I lay here I my new, untested tent deep in the mountains of Georgia. energy in the air outside is both magnificent and threatening. thunderheads prepare to christen our arrival here at Hawk Mtn shelter. I made it, nine miles today my first day on the trail and this after four days of scant sleep on Amtrak. .. I keep drifting off to sleep. Shit. Thunderclaps growing closer. Lightening strobe like. Lark is a cutie dropped out of Harvard t o join us on the hike. would already like to see more offfffffffff....
Holy Jesus! Here comes the mother of all storms!. Bang bang lightening and thunder and rain now, first trickling, then tearing out of some hole in the sky like a thousand screaming children released at for summer break. Will my tent hold up? Well, there's nothing to do now but pray. The roar has replaced the pitter pat , the roar an d the crash as the storm moves directly over head. then pop goes the sky and the whole Hawk Mtn world explodes!! and it suddenly occurs to me that I've left my little propane/butane stove outside the tent, not far from my head. If another lightening strike like that one hits any closer it could hunt down that little bomb out there and boom. No more Rick. Would probably blow my head off.
Wowwowowowow! I give over to the forces of nature and choosing not to worry simply revel in the symphony of light and sound, one of the finest electrical storms I've experienced in years, not I don't think since the trailer park outside Bisbee in 1996 with Florence Drukas.
Wow. Thank you God. Thank you LIFE for guiding me here to this place, to this journey. I sit up and flick on my headlamp and take quick stock of the tent floor around the edges. Not a drop. And still down it comes in buckets and barrels, kegs and caboodles.. remnants of creation.. and God made This..BOOM and God made that BOOM wow.
I am screwed if this tent doesn't hold up against this onslaught. I have a down sleeping bag, useless when whet, a down Himalayan jacket, and a not at all waterproof backpack. I think of little Lark in her tent across the way. Little Lark bound for Harvard, ballsy enough to drop out when her heart wasn't in it, to drop out and head south to hike the AT, alone. And my friends think I'm brave! I wonder how she's holding up in this onslaught? Hell, I've had to stop typing several times now , my heart in my throat as another bomb of electrical energy explodes overhead, seemingly right outside my tent. Today we, the dozen or so thru hikers camped here at Hawk tonight are weathering this storm together yet alone, today we all made the first big step on a daunting journey the likes of which few men or women will ever even consider. we are misfits most, and I like every one of I've met so far. Doug from the train last night who's doing the trek for the second time. Nathan sweet as can be, out of shape like me and missing a few teeth hikes to get over his lost love. John from Boston with his blinding white thighs , narrow and angular guy , graduate of Tufts and transitioning, trying to figure out that special question that lives in all of us: what next? And many, many more.
Well, the storm has largely passed now and I give my tent an A plus plus. worth every one of its two hundred fifty dollars with its silicone impregnated nylon and waterproof zippers an god knows what kinda super waterproof floor. I love it. God just dumped a Jacuzzi on me personally and my down and I are bone dry. But we're tired too. We should be wiped out so bad from four daze on the train and little sleep that we'd been passed out an hour ago. But that was too good to miss. Ha! As if I could slept through that cracking open sky. Day one on the AT, successfully completed. - RSM
Day Two:
I needn't look at my new purchased-for-the-trail watch to know
that I am the absolute last man standing here at Hawk Shelter. Even
the girl Jessica is gone, she who confided to me "It took me two hours
to get ready this morning. I don't know what I'm doing." She'd hardly
made a peep this morning while everyone packed around the table but
spoke briefly, almost soundlessly to me when the others were gone.
Last man standing. That's me. A merit badge for Day Two: last to
strike his tent. Thank you, Mr. Pedophile Scoutmaster. I am proud to
accept this honor on behalf of the me that doesn't give a rat's ass how
fast he moves down the trail, just so long as he keeps moving and
enjoys it the whole frikken way.
