TRAIL DAY 35
Sat, Mar 26, 2016 The sun was bright in the morning as hikers got themselves ready for the day’s journey. My tent neighbor was a gal named “Justice.” We’d see each other quite a bit over the next several hundred miles. People from the shelter filtered by as I had breakfast, packed up and headed out. I’m sure Justice left before me.
Most of our day hovered around 6,000′, ending 12.6 miles farther north at Cosby Knob Shelter at 4766′. Nothing unusual stands out about this day although I do remember meeting Claire and her brother Bob who were a happy duo hiking together. Having an older brother who was mostly off doing his own thing and no sister, I thought it was nice that they had each other for their adventure – together.
A note in AWOL for this day reads “High Flight” and “All” with a sun burst around it, followed by “Sir Tom of Warwick.” I was having one of those days where everything seems to coalesce. The day was clear and brilliant and I was realizing a long-standing goal in health good enough to meet its rigorous demands. The day and my life both sparkled and brought to mind the end of Camelot when “Sir Tom” meets King Arthur.
“Sir Tom,” a young idealist, has heard of the Knights of the Round Table and he is on a quest to become one. He runs through the forest in search of the battle King Arthur must fight against Sir Lancelot of France and comes upon the King whom he doesn’t know. Arthur, inspired by the ardor of the boy, even as his Kingdom faces ruin, knights the boy and orders him to run “behind the lines” so he can live and go home to tell all who have not heard that “once there was a fleeting wisp of glory called Camelot.”
As Tom runs off, Pelly, an old and comic Knight of the Round Table, asks “Arthur, who was that?” Arthur answers:
One of what we all are, Pelly. Less than a drop in the pale blue motion of the sunlit sea. But it seems that some of the drops sparkle, Pelly. Some of them doooo sparkle. . . .
I wrote “All” with a sunburst around it confident that ALL of the drops in the pale blue motion of the sunlit sea “doooo sparkle!” Each soul on the mountain top or below, the volunteer in the mist, the siblings hiking, Justice, Shivers – ALL of the drops – do sparkle in the glorious light.
I get that way sometimes – I find myself where it seems all is known – “my whole life” becomes “all of life – all that is.” Hiking the Appalachian Trail is not just for feet and boots but the whole person – the heart and soul of the hiker enters the woods, climbs the mountains, feels the sun, the rain, the snow, the frost, the heat and cold, the stillness and the howling winds blowing where they will and opening up receptors to the whole of creation. Is not just one such moment of seeing so far, so completely, worth every step that moves a body forward into the northern reaches of the Appalachian Trail?
While hiking day by day, one sees not just the turf or boulders, streams, lakes, cliffs or promontories – one wakens to the inner person, the one taking the steps and to the heavens through which he passes – for he and the planet holding him are, even now, couched in eternity.
I can’t leave this moment of glory without mentioning the “High Flight” notation. “High Flight” is a poem by John Gillespie McGee, Jr. who flew for the Royal Canadian Air Force. He had recently flown a mission which took him to 33,000 feet. On August 18, 1941, when I was 2 months and 2 weeks old McGee started the poem, High flight. He died 4 months later in a mid-air collision over Lincolnshire, England on December 11, 1941 at the age of 19.
Often as I slowly pushed the miles behind me on the trail, I would recite, if only in my head, poems I have committed to memory. “High Flight” is one of these. Although I am a private pilot who knows the feel of the skies, it was boots on the ground, mountain after mountain on the Appalachian Trail, that brought me closest to the spirit of this poem. It expresses the unusual character of what I was doing, seeing, hearing and feeling.
HIGH FLIGHT
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
– Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
I, too, had slipped the surly bonds for mountain heights above the fray and oh, so often, put out my hand, planted my trekking pole, hoisted my leg and torso and pack up, up the long ascending climb to rocky windswept heights where birds soared and swung in sunlit silence. With every step, I touched the face of the one who compelled my journey, each one success, each fulfilling a call, each a celebration of the very personal gift of good health.
Extraordinary mechanical power and personal skill in the cockpit shot McGee up to his destiny while slow personal plodding under muscle power took me to mine. The face of God was there for each of us; earth and sky are His and so were we, each having found Him right where we were, in a holy sunlit silence.
Surely my reverie took me miles northward into my hike. But then again, it most likely happened in the time it takes to type one letter in the telling. Nonetheless, I did move forward with my ever-present, ever-following, ever-loyal hiking companion and, in time, we arrived at the Cosby Knob Shelter at 4766′. Hikers and their tents were everywhere.
As I look back on our 215 nights actually on the trail and not in town, it was common for Theo and me to arrive later than most and there were several times we were well after dark as much as that was to be avoided when possible.
So here. The shelter was full and that’s fine – but so were the campsites. Mother Nature has a good number of acres so confidence did not wane. The area was quite hilly so scouting out a spot was a challenge as it had been the night before but also fun.
There is nothing artificial in the woods. Everything can be taken at face value. Mother Nature provides the set. You are the actor and the role you play is entirely up to you. Your actions begin with acceptance and where they take you is in your hands alone.
I have always loved little things as I said before. I love neat and tidy things, clever solutions, the minimalism of packing light, the efficiency of getting a job done with just the right amount of energy, force and movement necessary to do it well with nothing wasted. As my family knows, I waste very little. My oldest son saw me scooping the nearly dry bottom of my cereal bowl once and said in his clever and succinct way of seeing things, “Dad – it’s all gone.”
Well, the trail was made for the likes of me. Carry only what you really need. Leave no trace. Be efficient. Be clever. Make do.
I made do that night on a slanted rise of land between a trench and a stream where the most level spot was under a pine tree. I pitched my tent the best I could and from its opening the floor slanted down perhaps 15̊ and to the left another 15̊. That would have to do.
I cooked supper leaning up against the far wall of the trench and took in the scene. Some young hiker had pitched down a grade over the trench wall behind me. There were several tents up in the woods to my left. The shelter was active with the usual pre-bed chatter and up a grade diagonally to my right were two tents with bright orange panels and several hikers gathered around a fire, singing quietly to someone’s guitar. As I zoom in on a picture I took of this festive group, I see a hiker in a hat I would see many more times but at great intervals all the way to Mount Washington and beyond.
Theo made himself comfortable against my leg in one of his you-couldn’t-possibly-be-mean-to-me-because-I-am-irresistibly-cute-and-lovable-and-you-know-it looks. He was right.
When it was time to crawl in for the night, it was time, once again, to get clever. There would be no way to keep myself from sliding toward the foot of the tent and leftward into Theo’s space without some shenanigans. These were achieved by placing my nearly empty backpack under the sleeping pad to raise the bottom half of the pad enough to prevent slipping. It could also be positioned to resist gravity’s tug to my left. The fix achieved, I had one of the most comfortable nights of all on the trail.
I LOVE getting by with little! Making do and taking comfort with clever use of not much at all! If “Order is God’s First Law,” he must be please, too, with “Much out of Little” – both laws are so helpful out in the woods on the AT.
Day #35 Pecks Corner Shelter > Cosby Knob Shelter 12.6 miles