TRAIL DAY 74
Wed, May 4, 2016 I have many privy shots. The toilet paper holder at Wapiti Shelter was to the point.
The privy is a helpful little hut when available – privacy often minimal or absent entirely but for mutual respect. Some were loaded with toilet paper – some had none. I always had some napkins from the last restaurant in my back pocket. One privy had a flush handle which fooled you for a moment. Many had instructions on operation and the use of duff, the middle layer of decaying leaves. There’s a real science to management of the privies – but more anon.
About Wapiti Shelter and what I was glad I didn’t know when there. In fact I didn’t know until there were hundreds of miles between me and the shelter.
In 1981 Randall Smith came to the Wapiti Shelter where he killed one hiker with a .22-caliber handgun and another by multiple stabs with a nail. After 15 years in prison, he returned to an area 1½ miles from Wapiti Shelter and shot two other men who survived after a mad escape in a truck. Google can fill you in with an article entitle “Lonely, Dark and Deep” among other resources. This article begins:
DISMAL CREEK, Giles County, Va. All manner of animals feast in the deep woods along this lovely stretch of mountains. There are bear and deer. Poisonous snakes and fish shimmering in the creeks. Dreams are hatched beside campfires and the stars seem almost close enough to grasp.
But sometimes, man feasts here as well.
And the killer was hungry.
I was there and unaware – happily so.
Whenever something so sad and tragic and pointless as this fills your mind, it takes over your senses and, for the moment, your conscious thought, to the degree that it colors all scenes in the imagination with its inhuman chill. The loneliness of the remote woodland lends an eerie cast to the story and its location. The story and the memory don’t go away.
Nonetheless, Mother Nature draws you forward. Her world will not be put down. I pray we never get the upper hand with her – NEVER! No matter how many vehicle adds think to crush her with their violent, churning, machine-driven sport wheels. No matter how many times we scar her beauty for our goods. My mind’s eye sees a bare-breasted mother nursing her young as bullets tear into her flesh and still she nurses.
Speaking of “Lonely, Dark and Deep,” I used to think that Robert Frost’s Poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” had those words in it but they are “lovely, dark and deep.” Here’s the poem which a woodland hiker can relate to but for the horse – none are permitted on the entire trail:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of the easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
The author of the article is either playing with this line or has made the same mistake I have for years. “Lovely” is inviting but, perhaps a little like Dante’s “Heaven,” not quite as intriguing, for me, as “lonely.” Perhaps my Nordic, melancholy, happy-on-a-grey-day-or-in-the-dark-of-winter spirit is moved more by that more solitary, inward word than by the sunshine of the more softly inviting one.
After crossing the nearby stream, the long rhododendron tunnels drew us away from the Wapiti Shelter and up nearly 1500′ in elevation before a slight descent to the (0.5E) gravel road leading to one of the most famous stops on the Appalachian Trail: Woods Hole Hostel.
AWOL has this to say:
Woods Hole Hostel (www.woodsholehostel.com) Open year-round. A “Slice of heaven, not to be missed.” The 1880’s chestnut-log cabin was discovered by Roy & Tillie Wood, who opened the hostel in 1986. Their granddaughter, Neville, continues the legacy with husband Michael, with emphasis on sustainable living through beekeeping, farming, organic gardening, yoga, & massage therapy.
They run a pretty tight ship at Woods Hole with many instructions posted about. The granddaughter, Neville, is the one you see most of the time. She is short and cute. She has to stand on a stool to reach in the large ice cream container to scoop out the goods for guests. We are asked to help in the kitchen and to set the table for meals. When they are full, there is a lot to do and it is fun pitching in.
Michael is the mechanical and technical genius with a degree in biochemistry or some such intimidating discipline. You don’t see him much because he is quiet and keeps himself very busy running things that take his skills.
Neville joins in for supper and, on occasion, Michael. Grace is said holding hands in a large circle and people are invited to say what they are grateful for. The company of fellow hikers and the good food were mentioned by me and others. Meals included greens from the organic gardens and were excellent.