The storm last night was brilliant! An orgasm of light and crashing sound. "Concussion Bombs For Jesus!" Amen and we thank Oh Sacred & Indefatigable Tent for keeping us snug and dry as a pit barbecue hog in summer.
There is this mentality, nay, and this instinctual desire to keep up with the pack. This I imagine is going to be my daily sacrifice, both to taking it slow and safe and to keeping this story written down, everyday. All right, so whilst we sit here and last night's gang gets ever further on ahead, let's talk a bit more about gear.
For the sake of easing access to food during the day's hike, I spent the $15 on a small fanny pack, just large enough to hold a day's worth of granola, dried fruit (including honey dates from date palm trees just down the hill from my home base Idyllwild).. speaking of which, just as a matter of unique interest, I also carried here from California and am still sipping from two quarts of spring water pulled right out of a hole in the ground just a stone's throw from the Pacific Crest Trail, the AT's west coast cousin. Thus, aside from the fact that Idyllwild sits right on the PCT, in me here today there exists a kind of a marriage of the two trails in water, as it were.
So there's the fanny pack round my waist full of snacks in easy reach as I hike. An excellent item, one I can't imagine doing without is my Camelback, a 70 oz. water bladder with a line of blue transparent tubing running from the pack to the area of your mouth. You simply turn your head to the side, bite the nipple and you're drinking. I bought the thing years ago as a gift for K but kept for myself when it turned out she wanted a bigger one (ha, there's an opening for a dick joke). Fanny pack of snacks plus water bladder equals hands-free hiking. This makes a big difference when you got a hefty load on your back and you don't want to have to offload and reload every time you wanna nosh.
My pack is no mythical, hi-tech thing. It's simply a pack, a black Jansport bag with no internal frame or space age shit on it. It was a gift from friend Emelia years ago, I think from when we did some hiking together in northern Cal's Trinity Alps. I must have been pack less and she had two. Emelia will no doubt pop to mind often on this journey. A dear friend, a beautiful lady with a matching spirit, she gave my latter college year's depth, Zen wisdom and the perspective of an older friend. Much or all of the simple yoga stretches I'll be doing every day this trip I learned from Emelia.
My "kitchenette" consists of my $40 Mountain Survival Research "Pocket Rocket" stove, a tiny 3 oz. miracle that screws onto a diminutive butane canister, and a titanium cook pot, also feather light and also $40 (ouch). Oh, and I splurged weight-wise on the addition of a small stainless coffee mug. For utensils I have one heavy-duty plastic spoon and my Swiss Army Knife. That's it.
And that's it for this writing session. Close behind the storm last night was a cold front that currently has me sitting here freezing my ass off, even in the sun. Time to get hiking and warm up from within. -RSM
High atop some mountain in Georgia, I contemplate the last four days of some kinda weird ecstatic granola-junkie dirty-sock boot camp. At Walasi-Yi hostel at Neel's Gap, we are all equal in stink. "What will you do with your shoes when you're done hiking, The Volcano Goddess asks. "I'll sell mine on eBay. `The shoes that made the whole trail from Georgia to Maine. Two thousand miler shoes.'" Casey the border collie with the doggie food backpack comes over and nuzzles my face, attempts to get the cashews from my closed hand. All around us, Goddess, Flowershorts, Underground Radio and me, there spans out seemingly to forever the blue of the bluest sky, and below it layer after layer receding into the distance of blue-shaded mountains, mountains that to see them up close must be brown and gray like the forests we walk through, but in the distance and perhaps in the reflection of the sky, they lay like sleeping dreams of distant oceans.
I've been trying to find time to write for days. But I've become a part of a tight little family of friends, all thru hikers, all traveling at roughly the same speed. And they're pushing it, pushing me. Not in any zealous speed hiker sense, but enough, and more than what I would have done myself.
