Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail (31 page)

But then sometimes things work out perfectly. Coming out of Salisbury, Connecticut, the trail goes up yet another Bear Mountain. Signs were posted all around the base of the mountain. “Warning: Due to Recent Bear Activity We Recommend Hikers Exercise Caution.” However, as I neared the top of the surprisingly steep climb to the summit I ran not into a bear, but into two “hiker-friendly” women. The younger one, in her early-thirties was especially impressionable. She lobbed one softball question after another in wondrous fashion. Finally, she asked, “How do your feet stand it?” When I started to go into the mechanics of duct tape, mole skin, and the wonders of callous formation, she said, “I’m a massage therapist. Would you let me massage them at the summit?”

I struggled not to accept in overly eager fashion. But then she strained credulity by exclaiming, “Oh, you thru-hikers are so brave. Only a thru-hiker would be brave enough to let a complete stranger massage his toes.” When I suggested a nearby boulder for her to ply her ministrations, she insisted, “No, the summit is what we agreed on.”

“Why yes, of course,” I said and dutifully trekked up to a summit that I thought would never arrive. I hadn’t been so glad to see a summit since Blue Mountain on my “day from hell,” back in Georgia. We sprawled out on a huge boulder overlooking the Housatonic Valley and she enthusiastically went about her task. She didn’t even complain about the infamous hiker “toe cheese,” guaranteed to powerfully pique one’s olfactory properties.

“I love the Appalachian Trail,” I said dreamily.

“I love these feet,” she giggled. I don’t know if she was lying, but I damn sure wasn’t at that point.

Halfway through my thirty minutes of bliss, Stranger, an unflappable Kansan, arrived with a look of amazement. “Stranger,” I called out to him, “You’re my witness when I brag about this to everyone.”

Because of the unexpected delay, Stranger and I got to the Hemlocks Lean-To just before dark. Just as I had hoped, the shelter was full of male hikers, a perfect audience for my story. From the looks on their faces when I described the foot massage it felt like I was describing a gourmet meal to a bunch of concentration camp inmates.

Chapter 17

L
ike many of my southern brethren, I had always imagined Massachusetts as a land of nauseating, pointy-headed snobs. I pictured it populated by latte drinkers, Kennedy aristocrats, and urban elitists with Ha-vud accents. But after walking through the rugged and scenic Berkshires in western Massachusetts, and passing through lonely, quintessential New England towns adorned with American flags, I began to hold it in a different regard. Norman Rockwell, the famous American illustrator whose paintings glorify small-town settings and rural life, had settled in nearby Stockbridge.

But of all the early American writers extolling the virtues of wilderness, the name of Henry David Thoreau rings most resoundingly. The early European settlers had been shocked at the utter denseness of forest in the new continent. Their attitude can be summed up in one word:
Hostile
.

Wild animals and darkness loomed large in this haunted imagination. One pioneer on the American continent, theologian Cotton Mather, wrote in 1707, “the Evening Wolves, the rabid and howling Wolves of the Wilderness, make havoc among you, and not leave the bones ’til morning.” Perhaps their greatest fear of all was that wilderness would drag down the level of all American civilization. “The further and further a pioneer pushes into the woods,” wrote Timothy Dwight, the President of Yale, “the less and less civilized man he becomes.”

Given such paranoid attitudes almost universally held towards wilderness it is no wonder that the pioneers set about to conquer it. These early settlers used martial metaphors, referring to wilderness as “the enemy to be vanquished by a pioneer army.” Their obsession was to clear the land and bring light to darkness. In fact, it was the chief source of pioneer pride and national ego.

But in the nineteenthth century the transcendentalists, led by Emerson and Thoreau, began to view nature reverently, even as a source of religion. Thoreau thought that if a culture or an individual lost contact with wilderness, it became weak and dull. “The forest and wilderness furnish the tonics and barks which brace mankind. It is the raw material of life,” he intoned. “All good things are wild and free,” he exulted.

Thoreau grew up on the eastern side of Massachusetts, in Concord, a Boston suburb. However, given his contrarian style and romantic bent, he naturally gravitated to the western side of the state, with its rougher, wilder geography.

Wild is what Thoreau got in western Massachusetts. The AT moves up mountains and down deep ravines and through swamps. The bugs and mosquitoes are nightmarish. One thru-hiker, Adrienne Hall, in her book,
A Journey North
, vividly described her Massachusetts experience:

The trail circled, skirted, and sometimes plunged directly through nearly every swamp in the state. I sank and slogged in the mud. Nearing 100 degrees, the stagnant air was itself a chore to walk through.

She continued:

The wetlands belched out swarms of bloodthirsty mosquitoes. They attacked with gusto. I was driven by a deep hatred for them. But I swore these measly little bloodsuckers would not stop me from going to Maine.

