Gorham Grump,
Sweet Papa McKinney
& Jessica of the Poppy Fields of Oz
September 13, 2004
Gorham, NH
And I ran.
But I ran neither far nor fast enough, my desire to be in Jessica's company weighing me down, dragging me back with every forward leap.
And they caught up. We spent an awkward half hour or so at the shelter below Osgood Ridge, and then set out to conquer it, first up and then down, impossibly far down an impossible cascade of gigantic stones. To make matters worse, there was the wind. I have a fear of wind on high places, but considering Jessica's fear of rocks, I would tuck into a crevice here and there and wait for her. Eric and I.
I have one shining memory from that ridge, all that I will cherish of that windy descent, and that was this: Jessica, arrived at what was more or less the ridge's highest point, standing tall and brave and smiling into the wind, smiling a truly happy smile as if to say it was good to be alive and flying and smiling in the late afternoon sun of that wind, Eric and I hunched low in the rocks just below her and looking up, amazed, at Miss Jessica glowing there in the low gold of the western sun. I don't know what Eric saw, but I saw the Virgin of Guadalupe, all fractals of windblown light and zigzag outlines of a sun grateful to find her, to embrace her and call her goddess, mother, saint.
Other than all that, Osgood Ridge sucked. It was no more to me than a broken down escalator, a steep staircase to be descended with the greatest alacrity, a place of ill-written winds writing the first lines of a long list of winter death to come. I wanted no part of it, and I ran and skipped and hopped and danced in a manner befitting the greatest of high-wire fliers. I was a god.
That night at the base of Osgood Ridge, we camped together, Jess, Eric and I. Grumpy in the morning after yet another night alone yet so close to her I could smell her, I pulled out the maps and cursed. The topos showed the typical pattern of AT Madness I had come to expect and loathe. I had acquiesced to heading due south from Mt. Washington so as to cover the grand Presidentials. But now, just a hop skip and a jump from the town of Gorham and the Maine State Line not far north of there, the AT squirreled something wicked, south again in a backwards-ass loop over the Wildcats.
"No fucking way," I grumbled. "See this line straight to Gorham, and that line straight outa Gorham heading due north, that's where I am headed," I said. And I wasn't kiddin. The AT that I was hiking was spiritual in nature; its white blazes mere indicators of the suggested and politically-navigable way. Here at Pinkham Notch, the white blazed AT and me had reached an impasse. I was gonna walk the road. I was gonna walk as straight a line north to Maine as I could.
"Eric, take your future-fiance and follow the trail, I wanted to say. But I didn't. And wouldn't you know, Eric went for my plan. Jessica, too. So we walked to Gorham. In Gorham, we called my father. And Dad, sweet papa McKinney, he hopped in his truck and fetched us up and took us to his lakeside cabin in Fryeburg. That night it was steak and burgers and ice cream and beers and whatever we wanted.
And Dad took us roaring up some mountain road reliving, for a moment, better days, his ski bum days at Wildcat. "Back when I was being an idiot," he said. And though I tried to assure him otherwise, he was sure that indeed he had once been an idiot.. once, before finding God. Ironic, I thought, when ten minutes later I referred to myself as an idiot for not being able to find or keep the right woman, and he chided me, saying something like "Don't sell yourself your short, son."
Thanks to Dad's hospitality, the night at his house was pleasant enough. Well, pleasant if you could call my progressive intoxication and resultant blatant amorous leanings toward Jessica pleasant. More than ever, that night, I thought, "Jesus, Eric, are you paying any attention at all?" My father was. He saw it clear as day.
The next morning as we prepared to leave, I stood looking over my father's lake and knowing that very soon it would freeze solid as granite and be run amok with snowmobiles and cars doing donuts in the snow. It was yet autumn, but just the night before, you could have rested a snowmobile, a car, a jet airplane on the tensile strength of my passion for that woman. I felt awful. Yet there was nary a shred of icy air coming at me from the woman. Far from it. But who can know a woman's heart?
I hadn't ever shared more than a hug with the girl, but her body was all over me. Her sex. She was a field of poppies and I Dorothy on the road to Oz. It was absurd. When the going gets weird, sometimes it's best if the weird just go. -RSM
September 15, 04
Unnamed pond just north of Gorham, NH
I awake to the sight of fog over our small pond of last night. The dew is substantial. The tent Tinker lent me is soaked inside and out. And because I pitched it too low last night, my sleeping bag is wet as well from touching it. I awake fearful and very tired. The sensation is of having not slept a wink.
Jess and Eric are ready just moments before me. I wave them off, tell them I'll catch up. They're so damn sweet. They would have waited, but...
I am grumpy and just want to plug into headphones and kill some miles. Maine's state line laid ahead 16.5 miles, a full day's hump given the difficult terrain. Instead of racing off, however, I get to the trailhead and contemplate going the other way. I spend a full hour prevaricating, miserable.
Leave the Happy Couple. Hitch ahead to meet up with Yazzy so you can have someone to take you to bed at night, so you can be loved at long last on these final 300 miles. Get away from this unhealthy attraction to Jessica, unhealthy for you because it has nowhere to go.
I flip a nickel. At two outa three it tells me to go for the "tail" on both of the first two flips. This turn of the coin is as I willed it. I want the girl, I want the escape. But I don't do it. I wanna walk into Maine today, not fracture my hike into pieces I'll need to make up later. I heft my pack and walk North.
Up the next mountain, on the very top, Jessica has written me a message in broken twigs. It reads: RICK HERE with an arrow pointing a hard left. It is written in the language of painted symbols on streets, the RICK above the HERE like ZONE above SCHOOL as though our jillion gigabyte RAM brains can't read such messages from top to bottom, but only slowly as we approach them. The twig message more likely reads, "HERE RICK." I get it anyway, and appreciate its sweetness.
I love Jessica. So sweet and soft-spoken and doe-eyed and when I lift her in a hug so light, those hollow bones like a bird. But she belongs to Eric in the way Ernie belonged to Bert, the way Mr. Rogers belonged to the neighborhood. They are sweetness and gentility and patience and love. What the hell are they doing with me?