So much to tell after so few days. I'm seated now beneath this fantastic old oak tree, all gnarled and scraggly and full of personality. From my place here on the ground it rises jack in the beanstalk high and crazy like varicose veins on the blue skin of the sky. And I type. Finally using my laptop lay down method after days of being so busy or so tired I couldn't hack it. I met Elly (pseudo-named for her likeness to Jodie foster and love of the film Contact) on my second day out. I wanted her the moment l spotted her. After spending an hour writing on Sunday morning, I'd made a shorter than expected day of seven miles to Gooch gap shelter. On day one I'd done 9. On day three, I did 12. Day four was just 4 miles into Neel's Gap where we rested and "desupplied." John dubbed our new friend Nathan "Underground Radio" for the fact that he buried his radio the first day of the hike in an effort to reduce his pack weight. His comment about this odd and colorful act, "The earth worms are groovin!" Apparently he left the radio on. I'd like to think the hypocritical dope-fiend Rush Limbaugh was the last to go squawking into the dirt.
The shelter on Day Two at mile marker 14.6 was great and I quickly claimed a spot in its loft. That night I sewed my loco fleece hat that has since become something of a trademark and is most certainly a colorful eye catcher. Hand sewed it with temperatures dropping rapidly as the sun went down. When Elly arrived I was up in the shelters loft, the shelter kinda like a minibarn with an open front and a picnic table beneath its overhanging roof the first thing I noticed was she hair. A real wild mane, very lion like, very reminiscent of my college girlfriend Melissa Moore back in 1989. Glasses, kinda fifties librarian type, sexy, muscular and slim, Elly comes from a commune in Virginia. At the right angle, she's a dead ringer for Jodie Foster but with a wild and uncombed mane.
It was almost like fate dropped this girl in my lap. Fate was close and dropped her right beside me. She got to the shelter when there was but one space left for someone to throw down their bag (the space right beside me) and join the stinky-feet slumber party that would, by morning, see the temperature drop to 20 F and have me snapping awake from dreams of clambering into this girl's sleeping bag for warmth. Perhaps those dreams were just premonition, for just one night later, after a brutal 12-miles and a cold and late arrival to the next shelter, I threw shyness to the wind and asked if she'd like to share a tent with me. She said yes. Now she shares my tent with me nightly and as a result I am not resting much. Little sleep. A lot more power-hiking than I'd counted on with days up to 12 miles so far. All this on knees not at all happy with me.
Last night's camp of some three dozen tents has completely cleared out. Mine is the last tent standing (again, like Day 1). I feel badly, holding Elly back from her potentially much faster pace. But for now we tread some middle ground compromise. Underground and Flowerpants have gone, essentially busting up our little family of four for today anyway. There is a shelter much closer today, seven miles. Perhaps I will have time to write then tonight, given this more reasonable goal. Yesterday's 12 miles wiped me out, and then there was the tent to pitch, water to pump and treat, and so on. Elly made delicious black bean burritos for she and I, kind of in trade for my pitching the tent. Overall I couldn't be happier, but I feel like a fat middle-aged man thrown into boot camp, and kept there, not by any mandate so much as a sweet cherry pie steaming hot in wait on the windowsill every night.-RSM
After repeatedly joking with south-facing hikers, asking them, "so how was Maine?" today it really happened. There on the path appeared Fuman, who to the same question answered that yes, he had come from Kathadin. Wha-what? We couldn't believe it. Fuman fiery red hair, beard and snow white legs couldn't match the fiery spirit that must have driven this man to thru hike the AT not only in the opposite and thus less-social direction as us, but in the dead of winter, one of the harshest winters on the east coast in years, says Elly. "What are your trail names?" he inquired. I said that we hadn't quite landed them yet. Fuman, without hesitation, looked at me and said, "Malcovich."
Almost done, he said. Just one more day. We all looked at one another in amazement. One day? It had taken us five. We shook his hand, congratulated him and not long after parting ways, wished we'd gotten a picture of the one called Fuman, who'd hacked thru winter with an ice ax, lost his partner and his Chu.
