Live Free or Get Off the Trail

Saturday, July 18, 2020, 8:23 PM

Jeffers Brook, Mile 1795.1

     If you're wondering how I stay clean out here on the trail, well, the simple answer is that I don't. If there's a pool, I bathe--if I feel like it. Days could pass without the pool being picturesque enough or without having walked enough miles to warrant a dip or without the desire to spend the time it takes to properly appreciate the holy mountain streams. Today was quite different, though. Today nature, i.e. God, blessed me with not one, but two spots to bathe and the wherewithal to pull the trigger and jump in. 

     The first was early in my day (as opposed to early in the day). I'd summitted and descended modest Mount Cube first thing in the late morning when I arrived at Brackett Brook. I planned to stay at the brook yesterday but instead added two miles to today's goal. Feeling covered in a few days of heavy sweat, I heard the water before I saw it. Hearing water from afar is a good indication that it's flowing full and fast, that it has a lot of room to spread out and pool. My day was only ten percent done, but I was already feeling tired and beat up. I said to myself aloud--I talk to myself often out here--"If there's a nice spot I'm going in." When I saw a wide, slowed section of water aglow in sunlight, I had no trouble keeping my promise to myself. 

     I bought a bar of Kirk's Castille Soup in Norwich, VT and take that right into the water with me. The AT's bathwater is usually frigid, so submerging for a thorough, environmentally conscious scrub with Kirk doesn't only leave you clean but also with muscles soothed from nature's summer equivalent of an ice bath. My body--mainly shoulders, knees, and feet--takes a royal beating daily. Spending a mere ten minutes in the gloriously cold water out here leaves you feeling healed and rejuvenated, like a Pokémon after a super potion. Unfortunately, these forest baptisms don't provide all-day galvanization. The cleanliness and stimulation earned from enduring such a freezing treatment fades when sweat starts to pour from your body and the pack bears down on you with all its weight as the terrain trends upward for as many as five miles. 

     I left Brackett Brook after checking out the stealth spot that could have been home the night before. It wouldn't have been worth the extra three and a half miles. I dawned my other half (the pack) and wet clothes swang from it, attached to dry as I walked through miles of sunlit trail. As Guthooks and the sobo from the night before, Trevor of Western NY, had told me, the day's hiking was to be benign, with no major ups or downs after Mt. Cube. I broke out the headphones and jammed to some Judas Priest till they died. Then I listened to most of "The Art of War" from the phone's speaker before going back to music with some Dispatch which gave way to some creepy Poe short stories and most of Beck's Guero album. I kept putting off lunch as I sometimes do to make better time and the day seem shorter. After crossing an ATV path I came to NH Route 25 where a gray Corolla was parked. It had a grocery bag tied to the back driver's side door. Beneath the bag were apples, clementines, and mini candy bars,  including my trail favorite, Reese's Take 5. This is trail magic, snacks and drinks left by trail angels for thru hikers who could use a pick-me-up. In the previous eight hours, or fifteen miles, I'd eaten a pack of crackers, a pop tart, and some peanut butter. I was forcing myself to go without because, as Sun Tzu says, "Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline." Disorder is a resultant sensation of great hunger and thirst. Trail magic showed up a mile from camp at a time when I really needed it. The Trail will provide. While licking the candy wrappers clean of melted chocolate, I noticed the trail angel was a 2019 thru-hiker in addition to being an adoptive dog mom, these facts evidenced by stickers on her car. Cross the road, cross the crystal clear waters of the Oliverian Brook, and up the mountain you go to where the Trail provides a piece of its own endless magic. 

     

Continued at the Notch Hostel, Monday, July 20, 10:18 PM

     I never made it to Jeffers Brook shelter because I found a tent spot overlooking that night's bath tub. Water ran down a wide rock face and pooled bubbling and icy to a depth where I couldn't stand. Upon entering, the water takes your breath away, and your heart rate spikes. This leaves you laboring to catch your breath and feeling almost panicky. That's when you focus on your breath and bring it under control, when you let the healing, restorative powers of mountain water wrap you in its freezing embrace. I find a rock that allows my bottom half to be submerged and wash my top half while my muscles below absorb the water's cool energy. At Jeffers Brook I even ditched the shorts and swam around in my birthday suit, feeling like a polar bear pawing through the Arctic--resembling one as well with my basic quadruped paddle. That night I ate and slept well. For once I was on the trail before 6 AM, and needed the entire day to log the 17 difficult miles to another brook, Eliza's. 

