Chapter 23. Appalachian Trail from South

From mid-January through February there was a round of solid rest, visiting of relatives and the Atlanta friend, and preparation for the trail hike to Maine that would complete my walk from British Columbia.

Carefully wash sleeping bag and down vest with wool cleaner in the bathtub, spin in the washer and air-dry for days. Mend every doubtful seam. Repair tattered wool long johns to wear during cold spring days; order new wool long johns to change into dry for sleeping. Buy a new mulligan pot to simmer on Appalachian campfires. Talk to a Boy Scout gathering and answer their keen questions about distance-walking and the mountain lion in Arizona that chomped a rabbit in two.

Time passed, but the right foot's instep didn't heal. My friend is a runner; at a running clinic the podiatrist suggested ice, heel pads, and boots with more support than moccasins. I religiously followed these instructions, although suitable new boots couldn't be found until a few days before setting out. The foot had improved enough to start. That it might not allow continuing was a prospect unfaceable.

I was taken to trailhead at Amicalola Falls by a Brown's Guide to Georgia photographer and his friend. A reporter from the magazine had already asked many questions in a session with everything in the pack spread out for inspection. At the ranger station on March 1st in 1979, with food for three days (including two loaves of sister-baked bread), winter gear and extra boots in case the new ones hurt, my pack weighed thirty-eight pounds. The first step then, Jack and Jill went up the hill.

It was a steep mother just to the falls; we envied the impure who drove up. As a symbol, however, of the whole trail and harbinger of hills to come, you couldn't beat it. The next eight miles to Springer Mountain sustained the metaphor; I could believe that many Appalachian Trail hikers don't make it to the start.

But a hero with his own photographer is not to be daunted. Sometime in the afternoon we read the starting plaque on Springer's summit. Not far was shelter and first camp. It would be two thousand miles to Mount Katahdin. The issue was joined, as it reads in the melodramas. Who am I kidding? It was a big moment to be about to live again in lean-tos, at the start of the longest continuously marked footpath in the world.

Next day the leafless trees were somber against a dull sky as we walked to Hawk Mountain. Its shelter was not imposing but I persuaded my companions to use it by pointing out that democratic rain is a great leveler of aristocratic impulses. There were nervous bear-jokes as I got a fire going; the previous occupants had passed on word that they couldn't sleep for the clanging of garbage cans. We slept; I voted for raccoons anyway as disturbers of the peace.

In the morning, mist and rain fell from the sky. Happiness to photographers—he said such weather made more dramatic pictures. My poncho posed grimly from time to time; I knew rain must fall for farmers in this best of all possible worlds, but my heart wasn't in it. However there were impromptu waterfalls in a wonderland of deluge to console the doubtful.

At Gooch Gap we smelled the lean-to fire before getting there. The photographer later said he thought the red eyes meant we were in for a dope-fiendish evening, but it was wood smoke they were low on. Moreover these locals made room for three, although they were full; it isn't always thru-hikers who know how to be human.

The night was stormy and the morning knew no better. At Woody Gap we piled wet into the car of the photographer's friend and sought a motel. When I was signed in they took me to Dahlonega for a first Appalachian off-trail feast before driving themselves back to Atlanta. That was fun, and I was launched.

By morning the rain had finally stopped; the man who put me back on the trail refused payment, the first of many such acts of kindness. The new boots were breaking in nicely, my pack load already lighter by moccasins sent back, and tree buds promised spring—why not walk to Maine?

After a red sunset on Blood Mountain, I inspected the rock shelter's littered dirt floor. Gross, but would you rather get wet? No water below the cliff, take it from a rain-pool then. Find what wood you can and quick, dark is coming. Supper now, and sleep; hang the pack away from rats. Nine miles had me tired, nothing woke me.

In the morning I tripped down the mountain to Neels Gap where the Walaysi Center (camping supplies) was closed. But on the hillside a tent was pitched. Hi, ho: what brings you into the woods so early? "I'm going to Maine." I privately doubted that; his gum boots and extreme youth argued against it. But I was wrong; he went the distance, becoming the Ice Cream Kid who set us an heroic example by belting half gallons of the national dish. Now he was just a green, kind high-schooler who promised to bring me back garlic when he hitched out.

The Tesnatee Gap shelter had burned down, but up the ridge and off trail a discouraging mile was Whitley Gap Lean-to. Unlittered in a lovely site, this Japanese teahouse offered its simple elegance for the rest of spirit as well as tired body. I wouldn't walk a mile for either kind of camel, but if ever I build a house or temple, it should remember Whitley Gap Lean-to.

Rocky Knob the next day was back to reality, its prefabricated plywood floor an inch deep in caked mud. But dry. Along the trail my right little toe hurt, boot a bit too narrow; however there are no blisters, blessing. The fire smokes and my hand is grimy around a cut gotten from breaking rough wood. Did you suppose that every hour on the trail was soul music? But the bloodroot is trying to escape the bonds of spring earth. If it can be resurrected, why not believe the Christians?

By Tray Mountain the rain was gone, replaced by clear cold. On an exposed ridge the lean-to was one of those which seemed to bear the title of shelter by courtesy only. There was another occupant of cold comfort farm, an experienced winter camper who was already thickly bundled. After supper I followed suit, pulling a wool balaclava down over my face as I snuggled into the bag with sweater and down vest on over dry long johns. My eyes stung, but I paid no heed in the warm I had to be.

By morning the price was clear: poison-oak eyes, forehead swollen to the monster or beaten drunk I'd known before. Dormant ivy or dye in wool didn't matter which, the poison earth had punched out again her valiant. Scared he marched a short day to the next shelter at Addis Gap. Eyes, eyes, go away; see again some other day.

But quick to sick and slow to grow, the morning they were the same. At Dick's Creek Gap a good-hearted couple took me by car down to Hiawasee for groceries or hospital. The latter would cost; they were returning to Atlanta anyway, would I come? Yes, back to my friend's house, clinic if need be.

Is hospitality a doctor? The eyes improved some and I knew I'd won again without cortisone. My wool cap was replaced by orlon, and an impervious parka returned to the dealer who had been sure it was uncoated. The old, merely windproof, gear would have to do; condensation inside is too much for raingear to serve in the cold.

Eyes fair after two or three days, I was ready to walk. Brown's Guide people returned me again; this time their reporter came. We hiked to Plum Orchard Gap, sharing a camp on the dirt floor of the gap's lean-to. They were impressed with my fire; I admired the perfect French horn carved in the wall by the photographer. Never mind graffiti, a French horn is art.

Elite of winds, it had been his instrument in the North Carolina Symphony. Now the shutter clicks, and that is art too, but what an ache it must be to recall that time when his days were marked by music. We pay for the resonance of past lives in the coin of regret. Sand, wouldn't it be cleaner and softer to floor this palace with sand? The embers lost their glow and sleep came.

Next day we parted, the reporter sharing out her candy bars. But the photographer's friend, who'd been an editor of the Atlanta Constitution , kept me company on to Bly Gap. Actually he came farther since we weren't sure when the North Carolina border had been reached. At our lunch on a hillside out of the wind, he said one of his offices had been to bestow keys of the city and southern-colonel-ships to distinguished visitors. As I left Georgia, I was to consider myself belatedly so honored. Thank you, sir, and goodbye, deep South that bore me.

The Carolina hills were steep and my foot hurt; I was glad to stop when a large A-frame shelter unexpectedly appeared. Muskrat Lean-to was new but already nicknamed in charcoal, "RAT CITY, USA." Rats or not, it was well placed for me since Standing Indian Lean-to couldn't have been reached by dark. Gathering enough wood for now as well as for the next camper I cooked supper, then sacked out in the vaulted rear for warmth.'

There were snow patches next day on Standing Indian Mountain as I met the first of a drove of spring-breakers, collegiates out to help spring come to the Appalachians. A philosophy major and his friend shared Carter Gap Lean-to with me. She had on her backpack the bumper sticker: festina lente , make haste slowly.

They gave me an Illinois cold, but it could have been as easily Michigan. I walked on slowly, around Albert Mountain instead of over it, to Rock Gap and then next day to Siler's Bald whose old but usable shelter was off on a black-blazed side trail. Here hanging with a note was garlic the young hiker had gotten me but hadn't yet been able to deliver. A lonely camp but for the gift.

Next day a clear sky allowed long views, especially from the tower on Wayah Bald. At Cold Springs I shared a lean-to with hikers who were unfriendly at first, some who fresh from the city expected to meet no other living soul in the wilderness. But the fire brought us closer together; once we were talking, it became a pleasant camp.

A day or two on I reached a major stop on the trail, the Nantahala Outdoor Center, with reputed laundry, backpacking shop, restaurant meals and fresh baked bread! Where paddlers meet hikers, a river is trailcrossed, and mountain music may be heard—what do you mean, the hostel is full?

My face must have been very distressed, for they decided to crowd another cot into the motel room fitted out with bunks that was the hostel. No regular motel rooms were available either since the coming whitewater competition had filled the whole place. We worried about kayaker resentment but what they did was offer a glass of white wine. Supper was a river-runner special, and butter graced the warm loaf.

Next day was planned rest, but a ramp hunt tempted. Ramps are a rite of spring in the Carolina mountains; a strong-tasting wild leek, they're up soon after hypatica blooms at higher elevations. Much higher I learned, panting to keep up on my rest day. Then we began to find ramps and I forgave everything.

You eat the first one and bury a treasure in its stead. Our leader put a gray hair because she hadn't many; I gave the earth a copper penny. Ramps are potent; I could believe that local schoolchildren are sent home if caught partaking, or banished, less humanely, to a closet full of their own breath.

We carried a lot down for cooking with rice or scrambled eggs or for making salad dressing with watercress. On the way I was taught another plant, turkey mustard, which also found its way into my trail mulligan stews. Both are to be used sparingly. Before supper a local mountain man joined the group on benches under packs-for-sale in the equipment shop; guitars were shyly produced and lovingly tuned. A concert then, where Appalachian Trail crosses the Nantahala River.

In the morning, full of vim and hearty breakfast, I began the notoriously steep Stekoah section. It didn't seem so long at first but when I'd gained the ridge and stopped for lunch, a redhead from Alaska (met in the hostel) caught up to announce the time was already mid-afternoon.

This guy worried me; his slurred speech and absent air were consistent with the ten-day fast he had already undergone and meant to continue. As we talked I tried to point out how quickly one could get in trouble on steep places and how few were other hikers, on this stretch especially, to help someone hurt.

But he seemed so far away I couldn't be at all sure I'd reached him. At least he'd had the sense to scout it first with a day pack. It had been difficult enough even this far that perhaps he'd reconsider, I told myself as he left. Fasting should take place in political jails of a far-off land where I am least involved and most needed. Shall the practically moral then inherit a tentative earth?

Going on, it was again steep with no switchbacks, especially the "jump up". I imagined local hunters reaching this point on the ridge and drawling, "you cain't climb the thang, might as well jump up". There was already some erosion in the vertical trail; I hoped it would be replaced someday by zigzags.

Like most thru-hikers I had little sympathy with the notion that the trail should be an obstacle course. The Appalachian Range is so rugged that even a good trail from Georgia to Maine would be a challenge. At Sassafras Gap Lean-to I camped and made ready for an early morning start.

It rained as I left on a hard fifteen-mile day to Cable Gap; I'd have camped in between but for the weather. The ridge is unrelenting; it seems you never go around but up and down, up and down the knobs forever. At good dark I finally reached the lean-to, with wood still to find for a supper fire. Score one for stove carriers. This tired camp was the last before Fontana Dam and Village, entry to Great Smokies National Park.

Next morning in a windstorm I limped along the ridge to its end, then down to a Fontana road. The instep slowed me so much that hurry was needed on the pavement uphill to the village before post office closing; there were no lifts offered. The postmistress surprised me by asking personal questions to establish identity. "Have you had much trouble with hikers stealing one another's mail?" I asked. "None that were caught on," she answered.

At the store the grocer left his shelving to sternly eye my pack that it not be filled with stolen goods. "Can you tell me where is the hotel?" I asked after paying for supplies. "Stone building on the hill", he answered shortly. "Do you know how much they charge?" No answer at all. "Is this the same friendly village I visited in 1973," I asked in disgust, "what's come over you people?" "Getting ready for opening day," he muttered. With the painful foot, weariness, and this reception, I wanted the earth to open for me.

On the hill, at least the hiker dollar was as green as anyone's. I registered, cleaned up, and had an excellent dinner. There was ice for my foot but nevertheless in the morning I could hardly stand on it. That gave no choice but to stay longer in this expensive resort. "Won't need it," I had said to my brother as he slipped an emergency fifty into the pack; now thanking him with all my heart, I paid part of it for another day of applying ice to the instep.

Next morning, citizen and hiker alike woke to a white world with snow still falling. The thought of how much there might be up high scared me, but the foot could be stood on; I meant to at least try rather than spend another day here. A park permit had to be obtained; the procedure is for a hiker to hang around the post office awaiting the ranger's pleasure. In my case they grudgingly consented to send someone to the hotel.

With the permit I waited for a staff-ride to trailhead that the hotel clerk had promised. It didn't materialize and of course it wouldn't do for a real guest to haul a hippie back to the trail. I waited, and finally the clerk called a man with a jeep, warning me that it would cost. I was ready to pay to get the sociology lesson over. But at trailhead the slow-spoken refused payment. I offered again, "You have to buy gas, sir." No charge. Lord, will you spare Fontana for one?