I meet a friendly chipmunk. He's a very busy bee. Has a mouth so fulla grass it's bustin' out all over like what I'd look like with a hay bail in my mouth. I think, "He's building a nest." This makes me think of winter, reminds me of how close the snow is. God, I can't imagine it. Picturing this place under snow depresses me. I wanna get to Katahdin and then get home to Cali. Bye, Mr. Chipmunk. I have been following a bear all day. I watch as his mammoth paw-prints impress into the stiff mud of the trail before me. The bear's prints overlay the last man prints, or so it seems. I imagine the bear is just ahead of me, as though any minute the prints will give way to paws and I'll look up and.. "Whoa!" there will be standing a bear, the bear, my first bear on the AT.
I bear down on Maine with a powerful push, a hunger to be there. Yet as I do so, I hear that down south Hurricane Ivan bears down on my beloved New Orleans with far greater power. I am concerned for my friends down there. I think of Chris and Jules and the whole Stock family. And what about great Miss Mae's? I send out a prayer for the safety, for the safe deliverance of New Orleans from the wrath of Ivan. Ivan the Terrible. Ivan the Incomprehensible to me up here in the New England woods where the winds are but gentle breezes and there are no mobile home parks to whip away, and hardly a sound at all most times when I pull off the headphones and listen. Silence.
Mad World
Journal from September 16, 2000Fear
Maine/New Hampshire State Line
"All around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces. Bright and early for the daily races, going nowhere, going nowhere. The tears are filling up their glasses, no expression, no expression. Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow, no tomorrow, no tomorrow."
I awake like Donnie Darko this morning, narcoleptic, knocked-out of time and space, sick to my stomach. Patrick Swayze and some other guy standing over me where I lay on a golf course green, the sun behind them blinding so that I cannot see their eyes. But it's Jess and Eric with me this morning, and it's not the sun but my own shame that's forestalling direct eye contact.
As with everyday for six months now, we no more than rub the sleepies from our eyes then we're packing, bright and early for the daily races, going.. somewhere? No. Not today. Today we're going nowhere, just like the song says. I can feel it in the crawling of my skin, the hollowness of my bones, the rat rattling the cage of my chest in the throes of death. "When is this gonna stop?" Donnie asks Frank, the six foot tall rabbit that haunts his days and nights. Today. Today I must hike on alone. I have to. I can't do this anymore.
"And I find it kinda funny and I find it kinda sad, the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had. I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take, when people run in circles, it's a very very.. mad world, mad world."
I find it hard to tell them. I skip breakfast and pack fast. My actions are a dead giveaway that something's wrong, but it's all I can do until I find the words. I don't feel ready to speak, but they're staring at me, bewildered. Jess walks off into the woods to pee. I seize the moment alone with Eric. "I've decided to hike on ahead," I say. "I'm going to try and catch up with Yazzy. We had a spark, she and I, and I'm starved for companionship, Eric, you know? You're lucky. You've got Jess. I've got no one."
It's a mad world, all right.
The night before, I crossed over into Maine alone. Jess was held back by the rocks, and Eric stuck with her. If she'd been mine, I would have stayed behind with her as well. But as the pain of her not-mine-ness grew in me, I could not but race ahead. I reached the state line just before dark. Standing there at the "Welcome to Maine" sign, I fondly recalled the day Jessica and I joined hands and, upon the count of three, hopped into Virginia together with a laugh.
Now at the last state line on the northbound Appalachian Trail, I put my left arm around the sign as one would a lover, held out my right as far as I could reach, and clicked the shutter button on a disposable camera.
I had about an hour alone at the next shelter before they arrived. Jessica had a look about her that seemed to say, "Thanks for waiting for us, Jerko." (Probably not at all her thoughts, but that look!) They were both tapped, pouring sweat and rabid from an all-too-familiar run with the after-dark devil of determination to reach a certain point, sundown be damned.
The shelter had a recessed loft probably capable of sleeping six above and six below, plus a roomy front area for cooking. Unlike most shelters, their existed a front wall as well giving the feeling more of a cabin than a lean-to. I myself had cooked sitting in the entryway. Finding it comfortable to sit with my feet on the ground outside, I'd cooked on a rock and watched the sunset.
Unfailingly polite and conscious of others, Jessica asked if I minded if she cooked up on the loft. I did mind. I was exhausted and ready to at least try and sleep, already cozily ensconced in my bag, head on my pillow. No, wait a minute. Did I say cozily? Let me rephrase that: I felt trapped. Trapped in my bag, trapped in the corner and heartsick to boot. Was this some unprovoked fit of paranoia? Hardly.
You see, the moment they had arrived, well, a minute or so after her dagger-eyed stare, Jessica had complained of overwhelming hunger. I could relate, having many times pulled too-long days only to arrive so tired I didn't feel I could possibly muster the strength to cook. I, meanwhile, was three-quarters done with my two-serving dehydrated lasagna-in-a-bag dinner and adequately fed. Without hesitation, I handed Jess the remainder and said, "Here, eat."
And here's where the story gets highly subjective. Here's where the jet engine comes hurling through the wormhole and smashes into Donnie Darko's bedroom and pops the question, "Did Donnie really survive just because his imaginary friend called him out of bed that night? Or is he dead? Or did just part of him die, leaving him trapped in space but dead in time?"
In all the time I'd hiked with Jess & Eric, I recall seeing him kiss her twice. Both times the kisses were of a conciliatory nature, making up for something he'd done that pissed her off. I don't recall ever seeing her offer up a kiss. If I had witnessed regular displays of affection between the two from the get-go, would I have allowed myself to fall in love with this woman? No way. It would have been a whole different ball game. For the sake of this story and within the limits of my memory, they NEVER openly displayed affection.
Then right there in the soft light of my little rose-scented burgundy votive candle, she spoon fed him from my dinner. She fed him and they giggled, two newlyweds feeding one another from the top of a tier cake.
Cut to Donnie's bedroom: the ceiling collapses in a shower of plaster and burning steel.
Cut to me in the corner in the dark, crushed and dying.
"Children waiting for the day they feel good, happy birthday, happy birthday. And I feel the way that every child should, sit and listen, sit and listen. Went to school and I was very nervous, no one knew me, no one knew me. Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson, look right through me, look right through me."