Day 6
Cheered from a grumpy slumber this morning by the four voice song of
the Von Trapp Family, three children from ages 10-14 (roughly) hiking
with their parents. They sang a song about shaving cream, or at least
one in which shaving cream was inserted every time the word should have
been shit. Very funny stuff.
- In other news:
- Six days, no blisters.
- Temp in teens two mornings so far.
- Most every step of the way so far has been as through dead forests, all deciduous and bare in the dregs of winter.
- Cooking is hard when your hands are frozen and your brain is meat Popsicle from hoofing it all day.
- I'm out of hot cocoa already on Day 5.
- Spent an additional $45 on stuff sacks at Neel's Gap - the result pure magic: everything once strapped to the outside of my pack now fits inside.
- One of the biggest subjects of conversation is pack weight. and I am well ahead of the game with a pack fully loaded with food and water: 35 lbs. Many hikers, some of them girls half my size are still carrying 50.
- I took a self-portrait photo of my bare belly against the background of the AT route map from Georgia to Maine (my belly hung somewhere in Georgia). Why? Because when I reach the top of that map, I will have no belly and will have muscles in places I never thought possible.
Lark lay in her tent asleep. its all-screen walls afford the passerby a full view of her reclining there angel-like on her back, closed lids skyward. And I think to myself, "It's Sleeping Beauty on display here in Nutball-Thruhiker-Terra-Stomping Appalachian Trail. Beauty's on `medical leave' and doesn't she look peaceful. I met Lark on the evening of Day One as she fumbled with her gas stove before a macho and unhelpful audience of hiker men. The stove was a blazing mess, seemingly uncontrolled fire spilling out of it everywhere and though everyone seemed to know how to work the thing, no one got down on hands and knees to help her. I didn't know the stove. Mine is of the propane canister variety. But I got down there with her anyway and did my best.
Later with the stove under control and her dinner cooking, I chatted her up a bit and learned that she had dropped out of Harvard to come and do the trail. Wow, I thought. What balls. But when I showed her my little pocket stove (that looks so much like a little lunar lander) and said I like it because it "was sexy," she gave me such a dirty look that I decided it best to leave her be. I mean, what was she 18? 17 maybe? I was 17 when I went off to Pepperdine U., and dropped out myself just one semester later. God Bless Lark and her hike. If only I'd had such a lofty and cleansing goal at a young 18.
Today I sit atop a hill at some shelter whose name escapes me napping and telling this tale in the sun and the relative warmth of a March 25 at three thousand feet in the northern Georgia mountains. I hiked, driven on by Elly's unflagging pace, seven miles today, an easy day in the parlance of this rugged trail mile-ripping crowd of Thoreaueans on crack. Some of these people really move. This is my sixth day and I've done 50 miles. I'm told the three young men who just arrived are on their third day. I just don't have the stamina or the training to move that fast. And the knees are a constant source of pain and psychological terror. If I stop longer and rest them, I lose Elly, the warm cherry pie at the end of grueling day.
So I have "crutched" the knees with $129 pair of trekking poles like ski poles that balance you and, in my case, bear a lot of the brunt of weight I place on my knees with every downhill step. In one day I have become quite proficient at this. I feel at times like Scrooge's Tiny Tim eagerly "four-stepping" (or did he only have one crutch?) toward Christmas turkey. More than once I've said to Elly, "Tiny Tim is ready for his morphine." The pain is that bad. It's down there, somewhere down this hill whose syncline is killing me, sending dagger-like stabs into my legs with every step. Is the turkey down there? Or am I the turkey? Better be careful with this metaphor. Turkey hunting season just opened in these parts and continues for another coupla weeks. It's strange that it turned out to be knee problems. I've never had a knee problem in my life. In the first two days, I went down twice on a turned left ankle. I've twisted ankles before and thought sure this would be the weak point. But aside from straight fatigue and major adjustments being made on the part of my lungs, I'm fine. Ankles now fine. Feet are fine, not one blister. Pray for my knees, would you?