Even with the late start on a snow trail, the first lean-to came before dark. Another hiker showed up, in shorts as if a dreamer felt no cold. A half mile behind me he'd had the luck to see a wild boar. I envied him that. These shelters had indoor fireplaces but the snow discouraged finding enough wood for a basking fire. Still it sufficed, and the snow had not gotten much deeper up high; I meant to go on.

The next shelters were surprisingly crowded for a snowy March; in one of them a skunk joined the company. He was tame enough, plodding about between bunks and massive hiking boots; the collision I feared never came and we all settled down to snores.

Another evening I met two from Indiana shivering and dreaming of the Arizona trip they should have taken. An hour they'd spent on fire for smoke, a minute's fanning with my sleeping pad blazed it up; they'd just quit too soon.

The most snow and ice came on Clingman's Dome, far side, in a deeply eroded trail. More ditch than trail, I could believe stories of short hikers being lost to sight in it. Showing clearly the folly of straight up and down trails in areas of heavy usage, it was the worst piece of trail between Georgia and Maine, a disgrace. In the wintry conditions I was glad to still have my ice axe for the descent, although others negotiated it without one.

Newfound Gap was open to traffic across the Smokies, although there'd been no tourists at the observatory on Clingman's Dome where clearing weather had afforded excellent views. On the highest point of the Appalachian Trail I had felt curiously let down, as if a vista could be spoiled by being made too explicit.

Crossing the road in thought, an elitist conviction hovered about me that rendering a mountain easy for the greatest good of the greatest number did, in fact, ruin it for all. But maybe not, I argued, the far blue ranges don't know who looks at them; they can't tell sweat from horsepower. Their strength is for all and beauty is a dam that breaks at random.

The northern Smokies, really eastern, have better trails; the snow was almost gone. With a lighter sky and early flowers gracing the path it surprised me to realize that my abiding impression of the range was one of dark and brooding beauty.

At Cosby Knob, hikers' permits were inspected by a gun-carrying park ranger. After he'd done with my passport he expressed disbelief that I'd come so far as from Newfound Gap. When I replied that I had started in British Columbia, he seemed to lose interest in such an obvious liar. Before the walk was over I was often to be reminded that my image was off. I could have grown another beard in order to be taken for a hiker, but I remembered even it as unsymmetrical.

Near the park exit at Davenport Gap, a hiker-physician offered a ride into Asheville where I rested a day with relatives-in-law. Returning to the trail wasn't so easy; the bus drivers said they couldn't drop me on the interstate without losing their jobs. Resigning myself to getting back by successive approximation, I bought a ticket for Newport. But when we crossed the trail it happened that a tire needed inspecting, which required my driver to pull over at the interchange. I got off, shaking the man's hand in gratitude for this coincidence.

It was evening; I camped under a bridge of the Big Pigeon River, even finding a few dry sticks there. Reached by a day's climb, the next shelter at Groundhog Creek was a miserable one, but better than nothing if it rained.

However the shelter after that, Walnut Mountain, just over the Tennessee border, was a delight—clean, spare, on a lonesome bonesome ridge looking blue into infinity. Cold clear spring-water not far down and a plentiful store of dry wood that I increased, let the wind blow: this was a home for the nomad to rejoice in. There was a little fence in front of the lean-to; is that why it was so well kept, because pride is contagious?

Now the shelter at Deer Park was passed up in favor of a Catholic hostel in Hot Springs. There I got to play Sherlock; another physician-hiker out revising the North Carolina guidebook had lost his plastic case of precious trail-data, and returned from Asheville to look for it. We all turned the hostel upside down searching before my thought came: let him be examining data on the car hood, leave the case there, and drive off. Sure it could have slipped down anywhere to Asheville, but if we're lucky—.

I searched a hundred yards down the road and there it was! I got a grateful hug from his wife and he looked happy enough to burst. They invited me to the Appalachian Trail Conference in Maine for August; I promised to come if close enough.

It was at the same hostel in Hot Springs that I met a squash player, graduate of Harvard now hiking the trail, and watched him make gorp balls—a delicious cocoction of many things in peanut butter glued together by honey. This was so good he might have been mugged by other hikers for it.

Over the French Broad now and up ridges to a camp at Spring Mountain Lean-to in misty weather. Reaching Allen Gap next morning I rued my light pack; here was a great store if you could eat cigarettes. Fortunately for me a father and son, giving up their hike, offered a way back to Hot Springs where I should have supplied in the first place. They even returned me to the trail. We talked equipment a lot; in particular, the father carried a diver's flashlight so strong the advertisers claimed that a Mack truck could run over it without crushing. I mean to have one the next time I meet a Mack truck on the trail.

With conversation and a hamburger, least I could offer, we were late back to the trail. I rushed to make Little Laurel Lean-to by dark. In the wind and rain come to me, Japanese teahouse. No luck, it was full of Boy Scouts. First I pitched the tarp close by, then the furious wind drove me down to a more sheltered place. Finally I could cook supper, on their fire, thank you. Well at least it showed me I could manage if need be without lean-tos.

Wake to a rime world and walk in the crystalline forest. When the sun came shyly to dismantle decorations of night it left lakes and bays below the ridge where white fog swirled against cleared hilltops. On then quiet in this filigree, hear the soft fall of deferred snow and envy no living soul, not even moonwalkers.

By Locust Ridge, Harvard had caught me even with a pulled leg-muscle. The wire bunks in this shelter were torn and twisted, their usual fate. I put discarded iron roofing sheets over one bunk and made do; he set up his tent behind. A good camp finally, even if my bed groaned on shifting.

Next evening at Sam's Gap I laid out my pad and sleeping bag on the back porch of an abandoned house; he used the tent again nearby. We shared a cheerful fire; the rain held off. (This camp was dubbed Dead Man's since the spring lay down-slope from a cemetery).

In the morning he pushed hard to make the Nolichucky River with its nearby town of Erwin, Tennessee where he hoped for advice on the pulled leg-muscle from a high school coach or trainer. I stopped at No Business Knob Lean-to, but didn't cook since I was nearly out of food. Munching on crackers I watched, for a change, someone else struggle to make a fire with damp wood. Then I lent my pad to help fan it.

The bearded Pennsylvanian was part of a fast-hiking group, blond young woman also from Pennsylvania and redheaded man from Massachusetts, who had started separately but began to camp together when it appeared their pace and interests were similar. This banding together, romance not necessarily implied, is not uncommon on the lonely and difficult trail. Next morning we passed and repassed one another in pleasant conversation down to the Nolichucky; then it was to town for me while they finished another twenty-mile day.

At the edge of town a motel wanted $18; I tramped farther in to sleep on the YMCA floor for $1.50, joining the Harvard graduate whose leg was already better. Hurrying to get supplied and cleaned up I just made it to a bargain matinee of Blazing Saddles . Back at the "Y" the clerk reeled off plots of other Mel Brooks films; since Harvard had a notebook, this guy also filled us in on Erwin's colorful past.

For example, it is a white town or was until recently, and one of the few municipalities ever to publicly execute an elephant by hanging. She had been implicated in more than one circus injury; a court order in Kingsport, Tennessee decreed her death, but that city had no facilities for hanging elephants.

Now Erwin came to the rescue; as headquarters of the famous Clinchfield Railroad it had derricks capable. The animal was duly transported and hung by the neck until. There was even supposed to be a faded photograph extant celebrating the occasion. Added the clerk, there was now talk of a reënacted tourist gala using a sick one. Provided a terminal elephant could be found. This was Good Saturday.

In the morning there was no way out of the locked (to keep drunks in or out?) YMCA building except a toilet window; I escaped, had a big café-breakfast, and walked into Easter morning. I had been invited to church services on the edge of town, but with no rides offered it was hard to arrive in time. Over my trail the leaved trees, also back from the dead, made a Christian arch.

That night Curly Maple Gap; then came an easy day even with bad instep to Cherry Gap Lean-to where awaited a welcoming committee. The Brown's Guide photographer, editor friend, and a tall lady had hiked in to share my plank floor and noisy campfire.

Next morning we descended to Iron Mountain Gap, then drove to her charming farmhouse where I split wood like a householder, received a gray felt hat among other gifts from the world, and even heard one side of Schubert's Circle Quintet before returning to the wilderness. Stuffing a pack is easy, it's leaving your friends that hurts.

The next evening's camp I don't remember, but climbing Roan Mountain's false summits the day after seemed to take a long time. No water at the top; I took ice melt along the ridge, passing up a side trail to shelter although it was late already. Over more bald tops after Carver's Gap, day-hikers outlined against the sky, here is where I met the friendly bird watchers in '73, serene in their quest for snow buntings.

Grassy Ridge Lean-to, where I'd stayed then, was now dismantled, its stones and roof panels lying uselessly about, entropy enforced. What a long mile then to Low Gap! At dusk its shelter wall stared a somber warning of possible rape and theft ahead; dark night, don't speak so. Neither flank of the ridge offered much water; I chose one and found enough. The supper fire seemed a beacon if the meadow dwellers really meant us harm.

In the morning, a climb of Hump Mountain afforded the best views so far of the Appalachians. Rank after serried rank the blue rugged peaks and ridges crowded a horizon wild at their insistence. It's not snow that makes mountains, I thought, as we westerners believe, but the very uplift that starkly proclaims. Neither here nor in the Klamath or New Guinea can trees really hide the turbulent waves of rock flung back at the sky-father.

By a cave, now damp, whose dry leaves had made my bed in '73 I hurried on to the highway. Groceries were near, but shelter two miles farther in Elk Park. At the same motel where once a sleeping bag had been left for me I rested. After supper, on the public service station of television, there was Austin City Limits with Hoyt Axton's group singing his own "Joy to the world, joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me." All right!

Back in the woods the trail instead of gaining an obvious ridge took a bizarre turn, not meandering but apparently seeking out the steepest hollows to climb in and out of, straight up and down as in Stekoah. I asked a local fisherman if inexperienced city people had laid out the trail. He replied they'd lived there all their lives, it was the Forest Service giving us hikers something to do !

To hell with that, can I follow Laurel Fork on down to Denis Cove? Sure I could, but there were many fords as the creek volume grew. Near the bottom, jeep drivers told me it was impassable ahead, that a dirt road should be followed which also led to the campground. It did, easily by car but a long climb and descent for one afoot.

Finally at Denis Cove, lo the poor Indian—hikers here, a retired couple from Louisiana who told me as I pitched camp and fanned a blaze for supper that they didn't even carry a cookpot anymore, favoring sandwiches of peanut butter and occasional sardine. What, me worry; they ate the same at home!

But they would heat up water for chocolate if there was a beer or pop can left about. This was to become their trademark; I knew they'd camped before me if there was a single blackened beer can—only hikers on the trail who could use litter. (And the sandwich system looked more and more attractive as hot summer came on.)

From their map in the morning I learned that the new trail followed the high ridge just yesterday descended, instead of proceeding directly as my map showed. Finally there was a blue-blazed old Appalachian Trail going by Hampton, which we elected. There's a right way, the army way, and sweetest of all, my way.

As we approached the road I was explaining to them that the car-less in our society are pariahs, that an untouchable may expect help from no one and only hope for contact with the saving remnant who love even alleycats. The man and his wife were horrified, protesting of the many kindnesses shown them from a culture with which they were still one. At the road was a car, stopped. The man walked ahead to it—eager smiling face in a halo of Mennonite beard, a check that anyone would cash, to ask how far down the road was the supermarket?

From a little distance his wife and I saw the window roll up and distinctly heard the click of locking. My heart sank for him. But in a wonderful triumph of mind over icy glass, of self-fulfilling prophecy, I saw him continue asking the question of a locked car. That's it: see no evil, be no evil. Do I hear a laugh, gentle reader? Well, the car window inched down a tiny sliver, a little more, and then the driver smiled. Paint the moral how you please, some saints may be seen even by motorists.

We bought supplies near Hampton and walked straight to impressive Watauga Lake to pick up the white blazes again. Winding up trail to the Dam Road one could be smug over man's superiority to the beaver if its means weren't so much more limited. Where does it come from, this delight that not everyone has in achieving much with little?

Is it that heavy means aren't portable; what has the desert Arab or Appalachian sheik to do with bulldozers? Moreover the beaver has to work; if his chisel teeth aren't worn down they grow back into the brain cavity, finis . No puritan ethic for him, but categorical imperative. The heavy tail is for support on land, rudder and half mile warning signal in water—smack!

When cold comes the water must be high enough not to freeze solid, or the family dies; under ice then he can lower the water level by making deliberate holes in the dam, thereby creating breathing and swimming space. All this he does himself, the logger lover; family is recruited only in emergency.

For delousing he sprawls on an ant hill, letting his little friends eat his little friends. Some of his claws are combs coarse and fine to steamline the longhaired Achaean in water. It is possible to envy the beaver but I climb better on rock. Altogether fitting would be however to have one's Greek family close, a water smack away.

Evening came too quick for Vanderventer Shelter which was said to have limited water anyway; none on this ridge either, so down a hollow I plunged seeking. Soon a trickle; climb back up for the pack, leave an arrow for the Louisianans, and camp in this quiet narrow level. I watched carefully for poison ivy but the succulent fern fiddleheads screamed no warning as I picked many for the stewpot.

