Chapter 61: A Fresh Take

P-Nut stood beside me in the Thunder Hill Shelter, limply watching the torrential downpour outside. Lightning crackled overhead. The instantaneous boom of the thunder almost knocked us flat, leaving only a faint ringing in our ears to be heard over the overwhelming rush of the downpour pounding the roof of the shelter.

Blithely ignore the deluge outside, I stripped half-naked and dried off with my trusty pack towel. Originally intended for backpacking in Europe, Megan had ordered the pack towel for me. In an attempt to save weight, I had asked for the medium, not knowing that it would be the approximate size and have all the utility of a soggy burrito wrapper. Still, I did my best, and quickly changed into dry clothes before crawling into my sleeping bag.

I figured our best option was to wait there until morning and hope for better weather. My plan had the added benefit of leaving our friends more time to catch up with us. Ever impatient, however, P-Nut had only begrudgingly agreed to stay. We had both just settled in for the long haul when it abruptly stopped raining.

And the sun came out, and the air was filled with birdsong and the laughter of approaching thru-hikers, some of whom we just happened to know. Caveman was there, along with Redwing and Lil Dipper. Even Hobbes was there! I think. And Bandito was there, too.

Bandito had missed me most of all. I was his best friend and moral compass, after all, and without me, he had been lost in a deeply embarrassing sea of misunderstanding and untowardness. He was thus only lucky that he caught up with me, so that I could keep him on the straight and narrow.

Moonpie and Little Brown might also have been there, but I didn't begrudge their presence. Despite all our differences – mainly their good humor and general gregariousness and my egregious lack of grace of humility – we shared a common goal, and for that reason alone it was easy and perhaps inevitable for us to get along and pull for each other. Plus Moonpie mentioned the possibility his girlfriend bringing us trail magic the next day, and that was an excellent way for him to get into my good graces. I was, and remain, an extraordinarily shallow person.

The next morning, Redwing and Lil Dipper mentioned going into Glasgow or Big Island to resupply. Personally, I wasn't too keen on the idea. It was a notoriously difficult hitch, and I had more than enough food to tide me over. I selfishly tried to convince them to wait a day to resupply at Buena Vista – inexplicably pronounced Byoo-nah Vista by locals – but they weren't so sure.

"Well, I just thought maybe you wanted that Five Dollar Foot-Long I owe you," I shrugged.

"They have a Subway there?" gasped Lil Dipper, her eyes lighting up.

I nodded coyly.

"Blimey!" she exclaimed. "But that's literally my favourite sandwich shoppe! I would walk like a thousand kilometers just to eat there!"

"Subway," added Redwing, winking. "Eat Fresh!"

And so, as a group, we decided to skip Glasgow and Big Island, and to hike on to the Punchbowl Shelter. Or something.

We saw Moonpie and Little Brown at the Matts Creek Shelter, just before the James River. Moonpie reminded us in his characteristically humble fashion that his insanely hot girlfriend was picking him up at US501, just across the bridge. And that he was subsequently going home with her for a week to gluttonously revel in all that mature adults in modern civilization are so privileged to enjoy. Like hot showers and cable television. Oh, and he also told us that she was bringing trail magic.

And she was.

His girlfriend – whose name I've callously forgotten – was gracious, charming, and generally way too young, attractive and intelligent for someone so unabashedly rough-around-the-edges as Moonpie. I was at a complete loss to understand their relationship. Still, she had brought with her a glorious cornucopia of junk food, for which I am forever grateful. Nobody deigned to mention to her that people providing trail magic don't generally buy out a Walmart in order to do it. Usually just sodas and candy bars would suffice. But she had so much that we almost considered skipping Buena Vista.

"Yeah, I'm sorry Lil Dipper," I shrugged. "I may not need to go into town after all. Your Subway sandwich will have to wait."

"What?" snapped Lil Dipper, eerily reminding me of Caveman. "But how much did you take?"

"But they bake their own bread, daily! And their sandwiches are so hearty and delicious!" moaned Redwing. "And the way they don't tessellate their cheese? I was so looking forward to that."

"Oh well," I shrugged, annoyed. "Maybe there's a Blimpie in Waynesboro."

Now, at this point, I had written something about how Lil Dipper and Redwing suddenly transformed into vengeful, Valkyrie-like goddess warriors, beat me to within an inch of my life and nearly drowned me in the river. I had also written an extremely clever bit where Hobbes came along just at that moment and made fun of me for being beaten up by a couple of girls, and for also apparently soiling my pants. On this last point he would have been wrong, however, as I then would then have explained in a carefully crafted joke involving a conspicuous smudge caused by some melted Snickers bars. Which had only melted because of a lightning bolt cast by one of the angry British girls. But it all would have been very silly and stupid, and none of it really happened. So I'm not including it.

