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[at-l] final chapter

Just back from Trail Days, which gave me a way to end my book. Since I
posted the draft of my introduction here on the list a while back, I'll
post the draft of the last chapter too. As for the middle, well, you'll
just have to buy the book when it comes out in '99. :-)

Any comments or corrections welcome.

--Robert
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=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Chapter Seventeen --first draft--

=46acing South

See they return, one, and by one,
With fear, as half-awakened;
As if the snow should hesitate
and murmur in the wind, and half turn back . . .
--Pound

SEVEN MONTHS LATER, THE OLD DOG KNEW I was headed for the trail again. As I
bumbled around the house, reassembling my gear, it nosed the sour-smelling
hiking clothes, followed me around with its snout to my calves, and yawned
nervously every time I sat down to consider my checklist.

"Okay," I said after I'd loaded the pack into the car's trunk. "You can go
this time."

The old dog jumped happily into the back seat and stretched out to snooze
as I backed out of the driveway and once more threaded my way through the
empty mid-morning streets of our subdivision on my way to the Interstate.
All the little commuters had parked their bikes outside the elementary
school, and as I drove past I could hear them playing at recess behind the
main building.

By now I'd begun trying to write down the story of my long walk, I had a
manuscript deadline, and from letters, email, and phone calls, it became
clear that many of those who had taken the walk with me planned to meet
again at Trail Days in Damascus, about four hours away. It would mean
missing my wedding anniversary, so I suggested to Cathy that we go
together. She wasn't interested: she'd never liked tent camping, the whole
ordeal of the thruhike still rankled, and, well, she really wanted to go to
the beach with the band, as we'd done last year. So it was just me and the
dog.

Damascus looms so large to thruhikers that it's easy to forget how small it
really is. There's exactly one traffic light, and that's at a dangerous
intersection west of town rather than in the central business district.
Coming in by car on a normal day, you might be able to pass through the
town center on U.S. 58 in about a minute, even if you obeyed the posted
speed limits. Just don't try it during Appalachian Trail Days.

Banners welcomed motorists to the eleventh annual celebration and all the
town merchants had set up window displays or stands in front of their
stores. The local florist had removed the usual flowers and baskets from
its storefront, and displayed instead a tent, backpacking stove, and hiking
boots. A new outfitting business advertised shuttles north and south along
the trail, along with hot showers and supplies. The town park flowered with
pavillions, booths, and concession stands. Cars parked everywhere, along
sidewalks, in open fields, in yards, and clogging up the lots of churches
and local businesses. Town residents set out yard sale tables in front of
their houses. All the bed-and-breakfasts displayed "No Vacancy" signs. The
Methodist Church stood with sanctuary doors open, advertising hikers' slide
and video presentations, and a fundraising pancake breakfast; its hostel,
The Place, was packed with thruhikers, and tents filled its yard. Along the
river near the Post Office, behind tents and stands erected for the weekend
by hiking gear manufacturers, a tent city sprang up--hundreds and hundreds
of tents of all colors and shapes--tiny one-person bivy sacks, large
spreading tarps, dome tents, small backpacking tents, and various makeshift
shelters from sun and rain.

And hikers. The town crawled with them--as if a strange cult had invaded
this small mountain town, a cult that never bathed, and whose devotional
garments, instead of flowing saffron robes or black Nikes, consisted of
polypropylene shirts, nylon shorts, gaiters, Tevas, and bandannas.
Thruhikers from this year's crop of pilgrims, just beginning to shed the
soft sheath of body fat for the knotty leanness of the trail, streamed in
from north and south of town: bewildered solitaries gawking at the crowds,
more people than they'd seen together at once for a month or two; rowdy
"trail families" cruising around, looking for free food and drink, ready to
party; injured and sick and convalescent thruhikers, here for one last
taste of trail life before they left for good. Cotton-wearing dayhikers and
weekenders were present too, on hand to see what it was all about and soak
up the sweat-permeated atmosphere. Future thruhikers, or those dreaming of
thruhikes, drifted distractedly around--perhaps on the arm of a spouse or
companion--considering how to extricate themselves from jobs, marriages,
and the like, and walk the limbo walk. At the other end of the spectrum
were a few AT legends like ten-time thruhiker Warren Doyle, longtime trail
afficionados, members of trail maintaining clubs, repeat thruhikers like
Baltimore Jack (who was making his third consecutive trip north), as well
as hostel owners, disciples of Rusty's Hard Time Hollow handing out
directions for finding it, members of computer hiking lists, and even a few
bewildered tourists stumbling upon the scene by accident.

