validation

I haven't posted here in a long time.  There was no single big reason, but several smaller ones, and most of them really aren't worth mentioning.  The biggest is that I was working on something else.

Before I started my hike last spring, I had already decided that I wanted to write about it.  I kept a careful journal each night of the hike (save one, on the night of what my friends and I agreed was The Worst Fourth of July Ever.  I wrote about that day on the 5th, for reasons too numerous to mention in a parenthetical aside), and frequently considered how I might describe the things I experienced along the way, the people I met, and the unbelievable discomfort of a toilet seat so cold that it prevented pooping.  Then I got home, and crashed hard.

For the first week or two, I barely moved.  I cooked, and I walked--very slowly--to the grocery.  People passed me on the sidewalk, which isn't something that usually happens to me, but my knees still ached, and my ankles, though improving quickly, still felt like they had broken glass in them.  As I shuffled along, distracted mothers pushed strollers past me, and a surly voice in the back of my head would growl, "Sure, you can pass me NOW--I just hiked two thousand miles this summer!!"

Thirteen days after my hike ended, I started writing.

I managed to take slightly less time writing about the trail than it took me to hike it.  To maintain a sort of false pressure on myself, I sent an updated copy of the manuscript to a friend at the end of every week.  To justify the email I would send her, I had to make significant progress in what I had written.  She was thrilled to get more details of my hike; I was thrilled that she seemed pleased with what I had written.

When I finished writing, I started over and read everything I had written, proofreading, correcting, and revising as I went.  I sent that second draft to the same friends, plus three other "test readers," and then closed the file.  I wanted to get feedback from people who didn't know my story.  Asking people to read 82,000 words of a deeply personal, revealing story is like showing up to a party stark naked and hoping nobody will notice you.  I was anxious and edgy for weeks.  Each Wednesday, I marked the passage of another week without word from any of my test readers.  When a month passed, I considered sending a reminder email to my tiny cadre of previewers to remind them that it was ok to say that they hated it, as long as they tried to tell me why.  I just needed to get some sort of feedback on what I had done.

This Saturday, I received a large manila envelope in the mail.  One of the readers had printed the entire manuscript and hand-written her thoughts in margins and on the backs of pages.  She'd caught some mistakes that I'd missed, and some of the annoying things people do when writing that drive me crazy when I see them elsewhere.  Somehow, I hadn't caught them all in my own work.  She also had lots of very helpful, insightful comments on the product taken as a whole.  As soon as I opened the envelope, I sealed myself in the bedroom and read everything she had written.  The Girl and her brother were in the living room watching Doctor Who, but I didn't care, because finally I'd heard back from someone who read my book, and more importantly: she'd liked it.

I was out late that night for unrelated reasons, but I still felt great until I finally got to bed at three in the morning.  For the first time since I'd finished the trail (which was itself the first time in a much longer period), I felt really good about something I'd accomplished.

Now there will hopefully be more feedback, more revisions, and then I'm going to try to get my book published.  It will be the second time I've tried to get a book through the gauntlet of publishing, and the first non-fiction attempt.  It's scary to think of it in such terms, but if all goes well, I won't be the naked guy at the party, I'll be naked in front of the world.  But I still want to do it.  I love writing.  I love sharing my adventures.  I'm not always comfortable sharing my pain and personal life, but this was a very personal story, and a very personal adventure.  I could say that I'm sharing it because it might help people, but I'm not the humanitarian people mistakenly assume that I am.  I'm doing it because I hope it helps me.

Dibs

We went to a LOT of weddings last fall.  A lot for me, anyway.  We did talk to one person who had seven in one year, and we only went to four, but that was in the course of two months, spread from Cleveland to Colorado.  The Girl and I were fairly evenly matched; two weddings were "my" friends (they both prefer her now) and the other two were her friends (no air-quotes necessary).  However, she wasn't in either wedding, while I, for the first time ever, donned a tux and stood by a friend on the day he put on the One Ring (it binds him).

