I die each night with the setting sun. Down it goes, falling languidly toward my native California making me wonder, as I often do, what the hell I'm doing here. "Here" over the past many years has been many places, many places not California. I have roamed nomadic, at times ecstatic, others pathetic. Now at sunset on a Sunday in North Carolina on Standing Indian Mountain, I merely stare, stupefied, stoned by another eight-hour endorphin rush, the result better than codeine, valium, any of that shit. We clean our pots and hang our food against the bears, and I, somewhat against mountaineering protocol, leave out a pre-made cup of coffee for myself, sugared and creamed instant, cold but conveniently located for that early morning groggy grab out the tent, lighter in hand, pocket rocket propane stove on, coffee hot. If the bears come after that, well, let em have it. And then it's down like a fighter throwing the fight, into the tent, out like a light. At 7:30 p.m. Astounding. - RSM
How does that song go? "New morning, new day, gonna do things, my way.." Who's that? Foreigner? Yeah. Ok, I'm old. What am I talking about? The frikken Stones are STILL performing! Feeling better today, way better. Feeling like $37 instead of the $5 I felt like yesterday when I woke up. Although "woke up" isn't quite correct since I NEVER SLEPT! But that's another story, one I'll tell when I've gotten over the shock of it.
On today's forecast ladies and gentlemen of the Vicarious Trek, Elly and I and a handful of other insane misfits & Ameri-Cuban boat refugees from the Bush Disaster will be Romper Rooming it over not one, but two mile-high peaks in our overpriced sneaks. The AT, I have found, has a penchant for outrageous ups and downs. Its "authors" or trail volunteer engineers, as it were, seem to enjoy sending its adherents way up and then way down again in roller coaster fashion. When I heard someone speaking of "The Roller Coaster" the other day, I thought surely they were speaking of some stretch over which I had already climbed. But noooooooo.
THE roller coaster awaits us yet, apparently an 18-mile stretch somewhere in the Smokeys featuring no less than 18 mountains. Eighteen mountains, eighteen miles. How many psycho-fitness nuts did it take to screw in that topographic light bulb? I wonder.
Woke up last night to the sound of drops hitting the tent canopy. Just an occasion "pop" of a raindrop, but it was enough to jerk me straight out of bed, shoes on and out of the tent. I grabbed our packs and stowed them under this tiny vestibule of a canopy at the tent's feet end, grabbed Elly's shoes and tucked them in her side of the tent, and did the same with mine on my side. Then I peed. You pee a lot out here. Or maybe it's just that you notice it more. Because every movement of bladder or bowels out here is an undertaking, some more major than others.
Getting up in the middle of the night to tinkle is one thing. It's cold and, as in the case of last night, damp, and dark and spooky and all the rest, but once past the pain of wrenching oneself out of one's toasty mummy bag, it's bearable. But a midnight movement, that's a real pain in the ass and usually requires twice the "enthusiasm" to get out of the bag. After a largely sleepless night (night before last) I NEEDED sleep BAD. So last night, after laying there awhile entertaining the various pains in feet and knees and so on, I said fuck it, and popped a codeine (leftover from recent wisdom tooth pull). Aside from pain reduction, codeine has the added "benefit" (in this case) of stopping you up. Result: no nocturnal interruptions of my deep sleep campaign to answer any unwanted call from, you know.. Nature.
So yeah, so much for my highfalutin talk about endorphin highs at sunset. That high only lasts about half an hour. Beyond that, you're on your own. Like a good boy scout, I come prepared. - RSM
And just like that, Elly is gone. The walk in the woods today was strange. No, she didn't go "off trail" as is the gentle vernacular for quitting. And no, she didn't disappear. Like that old joke where a guy asks his buddy if he lost his job and he answers that no, he knows where his job is, there's just someone else doing it now, well, I have a pretty good idea where Elly is.