Most of all, though, I found familiar faces--the faces of my pilgrimage
year, all pilgrims again, if only for a weekend. Here were those who had
preceded and followed me to the summit of Katahdin: Bigfoot, RockDancer,
Mossman, Tonic and Broken Arrow, Dancing Bear and Icebox, Southpaw, Ox,
Kadiddle, Numb, 180=B0, Dingle and Hat Trick, Hiker Ned and Sweet Pee,
Globetrotter, Shaman, Space Wrangler, Luna and Six-String Hillbilly, Mass,
the Connecticut Kid and Hungry Tortoise, One Ramp, Rambleon, Trip, Time to
=46ly, the Hiking Viking, Fire Marshal, Gold Thumb, Solo, No Stove, Texas
Tapeworm, Solophile. Here too were some of those who didn't make it all the
way: Dave and Abby, Domino, Good to Go, the Doobie Brothers, Loon,
Sleepyfeet and Bunnyhead. And dozens of others who made it, but who
finished early, or late, or went north-to-south, and whom I never
met--names I knew from trail registers and photos on the wall at Rusty's,
or the book in Harpers Ferry, or who knew me from following the ongoing
"Ballad of the Rhymin' Worm."

"Worm!" Bigfoot rumbled when I walked up, and rose grinning from the circle
of other familiar faces amid the sea of tents to clap a great wing around
me. He had climbed Katahdin in late October, one of the very last
northbounders to finish, after the mountain was closed and snow-covered,
cloaked in cloud and bitter cold. Over the winter he'd bounced around from
one part-time job to another, and had just begun work as paid crew on a
racing sailboat around Boston. "Yeah," he said. "They needed someone with
long arms to grind the winches. I put my head down and just grind like
crazy when they tell me to. Don't know a thing about sailing. It's pretty
great."

RockDancer summited about a week after I did, after a long final month
through New Hampshire and Maine in which he put away his anxiety about
winter, and hiked forward believing that it would work out somehow, and he
would find in himself the competence to handle whatever the weather dished
out. He had gone off the trail briefly, one last time, in the White
Mountains, learning from a message relayed by an AMC caretaker that his
father had died. They had not been close for many years, but the funeral
had brought some healing and forgiveness. After Katahdin he spent several
weeks in Maine, watching the last northbounders finish, then worked his way
down the coast by car, staying with friends and visiting fellow hikers from
the trail. He was looking for a new place to live, and to buy a house. His
travels led him west, where one night he fell asleep at the wheel while
driving and was involved in a serious wreck, totalling his car and
suffering a bad concussion. By Trail Days he had recovered, but was still
somewhat shaken.

Like RockDancer, Kadiddle had summited about a week after me, and also like
him she was hospitalized from a car wreck in the spring, though another
driver was at fault in her case. She had put her plans for a book on hold,
and gone back to her training in art and design to pitch a public sculpture
to the owner of a new high-rise building in Charlotte. He approved the
design and paid a substantial commission, which she hoped would be the
first of many.

Dancing Bear and Icebox summited two days before I did. Afterwards they
went their separate ways, the partnership over. Dancing Bear had planned to
go west looking for work, but nothing had worked out, so he'd taken a job
as chef for an AMC hut in New Hampshire. It wasn't on the AT, but sixty
miles of mountain trails led right to his door, he said. He had been
thinking of writing a cookbook for backpackers, and this would give him a
chance to test and develop recipes. And then, sometime later, he still
planned to go west. Icebox reentered college in North Carolina, returning
for the winter semester of his sophomore year. He'd buckled down to work
hard, he said, and now that his grades were solid, he planned to kick back
a little more and start enjoying the college social life.

Mossman had returned to his landscaping job in Florida, and Tonic moved in
with him. It was a big change for her, after years in the Colorado
mountains, but she had been ready to leave. Now, after a short stint in a
bookstore, she began working again as a dietician. Mossman talked about how
they might move to the North Carolina mountains, near Ashville, but they
hadn't gotten serious about it yet. Eventually, he said, he'd like to go
back to school and get a teaching certificate. He'd make better money doing
landscaping, he said, but he'd always wanted to teach. "Plus, you get your
summers off!" he said. They had summited together on October 16.

"I was just numb," Tonic said. "We got up to the top, and I expected to
feel this wonderful elation, to be so happy, but it was like we didn't have
any emotion left. I felt so tired that I didn't have any emotion left to be
happy with. We were just glad to be done."

"Actually, I thought it was a pretty cool feeling, being done with the
trail," Mossman said. "I thought, my God, this horrendous body abuse is
over. Then, I guess, I got a little depressed going back to the real
world--I was definately having mixed emotions about Florida. The fact that
we were together made the transition a lot easier. It was more of an
adjustment for her. Luckily, she came to Florida in October, not in June."