For me, that was a bit of an adventure in itself.  Given the scope of the planning that went into this wedding, I think it might have qualified as an adventure for anyone who attended, and several people who might have just wandered past the festivities.  That's why I'm breaking my usual post schedule to put this up on the first anniversary of one of my best friends.  I wish you could have gone hiking with me, wanker, but I understand that there are extenuating factors to consider now.

I wish you both the best, C and M.  Happy anniversary, and many thanks for everything you do!

It's the glass pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

Remember our friend who does glassblowing?  She invited us to help again with her fall harvest of glass pumpkins.  I've only personally known one other person who did glassblowing, and she did it as a class; as she told it, the instructor did most of the work, but she got to make pumpkins as part of the class, and she was pretty excited about the results.  Our local glassblowing friend took a class in college, got into it, and now works on her own using rented time to produce all of her pieces (it's expensive enough to buy your own materials, but installing the kiln and other necessary appliances in your apartment would be ridiculous. And really, really hot).

The catch for her is that some of the work is easier to do when she has a little help.  Fortunately, I'd do that sort of thing for free because I like seeing how stuff is done, and I'm fascinated by learning new processes.  She's still willing to add the enticement of giving us one of the pieces we help make.  If you want your own, check out her store!

Wood forms have to be soaked in water so they don't burst into flames.  As it is, you still smell them smoking a little.

Newspaper has to be soaked, too, for the same reason.  It smokes a lot more, and ashy bits flake off and float around as she works.

This mold provides pumpkin-y ridges. 

That pinch point will be the top of the pumpkin.  Later, we break it from the blowpipe at that point, and the stem is added as a separate piece before the glass cools.

If pumpkins don't have a flat base, they roll away and shatter on the floor.

The pieces will slowly cool in this box over 12 hours.  Cooling faster will cause them to break.

Tools of the trade.

Prost!

A year ago today, The Girl and I were in Colorado, eating venison sliders and gourmet bacon-wrapped mac and cheese nuggets as appetizers between a friend's wedding and the dinner that followed.  Rain had botched many of our other plans for the trip, but we managed one good hike, a couple nice strolls, and a brewery tour.

This summer, I'm hiking the Appalachian Trail; the couple who got married in Colorado got engaged while backpacking in Wildcat Hollow, a backpacking trip I remember from my youth which for me was distinguished not by promises made, but by my aunt's encounter with pornographic fungus, my cousin's mental breakdown as she tried to play solitaire with a euchre deck, and my brother forgetting to take toilet paper when, in a fit of uncharacteristic modesty, he hiked at least three hundred yards from the trail before digging his cat hole.  It is arguable which of us had a more memorable time in Wildcat Hollow, but I don't want to make a contest of it.  I just have funny stories; my friends have each other, forever.

I wrote this post before leaving on my hike, because although they plan to visit at least once during my long walk north, I doubt it will be on this weekend, and I don't know yet whether I'll be off the trail in time to say this in a more personal manner, so I'm leaving it here to magically appear on the appointed day, and hope that they see it.

Happy anniversary, C and L.  Cheers!

The Girl took this picture on the night before the wedding, as we waited for our monster burgers.  They were delicious.

By the numbers

I went through my journals this morning and compiled a list. Some of these numbers may be off by a little (for instance, I lost track of how many round Treebeard, Margarita, and I bought for each other in Port Clinton), but the following gives a pretty good idea of how my hike went, in purely quantitative terms.