Do I miss her? Yes. I'm lying here in a shelter on some mountain at around mile 110. Beside me lay a man rumored to be a gargantuan snoring machine. We'll see. I could have set up my tent, but it rains now, and it could freeze tonight, bringing snow. And in a way it is symbolic. I met Elly in a shelter and haven't slept in one since. I slept with Elly. We shared my groovy little two person tent every night.
The boys out around the fire are talking about Bill Bryson's book A Walk in the Woods. The review is largely critical. We are laid out here in the old wooden shelter like bagged corpses after a massacre. Our packs hang from large nails driven into the wall above us such that my pack is suspended right over my head. The wall is not much longer than my body laid out lengthwise to my left. The back hanging wall at my head. And a third wall six sleeping-bag-widths away to my right. I am in the leftmost corner. Rain dances on the tin roof overhead. The roof extends farther than the walls, almost by double, creating a covered cooking area, what someone called a pavilion.
Some guy from south Boston with the thickest accent I've ever heard and a thus-far curt demeanor loiters at the butcher block-like table in the center of the open area. He eats and paces, his bright headlamp beam scanning the darkness as though intended to annoy me.
I don't know where to begin in telling you why Elly is gone. It was getting quiet between us toward the end. Now it's dead quiet without her.
I've heard chainsaws aren't verboten out here. Not even the trail volunteers who clear fallen trees from the trail are allowed to use them. There is only birdsong. Woodpeckers mostly. And the clink-clink of my titanium poles on the trail. I look at myself and feel I must look like every kid I knew in school with arm-brace crutches, kids with CP, Leukemia, what have you. But I am not disabled, not physically. And so I walk on steady and sturdy determined to make a good go of this for the physically disabled everywhere, for every limping, crutch-addled person I've ever seen on the street whose infirmity has set me teary-eyed and smacked my blues cross the face real fast. Incidentally, Duke, the tiny action figure from Doonesbury that I stole from my art car to carry on my pack has lost both his arms. Poor Duke is a paraplegic, but he's still with me, riding proud.
"When you goad me I start farting," says Fast Eddy from Louisiana. Navigator is giving him shit about snoring, as he is rumored to do. There are two tiny dogs running around. They belong to Dirtnap, an alleged law student gone native now running around the Appalachians in shorts and Tevas and a mop of brown hair stoking a smoky fire to cook his food (he carries no stove). He has been hiking north since January, having begun in the Florida Keyes. Says he walked some stretches in a foot or more of water for miles at a time through the swamps of that state.
Tinker is a very hungry 19-year old with a great enthusiasm for gear. He made his own alcohol stove based on recent popular soda can designs published in Backpacker and on the Boy Scouting website. When I arrived today he was surveying a massive sprawl of food before him. "This is four days worth," he explained to me. "That's why my bag weighs 45 pounds. For my whole first hour or so here, he was eating, trying to force down as much as possible to reduce his pack weight. Tinker is in the National Guard and may get called off the trail at any moment to go serve his country in Iraq or elsewhere. [Author's note: Tinker was shipped off to Iraq eight months later for a two-year tour of duty.]
Sanguine is a schoolteacher from Providence RI, taking a year off to go get dirty and cold and sore in the mountains. She has a big bright lime green pack cover that made me want to call her Miss Margarita coming down the trail today. Hiking with her, Navigator from Seattle. I would have called him Yodeler for his classic Swiss Alps hiker look.
I want to talk about Elly. But I can't. I miss her. But then again I don't. It's hard to mash two people from totally different worlds together for ten days, twenty-four seven as it were, especially in this pressure cooker first month wherein the attrition rate is 40 percent. We're all just too unique and too full of our own ghosts and quirks and demons and doubts. We tried.