Because everything else I've written has been the unequivocal, unvarnished truth, without regard for my or anyone else's feelings, public image, or future political ambitions. And I want to keep that going. Also, because I have artistic integrity, and would never write anything that wasn't at least emotionally honest, not for shock value, not for laughs, and certainly not for any extremely generous gift card to the first and most delicious and healthy sandwich-based chain restaurant that springs to mind.

Chapter 60: Thunder Hill

On September 12th, 2001, I impulsively decided to walk downtown with one of my roommates. We were on a pilgrimage of sorts to see ground zero, or at least to see how the events of the day before had affected the surrounding neighborhoods. We wanted – or needed – to witness it for ourselves, with our own eyes, and not just see what everyone else was watching on television. In a certain way, what we were doing felt important.

We walked south on Broadway, right down the middle of the street. That in and of itself was an extremely weird experience. Except for parades or demonstrations, and before Mayor Bloomberg tried to turn it into a pedestrian thoroughfare, it was almost unheard of for Broadway to be closed to traffic. But it wasn't shut down. There just wasn't anybody left in the city.

The significance of this might be hard for an outsider to grasp. Ninety percent of the quintessential New York City experience is the ubiquity of the crowd, the sheer mass of humanity that surrounds you at any given moment. I had always, have always felt a certain safety in numbers walking the streets of New York. But on this day, we were alone.

The other ten percent of the New York City experience is the Russian roulette of dodging traffic and the tourists who clog the sidewalks to gape at all the tall buildings; laughing at people who take taxis instead of the subway; and the necessity of spending over half of your income on rent and utilities and the other half on alcohol to dull the pain of everything else. But then again, on this day, there was no traffic, no tourists, no jostling crowd. Even the bars were closed. There were no rumbling trucks, no pounding jackhammers, no cacophony of car horns, no taxis with squealing brakes and drivers cursing at you in multiple languages. Nothing. The entire quintessence of being a New Yorker was gone.

The monolithic apartment buildings lining the avenues stood silent and empty, like gaping mausoleums in a forgotten cemetery. Occasionally a face would peer out from a doorway or window, ashen, shellshocked, broken, their interest perhaps only momentarily piqued by the faint thud of helicopter blades or the far off wail of a siren. The worst part was the acrid smell that hung in the air, thick with ash and dust and probably a lot of other, more sinister things that I'd rather not contemplate.

We made it as far south as Houston Street before turning back. In retrospect, we probably shouldn't have been out there at all. It wasn't important. It was shameful, and stupid. What could we have seen had we actually gone any further? I honestly do not know. Would it have brought us any wisdom or closure? No, and of that, at least, I am sure. But what sort of toxins did we breath in, and how much danger did we expose ourselves to, even going as far as we did?

I've since come to peace with the fact that I'm probably going to die of some mysterious and horrible form of lung cancer. That is, if I'm not shot, stabbed, or blown up in an unforeseeable alien apocalypse in the meantime. Frankly, I'd rather bow out in a spectacular blaze of glory, preferably via drug overdose while I'm sitting on the toilet in a gay brothel. The point is, I know I'm going to die.

Which may explain why I'm such a vivacious and easy going person. Accepting the stark inevitability of your own mortality can be incredibly freeing. Instead of worrying about or trying to avoid one's death, one can fully embrace and enjoy life. Because, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once said of life, "If you don't stop and look around once in a while – and do whatever you want all the time – you can miss it." I prefer another quote, however, from Henry David Thoreau: "Life isn't meant to be spent inside on a beautiful day like this. And stop hitting your sister!" Or was that my mother? I forget.

----

There was no water at the Cove Mountain Shelter. P-Nut and I had to hike three miles to Jennings Creek in the morning before we could fill up. This wasn't particularly easy. Neither of us had had anything to drink since the previous evening, yet we somehow managed the feat without drinking our own urine.

As we headed down to the river's edge with our filters, a nearby day hiker warned us that the river was contaminated. Yeah, right. I wasn't going to let some "mercury" or "arsenic" or "botulinum" come between me and a nice sip of cold water. We laughed off his feeble warnings and filled up.

