Has the AT Had Enough of Me? The First of Three Ridiculous Days
I wrote a LABE (long-ass blog entry), so I broke it up since I know people don’t have hours to thumb their screens on one post. This is Part 1 of 3.
Things Begin to Look Quite Grim
Day One: June 21, 2016
We arrived early at Rice Field Shelter, which faced a gently inclining heath to the west with a 100-yard path that promised a view into West Virginia.
Its not going to rain, Braveheart said. Two weeks prior when we planned for him to join my hiking buddy, Sunshine, and me for 40 AT miles, he had promised to bring good weather. It never rains wherever I am, he said. As evidence, he had cited multiple cloud-free visits to Portland, Oregon.
I had given Braveheart, my dear cousin Ken, this trail name alluding not to William Wallace but to Kens literal courageous spirit. He left a successful but soul-deadening corporate career eight years ago to become a life coach, and in the process discovered and determined that his own lifes purpose was simply to love, fearlessly. In the last five years, weve grown closer and spent more time together than in any of the previous forty or so that weve been alive. Mostly this is because he makes togetherness happen, despite our mostly living 700 miles apart.
In short, I feel closer to or loved more by few people, so Id been eagerly anticipating our time together.
The leg leading up to Sunshines and my zero in Pearisburg, just before Braveheart joined us, had been extremely tough for me. The distance between Marion and Pearisburg, plus our desire not to carry 15+ pounds of food each, had motivated us to push a lot of big-mile days, just when the weather was turning hot (when not wet), and Virginias promised flatness hadnt materialized. Then, too, right when my right foot seemed finally healed from its tendinitis, my left foot was starting to give me trouble.
But lots of Mexican food, Dairy Queen, a pedicure, and the usual town luxuries (showers, laundry, sheets) had felt as restorative as any town visit, which is to say hella restorative, and I had no reason to suspect the AT would be any crueler or kinder than usual during Bravehearts visit.
Then Tuesday morning, leaving Sunshine behind to wait for a trekking pole delivery, we had set off to climb a short, steep seven miles out of town. Within a few hours, I noted with dismay, he was quite a bit ahead of me, and the distance between us shrank only when he stopped to wait for me.
Seriously? I thought. I dug my pole into the dirt for my next step and felt the injustice of this. Futile feeling descended. It was 68 days since Id started hiking in Georgia. He was out to join me for four.
Hes athletic, of course. He runs. We have logged many running miles together, miles he always consents to run at my slower pace. I was used to him being the fast, strong one; it was why, when Sunshine and I mapped out an itinerary for his visit, we decided not to abridge our typical distances. Daily mileages of 7 (uphill, out of Pearisburg, VA), 16.5, 14.5, and 2.5 (to the only road where we could get a ride to his car) would challenge but not unduly tax him.
I didnt reckon hed chew up the first four miles, leaving me to breathe his dust.
The word should came up: This should be easier for me than it is for him, I thought. I dont care how athletic he is; he hasnt been doing this for eleven weeks.
A popular sentiment among athletes, motivational posters, and self-help literature is the notion that youre stronger than you think you are. But on my first day out with Braveheart, he was, not unkindly, kicking my ass.
It devastated me: Im weaker than I think I am?
Now, at Rice Field, after eating we walked up the path and gazed out over West Virginia. Clouds thickly filled the sky, and the airs humidity plus the forecast wed checked that morning contradicted Bravehearts attempted manifestations.
We discussed hiking another half hour to a campsite in order to eat up a few of the next days miles. But this was such a pretty setting and we had arrived early enough to secure shelter berths and keep our tents dry at least one night, so we decided to stay. We laid out our sleeping pads and bags, spreading them just enough to include Sunshine.
After a little bit, one of a crew of about nine arrived. I knew the crew numbered about nine because I had heard of them, had seen some of them at the next-door hotel in Pearisburg, had had a conversation with one of them outside Atkins, and had met all of them in Damascus. The crew were all men, almost all in their twenties, and all hailing from lives harder than a thru-hike.
As they trickled in that night, claimed tent or shelter space, shook cigarettes out of their packs, and poured food bag contents onto the table, they engaged in a lovingly insulting and vulgar banter with each other which, if not always easy to follow, captivated and entertained me. Mainly this was insofar as it illustrated their solidarity with each other and differentness from me.
Red Beard broke out often into song:
Lets go to Luckenbach, Texas, with Willie and Waylon and the boys.
Likewise, at any moment one of the group members might start with Mama, dont let only to be joined by the rest for the chorus your babies grow up to be cowboys. They said this was their theme songthey said it was ironic but I never caught the nuance of how, and it was a nuance. Although the group was rough and tumble, its repartee was as sharp as any on an Aaron Sorkin screen page.
You know what other song I love? I asked. Wagon Wheel, by Da
DONT say Darius Rucker, Red Beard said.
Well, I was going to say Darius Rucker, I said.
Nooooo, he held his head in the manner of a curmudgeon faced with a youth whos just realized that Run D.M.C.s Walk This Way is a cover.
No, no, no. Youve got to hear the original version. Old Crow Medicine Show.
Great, Id love to, I said.
Musicality must have been among the criteria for membership; dulcet notes from Red Bulls pan flute occasionally brought to the scene a brushstroke of melancholy, and, by their contrast to the testosterone-fueled banter, hilarity.
It rained, and then the rain let up, and we were treated to a gorgeous sunset.
As soon as the rain let up and showed us this vista, it seemed, sprinkles started again, and we rushed back to the shelter and cover.
If any member of their group didnt smoke, forgive me for not being able to name him, as, in any given 30-minute interval, six at once of them puffed away at what probably seemed to them a courteous-enough distance from the shelters open side (which distance shortened dramatically when the rain started, my repeated offers to use my umbrella to lessen the white cloud inside the shelter notwithstanding).
And here is where my conflict began. I liked these guys, to a person. I liked their boisterousness and their willingness to welcome Bravehearts and my forays into their conversation, flat as our attempts often fell.
As coarse and insulting as they were, they never laughed at you; they laughed with you.
But, look. I and any one of these guys were not likely to form a bond deeper than that granted by shared experience. Had we found each other at the same bar, not having met on the trail, the likelihood of our striking up a conversation was slim.
The rules outside the trail are different from those on the trail. Off trail, peoples engagement with one another is more scripted; we fasten our masks before leaving the house. On trail, your masks off, dislodged by discomfort and a focus on survival. Its the loneliness of the woods, the paucity of friends, the fact were all slogging through the same storm, stepping up the same switchbacks.
And, because trail life is different from anything Ive ever done, most of the people Ive met out there are different from anyone Ive ever met. I love this. Hiking exposes me to people unlike myself. D.C. might be a transitive area, but its people share a few qualitiesdrive, ambition, passion. I mean, I wont be accused of grossly generalizing here, will I, if I say D.C. is not that laid back?
And thats fine; Ive lived in the area most of my life and Im not moving out anytime soon. After all, Im not that laid back, either. But, man, its nice to hang out with laid-back people.
That is, until they are so laid back that they dont realize how much what theyre doing bothers somebody else.
All of which is to say that by the time we were getting into our sleeping bags and the rain was not letting up, my dismay and the physical discomfort in my lungs and the stress I felt at being unable to control my surroundings, to protect my own person from smoke inhalation, had basically canceled my positive feelings toward the group.
It was about to be a long night.
*P.S. I finally found and listened to the Old Crow Medicine Show version of “Wagon Wheel,” and, Red Beard, you were right.
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