Pizzas consumed: 10
Beers consumed: 30
Burgers consumed: 15
Showers: 30
(tiny) loads of laundry: 10
Glasses of wine: 2
Nights I shared whiskey with other hikers: 5
Ice cream cones: 8
Ice cream sundaes: 7
Other ice cream (in gallons): 1.875
Sets of pole tips: 4
Pairs of shoes: 6
Pairs of camp shoes: 3 (one was given to a camper who had inexplicably lost her shoes; someone gave me a replacement pair, and I replaced those with something lighter that fit me better once i had the chance)
Pairs of socks: 3 (one was damaged while drying in front of a fire in the Smokies; one pair made it all the way from Springer to Katahdin)
Ticks found on my body: 7
Tick bites: 1
Mosquito bites: innumerable
Nights spent in hostels: 10 (one of those nights was in my tent on the hostel's back yard)
Zeros: 8
Neros (less than ten miles): 4
Catholes dug: 5
Catholes used: 4
Damsels rescued: 1
Books read: 5
Ponds I swam: 4
Rivers forded: I forgot to count those, but there were a lot more than I was supposed to have
Times I gave directions to shorter-term hikers: 6
Pack weight: 28-35 pounds
Passenger weight: 6 pounds
Calories consumed per day (estimated): 5,000
Nights spent alone: 8
People who came to see me start: 4
People who came to visit along the trail: 15
People who came to hike with me: 2
People who sent mail (and packages): 4
People who came to see me finish: 12
Generations of my family represented on the final day of my hike: 3
Generations of my family represented at dinner that night: 4 (my nephew was too young for Katahdin)
People who donated: 38
What they donated: $1,403
Disturbing mail: 2 (both were very well-wrought jokes)
Disturbing people: 3
People I met who I thought may pose a danger to me: 0
People I met who I thought may pose a danger to themselves: at least 6
Average speed (including zeros and neros): 18.06 miles/day
Days over 30 miles: 6 (I think)
Days that were really close to 30 miles: about the same
States: 14
Miles in the Hundred Mile Wilderness: 99.4
Trail Miles: 2,185.3
Days: 121
Bucket list items completed: 2 (same item, 2 lists)

The Ballad of Kenny Fauquing-Smythe

The following story is true, and contains a lot of colorful language.  If you're not old enough to buy an "Explicit Lyrics" CD without an adult, go read something else.  If you are easily offended, you probably don't spend much time with me anyway, but go read something else today.  Names have been changed to protect me.

It was late, it was dark, and it was raining.  The Girl and I decided to just stash our stuff in the car instead of trying to hang a bear bag.  The trees in our area didn't even have limbs below thirty feet, so it was much easier and, we believed, more expedient to just walk the three-quarter mile trail to the car.  The rest of our party was either engaged in bear-bag hanging efforts, had already crawled in their tents, or had given us their leftovers to stash in our car, "since you're going down there anyway."

I had just lifted the hatch of my car and started to load our things when a slightly younger man careened up the dirt road and into the parking lot, winded and wide-eyed.  Jay told us his story in a rush of clipped sentences which didn't quite mesh until much later in the night, after I had heard corroborating and supplementing accounts from his friends.  Jay and his wife, on their way to a camping weekend with two other couples, had come across a crashed pick-up truck with two men standing beside it.  They had offered the strandees a ride, being charitable on a rainy evening.  One of the men had begun threatening his saviors.  "He had knives," Jay told us, "But I took them away."  Despite his story, I had already surmised that Jay was not our generation's Bruce Lee, and I wasn't sure how he had managed to disarm the man.  "Well, he gave me his knives," he explained.  "I put them over there," he added, pointing to a large rock at the corner of the parking lot.  "He said I should take them, because he was afraid of what he might do.  Then he told me he was gonna cut me, so I took his knives."  Since arriving, Jay hadn't gone near that rock, which tells us that this was his second trip to the parking lot where we now stood.  This parking lot marked the terminus of a single-lane dirt road in, relatively speaking, the middle of nowhere.  The fact that he came back to the same lot looking for help tells us something else about Jay: he was really, really lucky that we happened to be there (you thought I was going towards a different conclusion, didn't you?  That's ok--they're both valid).  Jay added that he had left the guy who had offered his knives with two friends.  I looked behind him and saw three figures approaching at the outer limits of my headlamp's beam.  "Is that them?" I asked.  Jay spat out a panicked noise and dashed past me.  I told The Girl to get in the car, and to be prepared to go find help.  She expressed concern over my own safety, and I reminded her that numbers were on my side.

Then I met Kenny.

Kenny was accompanied by Jay's friends, Adam and Brad.  As Kenny reeled drunkenly around the parking lot, Adam and Brad introduced themselves and filled in some holes in Jay's story, much more calmly than he had.  The three couples (Jay, Adam, and Brad had each left a wife/fiancee/girlfriend in cars somewhere down the road in order to deal with Kenny) had planned to go camping in the area until their evening was interrupted by the discovery of the wrecked truck and the two drunks it had contained.  "Where's the other guy?" I asked.  "Oh, he's still with the ladies. He's not as bad as Kenny."  By this time, Kenny had made it back to our little circle, swaying gently in a breeze the rest of us couldn't feel, and the party really got started.  Until this point, I still thought the highlight of my day would be the bear I had seen that afternoon.

