Project Eveningland

6/25/2023 Sunday

There was no rooster call in the morning, but if there had been I would have been awake for it. I packed in the dark, clean, cool air of my little basement getaway. God I love the polished brick flooring in the hallway. I changed my plans at the last minute.

It’s probably going to rain today and it sure looks likely to tomorrow. I don’t need a day off but I don’t fancy hiking in the rain all day just to face down more. And then my old buds Wedge, Hide, and Lost in Town came to me and I remembered to ask about slackpacking options. Barbara and I fixed up a 15-mile day that would end with me sleeping here again. She drove me to Wind Gap and dropped me there. I hiked southbound all day, returning to the pickup point from last night (which is very close to the house).

On the drive to Wind Gap, we saw a buzzard on the road that took flight but so slowly that there were only feet between it and the windshield (and that was with gentle braking). Barbara asked me if I thought it might be an omen and I said, “yes, an omen of thrift and efficiency” (on account of it being a carrion eater). That was for me. I said that for me because I had had the same dark thought.

Another fun thing from our drive: she called the terrain ahead “potato salad,” though she was careful to explain that her information wasn’t firsthand. I spent the whole day feeling reassured by that metaphor. First I tuned it up. It’s like walking on rock hard potato salad if you were the size of a mouse. That kind of tread (sharp angled rocks of a similar shape to cubed potatoes) is miserable, but not the worst.

The worst tread here is like being the size of a jelly bean and trying to clamber over greased cornflakes. I know, I know, potato salad is a real food. So are greased cornflakes—it’s a traditional Cloud family dish that we eat on… oh, let’s say Groundhog Day. Or maybe we ate it as a punishment for insouciance—my memory is fuzzy. In any case, imagine yourself, that little bean, making your way through a haphazard pile of giant cornflakes with knobbly, crusty surfaces that cannot be trusted to hold your weight. Slippery in the rain (milk) also. Or is the rain the grease? What’s the mayo in the potato salad?

I went overboard on the food analogies for different kinds of tread. I particularly dread jawbreaker tread (solid rock) and have a special aversion to a rare kind of muddy soil that’s not unlike seven-layer dip in that the top layer looks firm but if you try to walk on it woe be unto you. Lots of that stuff around mile 325. Walking in a swampy area with soupy brush is like walking across a giant vat of shredded sandwich turkey—the kind you eat between a cheap hamburger bun at a high school graduation party in flyover country. Ok that’s enough of that.

As usual, when headed southbound on a primarily northbound trail, you see everybody. I met some familiar faces and ran into Blackbeard and Serendipity, whom I think I last saw at Weary Feet almost 700 miles ago.

Rain threatened most of the day but held off. Tiny toads and salamanders cavorted. Then, late afternoon, rain did arrive, but not before a gorgeous hourlong period of stormlight. It’s like golden hour but with much more energy, much more danger.

It is a summer feeling, the pre-storm tension. Feeling it outdoors, miles from shelter, frightens me. As lightning flashed in the distance, my mind turned back to that vulture from this morning and the slippery rocks between me and safety. I must remain steadfast!

The vulture wasn’t there to warn. (Obviously—it was there to eat). But if we must see it as a portent, let it remind us that we are still alive. I am in the rain, on the rocks, far from home. But also alive and still in the game.