The smoke from the wood fire outside drifts in here into the shelter in sufficient quantities that I feel ready to sneeze any moment. And the little dogs pace parabolas between our bags looking for someone to snuggle up with. The fire is a good thing to a point. It warms us and gives us a little nightlife where normally there is none. But then the eight o’clock zonk bell goes off in my now-conditioned head, and I want the fire to die out and the boys to go to bed. Their dialogue is far too clear. I think it's time to take a Quaalude and call it a night. - RSM
Six of us cram into Wessar Mountain shelter. Sarge, Little Engine, Boudreau, Doug, Tinker and me. It's been brought to my attention that I need to start giving mileages. Okay.
Mile 127
18 miles covered today
Wednesday, March 31, 04
Wessar Bald Shelter
Boudreau the "Sobo" or south bounder is telling the story of the origin of his name, of one John Baptiste Boudreau, his apparent 5th generation great grandfather. Somewhere in the story there's talk of grandpa Boudreau selling in the slave trade. Sarge, black and big and 72 and once a Marine Sergeant, don't sling bullshit: "Slaves are slaves, Boudreau, but let's just get on with this story."
I want to tell the story of my day. I walked in snow all day today. I walked in a blizzard. I walked in a period of sunshine when the sun melted the snow on the branches and snow avalanched down on the trail like a frozen waterfall. Boudreau's story, however, goes on and on. I am sure it is a good story. But I walked eighteen miles today! And I want to rest. I want to write and then rest. To varying degrees, the others are listening. Doug later tells that the story kept his mind off the bitter cold. Tinker must be listening because when, after like an hour of exposition, Boudreau poses a question to his captive icicle audience: "And what do you think those secret orders said?" Tinker yells out, "Kill him!" And so they did. Sarge later told me he had his earplugs in by then. Little Engine keeps murmuring "uhum" from her face-down position in her mummy bag, either a good listener or a polite girl.
My god. The story is finally over! But not before we got to hear three soldiers sawed in half and Boudreau's fifth generation great grandfather bashed to bits "on the wheels" as it were. What a fucking gory nightmare. I can't even think of my day now. It's gone. I've lost it. Eighteen miles my greatest achievement to-date, bashed to bits by a long and passionate story about , well, about a guy getting bashed to bits! Oh, yah, and how that inspired his fifth generation grandson to take on his name for a trail name. I much preferred hearing M's story about being the fifth generation grand-daughter of Lewis Carroll's Alice, told to me in sighs and moans as Mad Hatter-I thrust into rabbit hole like it was the last tea party on Earth.
But that, as with the tales of so many lovers, is another story, from another time and place.
In the silence following the denouement of the seemingly endless tale of bashed-bones Boudreau, his odd progeny farts long and loud. It is the perfect punctuation to his passionately told but too-long tale. Beside me to my left Little Engine and Sarge. Sarge has hiked the trail from end to end before and now hikes a thousand or so miles of it every year since. He certainly seems to deserve his trail name. I got wet and cold as hell today. Coming into the shelter I had to move quick to get out of wet clothes and into what little dry stuff I had, and then of course into my bag.
Dinner was a mix of chicken noodle soup, dried potatoes and dried refried beans. It was delicious and warmed me so inside. My shoes are soaked and I doubt they'll be any drier by morning. Of my three pair of socks, only one pair is mostly dry. I have them here in my bag with me to finish the job. The temp outside is likely in the teens. It was twenty-eight most of the day, through snow and snow and more snow. I hiked today without gloves thanks to my one MasterCard, a Paypal card, being denied at the supply store back at Rainbow Springs. And today more than ever my trekking poles were essential, which meant having to have my hands exposed. I hiked ten hours almost without stop. Today was the most foul-weathered, arduous day yet, but in many ways one of the best.
Postscript:
In the morning Boudreau is gone. If I had to swear one way or another,
I would say that Boudreau wasn't of this world. Boudreau was an
X-file. There was just too much about Boudreau that didn't fit, or did
fit, as it were, into some mystical scheme to make us all believe he
was there in the flesh when in fact he wasn't. His skin for instance:
he was ghostly white. And the whole southbound thing: what a perfect
excuse for why we'd never see him again after that night. He arrived
late, nearly dark, high atop a haunted mountain and met us all when our
minds were blown from battling the elements and thus not too
discerning. And I have heard of the dead that they can't sleep
head-to-head with the living: Boudreau, in a move I found quite odd,
slept with his head at my feet.