     New Hampshire is known as the most beautiful and the most difficult state on the AT. Did I say that already? It's proving to be true. The climbs and descents are long and steep. Coming down from Moosilauke, one of the highest points in the east, I broke a trekking pole, snapped the bottom half right off. I'm adjusting to life with one, however, and am starting to think its breaking was a blessing in disguise. With just one pole now, I've found different ways of hiking. Sun Tzu also preaches varying your tactics. Since losing a pole, I've discovered new ways of ascending and descending. Trees and rocks have replaced it, and I move sideways and even backwards now depending on the path that I see as least resistant. My rhythm is smoother up here, my step laced with more confidence. I'm beginning to carry myself like a thru-hiker. "If you can hike New Hampshire, you can hike anything," I tell myself. Then there are people who ask if it's worth it, the daily struggle. 

     Coming down from Lonesome Lake today, a day hiker asked me if it was worth it. "It's always worth it," I responded without thinking and hurried on my nearo way, excited by the wonders that awaited in town (Lincoln/North Woodstock). But down the trail I repeated his question out loud. "Is it worth it? Is it worth it?" It befuddled me. "If you thought it, your three or four mile day hike, might not be worth it, a day off effort, why did you even leave your house?" Whatever the answer, I wasn't the one to be giving it to him. How could I decide what's worthy or unworthy to you? Another day hiker inquiry is how far they are from the top of whatever peak they're climbing to. I want to say, "Will knowing get you there any quicker?" but I usually blurt out the less snarky, more uplifting response of, "You're getting closer every step." Descending Moosilauke was grueling. The way was steep, rocky, and interminable. One day hiker asked me, "Is it this steep all the way up?" I contemplated a response before saying, "I'm not gonna answer that." I could've suggested she turn around right now because I was closer to the bottom than they the top. Is it worth it? I'll ponder the answer to this question forever. 

     Here at the Notch Hostel. Time for bed. Early start tomorrow. Free pancakes and coffee! Thank goodness for ear plugs!

     

With No Affiliation and Less Censorship

Written the evening of Sunday, June 28. Hail came the next day, and I finished Hatchet. Currently reading Ruthless Tide by Al Roker, about the Johnstown Flood of 1889. 

Well well well, look who it is. How long you been out here? Four weeks and some change? And this is your first blog post? Sure you changed the description--but not the title 😉--explored other blogging platforms, been logging nearly every day--I give you a rare kudos for that last one--but have neglected to post for a month. Not because you didn't think about it. Heaven knows you've thought about it--just never done it. And look, you finally get to writing one, and there's no service. Serves you right. You need to be like the USC professor in that Hidden Brain you just listened to--a better habit-former. Obstacles must be removed between you and your target habit, say, writing every day for two hours a day. Ques must be established and respected; e.g. before you write for two hours you do a circuit of exercises or washes the dishes, make the bed, go for a walk or delete old emails. Obstacles--or friction according to the prof--should be placed between you and your bad habits; e.g. how smokers can't just light up wherever they want any more,  usually have to go outside or to a designated area. Then once you've written for two hours, congratulations! Reward yourself by wasting time playing MtG Arena and see if your brain doesn't explode from the dopamine rush. I don't miss playing Arena. It's nice out here in the woods. 

     I left my parents' house on Friday, May 29 with Aunt Betsy, Uncle Scott, and Dylan, the latter driving as a newly licensed operator of automobiles. Mom was crying, as she always does before I embark on a new adventure, new challenge. This always makes leaving all the more difficult, but leave I still do. It's what we have to do in order to exchange adolescence for adulthood, leave home and travel to faroff and fabulous places where we'll face the challenges destined for us, like destroying an all-powerfully evil ring or discovering what's at the top of a certain tower. Leaving home is a difficult thing, though it's a decision often made confidently without much hesitation. But courage isn't the absence of fear just the facing of it. I was scared as we traveled south on PA 225 toward the trail; but I was moreso determined to face the difficult path that lie ahead, one I hadn’t chosen for myself. That determination was coupled with confidence that I could make it and discipline to ensure that I would. Is one born with such qualities: courage, discipline, confidence? Or are they learned? I guess both are true, as are all the combinations between them. I believe such useful qualities can be learned or--better yet--self-taught. And if all else fails, fake it till you make it. 

     Before May 29, I could count on two fingers how many times I'd packed up a bunch of stuff and headed into the woods with no plans of returning to civilization that night. This hike wasn't supposed to happen until 2021, so I had to buy a bunch of gear and do a bunch of research while the days passed toward my departure date. If you ever want to do something big like this, first thing you should do is set a date. Then tell people what you're doing and when you're starting. This verbalization makes it real--to you and the person you're telling. They might think, "Pft, yeah right, I'll believe it when I see it." That's probably what most people thought before my first bike tour in 2014. But if you have history of making plans and seeing them through, you'll be seen as reliable in your ballsiness and people will take seriously your declaration of upcoming adventure. After nearly three decades on earth I feel wise enough to offer this advice: always fulfill promises to yourself and others. 