True they were too luscious for bracken which are safe, and the taste after cooking was bitter. How can an experienced forager poison himself on the wrong kind of fiddleheads? Overconfidence, say; none of my kin are stupid. A knowledge of first principles is no help to the violently ill; endure, perhaps somehow your cast-iron stomach will prevail. The couple had passed during my sick night; cheerful notes they left me in the next weeks, but no stomach pump.

Vanderventer in the morning, far down to water, fern taste everywhere to gagging, I see even the sun through a green haze. I reach Iron Mountain Shelter grateful that the violence has at least subsided. Tea and a cracker, you'll get better; you know someday this will be just a memory. How I hate green that once I loved.

Soon in this weak day came a rock monument to Nick Grindstaff who lived and died alone, on this ridge then trail-less. Cry no more, night wind. Neither a borrower nor a hermit be; it is too cruel an interest to charge your friends. Stone by stone lifted strangely in the tearful dawn; mother, who will jam my bread? In heaven there are no marriages given; comfort me here in the Gothic sun.

Then rain came but not enough to cleanse me; at Low Gap I mentally counted the number of hikers headed for Abingdon Gap Lean-to. Filled up; here's an abandoned cabin, blue trim, dark polished wood. Already vandalized, what anger it must take to smash something so lovingly wrought. I stopped, took water from the cistern and cold-camped but dry.

Next morning at Abingdon it was clear from the hiker register, our gossip column, that the shelter had indeed been full. Going for spring water to have early lunch I came on a yellow plastic tarp pitched for shelter, pots and pans near a fireplace, and many filled burlap bags. I thought idly, litter pickup, and wondered they found so much.

As I lunched back at the shelter two men arrived suddenly with more heavy sacks. Tall and short, the latter's face was swollen as if he'd been in a fight. "Big sacks; you aren't hikers?" No, they were root-diggers; the burlap bags were filled with roots of the May apple, fabled mandrake. It has a single umbrella-shaped leaf, forest floor often covered with them. An intermediary in Roan Mountain, Tennessee bought the roots for resale to pharmaceutical houses. They said it was a good life to roam the hills digging but the rarer ginseng brought more money. I didn't think at the time to ask, with Donne, if meteorites also had a market.

Rain came again before I reached the Virginia line; instead of camping in it, I waded on to Damascus not looking this time for apple trees in bloom. But they had to be; a sweet-smelling valley floor was my welcome to Virginia. Is there a hostel, sir? Right there, around the corner. Home, dry home.

A big house of two stories set aside for hikers, many there now; against the walls were stacked foam mattresses that supplement the thin pads we carry in our packs. No matter really, all wood is soft as a picnic table where we've also slept; tired you sleep, a secret well kept by mattress makers. In the country if cousins pile up, there's always room—make me a pallet on the floor.

Restaurant breakfast, but little for me, thank you; green eggs and ham, Sam I am, still sick. Supplies and conversation, mail call, that's what trail towns are made of. It's the flowered air of a valley you learn in an hour, and ache to miss when it's gone. On the way out, friendly dogs accompany and with reluctance turn back for home.

A hunter with wooden rifle is even more fun, the game is the thing. Point, Ol' Blue, the hypatica or other immobile butterflies of spring. Invent the crash of walker's staff reporting, a sound of one hand clapping. Good for you, mutt, isn't a life of the imagination better than guarding the road in front of some farmer's house?

A cold rain began; chilled, I took shelter in the first lean-to on an old direct route that misses Mount Rogers. Too sick to make supper I dozed off, then awoke to violent shivers. Crackers, cookies, eat something to get warm. I could use some life of the imagination now myself; if it's this bad in the morning, I'll walk out to find a doctor.

You're a doctor, fool; heal thyself! My kind of doctor was a doctor when your doctor operated out of a barber shop with bloody rags around the pole. Very smart, how does that help you stop the green shivers? Aspirin, balm of willow, take two and call me in the morning. Done, and fuzzily someone related to me fell off to sleep. Of course in the morning I had more guts for going on than for crawling back. There was even some sun.

The next few days are hazy, but I began to mend and the green in my mind was replaced by seasonal. One morning a hard-walking Englishman, John Merrill, passed with a Tennessean who was then keeping up. Word of Merrill had spread on the trail, how he'd already completed a 7,000 mile walk around Britain's coast and expected to finish this trail in June.

Soft-spoken, Merrill told me he'd walked a total of 13,000 miles; I congratulated him, saying he'd pass me soon at the rate he was going. But I laughed at his notion the Appalachian Trail could be used as a warm up for the Pacific Crest rather than vice versa. That this trail is harder surprises most hikers but Ryback is the only one I've heard of to do both and disagree.

After I mentioned to Merrill that the Chinese had ignored my plea to retrace Marco Polo's route, he confided that he had an ultimate walk in mind but couldn't discuss it. I admired his stamina in carrying such a heavy pack, and wished him good luck, no more accidents such as the one that had marred his coastal hike. (Some other Englishman has defined a well-managed adventure as one that is dull.) In parting he gave me his card, and I shook his hand.

The old trail ended in confusion before Dickey's Gap, but not before I'd had the luck to see a hen turkey. This alternate route had been a mistake anyway, because motorcyclists had taken it over; the much longer way by Mount Rogers is preferable. The Gap had no store, despite report; I walked into Troutdale for supplies, but was brought back uphill by a friendly clerk. I then hiked farther along the road to rejoin the white-blazed route.

Raccoon Branch Lean-to was shared that night with two hikers and Sadie, a dog I liked because she didn't bark much and resembled a coyote. Toward the village of Teas in the morning I amicably passed a ditch-cleaning farmer but later Sadie got in trouble. Just curious she circled the horse in pasture, not chasing it but the wrathful farmer ran for his gun. He didn't return immediately and they walked on without a fight, but it must have been very disturbing.

Recalling it, I wonder if something deeper wasn't at stake, if dogs aren't a quintessential expression of territoriality. That is, hikers passing over a man's property aren't so bad because they'll soon be gone, but if they bring a dog it means to his subconscious that they think they own the place. This implied territorial threat would also explain why other hikers, even those who love dogs at home, are apt to resent the hiker with a dog.

Of course we make exceptions for the many trail dogs that are friendly and well-behaved, but there seems almost always an uneasiness, which I attribute not to fear only but to an underlying conviction that the trail's extraterritoriality (belonging to all of us equally) is being violated. There is another place that everyone recognizes as extraterritorial. It puts the matter in too extreme a light, but would you bring your dog to church? This being said and even if all true, would I if I could, bar the trail to a hiker who loved his dog too much to leave it at home? No.

Although there was some easier roadwalking, the fourteen miles to Glade Mountain Lean-to seemed a long way. Our temporary company was joined in the shelter by a lean man who had hiked with the Englishman, fallen back when ill, and now was furiously pushing himself to catch up again.

The lean man said he woke earlier than Merrill, climbed faster, and outwalked him on the level; it was downhill that the Englishman could not be surpassed. This shelter marked the 500-mile point, one-fourth of the way to Maine. From that philosophic height we smiled and Sadie didn't bark at the notion of competition on our Appalachian Trail. Cut a rope on the Matterhorn if you must, but don't race in this novel spring. Yet the gossip of it we didn't scorn to hear.

In the morning after a camp at Big Walker Lean-to I stopped by the highway's Big Walker Lookout to joke with the concessionaire about hiker appetites, providing an example as I attacked pie and ice cream. She said other hikers had passed on the word: no water at Turkey Gap.

I didn't make it to there anyway; rain caught me by a campground on the dirt road approach. Only shelter was a toilet; it would do while I wondered if rocks over the ridge had a cave. When the rain slacked, search revealed an overhead ledge wide enough for a camp. And dry wood to cook supper; celebrate the golden center.

The lean-to when reached in the morning had cistern water so unappetizing that yesterday's early camp seemed a blessing. Farther on in a high place I heard an agitated straining, another wild turkey, this tom big as a pterodactyl. My approach had put him in such a panic that he crashed aloft, foregoing the usual short ground run. I was sorry to cause fear, but it was marvelous to see a big man move so quickly.

One morning I reached Crandon's little store, meeting its keeper ambling friendly across the road just as in '73. Then it was autumn leaves but what's in a season if neither of us had yellowed? Now the trail was road awhile; I met a redheaded Appalachian Trail Clubman out scouting his section before turning it over to another maintainer. He invited me to visit and report on the trail when near Roanoke.

Then I passed a tiny store, but not before having a soda pop with the heavy man, admiring his flitches of country-cured sowbelly, and hearing where Grandma Gatewood had stayed when she walked through. Groceries could be bought at the Gulf station a mile and half farther where there'd be a wider selection, he said.

The pavement was hot to the Gulf store, which seemed crowded to bring a pack into. But outside there was traffic and idlers. Of course no one will take the pack, but what if they did? In this dilemma the counter-girl suggested it be put back on the patio.

But there the store owner rounded on me with blazing eyes, "Get that thing out of here," she said, "this is private property!" I put my private property outside and tried to concentrate on shopping. It was no use; after replacing what little had been selected, I shouldered the pack and hiked back to a voice without edge.

There the heavy man wouldn't sell a small slice of sowbelly, he gave it away. When I was done selecting he locked his store to haul me, saying no sense in my walking both ways. He laughed when I wouldn't ride a quarter mile past the Gulf station to trailhead, "that's how some of you hikers are and never had no trouble with any." And that's how I left a gentleman in rural Virginia.

At evening, not having reached Wapiti Shelter, I wild-camped some distance off the trail after rejecting several sites as too visible from a road. Probably no one meant me any harm, but then as in most of my life outdoors I had the animal's instinct to bed down unobserved. Except of course for the lean-tos, in those gypsy temples I slept secure.

(By the news where Will Rogers and I learn everything, the gypsies are arrested again for jewel fraud. Not chickens, that was long ago. But by the same organ a governmental minister in Switzerland apologizes for the official program that lifted their babies for placement in foster homes where they could learn to yodel instead of roam. Who wrote this script? That was, my God, our ancient complaint against them ! What need has the world of devils if a most favored nation steals children?)

Early morning I took a blue-blazed side trail to Wapiti, meeting weekend hikers on the way and putting out their fire when I reached the shelter. It made me angry to realize that some of the prejudice against fire builders is warranted.

Then continuing on the old trail over Sugar Run Mountain I reached a ranger cabin, no one about, bright in the sun, spring outlet murmuring nearby. Make it lunchtime then, and after let the water lull to nap. The next shelter came soon enough in the afternoon for a shave and cleanup before town. It was my custom to be presentable; a loner in the woods, I still needed the citizen's smile.

Many a ridge mile in the morning up and down to Angel's Rest, which is an anticlimax from the south. Then I dropped sharp to Pearisburg, and walked city blocks to the Appalachian Trail's first guest-house. "Miss Mary, do you remember me?" "I think you've been here before," she murmured.

Three dollars for a room in '73, the same in '79; Miss Mary withholds diplomatic recognition from inflation. A rest day with you, Ma'am, and I'll come back in the fall if I can.

There were no thrift shops in town but I found work clothes on sale, battleship gray, tight-woven and long-sleeved against mosquitoes, the pants to be cut off for walking shorts. Freed of cuffs, will these mercurial feet even touch a low valley on the way to Maine? In fact, the instep did seem better.

By afternoon a lady hiker appeared. An ex-officer from the U.S. Navy, she was walking the trail with two companions who had gone on to the Catholic hospice. I added another steak to Miss Mary's; then the women cooked, and I appreciated. At the porch swing we visited but, not as delighted by Miss Mary's stories as I was or just weary, the captain retired early.

Next morning the conformist route led down a freeway by a factory over New River's big bridge; I chose the old trail up Stony Creek, remembered as wild and pretty except for a dusty cement plant. But to reach it I'd forgotten which direction had a railroad trestle over the river; luckily guessing right, I didn't have to backtrack.

Then along the tumbling stream I climbed steadily, out to a settlement whose storekeeper also remembered Grandma Gatewood, and up to a stream fork that required scouting. Finding one old white blaze I continued by woods-road to a confusing junction with the new trail near the village of Interior. At Bailey Gap Lean-to I camped, tired.

Next day I waited out a noon thundershower in War Branch Lean-to after hurriedly throwing in wood to stay dry for those following. Then on to Big Pond Shelter whose water for camping was way down in a murky swamp. From here the old route dipped into the valley before directly climbing Sinking Creek Mountain's extended ridge. The new trail stays on a parallel ridge, continuing a long way the wrong way before descending very steeply to Newport, Virginia.

A baffled hiker accepts many relocations as necessary, but its meandering to and fro along a rockpile on the ridge top and its precipitous slide down one grassy field make this particular reroute a conversation piece. "Let the designer do it in the rain with a fifty-pound pack", is the most cultured of the mutterings heard.

After resupplying at Newport, there was a steady climb onto the ridge of Sinking Creek. It was long and dry; the first blue-blazed side trail down to water had been closed by ice storm damage. The second, when evening came, was no better; after scrambling up and over many fallen trees seeking blue blazes, I headed straight down to camp at first water, near the valley floor.