You see, I believe in ghosts, and I believe that alleged southbound hiker Boudreau is in fact the lingering spirit of the man he spoke so passionately of. I believe the spirit who visited Sarge, Little Engine, Doug, Tinker and me that night was none other than John Baptiste Boudreau himself. For John Baptiste was a half-breed Indian at a time when the French still owned the Louisiana Purchase, and his work as peacekeeper between the French and the native tribes was of great importance. But the French killed him anyway. And for days now we've been hiking over lands soaked in the blood of natives, French, English, and Civil War soldiers. Places with names like Indian Grave Gap and Blood Mountain. John Baptiste came to tell us his tale, and I was too tired to listen. - RSM
Mile 127, Morning
April Fools Day, 2004
My sleeping bag is a stinky sack of dirty (and now hopefully dry) clothes, my palm pilot and me. I had to put my palm pilot between my thighs for five minutes to thaw it out. I suppose it works cold but when it's cold I can't see the LCD screen. Which is fine because I am now typing in the dark, this time inside the bag because the air temp outside is well below freezing.
Yesterday I walked through a brutal snowstorm. I'd get all worried cuz one inevitably gets wet from sweat in one's under layer and I was soaked. Then my shoes got soaked. I had just to keep moving. Every now and then while I'd be worrying or wrestling in my mind about the possible mistake of letting Elly go, I'd remember Jack Barrymore's character in that 30's film "You Can't Take It With You" and I'd say to myself, "Just be like the lilies. Just be a Lily and everything's going to be just fine."
Ha. The gods just never quit with the irony. Be like a lily, Jack said so long ago. Okay. I love Jack. Fast-forward to the present and Jack Barrymore's great-grand-daughter Drew goes to court and sues my best friend's dad for the rights to his 40-year old documentary film company name and wins. The film company Les Blank forgot to copyright? Flower films. A lily, indeed.
Trekking poles, it turns out, make really good snow smacker-offers. Some parts of the trail are so dense they're like tunnels. Now add a layer of snow to the branches and you've got one narrow tunnel! I knock the snow off with my poles and whoosh, up snaps the tree branch, up and out of my way!
Doug was amazed to find how many people had made their way through the storm and to the shelters, Cold Spring and Wesser Bald. "I was following two sets of prints in the snow, that's it. I figured it was just you and Tinker I was following," he told me. The snow was coming down that hard.
When the drinking tube from my pack water bladder froze (because it's so skinny it was the first thing to freeze), I took to lapping snow off of rhododendron leaves for hydration. Underground Radio would have been fun to get through the snowstorm with. I miss him. I guess I never explained what happened to Tumbleweed and him. Basically, one day the foursome hit a shelter a little early in the day. Tumbleweed and Radio wanted to stay. Elly and I felt like going on. I haven't seen them since.
Everybody here is talking about food. Tinker asks Sarge what he ate at Fat Willeys. Sarge says something, then Tinker says, No, I asked WHAT you ate. So Little Engine, who appears to be Sarge's companion although young enough to be his granddaughter (and not black like Sarge), goes into great detail about the exact food elements that comprised their dinner at Willeys, some restaurant in Franklin, NC. It's brutally cold out and I have to go to the bathroom. Not looking forward to this.
When I sleep, I remove my Himalayan down jacket, zip it back up, and slip the foot of my bag into it, thus doubly warming my feet. I put on my ''smart wool'' long johns and dry socks if I have them. In the case of last night where I didn't have dry socks, I tucked my feet into the legs of my other long johns whose hip area needed drying anyway. I wear nylon spandex shirts because they dry so quickly and are warm. I have only two long sleeve warm shirt items, a wool sweater and a thermal turtleneck. Both were rather damp after yesterday's hike, but I wore the sweater to bed and the turtle neck lay in here somewhere drying.