Kilgore Trout didn't show. We'd talked a couple times by phone. He had
finished his hike in November and gone home to New Hampshire. In April he
married the woman who'd flown down to meet him in Roanoke. This meant a lot
of changes for him, one of which was becoming the stepfather of a teenage
girl. Like Mossman, he'd sometimes found himself getting a little
depressed, particularly as he gained weight, lost his trail conditioning,
and started looking for a job, trying to sell himself again at age 45, with
a "gaping hole" in his resume. But for now money wasn't a problem. "I think
I may quit looking for work for the summer," he told me. "Why waste a
perfectly good summer looking for a job, when you don't have to?"

=46or him, Katahdin hadn't been the end of his hike, but rather the
mid-point. For the first month, after getting back on the trail, he'd met
northbounders heading toward Katahdin, but he'd eventually passed through
the crowd and hiked toward Pennsylvania with the southbounders, often by
himself. After our last meeting in Glencliff, he said, he found his hike
getting better and better, his body getting stronger and stronger, though
he missed the company of his friends.
"Somedays now I wake up in the morning and in my half fog of sleep I'm
either in my tent, or at the Kincorra hostel in Tennessee," he said. "And
then I'm not. Sometimes I wake up just dreaming that I'm walking. For the
last third of the trip, the hiking got really good, where it had been a
real chore in the first half. I followed the changing leaves all the way
down the trail to Pennsylvania, which was neat. I remember getting into
Kent, Connecticut, at two in the afternoon, and thinking, 'Wow, I've
finally figured out how to hike.' And I find myself thinking back to when I
was hiking across the Cumberland valley in Pennsylvania, or the walk along
the river going into Kent. In both of those places, without even trying, I
was making five miles an hour. It's amazing to me that the body can do that
without complaining. This summer I want to finish the Long Trail, in
Vermont."

He finished his thruhike in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, where he'd sent me
the postcard when he left the trail in July. It was something of an
anticlimax, he said. He just emerged at a roadside trailhead, stuck his
thumb out, and hitched a ride to town.

Mr. Trout and I had talked by phone about hiking in to Trail Days together
from north of Mount Rogers. He would drive down from New Hampshire the
weekend before, and I'd meet him. But when I sat down to look at the
calendar, it became clear I couldn't afford to lose those seven days. It
would mean leaving immediately after returning from a four-day vacation
with Cathy and her parents at a time when the early summer deadline for my
manuscript was fast approaching. He sounded crestfallen, but said he might
hike in anyway on his own. A couple days before I left, though, RockDancer
told me Kilgore wasn't coming after all.

And me? Well, Cathy had flown up to meet me in Maine, using the extra
vacation she'd won as "Employee of the Year," and we'd dawdled around New
England for a few days before flying home. Things sometimes became tense at
home as we worked through what had happened, and what would happen next.
But I felt we were growing closer again, not more distant, as we'd been
before I left. I started gaining back some of the weight I'd lost, and I
began picking up free-lance writing and editing work while I tried to tell
the story of my long walk. In a strange way, as I reconstructed each day,
each incremental step north toward Katahdin, it was as if once more I was
walking the trail through the notes and rhymes and maps and letters from
friends. It wasn't exactly conducive to settling down and getting on with
things. Limbo again, for a while longer.

But by now life off the trail had gripped all of us, to greater and lesser
extents, and no longer were our days governed by sun and cloud, measured by
the distance between beginning and end. Even Mr. Clean, who had immediately
hiked south from Katahdin again, had reportedly taken a job at a Vermont
ski resort. Here at Trail Days we kept our backpacks close at hand, we
slept in tents, we dressed once again in polypropylene and Gore-Tex, in
many cases the same clothes and gear that had seen us through our
pilgrimage. But they were costumes now, not uniforms. Cotton would have
been more comfortable and practical: we'd have smelled better, and after
Trail Days we could simply throw it in the dryer. We wore our hiking
clothes so we wouldn't seem out of place, the way you might dress to attend
a party. We were writers, or computer programmers, or prison guards, or
cooks, or students, or job-hunters now, here for the weekend to reminisce
and watch the new pilgrims walk through.

=46riday evening some of us sat around in a circle, talking, and watching as
the current crop of thruhikers lined up for a free barbecued chicken dinner
and banged their pans impatiently. Smoke from the charcoal hearths drifted
across the vast, buzzing riverside tent city. Several hikers broke out
bongo drums and maracas, which filled the open field with an insistent
beat. The old dog sniffed around at the end of its leash, bewildered by all
the crowds, the strange smells, and the trail dogs here with their pilgrim
parents. At one point Tagalong, Mass's ingratiating companion, rushed out
snarling and righteous to chase the old dog away, defending tent and food
bowl. Mass apologised, but I couldn't help thinking of the turd in the
playroom of the Episcopal Church in Manchester Center. That night, several
campers began shooting off fireworks, which spooked the old dog, making it
bark and quiver and press up against me in my tent. I fell asleep to the
sound of the bongo drums, the whoops of celebration, and the buzz of
conversation.