I lay awake beside the pair that night feeling, in the words of Tom Waits, lonelier than a parking lot when the last car pulls away. I wanted to leave that night, but I was trapped, ashamed.
Outside the shelter in a locked steel "bear box" was my stuff sack full of food. Unlike the usual method of hanging food in the trees, the steel box guarantees there is no way in hell a bear is gettin' to your food that night. But inside the shelter, something far more vital than my food lay torn open and exposed for any creature to devour. I held my heart tight in my chest that night, felt its every liquid breath of red, red life.
And in the morning I took my heart away. It was hard as hell to say goodbye. Despite my efforts to make it a smooth break, the vibe was clearly ugly. Eric spoke in monotone. Jessica returned my embrace with wooden arms. She was brushing her teeth when I walked away. What was that intense look in her eyes? Was it betrayal? Did she feel betrayed?
Just out of sight of the shelter but still well within earshot, I stood still and tried to speak. Were it not, I believe, for my own feelings of shame, I would have shouted these words. "I LOVE YOU, GUYS. I REALLY DO." But no words came, and I walked off alone into the woods of Maine.
"And I find it kinda funny and I find it kinda sad, the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had. I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take, the people run in circles, it's a very very mad world, mad world, enlarging your world.. mad world."
[Entire lyrics of theme song from the film Donnie Darko]
There's a reason for all the reference to the film Donnie Darko.
The shelter had been down a canyon of sorts, so there was no radio reception. No matter. The "silence" of the forest and my own footfalls were all I could take for awhile. When I later reached the next point of high elevation, I carefully searched for signal from the one last radio station I knew to be clearly audible up here in Nowhereland.
And what song do you suppose comes on the radio and starts to play that very moment? A song not heard in the regular rotation of most commercial stations, one I'd heard only one other time on my hike: "Mad World," the theme song from Donnie Darko.
With the words of that haunting line, "The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had," I lost it. Right there in a rather narrow corridor of the Appalachian Trail, I dropped to the Earth and cried.
*****
Later that day..
Mahousic Notch
The Meanest Mile on the AT!
[Written 1/13/05 while reflecting on one of my finest moments on the Appalachian Trail]
Mahousic Notch. The girl beside me here on Amtrak Time Warp Train #1 wants to hear the story of Mahousic Notch. And suddenly I'm kind of sorry I brought it up. How many times have I told the damn story yet still not written it down? At my current level of success, I wouldn't dare profess how to be a writer, but I can tell you how to be a wanna-be writer: tell your stories aloud to anyone who will listen. You'll never write a word of it.
Oh, I'm sorry, how rude of me. The lovely caramel-haired, apple-cheeked girl eating cherry yoghurt and sensually licking my Lexan spoon is Katjia. Katjia is from Slovenia, and until ten minutes ago had never even heard of the Appalachian Trail, let alone its famed "toughest mile," the ginormous boulder-choked tight-squeeze mini-canyon that slows even the hardiest thruhiker to a crawl for upwards of two hours. Two hours to traverse one mile. Just north of the New Hampshire-Maine state line where most northbound hikers are pumping out two and three miles and hour, something that slows one's pace to half a mile an hour must be pretty tough. Going into it, I believed it. There's not much exaggeration among thruhikers.
And I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that my Lexan spoon has never had a licking like Katjia is giving. It. Presently. Ahem.
Lexan, nine out of ten thruhikers prefer it to those bendy Matrix spoons! You know how in the first Matrix movie, the little bald Dalai Lhama-wanna-be kid bends spoons and then says, "There is no spoon."? Well, on the AT, there is no OTHER spoon. Nor is there a fork. Or knife for most. A spoon and a cook pot, that's the lot!
"What are you mumbling about?" Katjia inquires. "Can you speak more clearly, please, Mr. Jack? My English is not so good."
Sure, Katjia. How about you quit it with the spoon fellatio and maybe I can concentrate!
I don't tell her this, of course, rather just smile politely as she works my spoon further into her mouth like a tongue depressor, MY SPOON that I ate with in the forest morning and night for 2000 miles, my spoon which, as with the entire inventory of my AT trail gear, I cannot separate myself from still now three months off the trail. Five states, three airplanes, one train and two major road trips by car, and sure as shit that backpack is still packed and ready for wilderness survival at a moment's notice. The spoon I carry in my pocket. The Amtrak snack bar was out of spoons. Thus the current situation.
Her yoghurt gone, Katjia is now staring out at the barren west Texas landscape with tears in her eyes and gurgling "Ahhh!" to some invisible doctor as she experiments with how far she can shove the spoon down her throat. Katjia is 21 going on 12. But she listens well.
"KATJIA!" I shout, lightly thwacking her in the back of the head as I thrust my fist into her mouth and retrieve my precious trail memento. "I got the message.." I say, and mumbling the rest, "I think."
A couple of the old ladies sitting nearby here in the glass-dome observation car raise an eye at Katjia and me, but only for a second. There are other more interesting freak shows going on all around us as Train #1, currently 5 hours behind schedule, swaggers down the track past Marfa, Texas like a half-full fish tank on a drunk pony.
"Zell me the story, Mr. Jack! I muss to know how you conquered da crotch!"
"Notch. Okay, okay." Concentrate, Jack. Jeezuz, how do I transport myself to Mahousic Notch in the Maine woods while rolling through barren Texas with a burlesque Slovenian girl leaning into me with bloodshot eyes and sweet cherry yoghurt breath? And that's nothing. There's this older guy twitching across the aisle and then this twenty-something bohemian looking kid with an ancient cassette player behind me playing Tom Waits tunes at a volume just low enough to not get him thrown off the train but plenty loud. And the older guy, this obviously suffering bastard with some kind of twitching disease, is twitching in perfect rhythm to Tom Waits. It's uncanny and kind of weird. But I mention him because his outfit is all Maine: hunter's cap, thick woolen coat patterned with stag deer and pine trees and mountains and stuff.
So that's it. I find my focus and target in.
Amidst all the chaos of the observation car, I, Robot on the video screen, Tom Waits croaking nearby, kids running up and down the aisle spreading some baloney smell, Katjia staring, and a handful of gang-banger guys getting more drunk and raucous by the hour as the sun fizzles out the window to my left, I focus on twitching man's jacket. Ignoring the man and his bobbling head, I stare hard at the faux forest on his back and arms. I stare and I stare and I stare until I am the stag, I am the trees, I am the fabric of nature.