My bag is of the mummy type and thus has a "hoodi" area that lay under one's head and zips up around your head and neck. I sleep with the bag upside-down such that the hoodi lay like a flap over my head. In windy witch-tit cold weather like this, I hide inside. I'm telling you all this just to avoid joining the crowd in the inevitable ice cold pack up of gear. Did I mention that Elly is gone? Yes, I suppose I did. But hey, maybe there's potential with Little Engine? She can't be Sarge's lover, can she? Nah! Too young. And I like what I've heard of her so far. Sweet, attentive as hell to the old dude. Maybe mid to late 20s. Ahh, hell. I don't know. But there's a woman for me out here somewhere. I just know it. - RSM
Mile 134.6
April 3, 04
Just above Nantahala
Stepping up a craggy cliff-side out and away north from the Nantahala Outdoor Center in Somewhere, North Carolina, I feel a mixture of irony, satisfaction, gratitude and the will to move forward. Fading below me as I rise in elevation come the strains of Whiter Shade of Pale, that melodic and nostalgic-sounding 70s dirge that trips the light fandango and all that. The music is piped high and loud through the canyon to be heard over the roar of the Nantahala River. I have stayed two nights at the NOC, taking a zero day primarily for the purpose of rest and to catch up on what seems to me days and days of stories untold, but also in hopes that Underground and Tumbleweed might catch me up.
That's right, they're gone too. In just a matter of a few days, our cool little family foursome went dry like a keg of Blue Ribbon in a Wisconsin bowling alley. Now there's nothing left but me: the tap. Or am I the empty keg? All right, enough of that analogy. Two nights at the NOC and I couldn't write diddly squat. Now I'm just half a mile up trail and the words begin to flood in. I sit down on a leafy soft spot and pull out my "works" and shoot up some words. Round the corner comes No Beard and his pretty fair-haired, fair-skinned, fair-everything'd girlfriend No Dog. They're a cute couple. Seem solid as oak and granite and colorful as fruitcake. What am I saying?
Okay, time to hike up a jillion switchbacks. Two days at 15 miles/day will put me at Fontana Damn and the gateway to the Great Smokey Mountain National Forest, 70 miles of bear-infested and allegedly rule-crazed ranger territory. The prize at the far end is Hot Springs, NC, where the whole town comes out to celebrate thruhikers on April 17. Sounds like a blast to me. One day soon here I'll catch you all up on questions like: what happened to Elly? And where am I? Who am I? And more importantly, who are all these crazed mutants huffin and puffin alongside me bound for Maine with nutty names like Dirtnap and IceBox? Tune in next time...
[a little later..] I sit on some high rock overlooking ridge upon ridge upon mountain upon mountain. Mule and the Professor point at the snowline atop the highest mountain as far as we can see and say "See that snow? That's where we walked from the other day." Indeed. Was that a nightmare or a lovely crystal white fluffy winter dream for which I should feel grateful for having been present? Truth: I froze my ass off up on that mountain. I got wet, shoes, socks, and upper body garments from the sweat beneath my raingear. But hey, I also hiked my longest day that day: 18 miles. Hoo-frikken-ray. - RSM
Mile 137.6
April 3, 04, 11:51 pm
Grassy Top
And they're off! Right out of the gate it's Harvard Lark apparently inexhaustible after her much-celebrated 22-mile day. Right behind Lark is Beer Thirty from Jersey, bent trekking pole and all he's making tracks like a champ. Third out the gate this morning here at Appalachian Downs it's Big Horn Wanderer, big, wandering, and well, horny I guess. Sarge is out there, holding back from his usual pace, throwing the race for the sake of Little Engine, the judges daughter from Pensacola preparing for the big flip-flop half way to Maine. She's smoking' , but not in the way to win the race, if you get my meaning. In our next heat we have No Dog and No Beard, colorfully adorned in red and yellow Gortex jackets, sure not to be shot by any near-sighted turkey hunters this season. Initially ahead of them but now dropping back we have the Professor and Mississippi Mule, two daunting 60-something studs sure, by dint of age and determination, to win the Gold no matter how they place in this one-of-a-kind, 2000-mile race.
