Last year, I wrote this thinking about my first day on the AT. Thought I would put it back up to help (or not help) the class of 2014. At least you might get a laugh or two. This is the way my first day on the trail will go… March 11 (Sunday) 2013…I stood in the parking lot of Big Stamp Gap and watched my friends truck disappear down the road. I wonder, Is it too late to change my mind and get the hell off this mountain. Even the sound of the truck was now gone. RATS!!! Trapped! The question had been ask and totally answered. The sun refused to peek through the steel-gray snow-filled clouds. A large flake of snow drifts lazily in front of my face. I look off to the west and see a wall of white moving toward me. Oh, crap…not snow!? My first 30 seconds standing on the trail and here we go with the taunts. I shouldered my pack and make a few strap adjustments. Heavier snow starts to fall pushed at acute angles to the ground by the now roaring wind. I start the hike back to the top of Springer. After a half an hour of walking south a small clearing comes in view with the summit of Springer. The plague!!…the beginning…the end…and the first white blaze painted on a rock sticking up from the guts of Springer Mountain. Thoughts of Gator Gumps naked ass planted on that plague shot through my head. I rubbed my forehead repeatedly saying, Go away mental image. Go away mental image! So many dreams and adventures had begun right here on this spot. So many hoped for dreams and adventures begun only to end right here. I wondered were my dreams were going to lead---fulfillment or failure. But like Scarlet, Id think about that tomorrow or the day after I hug the sign on top of the Big K. More snow covered the plague as I stood there looking at it. The first white blaze disappeared as I watched it blending then disappearing with an increasing blanket of snow. With the all to often taken photograph stored someplace in the digital circuits of my iPhone, I began to retrace my now disappearing tracks in the snow north on the Appalachian Trail returning to Big Stamp Gap. At the gap I searched the parking lot for my friend and his truck, but no luck. A loud snap sounded in my head as my life line back to hearth and home broke. What had I gotten myself into, you old fool? What were you thinking? The parking lot was a clean slate now with more layers of snow quickly being added. I thought briefly about writing my name in the snow as some proof I had been there. My hero Zach Davis had done it. But his first name had only four letters and mine had six letters. It wasnt going to happen. I hadnt drunk enough water. Besides, I couldnt make up my mind which font I was going to use---Old English Script or Helvectica. Oh well…just get moving…NOW!!!! There was a traffic jam of thoughts in my head as the trail and I made for Stover Creek Shelter. Stover Creek Shelter was my first nights goal. A massive distance of about six miles for the first day. Maine was getting closer. I could feel it. WooooHoooo! This boy is on fire (my apologies to Ms. Keys)!!! Wait…! Was that Stover Creek Shelter walking toward me? (Hey…give me a break. This is my world and shelters walk toward me…I dont walk toward them. Work with me folks.) Yeeeeahhhhh!!!! First shelter appeared out of the snow and forest. Do they have mirages on a snowy mountain top or is that only in hot desserts? Nope…it really was the shelter. It sure looked like the pictures I had seen of it. Yeah, real wood holding up a roof…it was my nights goal shelter. I took a look around the shelter and wondered where the switch was that turned on the heat for the shelter. How rude!!! No switch! No heat?! The ATC was going to hear about this. Well, it wasnt my cozy library at home with its massive fireplace, but this shelter and several hundred more like, or not like, this one would be home for the next six months. Home away from home… Home sweet home… and a hundred more ole saws popped into my head. I found a broom and swept the snow back outside that had blow into the shelter and onto the sleeping platforms. The snow outside (outside??? Was there a inside and outside to an AT shelter?) had all but stopped. The wind, I hoped, would die down as the afternoon aged into dark. My stove made me happy with hot chocolate. My sleeping bag made me even happier with the warmth of my conserved body heat. My friends had laughed at me when I told they that I was carrying a rather heavy sleeping bag the first part of my hike. The temperature, my iPhone told me, would go down to 25 degrees tonight. My friends who had left on the trail a couple of days before me had sleeping bags that were rated to 30 degrees and my bag was rated to 20 degrees. I would be warm tonight…they would be cold. Let it be saying that I got the last laugh on this one. So here it comes…HA!!!! I grabbed my journal and a pen…it was time to waste ink, paper and kill the Queens English. I made a drawing of a shelter in the snow. The snow in the drawing…no problem, white journal paper. After much wasted effort, I arm-lengthen the drawing and studied it for a few minutes. It looked like something Picasso would have drew coming down from a really bad one room trip on LSD. I thought --- later this spring when a search party found my freeze-dried body in my sleeping bag and looked at my journal, read my last thoughts and saw my last drawing, the rescuers would think, This guy, no doubt was the product of a first cousin marriage since he comes from Kentucky. Or at the very least, he comes from a gene pool the depth of a coat of morning dew on grass. Voices!! People???! Thoughts of Tolkien and his description of the Shire popped into my head. There are too many people in my head! Did I make a wrong turn at Springer. Was I in the Shire? If these people coming through the woods are short, walking in the snow with hairy feet, Im outta here!!!!! Nope…four normal people. RATS!!!! Yet another opportunity/excuse to leave the trail missed. Where was Frodo and Gandalf when I needed them? The hikers made themselves at home in the shelter and dropped gear all around and outside like leaves from a Gingo tree after the first killing frost. People names flew and spaces on the sleeping platforms were claim. Stoves roared! The day died with friendly conversation. Candles flickered. Snow began to fill up the woods outside the shelter once again. The sound of a creek wrapped me in a blanket of soft sound and sleep was not too far on the heels of the start of the creeks symphony. Day one on the AT…finished. Standup...class of 2013.
Posted on: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 16:22:21 +0000
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