Next day there was much confused roadwalking, and even a short trespass to avoid a ford, before reaching Trout Creek Lean-to which was shared with a couple who seemed heartily sick of the trail. Not so much that they turned down a bite of mulligan stew, that had once been scorned by a starving cat, but they apparently had no happy memories of the trail and were now pushing twenty miles a day to get it over.

Well, we all complain but most have a nearly bubbling joy that belies the tales of wet feet or steep places. The trail is difficult, the life hard, but so beautiful it is to tramp in rhythm among the mornings and golden afternoons that few would change their state with crownéd kings. Tennis, anyone? No more, not after an Appalachian glory unsung even by Copeland.

The next stretch of trail also had extensive relocations; I followed alternate blue-blazes that might have led around Cove Mountain but in fact just led to a steep climb of it from another side. The views from this unintentional ascent were magnificent. Going down on official, white-blazed trail, can the highway store be reached before that thundercloud bursts? No and, in a hard enough rain, tree and poncho together may fail.

When it stopped I squished a half mile to the store. After buying food and turning down a ride, it was more roadwalking around North Mountain. Too many farms, where would I camp? Then an unposted dirt road led uphill to a landing where logs had been gathered. I dammed a ditch trickle for fresh but muddy water, rigged the poncho as tarp against more rain, and found half-dry wood under a brush pile; home is where you make it.

In the morning more road, then a householder yelled, "Hey, come over here." Why should I, with your bump above the eye as if from fighting? But I did; he was a good man stung, a beekeeper. Has anyone ever heard of an evil beekeeper? Coffee and egg sandwich as big as lunch, and more coffee with rich conversation.

The beeman and his wife had walked up North Mountain; not true there was no water, he knew of a spring near an old farmsite and promised to blue-blaze it for us. Past time to go we talked on. Also had been a beekeeper, his grandfather the Frenchman with Lou Gehrig's disease whose brothers gathered around to say goodbye, but who lived on and on to tend his bees. "Help me out to the hives, boy."

Once, in a brush pile they had to burn, there was a copperhead. When the fire runs him out we'll kill him, watch now. But the copperhead like an Irish hero manned his station; when the flame leaped, he struck. At another dart of heat, he struck. In the fire he struck, and struck again, until his snake body shriveled if not his will. (When the time came Cuchulain with his sword strode out in the highways of the sea striking off the heads of ocean's horses until his head and mighty arm only were left, and on and still he smote the white invincible tide.)

Regaining the trail, there were right away two crossings of a swollen stream. One could be negotiated by hanging onto a fence-cable over the muddy torrent, but the other had to be waded. No problem, wet feet; it was mosquitoes near did me in before the socks were on again. Lambert's Meadow Lean-to made an early lazy camp, solitary until two other hikers showed up at dark.

In clear weather the Tinker Ridge next day was good walking, wide views. At Cloverdale in the valley I called the Roanoke Club member met near Crandon, and enjoyed a rest day in his home. We talked about a possibility of getting the trail off pavement in the valley by leaving Tinker Ridge sooner, a hard choice for the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club, but an easy one for the thru-hiker. He would, I think, always opt for a wilder trail off highways, even at the cost of missing a scenic ridge knob.

With an early start from Cloverdale I walked, by poorly blazed pavement much of the way, to Fullhardt Knob with its bad cistern, then on good trail to Wilson Creek Lean-to built of railroad ties where I chatted with a Californian in her seventies doing the trail in sections, and finally on more trail to Bobblet's Gap to sleep. A satisfyingly long day, thanks to the rest in Roanoke.

Next camp then was wild, in terrain before Cornelius Creek so steep it wasn't easy to find a level place. The evening after, Matt's Creek Lean-to was reached in time to shave before town. No matter if Snowden equalled a tiny store with post office in corner, the theme is what counts. Before getting to the road, however, a newly designated James River Face Wilderness had to be traversed, this task made more difficult by a Forest Service notion that white blazes marking the Appalachian Trail are incompatible with wilderness; they had painted them over with brown!

Fortunately the local maintaining club had sneaked back in some of the white blazes, or it would have been easy to get confused backtracking to look for a hypothetical white-blazed turnoff. On the road itself there was one faded white blaze. It is common that within sections the trail is adequately marked, but that between sections, the route, often a series of roads, is easily lost because of few blazes.

At the store, supplies were limited but adequate; one brand of cookies is enough if they're fresh. In a pinch, the sweet tooth of a hiker can even forgo that. This postoffice-store will close upon retirement of the capable man in his seventies; then trail walkers on short rations must hitch for more into Glasgow, several miles distant.

Now I hiked on to Punchbowl Spring to camp before dark. There was another shaver there; he indulged in the barbarous custom daily, which seems excessive. This good soul also helped collect wood, plenty for my fire and dry under roof for the next camper.

The following day to Wiggins Spring was a long one with rain threatening. The shelter was full of thru-hikers who made room; the shaver had collected another pile of wood which made cooking supper quicker. On a plain wooden floor many hikers can sleep their weary unfitful reward. Night, complement of day, dominion of dream—the journey that doesn't tire.

As last out in the morning I inherited a dog, tan mutt with sad eyes, who was on the trail but not of it. He enjoyed most the rests, dropping off to sleep immediately when I stopped and dragging mournfully when it was time to walk again.

I met a hiking couple going a short way south who loved him. To me he never even said goodbye; when an idea's time has come, there's no getting in its way. The lean-to on Priest Mountain was my next camp; the peak was easier to climb from the south, but with several confusing false summits.

Before the long ascent out of Tye River's gorge I sat on a rock by the suspension hiker's bridge, gazing into swirls and eddies, leaf and flower above. So what is nature's beauty, how does it differ from a creation of man who is its child? Maybe, only a wise fool is sure, maybe, it has to do with weaving a subtly deep order across a warp of random clutter; no one placed those stones, precise equations of eddy are unfound, but our intuition is firm that there is order beneath. God is subtle but not malicious, and He doesn't throw dice.

Some say we bring the beauty in our gaze, and that would explain the poem of a tenement child who never knew a leaf, but why should our atoms be so special when we all, quartz and Gandhi, left a central star. Then if a skyscraper is less beautiful than a waterfall because it's too obvious, should a painter choose his colors by roulette wheel? I don't think so; man is already too orderly and spare for his creations to mime nature's richness. Greek simplicity befits us.

Uphill then past one shelter and on I walked to Maupin Field by dark. The next camp however was early, on a piney hill before Rockfish Gap since I didn't wish to arrive at Waynesboro in the evening, too short a time to resupply and rest.

Next morning when the highway was reached, it was good not to walk all the pavement in; a TV repairman gave a ride in his van, letting me off near the fire station where hikers gathered. Here we could rest our burdens and shower, sleeping on the grass outside in good weather. A local restaurant that served backpacker's large portions got our custom; we stoked joyously for present and future hunger.

And gossip—a coffee klatch is an arena of reticence compared to the gabble of trail hikers swapping stories. How many times has your pack broken; did the company make it good? Will these boot soles go to Maine? What time does the shoe-repair open Monday? Can you use some of this extra boot-grease? That damn barking dog did too bite; the owner was sorry, of course he's not rabid, the poor thing feels so cooped up on a chain!

They say the Park Service is strict as hell; did you hear about the nurse who took shelter in a storm, a ranger into the lean-to at midnight fining her twenty-five dollars since it had stopped raining? Where does the Shenandoah National Park get off anyway, taking our lean-tos and essentially reserving them for picnickers?

Have you heard they've torn the floors out to keep us from sleeping in the shelters; what is that but official vandalism? Such beautiful country but you'd think if they couldn't manage the Appalachian Trail better they'd formally ask the Trail Conference to reroute it. Thus we taught each other the trail ahead, especially controversial Shenandoah. I was psyched up for anything in the park, except what happened.

Early morning four of us with Sadie the coyote shared a cab back to Rockfish Gap; I may have inconvenienced them getting off at the Gap itself rather than the park entrance but they joined me, tolerantly walking some purist pavement. At the entrance they applied first for permits, since I knew their defense against park bureaucracy was to go through fast and get it over; applying last, I could argue a little, but respectfully. The park superintendent had once asserted that hikers must like his management of the trail since none complained; I meant to edge into that vacuum.

The entrance ranger's claim, however, that tents as light as one pound could be had to shelter two men so flabbergasted me that we couldn't get much of a discussion going. I didn't even ask him where. Part of the difficulty may be that park rangers are authority figures in hat and badge; this goes over with the picnicking motorist who also doesn't know or care how much a two-man tent weighs, but doesn't sit well with a hiker whose back knows the difference.

When the itinerary was determined, guessing as well as possible for the ranger where my camp would be each evening, I started for Jarman's Gap. East of the main Shenandoah ridge led a reservoir road which could be followed along the park but outside. Peaceful walking it was down the old road; I realized that if it extended the park's length, that would have been my route, such was the sense of oppression gotten from meeting the first ranger. After fording a stream above the reservoir and talking to Memorial Day weekenders, there was a gradual climb into wilder country with a hospitable fir to sleep under (some rain had fallen and more threatened). A snug camp that, free and wild enough.

In the morning I regained the ridge at Black Rock Gap, proceeded to Loft Mountain Campground for groceries, and on to Pinefield Lean-to whose floor had been torn out by the Park Service. Nor can a flat campsite be found sufficiently far from the shelter for a permissible camp according to new regulations; the only level place was within sight of the lean-to. But I had no company, other hikers or rangers.

Next day I meant to lunch at Hightop Lean-to, but a picnicking couple was there first with a vicious dog that they could barely restrain. I took water and walked on. At South River I managed to find a campsite far enough from the shelter to be legal. Next day at Lewis Mountain Campground I bought more supplies and walked on in mist and light rain to Lewis Spring, where Mr. Paris Walters had been laid up in '73.

The shelter had been removed by the Park Service, so I decided to shell out for a sleep inside Lewis Mountain Lodge. I hoped another hiker just met could split the cost; he couldn't, but I invited him in anyway when they charged me the same as for a double. He paid part after all; we had an interesting visit since he'd traveled in Afghanistan and could add details to what I'd heard already of the Kuntz brothers' shooting by truck-driving bandits (he'd heard they put up a fight). In the morning after a lodge breakfast we parted, he hurrying to Skyland to hitch out for a televised basketball game. A zealous fan, he hardly ever missed a game even while trail-hiking.

Skyland for me was a quarrel with the restaurant manager over bringing my pack inside. While we argued and before a clerk settled the matter by offering to watch over it from a window, a gas pump outside caught fire. Concern over a possible explosion made our hassle seem petty; the fire was put out, and I ate lunch. Walking on I reached the shelter of the night, Byrd Nest Number 4, named for the prominent Virginia family. I slept uneminent.

Then the following early to Elkwallow, on a day like any other, rain fell more promised as I scouted. No camp enough away from the shelter but a flat posted no camping being revegetated. Damp it is the world where to lay my head. At this juncture without a roll of sky came another hiker. I helped off her pale blue pack, and when the troupe followed in a while lifted down theirs too with no more excuse than once a freighter captain's courtesy to me.

We filled the shelter; at fire the talk turned to rangers, good or evil, one of her friends pro, I con: when soft the night pierced by more than whipporwill, plaintive yet urgent, she, the piccolo, without apology did summon the genie in the wood. What advocacy is there, in the face of music?

In the morning came ranger threatening twenty-five dollar fines each for using the shelter despite rain but settling for a long jawbone in which he accused us of not being thru-hikers and of not appreciating the virtue of real outdoorsmanship, which consists of sleeping in the rain at an angle.

But occasionally a question could be slipped in; it seemed they assumed water quality wouldn't deteriorate under the dispersed-camping policy and might revise that policy if a forthcoming survey found high bacterial counts. (I wondered what their planners considered the original purpose of building shelters and outdoor toilets, if not to concentrate usage impact and thereby to preserve the remainder in wilder state that included pure water?)

Dark eyes intent she spoke rarely, and then in a low clear voice. When we could walk bent-eared but unfined, it was full morning in mist not yet rain. When it did fall it came very hard; I got half wet even under a poncho.

After seven miles there was a quarter-mile turnoff to Gravelly Springs Lean-to. She and an architect from Hawaii, early starters, were there first. Soaked her hair hung in ringlets; the shivering I stopped with my watch cap. The others came, also wet; we were glad to quit for the day, homesteading they called it.

This shelter had a caretaker, who collected a dollar to keep the rangers off and picnickers out. There were three such being set aside in the park in a new plan to allow hikers limited access. We were the first tenants of this bargain in the rain. When the caretaker's friend brought dry wood for a fire and a thermos of coffee plus chocolate doughnuts it became paradise enow.

Warm after supper she played again, even Schiller's Ode to Joy when recalled by my hoarse voice and Beethoven fist. Eine kleine Nachtmusik she remembered by its structure. Surely the lean-to log and stone will remember this christening. As we settled in, the curly-headed guy offered an upper bunk by her. Shyly no but never again.

When she took her friend's pulse, who argued for rangers, I held out my hand and was held in return. Curly-head asked about the Pacific Crest Trail; as I stood chatting softly with him, she fell asleep on my left. When I dreamed, from our pillow she introduced me to her brother, who spoke of hunting.