But of course it ISN'T a race at all. I just make fun with metaphor. Someone back at the beginning said "First one to Katahdin loses." I think they're probably right. For to run that fast would be to take all the fun out of it, and would likely also mean you got some big ugly responsibility awaiting you at home that's pushing you to finish. Fuck that. I and most with whom I have hiked so far have no deadline. Many of us have no homes, no phones, no nothing. And that's why we will be the ones to make it. I both admire and turn a curious eye on those who have spouses or lovers at home. I wonder how they'll do it. I admire them for trying.
Me, I'm not wired right for long-distance relationships. I gave up great love once (maybe more than once?) when I knew that our paths were dividing, geographically-speaking. It's too hard on the poet's heart, on any heart, I suspect. But I did get lucky and on Day 2 of this endeavor met Elly, with whom I hiked and camped for some ten days. Then it was time for that to end, too. Our paces, our patience, our reasons, our ways & our means, none passed the test of that grueling first week.
So I go it alone, now last in that little mock race I was just describing. My pace has quickened though, enormously. Now and again I remember that my stride measures far wider than I usually ask of it. Then into that stride I step, braking my fall with poles as I descend, pulling with poles as I climb. In no time I will have thighs of iron and biceps to match. The sun is out today, 70 degrees, light breeze, and we're cooking along. What a vast and incomprehensible difference from just two days ago when I descended through snow with a pack full of frozen stiff stocks and a drink tube full of ice and thus undrinkable water. Onward. - RSM
Thank God for small favors from the fascist hunter fuckers who "invent" time travel with this whole Daylight savings Time shit. Today they have done my fellow hikers and I a favor. Starting today, our days no longer end so damn early. Course, we'll still rise and set with the sun, but the sun will be around longer. And speaking of time and the whole game of reckoning progress, I came out here to relax and enjoy nature, (exfoliated and kind of winter-dead as it is right now - but SO WHAT?). The "whole food crack heads" as I've come to call them, are up and stuffing their bags and wolfing down Cliff bars at the crack-o-dawn no matter what the weather, and then THEY GONE! Off and running. Got to do the BIG MILES today.
I say, fuck Big Miles. Sarge is from the Big Easy and I think he'd agree. The whole "big mile" mentality is just another manifestation of the shop-til-you-drop, go-go-go, work-long-hours-for-the-man bullshit that I THOUGHT we were out here to escape. Of course, I never see those big milers again. They're way out ahead now. But every morning there's a new crop of whole food crack heads, bustin' ass to get to Maine quick as bunnies so they can race home and bust ass into jobs and cubicles and cliches. It saddens me to see this mentality. But more so I suppose it chafes at me, like jock itch, cuz many of these guys I'd like to see again on down the trail. But I won't. They're gone.
And speaking of gone and sadly so, Fast Eddy passed me going southbound yesterday as I was heading out of Nantahala. I said, "Hey, Fast Eddy, where you going?" He said, "Hey buddy! I forgot something back at the NOC." Just like that, chipper as can be. And away he went. I remember thinking right away, "Hey, he called me buddy. That's cool." Fast Eddy was the quietest, most soft-spoken giant of a man I've yet met on the trail. I liked him a lot and looked forward to getting to know him better. I heard last night at Sassafras Gap Shelter that Fast Eddy had "gone off trail," sold his gear to others, and headed home to Galliano, LA. He hadn't forgotten anything back at the NOC. Too shy perhaps to say goodbye, he'd at least called me buddy. - RSM
What? You want words at 830 in the morning when the temp inside my tent is a whopping 25 F? Forget it!