"Whoer yew?" he asked, scowling at me.  "I'm Ryan.  Who are you?"  He slapped clumsily at my shoulder.  "Man, don't you know I am, man?  I'm Kenny Fucking Smith!  I'm Mike Smith's son!"  Clearly, the Smith Dynasty were a locally famous clan, but I had never heard of them before.  He squinted at me.  When we had walked away from the tents, the rain had almost stopped, and I had gone to the car in a lightweight tech tee.  Since that time, the rain had picked up again, and the shirt clung to me.  Water dripped steadily from the hair clumping wetly above my forehead.  Hairs on my arm stood on end, beads of moisture capping each one.  "Man, whire yew all wet?"  I looked to Adam and Brad, each wearing dripping raincoats, smiling quietly, and avoiding eye contact.  I got the feeling they had already met the extents of Kenny Fucking Smith's (Mike Smith's son) conversational range, as I soon would.  "Because it's raining, Kenny.  It's been raining for hours."  "Whut?!"  He looked skyward to check my data, and I thought about the story of turkeys drowning when they look up to the rain.  "You're wet, too, Kenny."  Now he looked at his own wife-beater-clad chest, still dubious as to the verity of my information.  "Huh," he replied, and stepped away from us, considering the new hypothesis.

Adam and Brad consulted for a moment, their eyes on Kenny, and I took the opportunity to talk to The Girl, who had so far remained hidden in our parked car.  "He's drunk, but he's not a threat," I assured her.  I filled her in on everything Adam and Brad had told me, including how at least one of their wives was heading back out the road to look for help.  "You know the area better than they do," I told her.  "See if you can find some sort of Law Enforcement Professional to deal with this guy."  She agreed, and started the car as I went back to Adam and Brad.  She backed the car from the space and pointed it toward the lot's exit just in time for Kenny's drunken bird-mind to see movement.  When he staggered toward her, arms outstretched, beseeching her to stop, it looked to her like a scene from a zombie movie.  A lurching figure approaching in the rainy night, the headlights glinting off its shiny, wet surface as it gargled unintelligible syllables.  The tires threw gravel as she sped past him, hoping she wouldn't veer too far to the left and hit one of the large rocks at the lot's entrance.  As Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) slapped at the hood of my rapidly exiting car, I just hoped he wouldn't scratch my baby.  This was about the time I looked off into the woods surrounding the lot and saw what I still believe was Jay, lying prone in the bushes, fervently hoping Kenny wouldn't find him.  Truly, a hero among men.

Adam, Brad, and I spent the next forty-five minutes to an hour (maybe longer) having the same handful of conversations over and over with Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son).  The first, and most prevalent, was his introductory speech, transcribed above, exactly as it went every single time we had it, with one exception: one time, when he asked if I knew who he was, I told him, "No, I don't know anybody in this area.  I'm from Oregon."  He leaned back so far I thought he might topple over, then uttered in stupefaction, "Oregon??"  I might have told him I was from the Moon.  A little later, he grabbed my arm to ask me again whether I knew who he was, man, because he apparently had forgotten relaying this information to us thirty times already, and suddenly froze.  He squeezed my arm again, then slapped at my chest, another frequently-repeated Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) gesture.  "Man, you work out?  They make 'em strong in Oregon!"  Sure.  Oregon he remembers.

Our second conversation revolved around his continual surprise that we were all wet, and his continued disbelief that it was raining.

The third went like this:  "Man, you got any smokes?"  "No, Kenny, none of us smoke."  "Man, man, you got anything to drink?"  "No, Kenny, we don't have anything to drink."  As if he needed anything to drink.  Considering his options, there was usually a pause before his third question.  "You got any pussy?"  "No, Kenny, we don't have any pussy."  As luck would have it, the women each of us held dear were far away, in locked metal boxes, their feet on the accelerators.  "Well, what fuckin' good are ya??"  We would shrug at this.  Clearly, we are no good at all, and no fun, either.  Perhaps you'd like to go away now?