In this land of swamp and bugs I met the folksy character of Doctor Death. He was in his late forties, with a slim wiry build and thinning black hair. “I thru-hiked the trail last year,” he said. “I’m thru-hiking this year, and I plan to come back and thru-hike again next year.”

“How can you afford to do that?” 49’er wondered.

“I go home to Florida and eat Ramen noodles six months out of the year at twenty-five cents a pack,” he said, “in order to save up enough money to come out here and eat Ramen noodles for six more months.” The following day I remarked, “It seems like we’re going up and down more than at any point since Virginia.”

“You can assume it’s all tough from here on out,” Doctor Death responded in his gravelly voice.

It was dry as a bone. The area had experienced a drought for two months and, combined with the intense heat, many streams were dry. Streams that had water took on a brackish tint, possibly unsuitable for even animals to drink.

At dusk I climbed Mount Wilcox with the Troll family to arrive at the Mount Wilcox South Lean-To after 19.7 miles for the day. We were elated to see Whitewater and Nurse Ratchet for the first time since they had gotten off the trail to visit New York City. But our greetings were truncated by a more pressing question. “Where’s the water?” we anxiously asked.

“We’ll see how you like it,” Whitewater said. He then led us bushwhacking down a precipice as Troll and I held our breath.

There was a hole about a foot deep, with a pool of water full of leaves and debris. “Fuck this,” Troll said and stormed away to tell his weary family they weren’t through marching for the evening.

Meanwhile, I was staring at the hole of dirty water that Troll had so quickly rejected. I pumped my filter with maximum exertion and was finally able to get a decent supply for the night, although non-essentials like cooking and brushing teeth had to wait.

49er and Doctor Death had been with or behind us all day. We had speculated they would pull up somewhere shy of the shelter for the evening. However, right at dark they came panting and sweating up the mountain to the shelter. “We sold you short,” I greeted them effusively.

“Is there water?” they asked wild-eyed and in unison.

“Just a bit,” I responded. “And you can put your tents. …”

“No, the water,” Doctor Death cut me off. “Now.” I led them through the bushes just as Whitewater had taken Troll and me.

When Doctor Death arrived at the puddle he had just the opposite reaction of Troll. He maniacally dipped his Nalgene bottle in the hole filling it with water, leaves, and probably dirt. Forty-niner and I stood by transfixed as Doctor Death downed a full liter of the cloudy liquid.

“How is it?” 49er asked.

“It’s wet,” Doctor Death answered immediately. He quickly filled up again.

When we got back to the shelter I told the story of Doctor Death to Whitewater. “Yeah, ol’ Doctor Death,” Whitewater said, “he’s all salt and vinegar.”

Sleeping in the rocky terrain behind the shelter was again nigh impossible. The bugs attacked in the most immodest places. What I couldn’t understand was how, with a stocking cap, a scarf wrapped around my ears, and ear plugs I could nonetheless hear the buzzing. It was maddening enough fighting them all day. But this gauntlet they ran you through at night could drive you over a cliff mentally.

Others were spooked by the bugs as well. When I ran into the Troll family the following evening at a campsite Anchor absolutely refused to come out of the family tent, with its netting protection.

“You look like one of those child hemophiliacs in a bubble,” Doctor Death noted drolly.

The AT runs right through the streets of Dalton, Massachusetts, a charming working-class New England town right out of a Norman Rockwell scrapbook. A nice middle-aged fellow who worked at the local pharmacy permitted hikers to pitch tents in his back yard. Just where we were to use the bathroom was a question best left unasked. About eight of us were there when he pulled up in his car. He was a short, balding nondescript fellow, and very soft-spoken. “I had some luck with the lottery,” he reported with a smile. “I won $100 and want you folks to have dinner with me.”

He then pulled out ribs, fried chicken, potatoes, slaw, etc. to serve us dinner. Like every other hiker, I was warming to New England fast. And the best lay ahead.

Mount Greylock, the inspiration for the great American novel,
Moby Dick
, is the highest and most storied mountain in southern New England. Herman Melville, who lived in a nearby farmhouse called Arrowhead, had spent so much time staring at the eminence of Greylock from his second floor study that he became convinced of its likeness to a great white whale. The AT goes right over Greylock peak which is the biggest climb we had faced since central Virginia. After I scaled a steep section called Jones’ Nose, the trail crisscrossed a windy, paved service road that goes to the top.

Thoreau had written vividly of getting lost on a cold, snowy day and spending the night alone (“Like most evil the difficulty is imaginary, for what’s the hurry”) on Greylock summit. But unlike Thoreau, I had blazes to follow. The summit was crowned with fine spruce trees, and a sixty-foot stone-tower war memorial affords visitors fine vistas including the Green Mountains, where we would soon be, to the north. Better still, Bascom Lodge was there to serve hearty meals.