TRAIL DAY 45
Tue, Apr 5, 2016 Oh what a blessing to have lived with very little in the environment of the birth of our species. What a rock solid foundation for life – for living. I type this at a 6-foot-long desk covered with stuff I hadn’t seen for the better part of a year. The larger the desk, the more the stuff. The junk in our lives multiplies to fill the space available. My space was a 52-liter pack and a few pockets. Whatever I carried had to fit inside. Ooooh precious limits!
Time? That was another matter. There was no pressure for speed. My deadline was well within range. My work was walking. There was no rush for compensation, no hourly rate. You were surrounded by compensation in abundance.
Oh, do we even have the faintest sense of who and what and where we are? A snowflake is heaven. A sunbeam eternity. Love fills universes. And that which appears motionless is teaming with activity even as we ourselves are when we sleep.
I awoke in the woods of Firescald Knob to the sound of a grouse courting my brightly-colored tent. I’d heard that drumming sound before in my life but was puzzled by it while in my tent. The bird was not far from my head. I lay quietly for some time taking in the wonder of this natural event. Convinced of what I was hearing and having let the kind fellow dream his dreams and woo my housing, I began to stir.
Now what must that grouse have thought when this beautifully colored, gigantic bird awoke? Dream over, he was outta there!
It was a windy, fogged-in morning. We had breakfast, packed and move on out. Very soon after we began our descent we passed the 300-mile point on the AT just before the Jerry Cabin Shelter. At the shelter was “Storyteller” sitting inside as I came into view. We chatted a moment recognizing the distance we had come and I carried on leaving him in place. I would see him later.
In time the day turned sunny and I made my way to the Flint Mountain Shelter up a slight rise to the right of the trail. It was time for lunch. Soon several others arrived: “Lambo,” “Spirit” and “Whatever Works,” hiking with her dad, “Sookie.” I sat in the split-floor shelter with another hiker who joined me across the divide. The others helped themselves to the table outside and the fire pit. I listened to the tips and tricks at the table regarding mayonnaise to liven up a tuna sandwich. I inquired of Lambo what he thought of his solar charger which I had been considering ever since encountering Minute Man’s Levin Solar Charger. Lambo’s was an X Dragon Solar Charger. Nothing I’d heard led me to believe you were home free with one of these in the woods. They were slow to charge and required sun which is, of course, unpredictable. They seemed to provide no more boost than a high-capacity spare you’d recharge at a hostel and there seemed no advantage in weight.
I ate and left the others behind taking with me ever so slight a sense of impending struggle. A woman in her 60s who had hiked sections of the trail before had spoken with authority sufficient to feed the myth mill about difficulties ahead.
We carried on up, down and across long stretches, over grassy knolls, down into a valley, across a road and up a gradual, grass-covered embankment on the other side. Storyteller had caught up with and, of course, passed us. Theo and I hiked our own hike.
The trail continued over fences, into the woods and past a ground-level stone marking the ashes of Howard E. Cassette, 83, of Connecticut, who hiked the AT in 1968 at 64. We past a couple of tomb stones as well, one noting the passing of Dorothy Hornsley, May 2, 1865 – April 30, 1965, just two days shy of her 100th birthday.
It was around 9:00 p.m. when I turned off the AT (0.1E) to Hogback Ridge Shelter. It had been a long day over the farthest distance hiked so far – 17.2. It was dark – and cold.
“Sacket” had a roaring fire going that he and 3-4 others were warming themselves by as Hackett cooked his supper in a rusty tin can. This was his pot and it worked for him. I would encounter Sacket later and came to respect his vast knowledge of the outdoors and his primitive ways. He had canoed in Canada and done a lot of rough outdoor things as a younger man. He might have been in his early 30s when I met him. He was one of those people who knows a lot about a lot.
I got my supper ready at a nearby table after which I warmed myself by the fire with the others. I’ve never been “one of the fellas” and wasn’t here. I didn’t get right into the swing of the conversation but I listened in a little.
The fire Sacket and the others had built was multi-layered. On the bottom was a large bed of hot coals. Above the bed were two or three large logs burning up from the heat of the coals and then adding to them. As I backed up to the fire, I focused on the large logs and the warmth from their flames. Soon I was plenty warm and moved away from the fire pit.
It was then that I noticed my left pant leg smoldering. My insulated pants had prevented me from feeling the heat directly on my skin. There was no flame but the synthetic material forming the outer shell of the pant leg had melted. Nothing drastic but as with all of life, these pants were aging and getting a little beat up in the process. Fully functional – nothing lost but cosmetics and that sense of “new” which wasn’t all that accurate any more. Same with my desk at home – it gets scratched and, while one doesn’t desire to scratch a piece of furniture, I tell myself, “It is aging along with me.”
I turned in none the worse for wear.
Day #45 Firescald Knob > Hogback Ridge Shelter 17.2 miles