And there it is, the sign announcing my arrival at Mahousic Notch. I'm there, deep in the woods, a good twenty miles to the nearest road in any direction. I'm ready. I've dropped down from Groton Shelter where I managed to scrawl into the shelter register the love for Jessica & Eric that I hadn't been able to express as I left them this morning in a jealous rush.
In my mind is the challenge, the impetus. On my wrist: a stopwatch. At first just a little seed planted there by Eric who said he had heard of a guy who had "done" Mahousic Notch in 38 minutes, a number that sounded like some kind of record compared to Wingfoot and every other hiker's estimation of one to two hours.
It is now an imperative. I mean, why not? I've lost the girl I love. Okay, I conceded. Whatever. She's gone. It's just me now. Trail's almost over. I'm nearly forty years old, and I'm in perhaps the best shape of my life. I've always had excellent balance, and even that is heightened now. I've made it into Maine. It there was ever a good time to break a leg, today would be it.
I bend and stretch a bit, rotating my ankles in preparation for turns and twists though intended to avoid the same. I lean into a tree and push at it with all my might, emphasis on the muscles in my calves. Pulling back, I stand erect and cinch every strap on my pack to glue it to my body as tightly as possible. I'm not quite sure what I'm headed into, and cannot yet see these legendary boulders from this little glade in the woods where stands the sign. But I've heard it involves a lot of crawling, balancing, clambering, basically all things bouldering.
I have heard there are spots so tight one must remove one's pack and pass, or if alone, drag it through. Here I figure there must be another way: over. Where others struggle under, I will employ my billy goat balance to scramble up and over or just plain leap. I'm lucky. The ground is dry. No rain last night, so aside from some dew, the rocks should be, too.
With one foot against the sign, I hit my stopwatch and take off running. In no time, I'm in the rocks and wow, no exaggeration at all: they're huge. Imagine a flood-drainage channel through a city in which every imaginable large appliance and automobile has been driven or thrown. Hell, throw in a few shipping containers and airplane fuselages as well. I leap up onto a washer-machine, prance across a prone refrigerator, scramble up a Hummer parked nose down into the pile, then down its other side. I slip. I slide. But nothing too serious. I leap but never land with the energy of my leg aimed anywhere but straight down. No splits, thank you. And so I go from meteor to tractor-trailer to monolith to monster truck, hop, skip and jump.
And all the while I use my poles. I mean, I really USE them. I later talked to other people who explained how they were so busy using their hands they either let their poles dangle by their wrist straps or telescoped them down and packed them away all together. My technique, never really planned just sort of made up as I went along: use the poles. Oh, and part two of that unplanned plan just sort of came with the motive: keep moving.
By rarely if ever stopping, I had the benefit of the dance, the benefit of never having to dwell too long on this sketchy step or that precipice, the benefit of propulsion. And the poles provided balance. Like extensions of my arms, they worked furiously to keep me atop the city of mammoth stones and not crawling around between and beneath them. It was magical, and it was fun.
Using the poles, I was able to chimney through wide channels in the junkyard of rocks, balance-beaming, for instance, along the razor-thin edge of a long triangular stone while using its neighbors six or seven feet away to either side as points of purchase, as the walls of my chimney, as it were.
The notch was curiously warm in parts, then a minute later in a different spot cold and damp, radical changes in temperature, part of the reason I suppose that the Wingfoot book warned of ice on the rocks at all times of the year. For water flows beneath this sea of rocks, sometimes a trickle, often a gush. Not that I ever saw it or stopped to take a sip. And man, did I want to after about twenty minutes of running the Mahousic Notch. It was probably the most intense workout of my life.
And I made it all the way, on my own. My only witnesses: a white-haired couple I encountered perhaps one third of the way through. As they were coming from the other direction, it was two thirds of the way for them. I didn't get their names, nor they mine. They did savvy my rush, however, and deftly ducked out of the way to let me through. Not impolite, I spoke to them as I roared by, told them I was timing myself, even managing a glance at my watch to appease the woman, who had asked how much further they had to go. "I've been going twelve minutes," I told her. Gauging my speed, she quickly translated this into a half an hour or more for them.
Then I'd swear she said, "Well, now I've seen it all. Now I can go home and say I saw a crazy guy run through Mahousic Notch." The air in this section was, to my recollection, tropical. Like old Saint Nick, I let out a breathy laugh, winked and bid them farewell as I hopped on a sleigh-shaped chunk of Maine bedrock and flew away up the Notch and into the realm of trail legends to be.
"You are Spiderman, Mr. Jack!"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I guess I kind of am.. er, was." Katjia jolted me out of my Mahousic reverie. Or maybe just saying my name had been enough. Back on the train, little had changed. The twitching guy twitched on, and the gang-banger guys got drunker. But the volume had been turned down while I'd been far away, traversing the notch like a spider.
"You are crazy man!"
"Yeah, no. Hold on now Katjia. I haven't gotten to the good part yet. Here," and I gave her back my Lexan spoon. "Stick this back in your mouth and listen up a little longer."
I looked out the window of the train to where the last vestiges of the day's sun were pretty much gone. But there remained just enough light in the sky to silhouette the growing rock formations and small mountains of far western Texas. The effect: a jumble of dark shapes. It was enough.
So I kept running. I never once took my pack off, and only once was I forced to crawl between two rocks rather than leap over them. To the purist, I may well be disqualified because of this. For you see, even in the notch where it was pretty plain that there was only one direction to go in, only one way out, the white blaze led the way. The walls of the notch were steeply pitched, impassable, thus the necessity of scrambling the stony path.
So if you say I cheated because I didn't crawl through a white-blazed crevice where an overhead path was clearly doable, well, then I guess I cheated. But hey, the way I see it, going over this mile-long rock pile was a far greater feat than going under it. So, extra credit for me. Let the crawlers crawl.
Running the Mahousic Notch made my day. It made my week. It was one of the coolest things I did on the entire, supercool journey. And there wasn't one thruhiker anywhere present to witness my achievement. Not one. Just me.