The main event the next day was the hiker parade, a Trail Days tradition,
where hikers past and present joined together in a raucous half-mile stroll
through the streets of Damascus. On the way over I saw Globetrotter and
Time to Fly filling water balloons at a spigot. "It's a hot day, bro," Time
to Fly said. "Gotta cool down somehow."

We gathered in front of Dot's Tavern, west of town, in a grand, electric,
raucous crowd. A high school flag squad mustered in one parking lot,
several Model T and Model A Fords coughed and idled in another, county
deputies zipped around in ATVs with signs on them reading, "This equipment
purchased with money seized from drug raids." Rumor was that the FBI was in
town looking for information about a suspect wanted in an abortion clinic
bombing, thought to have made his getaway along the Appalachian Trail. A
fire truck stood ready to bring up the end of the parade. In one corner,
four or five thruhikers had donned dresses and face paint. One of them was
Loon, wearing a frilly turquoise nightgown, his head shaved bald. He was
thruhiking again this year, and had made it to Damascus without injury.
Perhaps this was the year he'd finish on his own. Several people had rigged
up banners, like a college reunion parade. Class of 1996. Class of 1997.
Most of the familiar faces seemed to be gathering behind the Class of 1997
banner, so I moved over toward it. Then someone elbowed his way into our
part of the crowd.

"Hey," he said. "Where are the hikers gathering?" We looked at each other,
confused. Was he blind?

"Oh, you mean this year's thruhikers," someone said, the distinction slowly
dawning.

"Yeah," he said.

"You guys go in front, I think."

"Right, thanks," he said, and pushed off into the crowd.

Then, with a bump and a bang, the parade started, and a whoop went up from
all assembled. The old dog walked next to me, nervously, trying not to get
stepped on as we shuffled forward and water balloons began flying back and
forth, splattering at our feet. Any supposed order to the groupings of
thruhikers broke down quickly, as everyone crowded to the front.
Townspeople and tourists gathered along the way to watch and cheer, along
with former thruhikers taking pictures and throwing water balloons. Many of
us had brought our own water cannons and buckets, and paid the balloon
bombers back in kind. On through town we marched, in fits and starts--one
last limbo walk with our fellow pilgrims.

The procession turned left in front of the post office, away from the main
street, to the Virginia Creeper trail and the old railroad bridge over the
river. Off sped the cars and fire trucks and ATVs to meet us on the far
side, near the town park with its pavilions and booths and concession
stands. Over the bridge we walked, two or three abreast, quiet and a bit
subdued now, as the voice of the river grew around us and the grand
procession crossed over. From there we left the trail and dispersed into
the world that buzzed ahead of us with its voices and loudspeakers and
souvenier T-shirts and funnel cakes and homemade ole-fashioned lemonade and
Trail Days gear specials and commercially led thruhike programs and
mountain souveniers and Philly cheese steaks. Pretty soon the old dog and I
had walked through the crowd, so we sat down on the grass in front of the
pavillion and listened as the proud citizens of Damascus, Virginia, held a
memorial service for the founder of Appalachian Trail Days, whose vision
had brought about this marvelous festival, this boost to the local economy,
this nationally-famous celebration that had given Damascus, Virginia, the
lasting distinction as "The Friendliest Town on the Trail."

On and on they droned. I looked at my watch. The annual hiker talent show
would begin in fifteen minutes, and more events were planned for that
night, and the next morning. But as I gazed around at the crowd in the
park, it came to me that my limbo walk had ended. I didn't belong here
anymore. Time to go back, finish the manuscript, start something new.

"Come on, old girl," I said to the dog, "let's go home."

When we got back to the car, I refilled the water dish in the back seat and
the old dog drank gratefully. I shut the door, turned on the ignition, and
backed out. We picked our way through the parked cars near the tent city to
a sun-dappled sidestreet, and then to the main drag, U.S. 58. From there we
turned east, driving up into the high country near Mount Rogers.

=46ive miles out of town, as the highway began to climb, we approached a
place where the Appalachian Trail crossed. I had hitchhiked back to town
from there a year before, just before the Sheep Rains. A young woman in
drab polypropylene, with a backpack, hiking sticks, and gaiters, emerged
from the trees near the white blaze and waited for the car to go by. She
was small and bony, and had shaved her hair bald like the singer Sinead
O'Conner. She must have left Damascus that morning, overwhelmed by the
crowds, perhaps, or maybe just trying to keep on schedule. I waved as we
went by but she didn't notice. In my rearview mirror I watched as she
looked carefully both ways, then stepped forward strongly, crossed the road
in a few strides and, without the least hesitation, vanished into the
woods.

from A SHORT HISTORY OF A LONG WALK
(c) 1998 Robert Rubin and the Rhymin' Worm
Please do not re-post





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