In between our Kenversations, the three of us discussed our options and swapped our stories.  At one point, Kenny wandered off to consider the informational sign near the entrance to the parking lot, and stepped carefully over the chain gate which blocked unauthorized vehicles from the Forest Service road beyond.  A couple moments later, we heard a WHUMP! and looked up to see Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) face-down in the gravel, the chain swinging wildly behind him.  "Should we check on him?  Is he ok?" asked Adam.  I put my light on the drunk's carcass and watched carefully.  "Eh, he's breathing.  He'll be fine."  A minute or so later, he managed to stand up and wandered over to us to inquire whether we were aware of his identity.  Never one to wait for a response to this particular question, he would push one of us at the shoulder and proclaim, again, "Man, I'm Kenny Fucking Smith, man!  I'm Mike Smith's son!"  Years later, a gathering of friends recounted this story to three others who didn't know it, and wondered for the first time whether Fucking was not an exclamatory adjective, but the maiden name of Kenny's mother, Her Ladyship Eveleyn Penelope Von Trapp Fauquing; this led to further consideration of Kenny's dynastic heritage, and whether Mike Smith used the British spelling of "Smythe" on his family crest.  Perhaps Kenny's surname was hyphenated?

Probably not.

I convinced my sober companions that Kenny would stay wherever he had an audience rather than leave us alone, and that our best option was to move the audience where we wanted Kenny to go.  Namely, away from the campground we planned to inhabit for what remained of the night.  We started walking, and naturally, Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) followed, asking us again why we were so wet, did we know who he was, man, and did we have any smokes/drinks/pussy?  We had made it maybe half a mile from the parking lot when Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) realized he had to pee, and somehow managed to make it all the way to the edge of the road before dropping his fly, at which point he began to assure us that his dick was bigger than any one of ours, and possibly all three combined.  We allowed that this was likely, mainly to avoid the collection of empirical data.  This was about when he slipped and somehow managed to fall underneath the log he had sprayed with his own piss.

Again, Adam and Brad asked if we should help him.  Again, I assured him that he was fine.  I felt that any extra effort Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) expended would be progress towards a sober state.  They caved, feeling a pity I lacked, and it took both of them to get him to his feet.

Ten minutes later, a local sheriff's cruiser approached us.  We stopped, relieved that our part in this play was approaching the end, but Kenny was eager to go meet his new friend.  "Sir, stop right there!  STOP RIGHT THERE!  DO NOT APPROACH THE CAR!!"  For a brief, exhilarating moment, I was certain that I was about to see a drunken moron get tased, but instead the officer deftly turned Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) toward the hood of the cruiser and into The Position One Assumes.  Adam, Brad, and I stepped into a small drive on the side of the road and chatted for a few minutes, watching the show and getting mildly annoyed that we were left to stand in the rain (now a legitimate downpour) while Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son) sat in the front seat of the cruiser, still struggling against a wind nobody else could feel.  Eventually, the officer approached us and asked some questions, never writing anything down or even getting our names.  "Is he a regular?" I asked, already certain of the answer, and was surprised to hear the reply, "No, not really... but he usually has a gun."  "Did you give him a breathalyzer?"  "Yeah, he blew a point-two-four."  (three times the legal limit.  If he could be that drunk and not dead, I can't possibly imagine how he wasn't a regular)  I remembered the pocketknives, and told him where he could collect them as an SUV pulled up from the direction of the parking lot: Park Rangers.  The two agencies spent a few minutes discussing where, exactly, they were, in order to determine jurisdiction and custody of Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son).  A third car approached behind the cruiser, and Adam and Brad left to catch up with their wives.  All three drove away without a single offer to take me back to the parking lot, but I ran (mainly to stay warm--by that time everything I wore was soaked to the bone) and arrived in time to show the sheriff's deputy (who had won custody) where to find the knives which had so thoroughly terrified Jay: three or four of the cheapest, shittiest, gas-station check-out line quality pocket knives I've seen in one person's possession.  Jay's wife arrived, still chauffeuring Kenny's buddy, who was nowhere near as drunk as Kenny Fucking Smith (Mike Smith's son), collected her husband from wherever he had been hiding, and left again, presumably to drive Kenny's buddy home.