It's not something I'd recommend to anyone. Done the way I did it, it was dangerous. And by the end, I was huffing and puffing like a Ford 302 with a cracked head and half a dozen blown gaskets. But man oh man what a thrill when the rocks ended and the path, now dirt again, hooked sharply uphill and I looked down at my watch and it read 29 minutes 34 seconds. I couldn't believe it.
When Eric had mentioned the rumored 38-minute run, I just figured that meant I could likewise do it in under an hour, 45 minutes maybe.
And in a tortoise & hare sense, I hadn't beat anyone. Why? Because I'd so overwrought my legs and lungs, that I had to spend the next three quarters of an hour cooling off in a stream uphill. Dumping cookpot-loads of water on my body, I sent steam rising into the autumn air. I kid you not. I was hot.
And to award me for my record Mahousic run, God and Wingfoot planted a big, fat mountain right in my path. Next order of business: climb on. And that's what the AT was, one long string of pain in the ass ascents and descents. What's that line from the Pink Floyd song? "Run rabbit, run, dig that hole, get things done.. don't sit down, it's time to dig another one."
"That sounds terrible, Mr. Jack."
"Hmm?" I looked up from the rocks of Maine, confused. The train, apparently only crawling out there in the dark night, jolted to a stop.
"Why did you do all dat if it luz so teddible?" Katjia asked, her already skewed Slovenian tongue further impeded by my spoon in her mouth.
"Because it was real, Katjia. Because for all the physical aches and pains, it made me feel better overall than I have felt in years, maybe ever."
"Lao, cool." The spoon had spoken.
As my consciousness returned to the train, I became aware that the movie had stopped and that the flickering light that I'd taken to be the TV was coming from somewhere outside the train. That's when I realized that the drunk gang banger guys were no longer cruising the aisle and hooting and hollering.
I got up, crossed to the other side of the train and cupped my hands around my face to see out through the tinted glass. Three cop cruisers sat fanned out facing the train. And there were the three skinheads, deplaning a little earlier than planned, I imagine. "Figures," I mumbled to myself. Twitching guy was also looking out the window at the live action episode of Cops. The Tom Waits music kid had gone back to his seat or something a while back. Now the bobble of Twitching Guy's head was more of a side to side shake. "Yeah, I'm with you, buddy."
It's easy for a sponge-like mind like mine (ooh, there's a tongue twister) to get caught up in all the negative crap of the world around me. No doubt this is why the trail was such a boon to me. No doubt that's why my bag is still packed. No doubt that's why I'm going back. If not that trail, then some other. I'm hooked, sister. And I'm an Olympian. I ran the Mahousic Notch, the Appalachian Trail's hardest mile, in under 30 minutes.
"Come on, Katjia," I said, grabbing the protruding handle of the Lexan spoon and lifting her gently to her feet. "Let's go back to my sleeper and see how many ways we can prove that little bald spoon-bending kid in the Matrix wrong." - RSM
Syrup Guy & Selectman Steve
Mile 1917September 17, 2004
B Mountain Road
After pulling a twenty miler yesterday that included the dreaded Mahousic Notch, I could barely walk this morning. On a "dare," having heard from Eric that the mile-long hell-hole notch requiring a good hour or two to get through yet had been done by "some guy" in 38 minutes, I ran it in 29 minutes flat.
Today then, it was ambling time, slow and painful out of my solo abode at Frye Notch Shelter, out of my cozy down bag and up and down the bumps and grinds of the remaining five miles to the B Mountain Road, all the time dreading the 8-mile stretch of road into Andover. Barren and barely surfaced, the road doesn't look good for hitching. Why didn't I notice this in the planning phase? Impossible map nuances. Too much to think about.
I stand up my pack on the shoulder of the hard packed dirt road (a smidgen better than a rural dirt road where there would surely be ZERO traffic), plant my poles hard in the dirt and, with the "thruhiker by the side of the road scene" properly established, I sit down for what will likely be a long wait. I have a book with me, "Fight Club" author Chuck Paluninininichuck's (sic) latest novel "Survivior." It is a sick frikken book, and I like it.
I hear a car approaching before I can crack the book. Ah. Going west. Wrong direction. Before long another truck passes going the same way. And then another. I pull out the map and begin to think maybe I should hitch in that direction instead, pick up the more heavily-trafficked Route 26 which makes a wide arc west then north toward Rangely, another trail town a few days ahead for one afoot, but maybe where I oughta go directly to catch Yazzy. Map in hand, "Survivor" never gets so much as a glance when voila! Along comes a truck going toward Andover.
You see, I can't recall whether or not I sent myself a resupply package to Andover. And with Andover being eight miles out of the way, I've been trying to convince myself that no, I don't have a resupply package there, and no, no one is sending care packages anymore and no, no one so much as hiccupped when I proposed the "Bed and Bath" fund, so there's slim likelihood that there'll be any money awaiting me there, which leaves a postcard from Kate Pearson, which I hate to miss, seeing as how she's sent me one to EVERY mail drop on the AT! But..
And then the "but" no longer matters as Steve Hardy and his dog Jake pull up and pull over, he the first to drive up and pull over, he the first to drive by heading east, and I hop in and off we go as though he were expecting me up here in his neck of the woods. Friendly as can be.
Steve's a maple syrup guy. "Been doin' it all your life?" I ask. "Nope. Had to wait until I was fo-ahh (four). I remember when I was little we had a maple out front of the house with one tap and my mother would make me wait until the jar was half full before I could take it into the house." Steve went on to tell me that he has 2000 taps in the forest just west of where the trail passes through. Wow.
I wonder how much syrup that makes, like, how long does it take to fill, say, a gallon, with two thousand taps, when the sap is running strong? What would you guess? I'm thinking sap runs pretty slow, so I guessed maybe an hour. WRONG. Steve blew my mind with this one: try 125 gallons of sap per hour! But the sap has to be boiled down, such that 125 gallons comes down to like a gallon of actual syrup. And Steve fires his boilers with wood! Wood that he cuts himself! Man, this guy is in his late sixties at least. Old Steve hardy is one tough mutha. Yeah, I learned all this in the short 8-mile drive down into Podunk little Andover with its two general stores, one restaurant and, and.. well, not much else.