The morning had forgotten rain; we left early. When she and the architect pulled away at their faster clip, my eyes said goodbye, but my feet without authority speeded up until we walked together. Let the instep survive as best it can. At Floyd's Wayside just out of Shenandoah National Park, the no-walled shelter more like a gazebo than a lean-to, we lunched. They had carried water but I used the far-off spring; we sat on the floor like children at marbles, munching and trail-gossiping.

Back on the trail down I rushed until it came that the reason for rushing was behind. I dropped back; she was slower descending steep places because of knee trouble, that's what the cloth bands were for. We talked of many things and field physics, the journey for me sometime after Katahdin. Near the road there was a goodbye note from the architect, who would make more miles hurrying now in order to enjoy a slower schedule in New England.

She was leaving too, off trail to Atlanta for her brother's wedding. By the road to Front Royal, with her as she waited for a ride, the fallen daisy that had graced a gypsy head I replaced. You look fine, just don't take a scary ride. I told her the beekeeper's story of a copperhead that struck back at his universe of heat. Quick tear against a flash of smile. A woman stopped for her as she spoke of catching up later on the trail. I leaned her walking stick against a road sign to hope for return.

On the trail of leaving there was long dappled grass, then came giraffes who had evolved high necks to see more of departing friends, wouldn't you? It was a Smithsonian zoological farm I passed, not a freaked-out dream of loss, honest tiger! At Mosby Lean-to I read in the trail register incredulous accounts of exotic beasts seen.

The shelter was very empty until a shock of curly brown hair appeared; her other friends, the tall one and the man who defended rangers, had also hitched into Front Royal. On his stove curly churned up a batch of macaroni and cheese, canonical trail fare; the fire crackled around my mulligan stew pot. Acutely aware of the absence of piccolo we. Whippoorwill, whippoorwill.

Next morning at Linden Store they smiled do you know a slight bearded man who can eat a half gallon of ice cream right there he sat? The architect ahead, we half expected to see the other two come in from Front Royal as we each paid our respects to a quart of the finest.

On to Manassas Gap Shelter for lunch, except we couldn't find it; on a dry ridge finally I tramped a long way down for water. At Ashby Gap in afternoon there was a note from the two, now ahead of us. After a milkshake in the store curly and I pushed on, looking for a good trespass camp, and found one under pines on a hill, not thick enough but would do.

Into the woods curly had gone while my gallon jug was filling at a brooklet. Following I saw a red fox sauntering behind his route. Sure now are the beasts charmed to join us or is it his lair our camp? I rigged a tarp against the dew. Curly offered the use of his stove so my fire wouldn't give us away. Safe in Sherwood Forest lie Robin Hood and Little John, hart-dreaming the poachers, and of Maid Marian.

Next day we reached Three Springs for lunch, a long lazy one at the shelter. We spruced up in anticipation of stopping early at the farm of a couple who welcomed Appalachian hikers. Hay sprinkled their driveway; after introductions we helped rake and gather it. Then nailing on vertical boards to a new barn proved our carpentry; back and forth a ball bounced to the young son, and supper is called.

It was an excellent meal but what made the day for me was a host who knew birdcalls. Blasphemy the paraphrase, reverse brocade a translation, but the man sang a woodthrush to wit: Come over here, come over here—stupid, stupid. This is an engineer? What will you give for even one severe rationalist in Gomorrah to sing a throat of birdsong?

Early in morning mist we set out; easy clipped the miles by as curly-head, first-rank raconteur, spun tales: how before they met, she sleeping alone in a shelter heard heavy shuffling noises outside, to learn in the morning it had been an injured bear; how on a stormy ridge she'd felt the concussion of a lightning strike and smelt sulphur (for this he teased her with the name Catastrophe Kid); how they'd all entered a town cakewalk competition, dancing round and round with children until a huge cake was won which the architect divided into hiker portions; how she had provided party hats which they then proudly wore through wind and rain, calling them geodesic domes and themselves the dome brigade; and how he, the tall one, and a wild kilt-wearing medical student no longer with them had, after a typical late start and conversational day, found themselves still far from the shelter at nightfall but continued through a thunderstorm to arrive in bedraggled party hats so late their sleepy friends dubbed them the midnight express.

The sixteen miles to Keys Gap was nothing in such company. But on to Harper's Ferry by dark! You're crazy, why should I work so hard because you promised them you'd be there? Grumble, grumble; of course I went along, glad the instep was well enough to let me. But there just at dark, my first twenty-mile trail day, I was tired enough to let curly scout about for our companions.

When they couldn't be found I stopped at a hotel on the hill while curly went across the river to a youth hostel, and there they were! However the man who defended rangers split in the morning early, to our regret. It was thought he went fishing, but we also have trout of tired contentment along the Appalachian.

Now three were warmly welcomed at Trail Conference headquarters where I was interviewed for a newsletter story. Retrieving my pack from the hotel we visited and chatted the afternoon away, then were graciously hauled over the Shenandoah and Potomac to the youth hostel. We, that is, except for a fanatic who got out and walked part way to keep his track continuous.

Then early to bed, early complain; Washington tourists catch a fast train—after walking an illegal trestle back over the Potomac. At coffee how elegant even a commuter train. I asked the help if they were paid or worked for the ride? Worth a smile that was.

In majestic Washington gawked the Appalachian barbarians as well as Pakistani and Dutchmen—we'd even have gone up the obelisk save for hours of wait. Across the hot grass to the Smithsonian then, where the tall one and curly joined me in touch-worship of the many-hands-smooth manitou stone of native copper. Now there was a planetarium show of space probes and awesome clash of alien clouds on faraway huge planets. A full tourist time; only high cost of shelter kept us from prolonging it to a Wolf Trap concert next day, which would also have given the piccolo more chance to catch up.

After returning by train, there was a mad rush uphill to the hotel's all-you-can-eat supper where I found the waitresses doubled over in laughter at the prodigious amounts of fried chicken that curly was preparing to demolish. I'm an eater, but this hobbit is phenomenal! We waddled across the railroad trestle back to the youth hostel; tomorrow we hike.

On the cinders of a Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath, past Weverton campsite, then up and away our trail led. And on to Crampton Gap Lean-to, where we camped. I don't remember why this was a short day but it should have been to help our friend catch up. Next day to Pine Knob Shelter made another easy day, twelve miles. On the way was a large tower built of rough fieldstone, said to be the first monument erected to George Washington.

What impressed me most was that a group just decided to do it and put the whole thing together in one day. The Pyramids are bigger but an individual could die before one was done. What did they use to help them, wood scaffolding, barrels to roll, salute of inclined plane? Peasant technology as opposed to bulldozers—those stones are big.

What gets it in our heads to move rock, to pit soft brain and smashable limbs against the hard universal matrix? Not for bread—nothing sprouts in granite, and George never saw his tower. Do we want the mountain top and windy tower to help us hope for stars? How brave it is, how symbolic, to diminish a parsec by a furlong! But perhaps a mountain's relief is not in its proximity to Alpha Centauri but in that it is an artificially induced crisis, man making and solving his own storm-drama. To the summit and back again.

Then twenty miles to Mackie Run Lean-to was a long day, by Raven Rock Hollow with a close eye on our gear (four packs had been reported stolen here in ten days), and into Pennsylvania at Mason-Dixon milestone number 91. The famous Pennsylvania rocks weren't soon in evidence; I remember peddling the infamous lie that they lay down like gentlemen shale instead of being upright instruments of torture. Stretching our supplies for another day, we could pass up both Waynesboro and South Mountain.

Now were shelters plenty; that day we walked by Antietam, Tumbling Run, and Raccoon Lean-tos before taking a campsite at Caledonia State Park where in the near town curly expected money from home by mail. They beat me in; the tall man had found a swimming pool in which to wet his gills, and curly had already hitched past a mile-off grocery on toward the post office.

After resupplying I saw him trudging back somewhat downcast. Not only was the hitching slow, but his money hadn't come. I bought a strawberry quart of consolation; we spooned our faces full. Tomorrow he'd try again. We had a brisk fire that night in the state park; the tall one surprised us by how much wood he could find.

Next day it didn't rain again; we passed many roofs, two cabins and two lean-tos, before camping. Second came I to Tom's Run, Boy Scout shelters a pair; tall man already had a home fire blazing. Last was curly his money come, patient saved. The sleepy floor then sank the travelers, but there was a midnight alarm: get the packs up, raccoons attacking! I just turned over; mine was on a cord from the roof already to save breakfast mulligan from nefarious mice.

In the morning I reached Pine Grove Furnace State Park before its grocery opened; after only a short wait, supplies, ice cream, and friendly questions from a proprietor interested himself in doing the whole trail. By the lake came a mellow cat with Frisbees (large plastic saucers gotten by crossing kites with baseballs); I told him there was a champion behind who might teach him a thing if approached carefully.

I thought that and swimming would slow them but they'd caught up long before Moyer's Campground where we meant to stay, curly complaining about some forward dude who tossed the apparatus about, urging him to open up and show some real moves. How should I know my friend is a modest champion?

Right off I didn't like this campground; it had a big white dog out of polar bear who objected to backpacks. Thinking of the mountain men's fondness for fat dawg roasted, I got by him only to learn at the grocery that there was no room in the campground (country music weekend). Ought to stock Beethoven for a more manageable crowd, and politer.

Packs heavy with good water we walked on a mile. Tired as me for once they found several roadside crashes but with true poacher wisdom I steered us deeper into the greenwood. What's so bad about drunks on a Saturday night, I was asked, if they have chillies to spare? My friends just may have had a point.

In the morning for a change we left together, then I lagged behind. They'd told me her walking stick that I had leaned on a post was soon gone and not much anyway, that her good tall one had been broken up by mistake for firewood in Damascus. Thus, I mused on a staff for the piccolo; dogwood it should be, so tough and finegrained that the southerners make of it spindles for weaving-machines.

Rejecting several dead sticks I went to live, finding one just right. Patient the knife and sorry the hand to cut something alive, but a stout reed will help her down every steep place. The wood was white and slick after peeling; I walked on holding the staff with a bandanna to keep it new.

They were waiting for me in the church square of Allen; as we rested under shade I was teased about the walking stick. Way too tall—cut it off here, measured against curly. When they rejected my idea that we all sign it, I just carved at the top her name which means gift of God.

The staff was left at a farmhouse where she'd probably call, with a note at the mailbox below. Going on in the sun, the long stretch of roadwalking through Cumberland Valley seemed devoid of campsites; we went off a mile on an intersecting highway to find a motel room. Two beds and a rug-soft floor slept the Appalachians.

Early morning I left quietly not to wake them, found breakfast on a long-cut back to the trail, and started a gradual climb on roads out of the valley. At its edge a woman jogging invited me by their dairy for a fresh-milk break; we talked of trouble between hikers and farmers over a new law empowering the government to condemn land if necessary to establish and protect the Appalachian Trail.

Not mad at us, she said, as much as the highhandedness of Park Service land agents. It did seem a pity that the thousand-foot corridor provision, so essential generally to keep the trail wild, should be applied also to farmlands where any trail off the pavement would be a boon.

Then more uphill into a rain shower spent under a tree eating luscious cherries before gaining the ridge where not one but two route mistakes were made by the time new Darlington Shelter was reached. There they were, to my surprise, not already to Duncannon. The tall one had waited for us both, curly having managed that morning to get lost about equally. Lunch, you blessing, sure now I'm knowing the way into a sardine can.

By Thelma Marks Lean-to in the afternoon we marched directly I swear ten miles to Duncannon, Pennsylvania, home of a hot shower at the fire station and someone else's cooking in the restaurant. After resupplying in the morning curly and I looked for a library and barber shop, although it was hard to believe he meant to decimate the shock that had Afro-wielders bowing in shame and envy.

The library was for Patrick Henry; the piccolo had taught him "The next gale from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle?" and he wanted the rest by heart. We found no book or barber; they decided to go on, the tall one wanting to get home to New Jersey for a short vacation. I waited, needing a rest and needing for our friend to catch up.

At noon there was already reward; two women showed up who told as I helped off their packs that the piccolo player was only a day behind. These strong hikers, a blond with high cheekbones of Siberia, and an auburn wearing a Nolichucky River Expeditions blouse, had been her pacesetters as they did long days behind us. She had found my walking stick at the farm, and it made her happy.

In a sun-filled next morning I walked out to birdsong harbinger of flute over a bridge of Susquehanna shining ribbon up into the hills of Appalachia leading surely to Earl Shaffer Lean-to where she'd be in the glad evening of a long day. There I collected wood, descended steeply for water, and waited, and waited. Had they stopped at the Zeager shelter, which has no water?

Finally I walked back on the trail, and they came! The Siberian was first; when I'd taken her pack to the lean-to and returned for Nolickucky's, that one waved me off, back to the last hiker, she who makes music. I heard her before I saw her, and then I practiced, hugging singer and pack and song-flute all at once.

There's plenty of wood; the water is way down—I carried enough. But Siberia insisted on going down. See you at midnight. She came back much later, red-faced from hauling the collapsible jugfull. Jeez!

"When I read you did twenty miles into Harper's Ferry I couldn't believe it. I'll kill them. It wasn't so easy catching my two Bills."

"We thought you hadn't a chance until New Jersey, or we'd have slowed up. You did good."

Are red coals a continuation of the sun's politics by other means? Her long day ended, night covered us all.