On the evening of our resupply day Tuesday (Day Four) in Neel's Gap, I actually had to excuse myself from my hostel company friends to go out back and ball my eyes out. I cried for fear that this weird and sudden anomaly would stop me short, would rob me of this great journey I am on and the family of like-minded misfits from mainstream society that I have quickly come to love. The poles are helping. I leave the rest to God.
I came to hike the AT knowing full well I would need a trail name, that everyone has one and so should I. It is a way of separating ourselves from the people we were in the outside world, in crazed and sickly mainstream society that all of us have somehow, miraculously and through great effort, managed to escape for a time. But I didn't want to name myself.
Now nearly a week in, I am proud to have been "gifted" several names from which to choose. They are: Hammerhead (based on the hammerhead shark-shaped fleece hat I made myself); Tinkerbell (given me by the children of the Von Trapp family) based on the little Tinkerbell in a plastic lamp I have hanging round my neck, property of Duke's dash but pilfered to bring me luck on my trip; Malcovich (explained yesterday), and Inspector Gadget, a name given me by Kristen due to the presence on my hip of this very device on which I now write. Before we got well ahead of them, Sam and Larrisa were calling me Jack, after Jack Sparrow, Depp's character in "Pirates." I found that both ironic and flattering. I have temporarily dubbed Kristen "flower pants" by her flower-patterned shorts, though surely she is deserving of something better.-RSM
An Appalachian Trail song, by me:
(to be sung to tune of Sunshine on my
shoulders makes me happy)
Mouse turds in my coffee cup make me happy
Mouse turds give you hantavirus and make you die.
So throw some water in, boil em up good, ya-dee ya-dee.
Mouse turds in my coffee get me high. [repeat]
Morning and the coffees on. Sleeping Beauty is now Dawn of the Dead, the fire round which we sat yakking is out, and last night's distant monkeys have been identified as turkeys (we think). I have manipulated carabiners to lower the cable lines which suspend our food high above nocturnal bear aspirations, and now, whilst others are chowing down carbos in preparation for "Big Miles," I am cooling my fingers on this keyboard to bring you, the reader, the latest from the Great Gonzo AT Romp. Elly, master of birdsong, gardener and graduate of Bio-Chemistry, is a snuggler. She laughs and smiles a lot in the tent at night, and thus far has stuck with me during the day, but I have no idea what she really thinks of me. I have asked much about her life and she offered still more, but not once that I can think of has she responded with a similar or related question about me. I find this odd and a little isolating, but have chalked it up to her somewhat reserved Elly-ness, her quiet and angular beauty. I've even managed for the most part (so far) not to be hurt by her apparent total lack of interest in my stated goal of writing about this journey. It is no doubt odd having someone run around following your actions with pen & paper, but it IS what I DO and I figure anyone sufficiently bothered by it will do well to just get the fuck away from me.
This is my blessing. This is my curse. But to the obvious and rigid goal of everyone in these mountains - getting to Maine, I have the added goal of churning out a tome to match the trail in length and spirit. I may soon lose my thus-far ad hoc hiking family because of this, because of the need to go a little slower, to smell the flowers, to stop and scribble. But I'll do whatever has to be done. Just as thru hiking the trail is really no more than a grand idea made real, so is this idea. And now for a handful of granola, striking the tent, and hitting the trail. Walk and walk and walk some more, this seems to be the only real trick of the trail. And a trick it is. For an entire business day we walk, and at day's end there's very little time before night. When the sun goes down in the forest, you go to bed. Just so. And awaken, as I have this morning, to the first rising of the sun, sometimes a little before. And the woodpecker hammers: getup, getup, getup! - RSM
Point:
A man sits trailside with a heavy pack and a four-pound bible in his
hands. "Lotta people on the trail this time of year," he says.
"They're gonna hafta put in a superhighway here. The good news is
there's about 150 ahead of you. The bad news is only about 5 of them
are gonna make it. Jesus is the way and the truth, the only way.