By the time we'd pulled up to the post office in town and were saying our goodbyes, I had learned a lot about how maple syrup comes to be and why it is soooo expensive. And as if the gift of all that knowledge and the ride and the company of Steve and his malamute Jake wasn't enough, out comes Steve with a fat little bottle of packweight, er.. I mean syrup!! Pure maple! His own brew. Wow! And I was beginning to think the trail magic of the South was a thing of the past. Thank you, Steve Hardy, for the syrup education, the maple nectar and the ride.
-RSM
Gordy, Me, Gaia, Big Stick, Coyote & Sunshine
Mile 1917
September 17, 2004
Andover, Maine
So I'm standing in downtown Andover, population 8 or 12, and sipping on my cherry Slush Puppie which when I got it the old man in the store says, "Yep, `bout time to shut that off for the season," and there's a handful of thruhikers across the street in some emptied-out old restaurant where the locals have been putting up hikers, and Arms and Kip and Ryder and D-Bone have been talking up this party wanna go to but now they've all smoked out and seem kindof maudlin and the trail is calling louder than the party and I'm figuring the scene like this: they're stuck, stuck on the dogma of the White Blaze, and their extreme cult like adherence to it will not permit them to take the detour to Caratunk. Caratunk. Another trail town one sizable chunk up the trail across Maine and site of the WhiteBlaze.com party, which they have consequently sold me. Some kinda seriously was laced into that homegrown they were smokin' and poof! Off they go back to the trail and leave me standing there, the lone thruhiker on the corner in Andover, Maine.
So I'm on the phone trying to make contact with someone in the outside world, the whyever, perhaps only just to know I exist still (in that world). I call cousins Justin and Stacey and a few friends out West, all to no avail or voice mail. I give up and stick out my thumb on Route 20 toward, no shit, Mexico.
Mexico, Maine. Check out the map sometime. Maine musta been in a real worldly state of mind when they named their towns and cities. There's a Rome, a China, a Moscow, you name it.
Now it's 3:30 pm and I've got maybe four hours of daylight to hitch a LONG way across Maine. I've got the party itch and am determined not to miss this one, having heard how much fun I missed at the post July 4th gig in Port Clinton, PA called "Billville." Being in no real special hurry except for wanting like hell to catch up with Yazzy, I decide what the hell. Maybe I'll get to see my friend (and yours, and everyone's) seven-time AT thruhiker Baltimore Jack.
A thin wiry guy about 45 with thick glasses strung around his head with baling wire and dried blood on his forehead a truck bed fulla odd tools and several changes of underwear is my first and almost instant ride. The blood, he says, came that day from all the thorny thickets surrounding his dope plants growing on some land up in the forest nearby. He's a fascinating guy with a jillion stories and he manages to encapsulate several of them in the short 15 minute ride past Mexico and to the intersection of the next big road going my way and I thank him and he drops me on a corner in the town of Dixfield, Maine.
Now I've been rather spoiled hitchhiking-wise out here in the Appalachians. We all have. Folks living within a certain proximity of the AT just "get it" and swerve right to the curve every time without hesitation. Many rides turn out to be past thruhikers. It's great.
But now here in Dixfield I'm just far enough away from the trail that I have a modicum of doubt. But out goes the thumb nonetheless, and with it, almost that very instant, a cop. I judiciously lower said thumb and don't raise it again until he's passed out of sight. My modicum of doubt is growing.
A few minutes go by and no one stops and I begin to remember what I must look like to the folks of this town. Grizzly, for one. And I surely smell, despite having caught a quick shower back at the Andover free house. (The pack holds the smell of months of sweat.) But they can't smell me from their cars? Or can they? And suddenly, there's the cop again, not approaching from the direction in which I'm looking, but just sitting there, stopped in the middle of the road directly across from me. Houston, we have a problem.
Officer Dow, as I soon came to know his name, sits squat in the one lane road blocking all traffic in the westbound lane of Route 2. I recall the Wal-Mart just down the road to the west. Poor Wal-Mart shoppers.
"Whatchoo doing?" he asks.
"Uh, just trying to get up the road a bit," I lamely reply, fumbling with my dog-eared and half-shredded Maine state map, looking for a nearby destination town to give him.
"Up the road, huh? Where to?" His tone is not one of concern for my well being, not one of service. And the traffic builds behind him. If he even notices, he obviously doesn't care.
Is it illegal to hitchhike in Dixfield, Maine? Who would know? Then I pull the only ace I have, the only one I've had this entire trip, though I'm not real confident that Officer Dow and I are playing with the same deck. That is to say, I don't know if he'll have any idea what I'm talking about.
"I'm just trying to get back to the Appalachian Trail, sir," I say. "I'm a long-distance hiker," and I lift my Leki trekking poles for emphasis. The traffic is piling up. Officer Dow is staring me down. No one dares beep. I finish my thought in a mumble, "..all the way from Georgia."
September 17, 2004
Dixfield, Maine
From the look on Officer Dow's mug, I'd say he didn't "get it." But somehow something I'd said or how I'd said it or perhaps the mystifying aspect of the hi-tech-looking ski pole thingies I was carrying got through to him. And despite his "I'm a cop and I'll block traffic anytime I like, thank you" middle-of-the-road stance, he shifted his focus forward and drove off. He didn't even say goodbye! Translation: he'd probably be back.
Then Miracle #327 on this long journey began to unfold, and I watched as a big black Chevy Cheyenne pickup truck (that had been in line behind the cop) "flip a bitch" up the road and come round back in my direction, pull over and stop. A burly Steve Donahue said, "Get in."
Just inside the truck, I had to ask. I mean, I'd seen him turn around. I knew he wasn't going my way, so.. what was up? "Where you headed?" he asked, ignoring my look of confusion.
"Uh, well, Caratunk actually, but that's and awful long way so any way along the way would be good. But hey, you're not even going my way, are you?"
Then I got the story. The truth. One of those small town truths that's stranger than fiction and the kind of grit that will always be my favorite fodder for this tap-tap-tap dance of fingers on keys I do for you, my Reader.