In the morning early my friend was early too; I placed her veteran cookpot closer to the fire's center. We moved quietly not to disturb the sleepers, stuffing down bags, folding groundsheets, hanging socks to dry on pack—the simple chores of a nomad. I left first since I would be writing in mid-morning, and wanted to be with them again at lunch. She still had contact lenses to put in.

Happy miles to a noon with company, then through St. Anthony's Wilderness we walked to Rausch Gap Lean-to, known as the Appalachian Hilton for its size, elegant open-air table, skylight in the roof, and running spring water from a conduit. Of course this haven was already taken but—wonder—the campers gave it to us and moved to a tent set up in advance, charging us only the listening to much advice. Especially were they concerned at the youth of my fellow hikers, asking if I were the girls' chaperone?

"These women have walked from Georgia" I answered, "and need no chaperone, but I have the luck to be in their company awhile."

I'm told there was applause, but I didn't hear it for stoking of the fire. Another backpacker with his small son joined us at supper, roar of his little stove entering speech with the common fire. At dusk the women went off. To a waterfall for bathing? No, just to escape well-meant advice. Then in the dark our patrons were quiet, the stars crept closer, and we found rest on the floor of the Appalachian Hilton.

Early down the trail and some road we severally sped, gathering at Greenpoint General Store for a feast of ice cream, and to pick up a few supplies (only one more camp to Port Clinton). There was a note from curly, teasing us that the route ahead over Pennsylvania's notorious rocks would be peanuts, a mere bag of shells. This was fun enough but did he have to tell the storekeeper she'd know me as the hiker-minister in a dark grey fedora?

I promised to administer a bump on his prodigal head when we caught up. To that end we walked a long twenty-one miles for Hertlein Campsite, rain threatening. Nolichucky and Siberia had their tent; the piccolo and I would make do with tarps, her plastic over my nylon should stop a downpour.

Our camp was joined by other hikers, four from Connecticut. When it was time for music, she slipped uphill away; I edged closer not to miss a note. Thus to end an evening before the night in which her sleeping bag will be here blue then dark. Did Tristan put the sword between in order that Isolde not be afraid, and will an ice axe do?

In the morning her eyes open I could touch the tip of nose not to cause a freckle. I had slept fair except when a woodthrush sang: Come over here, come over here—stupid, stupid. To ward off the chill I put a minister's fedora on her head where it stayed a while before passing to Siberia and Nolichucky. Coffee now a sip from her cup, and there are miles to make.

Perhaps we had lunch at Neys Lean-to; was this the day I gave a rose or did she find blueberries? On a porch in Port Clinton the lady had us sign in her personal trail-register: these thru-hikers out of Springer bound for Katahdin, from Yankeetown, Missoula and Stratford-not-on-Avon, do formally and hereby attain to the Schuylkill, said Skook'll, River at the small but by no means negligible port of Clinton.

Mail is collected and we pile up before the famous and only hotel in town. But the proprietress is not happy; together with some of the Connecticut four we seem on the wild side to her. It was only by shamelessly praising famous men, in this case her friend Mr. Paris Walters, that she was won around to our merits as tranquil guests in need of a shower.

But when her heart was opened she even gave a room discount and welcomed the last two hikers, soaking wet from a violent summer storm. I had gone off with the laundry detail (Nolichucky asking me particularly, in fear of the local man who'd volunteered to drive us), although I wanted to be by the piccolo, who was even quieter than usual. When the spin cycle and grocery buying let me return, she'd been drinking; that made me jealous, although I didn't say much.

In the general merriment about the hotel bar, which included a one-man band, this one man drifted, needing something, and only getting hold of himself when a chance came to serve her by offering payment to the same local for a ride back to the far grocery, since the near one had closed too soon for resupplying. Now we were together again, there and back; then I could sleep. (The man asked a beer for the ride, all of 25 cents on this special night; he would hike a short way with us the next day if not too hung over.)

In a luminous morning before breakfast I could tell the jealousy and even join in her gentle laughter at it. I packed up and left first as usual, but hadn't gotten far when she ran after without her pack. The others were stirring but not feeling well; could we have a rest morning and easy afternoon to the first shelter at six miles?

I was glad; she'd been pushing so hard that her sneaker-clad feet must need a respite from Pennsylvania rocks. In an aside as we walked back, she murmured that being turned away at first by the hotel, then as a hiker almost not being served in a nearby shop, and my being gone were what had depressed her the last evening. (If one's friend is shy, he becomes a collector of such oddments and broken scraps of precious china cup.)

At Windsor Furnace Lean-to in the afternoon we found the Connecticut group also having a rest day, which included an illegal swim in the nearby reservoir. At one point they charged back through the woods thinking from a hue and cry that they'd been discovered. But the alarm was for an overdue and lost group of Boy Scouts who weren't found until evening when one of the Connecticutters came on them confused and tired in a side road, and fetched them back to everyone's relief.

The next day to Allentown Shelter was longer, sixteen miles. This camp was to hold for me a sharp grief, in the form of an evening ritual that I couldn't partake of. The Appalachian Trail is not a scene of heavy drug use; hikers have other things on their minds. But sometimes when the weed is available, they take a puff before succumbing to the magic dragon of sleep.

I suppose I've smelt the incense often in my years of walking and thought no more of it than a beer, although rather hoping I wouldn't be offered any. For what if then a poem came? It might be as Frost suggested, that one would have to get drunk again in order to appreciate it. This is how I thought I viewed the matter. But when my friend smoked, I freaked out. On a journey she, where in the lost fog will a ray me seek? Hardly.

Against the lean-to catatonic wall away from seeing her hand I heard the Connecticutters leave to party more in the dark. Don't pee on me they said when I finally got up to relieve myself. The women slept and I found a place to lie down. Then I heard the four return and settle to sleep. A long night. Dawn came as is its habit.

"How could you go farther than Atlanta and not even tell me you were going?"

"I wasn't gone."

It was enough, perhaps just her getting up with me would always be enough. A sip of coffee then and off, to catch a nap in midmorning instead of write.

Open, my eyes, to the opinion of friends. In the sun I heard them whisper: sleep on, you need it. Up leaped in the possibly mistranslated Greek, Telemachos son of wily Odysseus and Polynices son of aged Nestor. Race you to the shelter!

The nineteen miles to Outerbridge Lean-to weren't raced, although we heard that recommended as a way to minimize contact with the rocks. Birds have a thing and angels are bright to transfer. The rest of us may take aspirin at afternoon break.

Among the matters, sir, that it would be vain to extenuate may we include forthwith an outstanding proclamation namely: that the interstitial and vacuual crevices among the nation's known Pennsylvania rocks be filled and inhabited by wood shavings—soft, treadable, and delicious to the sole of an arbitrary foot; and that in case of an absence or diminution of the above mentioned material, then may be legally and effectually substituted the miracle-drug sawdust in pursuit of the same panacea.

By some of us it was honestly heard that this remarkable proposal had been proposed without a smile, which seems surely a myth posing as a jest, since no less than a universe of sawdust would do. So how would you beguile an hour away from sore feet?

At the shelter there were already two campers, then came a hiker called "Two-stick Henry" since he used that many staves to help his knees. Our four then made it too crowded for the Connecticutters, who passed us by to camp farther on. I don't remember any whippoorwill, but my friend played, and I slept that night.

The next day was also a long one; we had twenty-two miles done at Wind Gap, Pennsylvania by mid-afternoon. Tired and sore-footed we wouldn't go much farther; ice cream called. But this presented a moral dilemma: over thousands of travel miles, even before 1971 when I would accept rides if offered, no motorist had ever seen my thumb.

A case of pride had set in, as well as a deep-seated fear of explicit rejection. Could I put that aside to hitch with my companions? They urged no, let them do it for me. Perhaps I am dependent on women, a hopeless mariolator. But not now, out goes the thumb! Who could pass up three young women and a beginning hitchhiker? In no time we were there, applying elixir to parched throats.

Back to the gap with heavy packs (water, not groceries) we walked the trail north to find a secluded enough spot. Down a side road under this hotel pine would do; a small cook-fire soon out, and all were turned in by dusk for a dawn start. Knowing from trail registers that our friends were close, we vowed to catch them.

Some time before light I awoke, glanced at her watch to make sure I wouldn't be getting them up too early, and quietly started a fire. Dreaming by it a moment, wondering if I dared wake them before half-light even, I saw a slim tan arm thrust a battered cookpot into the blaze. Settled that question! Her getting up with me always seemed a communion, and this time Siberia and Nolichucky were close behind. Breakfast mulligan, anyone, before it's thrown away? Not bad, says Siberia—which proves that trail hikers are more tolerant than starving cats.

By half-light we were on the move, Nolichucky setting us a steady mile–eating pace. At a breather our general announced that we had six of the miles, three more then to the lean-to where curly and the tall one might still be sleeping. With a whoop the piccolo and I were off, hoping to surprise them horizontal.

Pound the heart and fly the feet, I never moved so fast with a pack before, even downhill, and twice my friend, running to stay with these long legs, caught me up. When you strive, the target recedes and seconds prolong, but finally the shelter was just ahead. A moment for her to join me—then we turned the rude building's corner. But strangers we saw, sleepily starting their stoves. Could even thru-hikers be so crazy as to do nine miles before breakfast?

A long breath as the tension eased, a drink to our faces hot from exertion. They told us that curly had left only twenty or thirty minutes ago but the tall one was a day ahead hurrying home. We thought a moment as I ate a candy bar—if he's really moving we'll be to Delaware Water Gap catching him. But give up so close we could not.

"Catch him if you can, don't wait for me!" Now I ran part way, this being downhill, until after a mile or two there was just ahead a familiar shock of hair. Unconcernedly meandering a dreamy path, he didn't hear me until on him I swooped with a wild yell.

Startled eyes turned to face tigers; how could I have done it? If you'll hold up a minute, curly, there's someone behind wants to talk to you. Then she caught up, and it was old home week again as we visited. When we rested again going down, Siberia and Nolichucky joined us, and we walked into Delaware Water Gap together, the way it was to be for many miles north.

Showers were available at the church hostel, and supplies from a grocery and a health food shop. The piccolo was delighted to spot her parents' van; I met them and her aunt and a minstrel, family friend. She had from her father a handsomely carved staff which would alternate with mine. A new replacement pack for curly arrived, and packages for Siberia and Nolichucky. Can anyone use this extra raisin-nut-candy mix? My mother made these cookies!

Across from the hostel there was a gift shop whose lunch counter sold giant salads for $1.35, best deal in town. That was our supper; after it curly and I had a go at the Ping-Pong table. Then I received from the piccolo's hands a bright Indian headdress marking my acceptance into the dome brigade. Was there once out of British Columbia a solo hiker come so far without his feathers? At dusk on the green sward behind a church slept our pilgrim band.

Morning no fire early off roasted grain cereal with instant milk stir. Now the two will hurry on to Connecticut to meet slower hiking friends, while curly, the piccolo, and I join tall man at Culver's Gap for a loafing weekend on the farm he shared with a school-teaching buddy. We left severally. On the bridge looking back, I saw her head bent in conversation with curly, and a harshness of need brought tears to my eyes:

Afternoon brought thunderclouds; we walked faster on a long ridge, hoping to reach a spring for camping. But as the clouds piled higher and darker she and I exchanged a look. Of one mind, better get some tarp up or take a soaking.

Just making it as the last gear was thrown under in a jumble, the three of us crouched on packs as rain came in a roar, lightning flashed, and thunder boomed. When it slacked, in the closeness, for the patchwork girl who had so enriched us by her reciting, I said with Yeats:

The rain passed, a brief sun came to dry her tarp and mine. Did you think we spent all that time dreaming? In fact, wood had been thrown under to keep dry, and pots and canteens filled by rain in order that the gypsies might cook supper. Now curly drew lines in the earth, challenging the English major to hopscotch. She did good, if I'm a judge.

When the sky threatened again, we re-rigged the tarps over our sleeping bags. As dark nestled, because she had admitted once that they pleased her, I stuck sparklers in the ground and got the buggers lit, with curly's help. Bound by scintillation we climb higher and higher, but on Bastille Day they set all prisoners free. Viva the ides of July, viva! Then the lightning came putting my art to naught. And thunder its own publication.

Walk the morning to Culver's Gap where of course in an ice cream store we awaited the tall man who came in a gleaming car, somewhat spruced and trimmed by civilization himself. At the bachelor farm we met his buddy, saw a big garden, and inspected that finest of all agricultural evidence, pigs.

Elemental, gross, self-assured, most insouciant in the mud, pigs. Give them some corn, see, they eat it not even popped. Is the pig a teaching aid invented to provide urban guerrillas maximum education per unit exposure? Rest thee, merry pig, munch that corn, while this mangy hiker enjoys a many-splendored shower.

Then we shopped in the towns and walked by bookstores. Talking too often of a haircut, I was sentenced to a barbershop whose Berber knew no English and skinned me. It wasn't long to begin with; now I could join the Marines. But cool!

In the evening we trooped to an Italian restaurant where, besides eating, we were taught by the piccolo to play a straw flute. Some of us, at least. The soda straw is held vertically and air squeezed up through it to puckered lips, causing a piercing note of which an eagle would be proud. A sparrow in my case, but I kept trying.