[written during one of those weird endorphin highs I've been getting late in the afternoon] It's 7 o'clock and I really should be going. Still need to make camp somewhere before dark. I've hiked 15 miles or so today and I feel okay. I really should be going but I just felt compelled to stop and, if not capture in words, at least admire the beauty before me. It's a mix of manmade and Heaven, this dazzling late afternoon scene.
There is a breeze, cool but not uncomfortable whilst seated in the sun in windbreaker and fleece hat. I hear no birds just now, likely tucking in for the night. There is only the light dance of dry leaves and the whisper of wind in the trees. To my right and ahead sits the sun in the sky, framed by mountains, poised almost as though to drive down Yellow Creek Mountain Road that stretches onward below it. The sunlight has painted it, lit up all its yellow lines and shiny spots like a river or a silver ribbon through the forest. So perfect is it in line with the sun's path this afternoon that the shadow of not one tree touches it. And it is lined with trees. It disappears into the trees way off.
Closer to me, a tiny little alley of dirt and twigs and dry leaves tumbles upward toward me from that road. This little alley is but a few short paces of the Appalachian Trail. On a tree beside me there stands painted into the bark a tiny white blaze, not much bigger than two business cards end to end. It is the simple white paint sign to all who hike that yes, this is the trail, this is the way to Maine. A few thoughts at a crossroads in North Carolina. - RSM
I learned a lot from Elly, like the names of a few birds and trees. She taught me about the junco, a little bird that gets its dinner from junk laying around on the ground, and the pileated woodpecker, a big and beautiful thing that would sing to us through the jungle-like rhododendron groves of Georgia. That was before the snows of course, back in those first days when one might believe that Georgia knew no real winter.
From Elly I learned more than I may ever need to know about life on a commune, on one of the few still existent and apparently successful communes in the country, her home. I learned all about the The Rainbow Gathering and heard for the first time the term "spange" a short form of spare changing, the mainstay of the young modern hobo. Those are among the good things I learned about Elly, and most of them because I asked questions about her life and probed further when probing felt welcome.
I rather quickly developed a kind of lonesomeness around Elly, however, stemming from something I don't often encounter in people of mutual attraction trying to get to know one another: Elly never asked me anything about me. I learned that Elly had been hurt somehow, somewhere, quite badly it seemed. I learned this through her anger, of which she had plenty. We all deal with depression in different ways, and Elly's way is anger. The night when things really fell apart for us went something like this.
We made camp and went about the business of cooking our separate meals and washing in the creak almost entirely without dialogue. For my part, I didn't know what to say anymore. I felt I had run out of "interest" in this woman thanks largely to her seeming total lack of interest in me. If she didn't want to know about me, then I didn't really care to know much more about her. Weird how that works.
But Elly was sweet as a peach when we lay down together nights. She laughed and smiled a lot and was a totally different person than her hard hiking day self. So that night, duties done, when we lay down and watch the sunset, the last thing I wanted to do was get heavy on her, but I had to get the question off my chest. "How come you never ask me anything about myself?" I inquired. She didn't want to be invasive, she said. Hmm. Okay. "But you've asked me NOTHING about myself, nothing at all." She went on to explain that she had learned much about me by the stories I told, and that she hadn't felt comfortable asking more. Basically, she went on to explain away something that had really only required an apology, or some small balm on my ego with the assurance that in the future she looked forward to learning lots more about me and would do her best to ask.
Yeah, right Rick. Dream on.
The whole thing stank for me, and the combination of this problem and a lot of things I HAD LEARNED about her through incessant query and just plain observation 24/7 since we'd met had already likely sealed our fate. I felt it was time to move on, to say thank you both to one another and the Universe for the great gift of companionship in getting through this difficult first stretch of the trail, and say adieu. Despite appearances to the contrary, however, I don't easily make such decisions. But then Elly went kind of nutso, and that sealed the deal.