"I saw Joe Dow hassling you," he said, surprising me with his knowledge of the cop's name. "I'm a town selectman (aka city council member) here in Dixfield. Where can I take you?" I'd like to think he also said something about how it irked him, but I wouldn't quote him on that.
Thus began one of the coolest hitches in the history of hitching, I figure. A local politician (who makes peanuts for his public service and has to work FT at the local pulp mill to make a living) drives a stinky hiker TWO HOURS out of his way (four hours round trip for him) for no good reason at all. Or to vindicate the actions of a punk local cop. Or because he was in the middle of a divorce and needed someone to talk to. Whatever. It was a pleasure. Kudos to you, Steve Donahue. If I may borrow on a line from "Fight Club," Dixfield Selectman Steve was by far one of my most interesting single-serving friends, in the hitchhiking sense of the term.
We talked of many things, Steve and me. Good stuff about family (he'd raised a good many kids) and dreams and adventure and life and the road. Hell if I remember the details now. Because Steve was, after all, driving me to a party. And party I have now for about 48 hours straight. Steve spoke with a certain sadness about his soon-to-be x-wife. Things had gone south and stayed south for a long time. It was either leave her or go bat F-ing crazy. He was a big teddy bear of a man, a tad sad but too fulla life and (obviously) good giving nature to stay sad for long. He was working hard to start anew. I assured him that he would, that everything would be just fine. He told me all about his teenage kids with great fatherly pride, and I replied with "Right on!" and "Excellent!" and meant every word.
I wanted to buy the man dinner or a beer or something for his effort. But he wouldn't have it. It was scary when we got to Caratunk, me having never been there and suddenly realizing that I was there based on no more than a rumor heard just hours ago and Caratunk turning out to be some old historic town off the main road empty and dead as some old museum exhibit of a town, not a soul stirring at 6 pm. And I begin thinking, "Oh, shit. This is Kip's doing!" Kip with dry and sarcastic sense of humor, and none of them coming after all. "There really is no party! I've been duped!"
But then I pull out the Wingnut trail guide book and reference the town and it says something about a rafting center with cabins a mile up the road and so up we go and voila! There it is! A circus tent with a bonfire going and a handful of early-comers hanging around, scraggly thruhikers every one.
I'm kinda sad that Selectman Steve didn't stop for a beer or a burger from the grill. That woulda been nice.
For the very next day, as the WhiteBlaze party really got rolling, up drives a semi, a full-blown 18-wheeler with a load and slows sudden to a stop there on the road between the Kennebec River and The Ferryman's place and WOW! Out of the semi cab sprout not one, not two, but five stinky smiling hikers fresh off the trail and hitchin' and arriving in STYLE! The arrival of Big Stick and Gordy and Gaia and Sunshine and Tripod was truly a command performance that'll go down in the memories of all present as a high moment of the weekend. Better than and so-n-so celebrity rolling up to the Shrine Auditorium in a LA in a limousine any day! Wow! Sunshine flagged down a semi! And what to you know but truck driver Gordon parks the rig and comes down to join the party. Wow. What a day. What a weekend!
-RSM
A motley crew of thruhikers
September 20, 04
Caratunk, Maine
Camp Steve
I broke down last night and dropped forty bucks on one of Ferryman Steve Longley's cabins. I was eager to get out of the cold and damp Kennebec River air and into a bed and shower I so craved a place where I could sit at a table by a little lamp and write awhile about the adventures of the past weeks, that well, I just spent the dough. My idea was that I'd share it with a couple of other hikers, and so I did and maybe they'll chip in toward it and maybe they won't. I don't much care. Gordy holds fast in her snug bag with her teddy bear Oliver on the top bunk here in Cabin Number One refusing to get up. Big Stick strums his guitar, toying with a new song he's working on. No words yet, but he's calling it "a morning song." Or I guess that's what Gordy called it. In between catnaps, Gordy speaks. "We've got only two and a half pages left in the Wingfoot book."
Gordy evokes the seemingly far distant past with names of towns a thousand miles back or more, saying "That's like from Springer to Gatlinburg." I say, hoofuckingray. I'm tired. Bone tired. Tired like I won't ever need to hike again for the rest of my life tired. Someone around here is reading Kerouac's Dharma Bums. I'm thinking about how tired Jack was after just that two-day trip up some peak in the Sierras. Nineteen hundred miles and whoa! Tis the morning my sixth month anniversary! Fuck me. I just had to blow some dough on this place last night, just had to. I'm burning out.
I can't write most times now as the temps drop below finger tolerance. So I came in here last night while a bunch of thruhiker freaks went to the bar up the street to hit the hot tub, Big Stick and Gordy included. I sat at the table and wrote by the light of the little lamp and drank a few Buds and when Gordy returned I showered hot and long and crawled in my bag, my goose down snuggle bag feeling better than ever with me all clean in it and here I thought it was dirty but it was just me every night, even despite the little sponge baths I take and slept good last night.
But now it is time to motivate, time to run with the pack. Time to get out of Caratunk where we transported forth along the trail to party. Time to return to our places on the AT Game board: Andover, Rangely, Stratton. I have decided to join BAMMS, the happy gang who arrived via tractor-trailer truck cab. Plan: go back not quite so far on the trail and begin walking again in Stratton. I hear tell that Auggy is there, so it is the best of all worlds. I'll be missing about fifty miles of trail, which I can later make up, or sooner. Or never. Who cares? If I go all the way back, I'll end up crawling up Jessica's tail, literally. And that just wouldn't be right. What with her always trailing behind Eric by an orgasmic howl or so, Doppler-wise, mind you. You know, first you see the jet, then you hear it, that sort of thing. Of course, in the Green Tunnel, you can't see the forest for the trees, let alone hear much more than your own footfalls, so.. ahem. I mean, amen."
"What would Jesus do?" I'll tell you what Jesus would do: he would wash the feet of that Italian goddess and suck her toes to boot. And so would I. I'd pull a Robert Johnson for that cherry snow cone of shaved Italian Ice, sign on the dotted line at The Crossroads doorstep of the Law Firm Infernal at Louisiana, Hollywood & Vine for that fine, fine woman.
But Jessica IS taken. And that's that. End of story. To Eric the glory. Spoils to the victor. Toils for the fool. It's hitchhiking time. By the way, Happy Birthday, dearest Jess, born the 21st.