     What do you want to know? I'm happy to be out here, blissful in my ignorance to all the garbage drama the media puts out to boost viewership. I'm writing this in a shelter alone in the old growth forests of Western Massachusetts. My freestanding tent is set up right in the shelter and keeping the dreadful mosquitos at bay. They've been the worst I've experienced today and yesterday. We had rain yesterday and today, so their breeding grounds are ripening. Bleh 😖 Isolation from the "real world" is a reason I came out here. As HDT said, I went into the woods to face the basic principles of life. I'm butchering that quote, but you're familiar right? We all should have some experience where food, water, and shelter aren't so accessible and so easily taken for granted. Thoreau goes on to say in that quote that he doesn't want to look back on his life in the end and see that he had not lived. I'm going with his spirit, now actually in the same state as his beloved Walden, though on the other side of the commonwealth from it. I have Mount Katahdin and Walking on audio and will listen when the time is right. I've been listening to a lot lately. 

     I've finished six books since May 29: Stephen King's The Bazaar of Bad Dreams and the Bill Hodges trilogy, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. I'm currently reading--or listening to if you're a stickler--Gary Paulsen's Hatchet. I can't get through them fast enough and have never been so easily and often immersed in worlds other than this one. Oftentimes I am more invested in these made-up worlds than the one I inhabit. Not sure why this is so. Maybe because characters in books are, paradoxically, more authentic, especially when reading a first person account or a story in third person omniscient. I also listen to a lot of music and the occasional podcast to divert from the potential monotony of walking through the woods. 

     When people ask how it's going, I sometimes say "ploddingly." Not even sure if it's an adverb, but it is now, along with "trudgingly." Sometimes the pack feels heavy and it's lethally hot/humid and my clothes are literally soaked with sweat and my knees ache with every upward thrust and the balls of my feet sing dark and discordant notes of pain when I take the millionth step of the day down the mountain. Other days the pack is light (little food probably), my steps are sure and quick, hiking pole placement on point, weather mild and body not crying out so loud in pain, terrain amiable and vibe coursing with positivity. Just like life out there I have good days and bad days. One secret is to know the good days won't last forever and to wring them dry of pleasure before they're gone. Another is to not let the bad days get to you. "Embrace the suck" is a thru-hiker saying. While I'm tackling a steep incline or falling with control down an incessant decline, I am reminded that I'll be stronger for having faced and overcome the challenge. And even though we all "hike our own hike," I have trailmates to commiserate and revel with. 

     I was rolling consistently with a group between Weeks Two and Three. Shoutout to my tramily: Beehive, Monarch, Lance, Dr. X, Picasso, Goat, Krispy, Red Eft, Pacer, BFG, Uncle Jim, Half Baked, Cans, Fonz, and many others. Another is the artist formerly known as Purple Rain, the Sparkle-Chasing Mountain Mermaid. She's a fellow blogger from the state where people live free or die. You can follow her journey here. I think she's known as Neck Knife now, and we shared a hotel room (two separate beds) upon meeting each other in Hamburg, PA. If you follow the news closely you might have a pretty dire picture of the world, real doom and gloom, "life on red alert" kinda thing, but you don't see the instant trust that forms between strangers when it comes to saving 50 bucks and having an actual bed to sleep in and a shower with hot water to wash off the past days. While you may be busy devouring the media's "us versus them" rhetoric, you don't see people leaving food and drink for others in need or when two strangers take a chance on each other when one picks up a hitchhiker. It's been my belief for sometime that the good outweighs the bad in this world. And why shouldn't I believe it? Sometimes good is hidden within bad, like when crops get watered and streams refilled, while you get soaked and have to walk the rest of the day in soggy boots. Good is also hidden in icky things like disagreements. Disagreements can be uncomfortable and even contentious, but the result is usually either a mind changed for the better or more light shed on your true feelings of the issue. We need to be disagreed with; because sometimes our views need to be straightened--or solidified. 

     Ok, not much about actual hiking experiences, but it's my blog, and only my conscience can tell me what to write or not write. Almost 8 PM, dinner time. I have to find water first, then I can make some rice and tuna mmmmmmm 😋 Hiker Midnight (sunset) comes quick--so does 5 AM. Till next time!

PS on the trail, me llamo Señor Guapo 🤭 o, menos engreído, simplemente Señor. 

¡Hasta la próxima!