thanks, Mike.

-Spiceman was lured entirely against his will into this mad aqua blazing

act of piracy. Any and all blame for his apparent misconduct and gross

divergence from the strict AT white blaze code of honor should fall on

Osama bin Laden, since said terrorist got off entirely too easily when

all the blame for his actions was suddenly and quite ironically foisted

upon the Butcher of Baghdad and, with the aid of massive doses of

reality television and aquifer-introduced valium and soma, we were made

to forget him altogether. Bad Osama! How dare you make Spiceman

aqua blaze with us! Bad, evil Osama!

Okay, enough about that. -RSM

L Dee's Pancake House, Front Royal, VA

Next morning

Now it's pancakes and scrapple and coffee, coffee coffee. Lovely night

of motel comfort last night courteously of PG who said, "Jester, it's my

treat. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have had this excellent

aqua blaze adventure!" Works for me. Forking out the dough for motels

gives me a real pain in the groin, as it were. It inflames years of

ingrained poverty consciousness. With so many free hostels and

campgrounds and the entire free forest, well, I'd rather spend what

little dough I have on good food and beer.

So off PG & Spiceman went to shop and resupply and PG took with her a

short list of stuffs I needed and took my laundry (all one pair of

shorts, a shirt and socks) and did that with theirs and brought me back

McD's burgers to boot and all the while I wrote and wrote and wrote

trying to wrap up this story and when it came down to turning the TV

on, good girl PG was even kind enough to abstain so's to allow me to

concentrate and into bed they crawled and I doused the lights and me

typing then in the dark by the thin beam of my headlamp and the

reassuring whir of the A/C.

And somewhere across the world agro pissed off towel heads take another

American head and I think thank God for the woods and the blissful

ignorance of us, rowing, trekking free and full of beans high through

the mountains of the East, oblivious. But not, of course. Sadly not.

I think of Linda back in Idyllwild who sent me a box of "blondie"

brownies that I never received and then never heard from her since as

she no doubt thought me ungrateful. Poor Linda. But the postal

workers are bogged down out here with thruhikers and perhaps a little

careless, scanning the shelves full of general delivery hiker packages

and missing one or two, figuring they've found em all. So now I gotta

find out what town them blondies are sitting in and get em forwarded to

me and eat em up, yum yum. I hope she sent em Priority. Postal lady

this morning told me with Priority shipping they'll forward em as often

as you like so long as they go unopened.

And then there's Mike, in my mind these last few days when I noticed an

excess in my Paypal account and discovered he'd sent another donation

to the cause. God bless him. I can count my Jigglebox supporters

over the years on one, well, two hands I guess. God bless every one of

you for believing in the Holy Grailesque Quest of this Gonzo Author.

And thoughts of Dad this morning with Fathers Day just tomorrow and me

all spun out on river dreams and trail magic and town-stop resupplying

but wow! So happy happy full of fat buddha joy to hear Dad on the

phone from New Hampshire the other day praising and raving `bout the

writing, loving my AT Journal, his voice all fulla pride and me, not

knowing I did but needing to hear his pride, big time.

"The way you describe your hike, I feel like I'm right there with you.

I can see the roots, the rocks, the sky, fantastic." Something like

that. I love my Jesus-lovin' Dad and am pleased as punch that he's

enjoying my not-altogether pious or God-fearing Gonzo ramblings. Happy

Father's Day, Dad.

Sitting here watching peripherally as PG & Spiceman chow down breakfast

and I slurp coffee and type maniacally, knowing that soon I'll be back

in the Blue Ridge and out of service area. Gotta send this shit out

now! Spiceman with jawbone beard and goatee and curly hair looking

every bit Bob Dillon at age 21 chomps a banana and I thank God he's

still with us after our mad rock face scrambling, rope less and stoned

above the river. All was well and Spiceman fingered his way up that

face like a pro, doing finger jams and hard reaches and always dangling

high out over the river. I followed but got not nearly so far up as

he, and feeling stuck, let go and launched backwards through space to

the safety of deep water twenty feet below.

But soon Spiceman was damn near outa sight some 60 feet up and in the

midst of loosely-rooted cliff-dweller plant life. Then we heard the

raking sound of a lost footing and the tiny trees fluttered and rocks

cascaded down to the river as Spiceman slipped and barely caught

himself. Good thing, too. Because unlike where I'd jumped from flat

rock face to river straight below, the debris falling from Spiceman's

perch hit a lower shelf before ricocheting into the water below. Had

Spiceman fallen, it wouldn't have been pretty. Unless of course he's

really a Bumble and didn't tell us! Because as you may recall from

Christmas cartoons of years past, Bumbles bounce!

-RSM

[Postpostpostscript: Special thanks to Mama and Papa O in Charlotte, NC

for their kindness and fantastic southern hospitality a few weeks back.

My last entry in Post 9 was a maniacal half-drunken ramble that had

everything to do with my own personal discomfort with extended stays

with ANYONE, and nothing to do with them. I did well to last 10 days

with one family. I've been such a loner for so long.]

Copyright 2004 Richard McKinney All Rights Reserved