September 21, 2004
The Zip-together Sleeping Bag Revolution!
Some sense has returned to this mad mission of mine, this venture, this ad-venture, this tour de force of me inside nature. I have succeeded, for the moment anyway, in finding a woman to warm these ever-increasingly cold Maine nights as we close the final 187-mile gap to Katahdin.
I GIVE YOU AUGGY!
Auggy, whom I spent several days "chasing" and then finally got wise and hitchhiked forward to meet, lay with me last night snug together against the 40 degree weather, our two mummy bags of different makes and years miraculously zipping together to make one. We hiked out of Stratton, Maine yesterday afternoon and made the whopping 5-mile hike to Horns Pond Lean-to.
Caretaker Alice savvied our wish to be alone and away from the crowd at the lean-to and led us to a private little campsite all our own. Never have I seen cooler privies than the double-barrel composting setup here, proudly pointed out by Alice, the resident "poo stirrer" to use their own terminology, the caretakers of these "for pay" sites and shelters in the Northeast. A good walk distant from the house of poo, the site's water source looked and smelled good enough that we drank it straight out of its mountain spring source. I was distracted enough by Auggy that I just plumb forgot to treat it! And then there was the Fosters oil cans, two of `em. Fosters fat-ass cans of beer make for ideal trail "champagne," as it were. Good beer and the remains crush down light and small. Aug & me catch a good buzz and roll joyful beneath the stars of Maine.
Next morning now and we're fine. No problems from the water.
With my usual fresh granola and hot milk breakfast I added a healthy dose of Steve Hardy's pure maple nectar. Oh my God is that stuff good! Sorry Swami, but I have to disagree with you on this one. Pure maple is descendent from Heaven; Aunt Jemima sucks ass. And now I hear my watch alarm buzzing and it tells me that it's nine o'clock and time to hit the trail.
The air smells of pending winter, the sky slate gray. I cannot deny that I am entirely sick of this trail, that I wish only to finish it with all the aplomb and pride deserved of such a feat, and then make for a big double bed somewhere with down comforters and a fire in the hearth and just rest, rest, rest. But onward I go. And maybe today will be a little better than yesterday for the presence of a lovely woman who appears to like me and who feels good to lie beside after so very, very long alone. -RSM
Live from the Archipelago
First view of Katahdin! Here high atop Bigelo Peak overlooking Sugarloaf, an old fire tower at my back, lunch of salami and sourdough bread, peanuts, Auggy's dinner mints. Aptly-named Apple Cheeks (who I just can't help but call Apple Juice!) with her red dimples, and her not-so-aptly named pasty beau Mighty Joy from Oakland, California, haunt the peak with us like a couple of day hikers, out of place somehow, out of sink. I wanna talk California with MJ, wanna rap homestyle about "Oaktown," but we may as well be standing on a BART platform or in an elevator for how much they warm to the California in me. We are a rarity out here on the AT, Californians. I try to no avail. Fuck em.
A child's balsa wood airplane sits crashed out in the alpine scrub flora zone. Auggy picks it up and carries it as trash, reminding me of my x Jill, the Deep Ecologist. Jill was great in that sense. She, too, would have picked up the plane, way out here in the wilderness. But on the streets of her native Pittsburg or my LA, she'd toss McDonald's detritus right out the window of a moving car. Her rationale? Cities are fucked; Nature is still pure. I LOVED that eco-bent philosophy, the irony of it. I loved her.
Katahdin! To SEE him at last! Astounding! The ''Grandfather'' as is the native meaning of the peak's name, doesn't look so far now. A hundred miles as the crow flies; twice that by trail. Appears but a day's journey. My perspective, however, is skewed after half a year of spectacular peak top vistas. Boo Boo and Coyote arrive as we make to go. Boo Boo wants to Kerouac-out in the ancient tower, but finds (as literary-romantic-I did also) the nailed-up plywood battlements impregnable.
Half a mile later to the north and down now-rote ''stairways'' of jumbled stone strewn before us, a cascade of a 1000 dead washing machines, I remember that I forgot to ask Boo Boo if he had a condom to spare. The trail in NH & Maine often greets you like a wall at your nose, straight up, or straight down. New England has yet to invent the switchback.
I slept very little last night. Reunited Auggy and I ''slept'' like two wrestling Polar bears, a pair of moose in rut doing everything but. No wilderness substitute for a condom that I know of. Perhaps in direct consequence or due to some small bug in the water of last night's spring source, I felt weak at around three o'clock. Leaving the tent, I walked unsteadily as an old man, shaky on my pegs as they say. Fatigue hit me so hard I thought perhaps the flu had caught me. I sat repeatedly, once with tears welling up as I took it all in, the thousands of miles, the four billion paces, the hundred or more tent setups and breakdowns, and the fatigue-driven breakdown now upon me.
There was another factor gnawing at my gut: that of scowling Sundown somewhere up ahead, her face a cluster of angry muscle, angry at the world perhaps but currently said anger aimed at me for the gross sin of "stealing" her girl away. Ahh, what the hell. There's nothing wrong with her a hundred dollar won't fix."
And so we had called it a day, Auggy and me, at just five or six miles in roughly as many hours, and dropped down a blue blaze tent site trail and set up camp and slept ALL afternoon. It was an unprecedented dreamy afternoon detour from the rigors of the trail, and I am grateful to Auggy for going along with it. I was so useless at this point that I literally dropped my pack on a tent platform, lay back and blacked out. When I awoke, Aug had the tent all ready for me. We were no sooner tucked into our joint bag than it began to rain in the forest. I closed my eyes again and slept like a baby. Bliss, you earn your kiss of a name again and again here beyond the world of men.
Now at midnight or so, I awake and write again, inspired by the strong gusts of wind roaring through the trees overhead. It is at once exciting and scary. Blow-downs are common out here, and even a hi-tech MR Zoid tent is little protection from a falling giant. Wish us luck. Goodnight sweet world, sweet loved ones and friends.
Reporting Live from that part of Maine that, on a map, juts out north into Canada, an archipelago, a lake-filled land of peaks and trees and little else, of few roads and silence in quantities immeasurable by man.
-RSM