The Girl arrived when the cruiser left, and we both watched the Rangers' SUV drive away up the same dirt road that ran past our campsite, again with no offer of help.  We saw toad's eyes gleaming in our flashlight beams on our walk back to the tents.  Everyone else in our group was already asleep, and had no idea we hadn't returned within minutes of delivering our food to the car.  I told her my side of the story.  She said that she had found the truck, and that it had stopped on its way down a steep bank towards a river when it hit a tree.  "One foot to either side," she told me, "and he would've been dead.  Roll over, crash in the river, drown."  Just before midnight, we peeled off our clothes outside the tent, trying to keep the inside dry, but that was the night I discovered my tent had sprung a leak, directly above my forehead.

Someday, I'm going to rewrite this as a country song.

Please, sir, can I have some Muir?

When we left the city to check in for The Girl's most recent marathon, we stopped along the way to explore a little bit of Muir Woods, home to California redwoods.

Visitor traffic is so heavy that this handicap-accessible boardwalk is in place to protect the forest floor.

Redwoods are not quite as immense as the slightly-more-famous Giant Sequoias, but they're still plenty big.  Their size begs you to compare yourself photographically, to prove to other people how very, very, very large these trees are.  Consequently, along the boardwalk where many visitors get their fill of the park, there are numerous signs asking that you stay on the boardwalk and trail; these signs are usually right at the base of the enormous trees nearest to the boardwalk.  The earth between these signs and the trees they ostensibly protect is trampled flat in most places.

A moderate climb.

We veered from the boardwalk to the Ocean View Trail, which led up the valley's side from the visitors' center.  Our plan was to piece together a little loop, return to the car, and finish our drive in time to get dinner and fall asleep by a reasonable East Coast time (her EST body-clock comes in very handy for early-morning starts in West Coast marathons).

For the record, we never did get an ocean view from that trail, but we also turned onto the Lost Trail (found it!) before Ocean View reached the ridge.

The Fern Cliff trail took us back into the valley, passing a footbridge along the way.  I like that The Girl shares my compulsion to cross these, even if they are not along our path, but I was especially fascinated with this one.  Wreckage in  Fern Creek indicated the bridge had been rebuilt, and from what I can tell, both the original version and its replacement followed a similar structural plan: plane off the top of a fallen tree, and add handrails.  The second bridge had the advantage of laying partially on top of the original.

If a dentist did bridgework like this, he'd lose his license.  But I like it for hiking!

Eventually, we found a redwood which was both inviting and reasonably approachable, so we did the natural thing: we put the smaller of us inside to make it look even bigger.

No vegetation was harmed in the taking of this photo.

White Trillium

Wood Sorrel

On May 19, 1945, delegates from the United Nations Conference in San Francisco took a break from the conference rooms to convene at Muir Woods in an area known as Cathedral Grove.  They laid a plaque honoring President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had died a month earlier, and was supposed to have opened the conference.  Fifty nations were represented, and this conference gave us the United Nations Charter, forming the organization we know today.  I like that they took some time to step out into the world they were agreeing to protect, and hopefully saw one of the greatest reasons to do so.

Looking skyward in Cathedral Grove

Wood Sorrel colonizing a fallen trunk.

The hike brought us back to the Vistors' Center, where we had a modest lunch before driving down the road to Muir Beach.  Sun had intermittently peeked through the trees, but it had had its fill of us, and clouds coated the sky.  It made the beach look much more foreboding than it deserved.

We saw a surfer, families with children and dogs, tiny pieces of beach glass, and one large, dangerous shard of broken bottle aching to slice someone's foot open.  Aside from the homicidal litter, it was a very nice spot.  It's easy to see why so many people--and a few sea birds--chose to build their homes there.

Jeans are not optimal wading attire.

 It started sprinkling as we made our way back to the car, but it never got serious about it.  We had our fill, we got to sleep in plenty of time, and she ran a great race the next day.