Project Eveningland

6/7/2023 Wednesday

Yesterday and the day before I felt something in me shift. The trail today was out of a dream.

I sat eating breakfast in the morning on a rock, leaning against a tree, watching the ultras (super fit and fast hikers) from yesterday pass my humble campsite. I briefly chatted with the hottest one—he looks too pretty to be a thru-hiker but he is. Nice guy.

The tread up to Center Point Knob had some rocky bullshit and even a bit of scrambling. The trail passes through giant rock formations hidden in the woods. Such rocks might lurk in any old woods. These, though, are known and loved because of the AT.

Center Point Knob is undersold as an attraction. There was a comment in the app to the effect of, this is the last peak of the Blue Ridge, which AT hikers first surmount at Springer Mountain. If true, today’s walk marked the end of a long ridge walk indeed, and what comes next sounds like more rocks. But, in the meantime, something different and special.

Back in 2019 I started to get not just serious but really serious about long distance hiking. Ben and I planned a thru hike of the 70-mile Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail. Our friend Mike joined. Benny and I drove out to Ohio together to see my family on the way (Mike flew directly to Pittsburgh). I remember looking at the fields of the Midwest on the long drive, and in particular those little lines of trees, real-life pocket forests which often form a border between fields. I liked to imagine a little hiking trail built through those long, thin copses. I imagined long views and breezes, with nice flat tread.

Such a thing exists! It’s precisely what the AT looks like on the approach to Duncannon. I walked in a gentle daze. The ecosystem is probably garbage—compromised by agriculture and isolation. But the pastoral beauty! The cool shade! The sun dappled path! The views across waving-but-not-yet-amber grains! Summer ease incarnate.

So that shift. I remember when it started. It was at that cabin the other day, the one that was all sealed up but had a porch where hikers sit and filter water. I said, to myself, “I would like to sit a spell.” And I did. Then a day later I heckled those ultras at the ice cream challenge. Something in me stirred. Maybe I should touch base with them, make sure they don’t think I’m a jerk. Then I thought, “nah, who gives a shit?”

A huge piece of my need for external validation seems to have fallen away all at once, like an ice sheet collapsing. Here’s a visualization that may better approximate my feelings. Picture an old high school, built in the 1970s and appointed with fixtures from late in that decade. There are mustard yellow chairs in the cafeteria, and fake wood paneling. Soda machines hum gently, their buttons illuminated with pictures of strange retro sodas. The floors are buffed to a high shine. All the surfaces gleam, well-used but cared for. The bleachers in the gym are folded up. Now picture the lights going off, the hallways falling dark in spans. Dim yellow lights shine here and there. One brightens a corner of the industrial kitchens, warm but lonely. School’s out. The equipment is there should it be needed. But it won’t be.

For the record, I graduated high school in 2003, so I have no idea why this mental imagery is styled like 1978. Blame the media. It doesn’t matter; it’s just symbolism. It means—if the shift persists—that I am ready to treat my own judgment as paramount. I don’t need to defer or explain myself anymore.

In the last month or two, I’ve been writing here and there about feeling “less social.” Much less social! I’ve been spending more and more time in my own head and for the first time in my life I like it in there. It’s calm and clear in there. Things make sense in there.

Time with other people once distracted me from rumination. I don’t need that anymore. I feel content to sit in silence. Sometime down the line I’ll write about how this change began, four months before this hike, with something my therapist told me to read. Another time.

I got picked up at one of the many road crossings in this area after a 14 mile day. I’m staying at a lux B&B. One of the innkeepers is endearingly solicitous. I have noticed lately that my quiet, patient countenance both pulls people toward me and scares some, just a little.