It was a nothing kind of thing, but the way she reacted was telling as all hell. She rolled a joint and then lost it in the leaves. Okay, okay, let's put on our headlamps and look for it. "LIGHT IS NOT WHAT I NEED!" she railed. Roll another one? NO! And so it went, for like half an hour, a stomping, cursing, obsessive and repetitive search, back and forth over the same bit of ground. After a no-good attempt to help, I just kept my distance. Amazingly, she found the thing at last, in her sleeping bag. She lit up, we lay down, and I said, "I think starting tomorrow you and I should hike our own hike."
One long sleepless, tear-filled night and three days of tense relations later, she accepted my wish that this be so and raced on ahead so as to avoid the pain of seeing me. It was terrible. I felt awful. She'd even threatened to quit the trail over it. Elly's whole Terminator tough exterior turned out to be a total facade, and I was left to break the heart of a girl as broken inside as I am. But Elly is a girl whose brokenness has manifested in ways utterly alien and quite frightening to me. Actually, not totally alien. I understand it, but I cannot be around it. From her sadness has grown anger; from mine, a turning inward.
Elly is lovely when she smiles. At times, she was the spitting image of Jodie Foster. And gross as this will sound to those of you out there in the scrubbed-clean world, I loved her several-days unshowered smell. After her first 15-mile day (the night we met) she was ripe as hell. I loved it. She lay down beside me up there in the loft at Gooch Mountain Shelter and I was in Heaven. I'd barely gotten a look at her before darkness, but I lay there basking in her scent and her stories, a man in a dream. And dream I did that night. I woke twice in the early morning totally convinced that I had somehow mounted her through our sleeping bags. (And why not? It dropped into the teens that night and that sweaty body 15 inches away meant more than sex, it meant warmth!)
I see Elly now freshly showered and smiling in the afternoon sun at Rainbow Springs Inn looking beautiful as ever. "There's a couple of Coronas in the fridge in the yurt," she tells me, knowing full well I'm dying for a beer and there's none to be purchased for miles around. This is her gift to me, her concession, her sweetness after another angry freak out earlier that day left us both mute as trees. But sadly it's too little too late. By the time I get to it, there's one beer left in the fridge. I drink it and am grateful. The sun is setting on the cabins and the grassy grounds beside the river. John from Saco, Maine plays Frisbee with his dog Casey. Elly goes to the phone to call her mom. But the phone is occupied, and she returns to my campsite to say that she'll race on ahead tomorrow if that's what I'd like. "Just say it," she says. "Just tell me you want me to go away." I can't do it. I won't do it. It's not fair and it's not what I feel. I just want her to acknowledge my request of three days ago: that we walk our own walks now.
I say again what I've been saying for days: thank you. Thank you for the gift of one great week together. And I repeat some of what I've been saying about compatibility, that's it's a miracle and a gift we lasted a week. Elly smokes pot; I drink beer. Elly is a vegetarian; I eat anything and everything. Elly wants to help the Earth; I think the Earth's just fine and it's we who are fucked. Elly is a self-described luddite, one who avoids machinery; I carry a virtual laptop and modem in my pocket. And then the final big one: Elly is an atheist; I believe in God and GODDAMMIT I'M GONNA FIND ME A WOMAN WHO WILL TELL ME, ON MY DEATHBED, THAT I'M GOING TO HEAVEN AND SHE'LL SEE ME THERE!!
And that's the story of Elly and me. Until I meet her up the trail. Which I probably will. Whether she likes it or not.
From a mountaintop overlooking Fontana Dam, North Carolina and the only spot I could transmit from for the past 40 miles or so, this is Lord Duke "Jester" Malcovich Gadget Tinkerbelle Hammerhead McKinney saying goodbye, and see you on the other side of the Smokey Mountains if I don't get eaten by a bear. - RSM
Copyright 2004 Richard McKinney
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