That's all that matters. Bible stands for Book of Instruction Before
Leaving Earth." Typically garrulous and responsive, none of us have
anything to say in response to this man. All I can think is leave it
to a Christian Zealot to give us the grim news of how many of us will fail.
Flowerpants says she had to resist telling the man that Jesus was too
much pack weight. The man stays behind awaiting the next hiker. We
walk on. As an afterthought somewhere up trail, I say aloud, "God, Sir,
is living in me every step of the way. I've got Jesus in my knees!
Counterpoint:
At the trailhead at Indian Grave Gap, we descend to a road and to the
sight of Claire, "Hobbes on Catnip" and their dog Matty reclining
roadside in matching blue lawn chairs. Hanging from a tree just at
trail's end hangs an Easter Basket full of colorful plastic eggs. In
each egg, a handful of chocolates, sweet tarts and other goodies.
Claire and Hobbes hung there goodie basket the night before and have
returned to fetch the leavings. Our arrivals have coincided. They
pass out Frescas and we exchange laughs and, from us, gratuitous
expressions of gratitude. Such a simple and selfless act, is theirs.
These are incidences of "Trail Magic," an apparently common phenomenon
that strikes us as anything but common. Wonderful rather. Already
today another man was hiking a segment of the trail and handing out
"Cokes" the southern term for soda of any kind. He gave me a Pepsi.
Hobbes has come from Clearwater, FL and will begin his thru hike in May
section hiking with his wife pacing him in an RV. "I'm lucky to be able
to go at all. It's taken two years of planting seeds," he says,
nodding back toward his wife and winking at us. We laugh and share a
smile.
As we ready to move on up the trail, another car pulls up and out steps "Queen Diva," a local shuttling hikers around. She, too, offers us sodas and candy. We gratefully accept Oreos and Rice Kris pie Treats and head on our way. An hour later up the trail, the sugar rush must still be on me. We've made today's goal, Tray Mountain Shelter, but it's early and I can't imagine stopping now. Elly is game to hike on. But Underground Radio is complaining of sore shoulders and wants to stay. The one I've been calling Flowerpants has her shoes off and is tendering a nasty ankle blister. She's having knee problems, too. Together, they stay. Together, Elly and I move on. Once again the family is broken, though almost certainly temporarily. I've suggested several trail names for Flowerpants, and finally she has found one to her liking: "Tumbling Tumbleweed." I don't think I've ever met a bigger female fan of The Big Lebowski.
Two hours later Elly and I stop with the setting sun at Addis Gap, 61.5 miles north along the AT. It was a 13 mile day, my longest yet. Seventy degrees in the shade at 2:15 p.m. That represents a 50-some degree variance in just one week out here on the trail. I'm sweating like a dog, the flies are on me and it's only March. I can't even begin to fathom what hiking will be like in the dead heat of summer 100 degrees, insects in full force, the trail closer to cities and trash and tract homes. Jesus. This tough early stretch must be appreciated every moderate step of the way, then. Hiking you see a lot less of the landscape than one might imagine. What you do see is a whole lotta dirt. Earth, rocks, dead leaves, sticks. I have lagged behind the gang to rest a moment. A small black fly bites into my leg. The clink-clink of my trekking poles takes me in my mind to a ski slope of my youth, legs dangling from a chair lift, ski pole duels with the friend beside me. I imagine in this endless stepping rhythm and trance of the trail, I will travel to many places in my mind, see much that I haven't seen in years, all the while fully present in my slowly moving Appalachian world. - RSM