We stopped a little later at the Bryant Ridge Shelter. It was magnificent, recently constructed, two stories tall, and could apparently accomodate twenty hikers in relative comfort. Someone had left behind a squeeze bottle of honey that we promptly guzzled without regard to germs, disease, or propriety. I left a note in the register:

5/11/10
Man! I finally catch up with P-Nut after 20 miles, and he convinces me to do another seven. It's not yet eight o'clock, though, and we're still feeling good, so we may press on to the Cornelius Creek Shelter before nightfall. A 32 mile day! I must be crazy. Caveman, Bandito, Redwing, Lil Dipper et al., catch up with us! If you can...
-Major Chafage

Anticipating the bemused and panicked looks on their faces, I had more fun at the Cornelius Creek Shelter:

5/12/10
Well, here we are! We finally made it in at about ten o'clock last night. I was too exhausted to write anything at the time, though. P-Nut's planning another twenty miles today. We may never see any of our friends again. Oh well. I always thought those guys were lame.
-Major Chafage

And then P-Nut wrote:

5/1112/10
Everything M.C. just wrote in here is true.
-P-Nut

Which prompted me to write:

5/12/10
Augh! You screwed up the date, P-Nut! Way to totally blow our completely hilarious practical joke! I mean, totally forget what day it is, bro! Ha ha!
-M.C.

And then we left. Except P-Nut decided at the last minute that he should use the privy, delaying us for some five minutes. Remember this fact, because it will become important again in about forty sentences.

P-Nut always amused me with his steadfast refusal to use privies. While I never particularly enjoyed the sanitary aspects of using a privy, I eventually got over my squeamishness. Catholing was more pleasant, generally, except for the lack of privacy, but P-Nut categorically refused to dig catholes as well. This was a little bit more puzzling. What would he do? Apparently he'd will himself into suffering through bouts of painful constipation until he could get into town and use a real toilet. Perhaps not the most pleasant way to go, but it worked for him. Sort of.

As we approached the summit of Apple Orchard Mountain, we could hear thunder rolling in to our left. Now, despite it's name, there are no apple orchards on Apple Orchard Mountain. In fact, it's summit is bald, and currently houses a rather intimidating FAA radar dome. The summit was the last place we wanted to be during a thunderstorm.

"Yeah, that's more like it!" shouted P-Nut as I started to run.

He really was crazy.

I momentarily considered seeking shelter at the FAA facility, but it was surrounded by a barb-wire fence, complete with spooky signs that read "Trespassers Will Be Killed A Lot." That wouldn't do. Besides, the appropriately named Thunder Hill Shelter was only 1.2 miles away.

I had been caught out above tree line in a storm once before. I was sixteen, and doing an eleven day backpacking and sea kayaking trip with the Appalachian Mountain Club. We were eating lunch on some mountain in Maine, and we could see the line of rain approaching us across the sky. How often do you actually get to see a storm front, or the place where the sunshine stops and the rain begins? It was mesmerizing, until it caught up to us and hail stones the size of marbles started bouncing off our heads.

I didn't want to repeat that scenario. I didn't want to stop to put my rain gear on. I didn't want to get hit by lightning, or have lightning hit a tree near me. In fact, with a growing stitch in my side, I just wanted to get to the shelter and lie down before I passed out. Since, you know, we'd been running. And our backpacks are heavy.

A wall of fog materialized suddenly on our left, moving fast towards us through the trees. It was as if the clouds themselves were sentient, and maniacally intent on attacking us. It moved quickly, completely enveloping us in less than twenty seconds. It got suddenly dark; it was as if mid-afternoon turned into twilight in the blink of an eye. You could practically feel the electricity in the air. Actually, you could feel the electricity in the air. The hairs on my arms were standing on end. This was not encouraging.

We reached the Blue Ridge Parkway and hesitated. The shelter was 0.3 miles away. It was hard to see if any traffic was coming, and even harder to hear with the rush of the wind and the sizzling static in the air. We ran across the road, which was probably a doubly stupid thing to do, but made it safely. And then, maybe a hundred yards from the shelter, the heavens opened up.

I slowed down to walk. I was soaked already, and wasn't going to get more wet by taking my time. We were back underneath the trees, and I wasn't so worried about being hit by lightning. I could hear P-Nut's girlish screams in front of me as he ran to the shelter. Which was a good thing, because I wouldn't have known where to turn otherwise. I couldn't see five feet in front of me. And, of course, if we'd gotten there five minutes earlier, and we would've missed the rain entirely. But such is life.

There were a few others in the shelter. Most of them were lazy north bound thru-hikers. Who knows where they had started the day. We had gone seventeen miles, which was atypically unambitious for us, but we weren't going any further. We settled in to wait out the rain, and wait for our friends.