There is a large common room with a red wood-burning stove at one end. Only Michael was allowed to operate it. Couches face each other on either side of the stove with a low table in between. Looking from the stove end of the room there are open, wooden stairs on the left up to a loft and beds.
Theo and I stayed in the bunkhouse where there was also a common area and dry goods, sodas and other supplies to be purchased on the honor system. Every day Neville supplied huge oatmeal cookies for purchase.
Our room was to the left as you walked in the front door. It was small with double-decker bunks to the left and right as you walked in facing a window in between. The bunks were barely 6′ long. I was in the top bunk on the left.
There was a hiker box just outside our door to the left. “Queen” whom I’ll talk about in a bit, had found tent stakes in a bag just like the one I had with my UL2 tent and the stakes were the same. She wanted two of them and gave me the remaining 6. The self-centered, muck-brain that I am not so subtly inquired if she thought the whole set should stay together or some such lame hint that I’d like a full set. Nut case! Get over it! Be grateful and move on – but I still remember that! Mercy!
I was glad to have the stakes because the extra light carbon fiber round ones I had purchased with my Zpacks tent were not working at all. One of them broke with nothing above common force applied to remove it from the ground. Each stake was made of a black carbon fiber hollow cylindrical shaft pointed at one end with a silver aluminum tip. The other end was capped with another small piece of aluminum that was inserted into the shaft with ever so slight a lip overhang which was hardly enough to pull the stake out of the ground, beside which the caps pulled out.
I emailed Zpacks about the futility of the stakes I had purchased and, without charge, they sent me more of the stakes Queen had found which are made of light aluminum and V-shaped with a notch at the top enabling easy retrieval from the ground. Now here’s some of the travel-light, take-only-what-you-need, anal stuff others put up within me. Why the bleep would you manufacture these stakes with two holes in them and a string inserted through each for retrieval when all you have to do is use the tent or guy loop you fixed in the notch to pull the stake out of the ground? Beats me!
Garbage bags? They used to be flat at the top – just a plain, old plastic bag, when ready for the trash, I used to pull up opposite sides and easily tie them in a knot. Some clever (?) person got the bright idea to create little flaps around the top edge of the bag so you could fumble around trying to get the 2 on one side in one hand and the 2 on the other side in the other hand and keep them together long enough for you to tie the 4 in a knot. An infinite full circle of easily managed possibilities are now fixed and managed, if at all, with significant difficulty. I cut them off! And the colored drawstrings which I try to ignore? I’ll spare you. But those tabs are like formed steps on the trail. They require you to do something you can accomplish much easier on your own. Failed attempts to be clever and helpful.
Sacket was in the bunk below me and Queen and “Dot Com” were in the bunks across the way. I first met these interesting ladies here. Both were very athletic and had hiked together many times. One or both ran marathons.
Both had hiked the 100-mile wilderness in Maine but Dot Com seemed extra knowledgeable about it. She maintained that she and Queen were the last people to talk to Inchworm in July 2013 and they were each interviewed by the rescue team. The rumor is that Inchworm got lost in the 100-mile wilderness which added to the bigger-than-life mystery of that section leading up to the bigger-than-life “Greatest Mountain,” KATAHDIN!
It was not until I got to the edge of that long stretch of wilderness at Shaw Hostel in Monson, Maine, that I heard, for the first time from the owner, Poet, that Inchworm was not lost in the 100-mile wilderness but down near the Bigelows. In fact she was lost about 30 miles south of there. But there will be more about this tragedy anon.
The showers were in a building beyond the bunkhouse. At the main house, there was an amazing outdoor area with grills and a porch with rocking chairs. Beyond was another outlying building perhaps for maintenance. The place was very well kept and both Michael and Neville seemed to have worked out an efficient division of labors to keep Woods Hole Hostel up and running and worthy of its reputation.
You were family while at Woods Hole and it was nice.
Day #74 Wapiti Shelter > Woods Hole Hostel 7.2 miles