I stop on the crest of a hill and just breathe. Down by my sides extend arms misted in sweat connected to hands suddenly vigorous and vital in duty gripping hard the cork grips of titanium trekking poles. The poles have overnight become extensions of my arms, another pair of legs to support the week knees of the primary pair. Hot air heaves out of me in heavy gusts and I am reminded that I have been breathing like this for days, for one full week now. I rise in the morning a muddle of mad exhaustion and even madder enthusiasm and I do this every day, all day. I am become a machine. A hiking machine. And yet I haven't even been born into this yet. Over 2100 miles to go, yet today my 70 feels a triumph unparalleled in my life. A cooling breeze blows from the north and the west. My feet are throbbing, but this is okay, balanced by the fact that every muscle in my body is humming. At 37 I felt I was dying. Already I am no longer 37, no longer dying, no longer sick from the world. I forget to take the Prozac - I don't need it here. I take them anyway. It's okay. No harsh changeovers necessary. Just walk. That's all I have to do each day: just walk. And Elly, all business one minute, now tender as can be, reminds me daily that I'll be just fine. When my knees felt ready to collapse descending Blood Mountain, she walked with me slowly and at the hostel assured me again that I would be just fine. Up here on this ridge just south of Plumorchard Gap Shelter, I feel like a man again, a man and a monster, a heaving breathing pulsating well-oiled machine. A machine with very sore knees. I think maybe I'll be just fine. - RSM
Escaping 75 degree heat here on a late March day, I crawled inside a lush rhododendron grove, dropped my pack on a flat spot in the leaves and fell asleep. I have entered North Carolina today, having walked the full 80-some miles that the AT traverses northern Georgia. I am exhausted, sore all over, thirsty for a beer (haven't had one in nearly two weeks). Gear, food & knees are the principle topics of conversation among we thru hikers, a real switch from the usual outside world talk of sex, booze & TV (I generalize). Elly and I switched places yesterday, no longer her leading at her Zen plodding pace and me in behind. I took the lead and much more true to character began tackling the trail in leaps and bounds, interspersed of course by a zillion short stops for breath (at which point she'd catch up). Huffin and puffin is my daily due now, some eight hours a day I'm damn near hyperventilating. I know this will change with my metabolism. Pondering my trail name, the one I haven't quite settled on yet, I thought "Screaming Knees" would be good, if I were a Navajo or something. Met Squirrel Master going the other way yesterday (and hoofing it like all the obvious seasoned hikers do). Says he was finishing up his southbound thru hike, started in June of 2003. Wow! Said he was taking his time. I like that. He also said there was a "Gadget" last year, so I'm now somewhat disinclined to carry that name.
Met a guy named "Hard Tack Hank" from Buford, GA yesterday, a congenial and funny guy who says he's a big fan of thru hikers and bid us please apologize to young Lark for him. Nineteen-year old Lark is hiking alone, and apparently Hank figgers he freaked her out when he said he'd be "stalking her" on the internet all the way to Maine. I gave him Jigglebox so he could "stalk" my journey, too. What the hell. I know what he meant. Dropping down into Dick's Gap, the hitchhike road-crossing into the nearest town of Haiwasee, I told John to have a hamburger and a beer for me. Elly said to please eat some sharp cheddar for her. We weren't going into town and he was. Not twenty minutes later when we dropped down to the highway crossing, we discovered more trail angels there to greet us with food and drink. "Tater from 2000" as he called himself (a former thru hiker of that year) was the first to chime in and offer me a hotdog and soda. I was on that dog so fast you woulda thought I was a hummingbird. Then from a few picnic tables away came the voice of Queen Diva, offering the same. We all had a good laughed as I made a joke about being fought over for free food. Over at her grill, I got my hamburger. Talk about rapid manifestation of desires. John got one, too, and he even got a ride into town, with Tater. Diva is acting as a kind of road runner and trailside food supplier to her team she calls the "Fab Five." I was amazed to learn that she would be pacing these five hikers all the way to Maine at there set rate of 1 miles per day. Amazing. Additionally amazing because when I try and work out the mileage of this monumental undertaking and do the math with the days between now and October 15 when Mt. Katahdin, the northernmost point, closes for the winter, well.. I just can't imagine how the hell I'm gonna pull it off AND take my time and relax and smell the flowers along the way. - RSM
Copyright 2004 Richard McKinney
All Rights Reserved