Back in the farmstead kitchen, a little tipsy, we continued the music. She demonstrated a personal oven-grill symphony, modern. With one's own fingers stuck in ears for earphones, and grill dangling by two strings from fingers, the other players strum the grill with spoons, hands, or hair brushes for anarchic harmony.

To sleep then happy, almost. There was a single guest-bed and of course she should take it, but like a child someone needed her close, with them as she'd been in the trail shelters. When she went downstairs he was lost, he who had slept more than a thousand and one nights alone.

Do we all have a quota of solitary nights that can be borne, and his reached? And was night father to the morning that had another leaving too sharp for his armor? As if into the unwiseness of his too well loving a cold wind blew:

In these storms the jealous die more deaths than a coward, to no purpose, but there are returns, and smiles as serene as clearing. If I had gone with them, she said, there'd have been three to share the excitement of a farm truck's brake failure. Moreover at evening the roll-away bed downstairs remained away; her sleeping bag lay with ours, its blue to be seen by first light.

The next day was party, but the celebration for me was helping her cook for it in the morning. Needing no recipe, her hands knowing what to do, the hearth-person's movements and mine took on at times in farmhouse kitchen the air of ritual, as when you see your grandparents together in a faded picture of an ancient album.

Then came the party itself, friends and families and beer, at which, of course, I played the role of stone. Where do they find the courage to be so casual? Even the party, however, had its shining moment. An awkward thrower, the piccolo wouldn't play horseshoes until persuaded by curly, with me not supposed to look. But I sneaked back from Frisbee with children in time to see one of her wild tosses describe a perfectly arc-ed head over heels tumble onto the stake. Classic ringer—from the roar of approval you'd have thought her sport was everyone's redemption.

The saving virtue of parties is their finiteness and this one conformed, but not without an ominously serious conversation apart from the others in which my friend proposed that we shouldn't continue to walk together because my feelings toward her had become too intense. I was guilty as charged but hoped that something so well begun could be finished, if only as a matter of form. Later curly told me he thought it would be all right again back on the trail, and on that we slept. I could hear her steady breathing, before myself slipping off the edge.

In a goodbye morning the tall one drove us back to the trail; he'd be along in a day or two. After a day's walk on Kittatinny Ridge, with rocks like Pennsylvania's, curly and I saw signs and a note left by the piccolo, who had gone ahead to find her parents' camp near High Point Monument. We were directed down a steep side-path to the caravan where a festive supper awaited, with wine, and rollicking songs from her minstrel friend. One was about bonnie Prince Charlie, "would he no come back again?"

Next day she hiked with her father and the minstrel, catching up with curly and me at Unionville. There, after lunch and grocery-buying, the van left, and we three walked many miles on New York pavement until the trail was rejoined below a prominent ridge. Did I seem tired, to be appointed pack guardian while they fetched water from a nearby farmhouse?

Then across a big field into the woods we trudged for a camp. At first she meant not to cook but relented, helping gather sticks and adding her battered pot to mine in the supper fire. The mosquitoes were so bad curly put up his tent; we made do with headnets and chemical repellent, one of the few times she'd tolerate the gummy stuff.

On the following day we reached Crazy Roger's Appalachian Cottage (crazy in the good sense of uncommon hospitality). She and I arrived before it rained much, but curly later came in soaked. We'd met three other hikers, which put us over the limit of four that Roger could feed. I'd have gone short if the piccolo hadn't prepared a pot-full of curried peanut-butter rice, a dish learned from Nolichucky and Siberia, who'd once made us all a delicious meal of it. Now wine and chocolate pudding from our host topped off the banquet.

After supper we watched slides of hiking friends now ahead who had also stopped here, and discussed many things, including Roger's proposed novel set on the Appalachian Trail. As I was drawn out to recount the walk from British Columbia, my friend listened quietly. When asked if I had the bright feathers from an Indian, I answered no, but from a wild woman.

In the morning, drunk on coffee, I recalled that the raucous blue jay is supposed, in a strange tale of Indians, to have a secret song. Everyday the weather and d-d-drop that acorn, brother thief, but once in a great while, of green and gold confluence, the spirit transcends and then his wild sweet song, they say, is clarion.

Next day the tall man caught up, not happy that he had lost time in Unionville walking the wrong way. We teased him and he in turn ragged the piccolo for claiming a glimpse (that the rest had missed) of New York City from a ridge top. I was sure she'd seen Camelot but wasn't allowed to testify. Now on the way to Fingerboard Shelter I got angry about something and charged ahead. After an hour or two of cooling off, it was sad to be so far from them.

Then, to my delight, on a long switchback I saw her not far behind. She had pushed too, and caught up to explain the misunderstanding. Together then we hiked through New York's fierce dark beauty, around calm lakes, into and out of a cleft rock so narrow that packs had to be taken off and pushed ahead (this place was called The Lemon-Squeezer), and on under tall fir and red sun's end to the shelter at dusk. Why are lean-tos without water always reached at dark?

But downslope along a dry stream-course we found pools, and there was wood already collected at a nearby campsite. The fire was for her, since I hadn't even butter left with which to make palatable a mulligan of odds and ends. Wrong again—my gypsy friend and crown of daisies mixed stone and poor bean in her magic cauldron for our supper.

Now that it was late we supposed the others had camped short, but they finally showed up. Severe stings of bees (that I may have stirred up) on the tall one had delayed them. I was glad my big jug held enough water that they needn't look in the dark.

In the faint dawn we left quietly not to disturb their sleep. She wanted to reach Bear Mountain Bridge over the Hudson by noon for a day or two's sidetrip into the city, and I meant to be her pacesetter part of the way. It went well—again the pounding heart as our feet flashed up hill and down.

On the climbs it wasn't clear who was setting the pace; she was a little faster. But I liked the work so much that Bear Mountain itself was reached before we took our leave. I apologized for pushing myself on her; she impulsively held out a hand to me. It was doze in the bright sun when she was gone.

After a long while I loafed down trail to Harriman Park, and ordered a bachelor hamburger at the restaurant. Waiting an odd emerald minute, can it be that sweetly flowing as in silks my brown-haired friend should approach? Her retarded friend had still not showed!

"How about if I take you to New York City myself or at least offer a hamburger? Two, please." When he did arrive, he wasn't retarded at all, just the very picture of a modern ex-boyfriend; we ate together. Before leaving again, she lectured me from her guidebook about the trail ahead. The dummy promised not to get lost.

In an alternate universe the way led up from the Hudson River valley over ridges to Graymoor Monastery, after a bemused crossing of the park zoo in which a hiker looks for the next white blaze in competition with sturdy tourists peering at caged lions and inoffensive zebras.

The monks of Graymoor are very hospitable to those doing the Appalachian Trail, but I missed my companions. It didn't help that another hiker boomed in to report that the tall one and curly were swimming at noon in Lake Tiorati (near Fingerboard) with no intention of far-moving today. But he was wrong, they made it. Too late for supper, they were served thick sandwiches by the tolerant Franciscans. (And Graymoor had no drunks, unless you count those like me, who are "inebriate of dew".)

Next morning we were off for a few camps in the brave new world without a strain of piccolo. I did fair except under the moon at Edward R. Murrow Memorial Park. We'd gotten in late, no wood except some that required splitting. So I chipped away by ice axe under the full moon.

Perhaps my mind wandered, considering beauty present and beauty absent. Somehow I found myself holding two parts of broken axe-handle, the splitter having by lunar curse become the splittee. Add the pieces to the pile then, for a sacrificial fire. The blackened pick I gave to curly for a keepsake, while promising myself to discover another dogwood staff, this one for me.

The following day in Pauling I resupplied with sandwich materials, sick of my own mulligans. This got me some teasing as we camped near the Connecticut border, but I'd been cooked for twice, which is enough imprinting for this one of God's merry goslings.

In Kent early we checked for letters in the post office where, surprise, Siberia was back by car to get the mail missed when walking through. With a big hug she urged us all to catch up, since she and Nolichucky were only a couple days ahead. But I was tired and wanted news of the piccolo.

It seemed I could heard her voice saying, rest and write, rest and write. So I took a room in Kent's quiet guest house, while curly and the tall one forged ahead. But they wouldn't be going so fast that they couldn't be caught up with if it got too lonesome behind.

In the town's library I found the speech of Patrick Henry that curly and I had sought in Pennsylvania: "It is vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter. The gentlemen cry peace, peace, but there is no peace. The war has actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" What a fresher, more vibrant world it is in which someone's words are loved enough to have them by heart. Her music was not the only gift the piccolo brought.

The next morning too, I tarried, and got my news. Although she wasn't with that day's wave of hikers, they'd heard she was hiking alone—perhaps two days behind. Then I set off, planning to reach the ten-mile distant Mountain Brook Lean-to.

But it wasn't to be reached that night. Lost and thirsty in Macedonia State Park (from confusing light green blazes with white) I hailed a passing vehicle to ask where was the nearest spring. Miracle, it was her parents' van! "Come to camp, she may be along soon." "Gladly, but she'll never make it today."

In ten minutes I was proven wrong as a car stopped by their tent to let off a radiant hiker. Pushing hard she had made it to Kent walking and then thumbed to the campground, knowing they could take her back there in the morning to resume walking. Did receiving a letter in Kent, written when I couldn't sleep, have something to do with her happy face?

After supper she announced the minstrel would sing, but it was she instead who played. Not a little flute this time but the real thing, murmuring that she was rusty and needed practice. I couldn't tell. Her father said she was the only person he knew who made playing scales sound good. I could tell she'd changed from hiking shorts to a dress for the concert. It may have been silk; I could hardly look, she was so lovely. This had something to do with my happiness.

She slept in the small tent with her aunt. The big tent was too close for the fire in my head. Arms flung high in a night alive with distant singing—thank you, hunter stars: prays the Bushman.

With the morning began a time of walking in front. Her father would hike with her a week; I meant to stay ahead but not so far that she couldn't afterward catch up easily. It began well enough, as if the music hadn't stopped. But my accursed need for reassurance grew, and before the end I wanted intensely to walk backward to be with her. Of what use is a wrong way thru-hiker?

The rabbit didn't help. He stood up in the trail begging piteously for water, a grim different-colored patch at his throat. Water is the right of every creature, I said, regardless of race, creed, or fur. Even a dromedary gets to drink in time. How about if you ride on this rough board with me to a brook? You'll pardon my not shaking hands in case that throat patch is a diagnostic?

Long way no water—on Mount Everett we looked at each other. Weekenders came from the north, water. It's all right, I'm not thirsty anymore, but I have this cough. I wish you wouldn't cough like that; the world is short of rabbits already. Your rough board confines me, sir; I will jump to freedom. Your freedom, friend, is near to license.

What if there is no time to die, what if this sight will bring pain to those behind? Take your time, brother; you breathe for us all. When he finally rested, I found him a quiet place in the unstaring bramble. The weekenders promised no word to the brown-haired woman with light blue pack.

Somehow then, the camps were made and sleep found. It was easier having sandwiches without a fire, if less cheerful. The days between camps were filled with walking and one bath. A hot afternoon down Sage's Ravine, don't those pools look inviting? But no privacy, trail is too close. Another, and another so cool-looking. There, the deep one—I'm going in if the Queen of England sees me. Wonderful shock of cold clear water. If the just have their sleep, may not a fool be clean?

Many are met on the common-trail. Now came a man with high cheekbones, in denim bearing a paleface packframe. We and forefathers walked their trails and ate their turkey; how if a poor Indian tramps this white-blazed Washington-approved path between Maine and his Cherokee home in Carolina?

Did you really keep going all winter, and get a deer by that lean-to where I slept? He would stop in rich Salisbury to earn enough to refill the pack with supplies. No fun, I said, staring down proud men with your belly growling; this peanut butter and butter on thick rye will help. Carry water, there's none on Everett.

The week of walking ahead drew to a close, but I should have prayed it to continue. For on the day of heavy showers while camped with two other hikers under a restaurant shed, listening to the drumbeat and chafing because it took her tarp and mine together to keep out rain, I heard words of chill import.

What did you say? One of the other hikers had lunched with them before catching up to me. "She said she'll carry a day pack and do thirty-mile days." Seeing the impact on me, he tried to soften it by supposing the rush was to me. But I knew she knew that thirties weren't needed to catch me. I wanted to be caught.

Planning to do thirties meant that the day she played both flute and piccolo had been a dream, that she would say goodbye as threatened on the tall man's farm in New Jersey, and I must fall back as promised then. Where was the strength to come from to do that? I knew it would have to be found, but not tomorrow.

I couldn't sleep but waited, endlessly tormented by mosquitoes, for enough dawn to walk by. Then I fled with my damned feet to a better land and hour.

That time is a blur, but one morning this came:

And there was the day that I began at Jacobs Ladder Highway in Massachusetts, continued past October Mountain Lean-to when the rain began, progressed in a downpour on brush-choked trail to Dalton (fast hamburger in town with Mr. Wood), and persisted over the good trail maintained by Mrs. Wood to Cheshire—where a strong flashlight was bought for the final midnight express to Kitchen Brook Lean-to, thirty miles. So the heart pounded again and weariness tried to conceal the fact that I was alone. In Williamstown the tall one and curly, Siberia and Nolichucky had left only two hours before, but I had to sleep and resupply.

