Project Eveningland

6/4/2023 Sunday

The tiny window air conditioner hummed nicely last night and kept me asleep until a very reasonable hour. I heard the tiniest sound sometime after 7:30. Was that a knock?

It was just the softest, politest, most demure knock. I can’t even remember what Bodie said this morning, only that very very unassuming knock. Folks were arriving for church downstairs.

There’s a bathroom/shower/laundry combo on the side of the building that’s just for the hikers, and can be accessed from the outside even when church is in session. Very humane. Mostly we hikers hung out in the “fellowship hall” with some parishioners. It is full of tables and fridges and this and that. A swell place to hang and chat.

Another hiker, 21 and just starting a flip-flop hike, offered me a breakfast sandwich. We struck up a conversation and now we know that there are three gay male thru-hikers including me staying at the Pentecostal hostel. And another queer woman besides. You could set a musical here, honestly.

If we can dwell on the the thing for a minute: that makes this the gayest hostel experience I’ve ever had. Bodie brought up the unlikeliness of this confluence and observed that maybe it’s not so uncommon—“churches are the only place around to sing sometimes.” Or something like that.

I think my conversation with the young man (the third gay man) may have been really meaningful for him. He also has joint issues related to hypermobility and has recently reckoned with his inability to be one of those hikers who cranks out 20s all the time. He is ahead of the game because, I learned, he has a dad who says the most wonderfully encouraging things to him. That young guy is lucky to get to hear such loving wisdom from an early age.

I did my morning essentials and slept for an hour or two. I skipped out on services. I’d told Bodie he could hide out in my private little air conditioned room with me during services, hidden away on the tiny second floor of the large sheet-metal-and-cinder-block building. (The bunk rooms below are much less private). He and I sat up in my room speaking very, very directly. We talked plainly about our positions on hiking, life, and other things without chatty indirectness and false humor.

Ideas and positions from the services made their way into circulation through the other hikers and confirmed secondhand the prudence of sitting out with the “cool kids.” For a minute I thought myself a wellspring of moral corruption, a Satan in the rafters. But then I picked a more reasonable position: I’m here on a different mission than the church folks, but since I have clear boundaries, we can be friends. I think we have come to be.

It was a very intellectually rigorous morning. Then I waited too long to seek out lunch. Bodie and I walked down to the BBQ place but they were out of food. We had to walk back to the church/hostel and arrange a shuttle to eat and shop.

Everybody had the same idea. We went to Walmart with two groups in two cars. There’s an older couple I met back in the Shenandoah who are, on the one hand, sort of cute in the way they embody a midwestern fussiness and, on the other, exasperating because they have a bickery way of making decisions that got between me and food. He looks like a tan, thinner Santa.

Also with us was that emergent tramily from last night: Elliot (“Salamander” [16]), Emmet (“Aristotle” [18]), their mom, and Hungry Bird, a woman in her mid 20s whom they met on trail and who’s been hiking with them. They’re all flip-floppers eight days into their thru-hike.

Bodie and I split off to get lunch at Dairy Queen, whereupon a very rough gentlemen used the vaguely Ukrainian colors of Bodie’s hat as a pretext to deliver some passionate, ungrounded critiques of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I watched the Indian family running the DQ regard him warily. He seemed at the edge.

After a rigorous shop, we all waited in the shade outside Walmart for our ride back to the hostel. I helped Sacajawea (the mom) understand how to find resupply points more easily. Also, we all set about working with Aristotle to help him articulate his values in a way that does him more credit and is less off-putting to women. As Hungry Bird put it, sometimes it’s keywords—“roles,” “tradition,” “preserve”—that are putting people off or raising their hackles.

We all split when we returned to the church to sort groceries. We will reconvene after the Bible study hour to share a meal. It was a good choice to come here. Elliot was joshing me about my insistence that the cliché, “the trail provides” is the wrong way to think about it. The trail doesn’t provide. People and patience do.