In the morning I walked straight into Vermont, by Congdon Cabin, Melville Nauheim Lean-to, Glastenbury Mountain Lean-to with the cold spring, by Caughnawaga and Kid Gore Lean-tos, and on to Story Spring before sinking to rest. There were many campers on this part where the Long and Appalachian Trails coincide. "Stop and have coffee with us; having feathers doesn't mean you have to fly. There are friends in every dell; don't be a dumb thru-hiker."

Early off again, I had eighteen miles by lunch where the trail crosses a highway to Manchester Center. If I go into town and they didn't, then I've missed them again. I'll dash up the trail in a last effort to catch them, say my goodbyes, and then walk back to Manchester Center to resupply and await the piccolo's goodbye to me. Halfway up to Bromley Camp I left even the pack to go faster. At the cabin I described yet again my friends to the caretaker.

He said that not five minutes ago they had finished their lunch and left. Well then, run! There are the familiar packs of the tall one and curly. Stop the presses, tell the girls who's here! How did you catch us, we heard you were two or three days behind? When the hugging was done: you're not going back to Manchester, we've plenty of food. She'll walk with us if we're all there to dilute your intensity. Get the pack now and come on to Griffith Lake for a swim, only ten miles. So that's the way it was.

These were quiet miles, when the exhilaration of catchup was succeeded by a serenity of weariness. But not, surprisingly, of complete exhaustion; although 140 miles in five days was a far cry from the eight mile per day average of the first three months, there had been no wall, no limit reached.

I thought that, if I were catching up with the musician instead of running from her goodbye, I could go faster. But it wasn't really a question of faster; for me, the secret of big miles was to slow down, not burn out, and keep it up a long time. And the very light pack was a tremendous help.

The lake water was a cool reward. A good fire you've started; I've about forgotten how. Is it a mulligan stew being offered; where did you acquire that uncouth skill? Better than mine, nary a stone can I find. Then we were spread out under the hotel pines, my nomad neighbors and I. Whenever it was that her friends became mine, what trail song or forest anthem sealed us, did good.

By the morning fire we began to learn Patrick Henry. A copy sent to curly had been lost in the mail but no matter, I had it by heart now and could coach them. When she caught up, we'd have it. "It is vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter."

That day to Sunnyside Camp was a sensible eighteen miles. In the next strong morning while they slept and a storm of remembering was on me, I left this entry in the trail register:

Then we swung off into a day of prodigy. At Clarendon Gorge the water could not be passed up. Dip in in my extra gym shorts; why do you wear those dinky gray cutoffs anyway, that can't be swum in? Are you aware that the old dog can't swim? Wade around the edge to us, then. Of course I slipped off the edge, wasn't that the history of my involvement with her and her friends?

Well, spell pandemonium, Poseidon! The tall fish dived in to rescue and the others hovered. But I didn't mean to be rescued on my birthday, and attacked water furiously in the across direction. And got there unaided, personal windmill withstanding. They eyed me quizzically. I hoped it could be called "swimming", but the vote went to "organized flailing."

At the highway crossing, we trooped left to a store. Ice cream, goodies, sweet drunk! Who will join the Half Gallon Club with me, my treat, I dared them (explaining superfluously that hobbits give on their birthday instead of get). The curly-head forthwith had at a half gallon of chocolate, poor chap; I chose maple-nut, while the others sensibly split a box of strawberry.

If you keep the paper sack around it, it's not so sticky. Are there a thousand big spoonfuls in a half gallon? I finished in swollen glee; we watched curly with eyes of compassion. He later told us that each of the last bites tasted like a whole creamcheese-cake.

As we returned to the trail I thought of what had been forgotten, sparklers, in case our friend arrived in time for the birthday. I returned to the store to ask, but they had none. This put me a half mile behind, what to do? Not having a familiar eagle, I stuck out my thumb. The second vehicle stopped, a van. Would you mind stopping also for my friends, sir? When he did, I grandly waved them in. How's that for a beginning hitchhiker?

There were only ten miles to go on the trail that afternoon, but after a half gallon what you want to do is sleep. I lagged, and at the nine-mile Tamarack Lean-to wondered why they couldn't have stopped there. The last mile at dusk was steep, over trail tangled with roots. Then Cooper Lodge and the smiling welcomes of my friends and other pilgrims.

"Have you walked off that lunch? Because there's wine!" The tall one had lugged a bottle ten miles, and Nolichucky and Siberia had baked a cake in the form of vanilla pudding, with candles. Birthday agapé . Blowing out the candles I wished that, the world of dream-time be knitted whole and all our days be daisy-crowned.

Down from Cooper Lodge on Killington Peak, we loafed in the morning over cups of coffee at the inn where Sherburne Pass is crossed by highway and footpath. Here curly left us on a hitchhiking side trip to town. It was to be an easy day: half mile to junction point where the Long Trail continues north to Canada and Appalachian veers east toward New Hampshire's Presidential Range, then only a mile to the lodge with bunk, bath, and all-you-could-eat breakfast for four-fifty.

But before that came the wonderful surprise in Gifford Woods State Park of recognizing the white van of her parents. There had been a nagging doubt that the piccolo was walking behind; she might have skipped ahead to finish and come back later to fill the gap. And this serious discontinuity would have been my fault. A relief then, and more—her parents thought she'd catch up soon.

Does music confirm joy? I listened to the minstrel play and sing (his practice hour) while the others strolled in to meet parents and aunt. When they had us all to lunch, I invited them to a chicken dinner—if my thumb was smart enough to find a quick-fry in Rutland.

After shaving off stubble at the lodge and receiving counsel on hitching (faith is the ticket), I set out. Sure now faith was no problem; right then I believed I could leap mountains. And so it proved; getting that chicken was duck soup—forgive me!

The last ride to Rutland had nothing better to do than bring me all the way back to Gifford Park with my bucket of hot extra-crispy. We collected Siberia and Nolichucky (the tall one without faith had signed up for a lodge supper), and so I broke bread again with her people.

From the lodge next morning I was ahead of the others, hiking in threatening weather with an ex-Peace Corpsman who meant to stop at the first lean-to, Stony Brook. After lunch he decided to come on with me, glad to have company when lightning flashed. But with fear of storm moving his feet, he outdistanced me.

When I reached Gulf Lean-to, only a little wet, he'd already made friends with a gentleman who told mosquito stories, the sort of story that has the other mosquito replying, "No, let's eat him here; if we take him home the big ones will get him."

Dating from Aristophanes, these stories depend not on novelty but on a serious expression in the telling. They can be rewarding if the speaker himself has a solemn air of one who studied transcendentalism under Ralph Waldo Emerson. I've noticed that gentlemen who tell mosquito stories are invariably from Pennsylvania.

Under tarp stretched high against rain I started a fire with dry wood considerately gathered already by my stove-using companions. After supper I kept feeding the blaze slowly. You're wasting wood, said the ex-Peace Corpsman. They're coming. Not in this rain, they've stopped at Stony Brook. They're coming. It's crazy to get so hung up on people but kind of nice, he said.

The tall one was first, dripping; some time later, curly with the women arrived. I depended on Nolichucky not to get me lost and what happened, he asked with a grin. Did somebody not put out his cigarette and cause this forest fire?

A general grunt of contentment as the new gypsies finished their supper and settled into dry corners, niches left by an all-seeing, benevolent hotel industry. Hilton be praised. I can't sleep on this pole floor, the tall one muttered, dirt porch for me. Patience you need, man; after the first dream when all untruths are blissfully at rest, the poles remember their limber youth and wisely turn the other cheek to enemy bone. Then soft the whippoorwill and low the pine's murmur as a company takes its pillowed rest. Bullshit, he said.

Next day after fourteen miles to West Hartford and a swim in the river, we lost the tall man temporarily. He would attend a fiddle contest and whoop-de-do with his farming buddy who had driven up from New Jersey to meet him. As we spooned from the assorted quarts of throat balm the buddy asked, how can you all eat so much ice cream? We train.

The four then took various routes to Happy Hill Cabin. That is to say, I got lost, and when I arrived, the water was lost. But traipsing with jugs north on the trail, I found some. A long way, it seemed.

At the cabin there'd been a noble black hunting beast. Will you get this mutt lost on the way to the spring, Siberia had asked, he's bothering the little pet of this solo lady hiker, southbound, who'll share the cabin with us tonight. I tried, but I'm no good at rejecting or being rejected; his mournful eyes reminded me of me. So back he bounded.

Then curly arrived thinking he'd been lost less than me but not sure. Who's your dark friend, Stymie of Our Gang ? I won't feed him, he'll stay; here, Stymie, have this. All dogs are named Stymie, did you know that? It was Stymie this, and Stymie that, the madman.

Then the women began to call curly himself Stymie, and he was sure they'd answer to the same. Right! That's how the ship sailed from then on, one for three and three for one, Stymies all. Is it Bose-Einstein or Fermi-Dirac statistics, when particles lose their individuality?

I spoke a while with the southbound hiker, remembering someone related to me who used to walk alone. She was bound for Georgia, a long way, and paid me a compliment, to tease about turning around and going north. But when it seemed that hikers might be, innocently, distinguished according to age, I resisted the segregation and slept next to my friend's friends.

In the morning an easy five miles brought us to the Connecticut River, over which lies Hanover, New Hampshire, and Dartmouth College, one of whose fraternities allows hikers to camp on its back lawn. In a broad world of narrow property, any hostel is happy, but the fraternity never smiled, which left one to wonder how they stood on liberty and egality as well.

Banish the frown; not these tones, oh brethren. When the tents and tarps were pitched we assayed the city for delicatessens. Rich ore! Gentlepersons, it is a scientific veracity that chopped chicken livers on rye grow not on trees; and Heineken's Dark, quoth curly, equals any Greek wine that got Polyphemos drunk. This being said, does it follow that a national bank's portals on Saturday are appropriate grounds for a picnic? Indubitably.

Finished? Then merrily walk ye to the stores for necessaries, and some opulence since we expect soon our company to be full strength. Toffee, and more ragweed tea, of course (the mis-said herbal that had passed around our many camps). I still had not been reconverted to my own cooking, so it was sandwich instead of mulligan materials to stock up on. What's this , a wallet left on the busy counter, complete with identification and traveler's checks? I think I know that person. When it was offered for sale, Nolichucky was the highest bidder. We all agreed she had better get off the sauce.

Is it that time already? Nothing for it then but an all-you-can-eat supper at Dartmouth College's renowned Thayer Hall dining room. We all performed nobly, but I thought curly slighted the ice cream. That full, I slept, but the Stymies went party-hopping, Ivy League style.

Correction: they were observing, since their packs were also heavy for dancing. When I heard the anthropological details, I was envious (unstartling, just money talking, with contrasts heightened for those now used to sleeping on ground or lean-to floors); but I couldn't have passed anyway, too gray for native.

In the morning, after, unbelievably, another meal at Thayer Hall (got to get out of here before we kill ourselves eating), we collected at the intersection of Breakfast Street and Connecticut River Road. Did you leave a note for the piccolo that we'd wait at the first lean-to? Then why are we dawdling?

Well, the women are off to the post office. Back, now where's curly? Looking for something at some store. Talk about slow mornings, why don't we want to go? I'm never this nervous, I said, unless she's close. Now practice one more time to get it perfect: "It is vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter."

Is that a single hiker coming this way? If it's her, she really pushed to be here this soon. It could be, it is; Bill, we'll get her, you stifle yourself!

My walking stick was the one she carried. It's good to see you again, I said.

Then curly-head came back and he and Nolichucky and Siberia each recited. All the way to "Give me liberty, or give me death," they got it perfect.

We crowded into the nearest café to lunch and hear how it had been with each other. The rain had not been heavy that night where she and her father were camped. Then the fast start with light pack had cost a blister, but when it was down she came on early and strong, day after day, to cover the miles. Did ice cream treat a traveler's throat with cool care? Elegant milkshakes today, instead of boxes without topses.

Back at the crowded fraternity-yard camp, we pitched tents again while she hit the showers. Curly and I were beckoned to by the temple of a tree. To the druid top we scaled it! We used to do that practicing for rock climbs, I said. Then a pride of hikers found the college green, Frisbees flying.

With a thumb twist you do it thus, curly instructed me, we'll give you the hang of a hippie apparatus yet. But my mind wandered from the lesson, remembering that the piccolo couldn't throw. All my life teased about it, she had said. She would wait until dark to hang a pack, so nobody could see her throw the rope over tree limb.

After a while I joined, for a moment, her and Siberia sitting in quiet conversation at the edge of the green. The parents would fetch her in the evening for a farewell steak dinner before driving back home to Florida. Later I saw the white van stop for her.

It was a long evening; I should have gone with the ex-Peace Corpsman to a poetry reading. At dusk, curly came out to wait with me at the stump in front of the fraternity house. I practiced on him the Yeats one about high stilts that ends: A barnacle goose/Far up in the stretches of night; night splits and the dawn breaks loose;/I, through the terrible novelty of light, stalk on, stalk on; /Those great sea-horses bare their teeth and laugh at the dawn.

"You got it perfect," he said.

When the piccolo and her family finally returned and goodbye hands were shaken all around, the hikers sat longer in the soft summer evening, swapping stories. When it was bedtime, too dark to see her face, she spoke to me apart:

"We can't walk together; it would make everyone too uncomfortable. I'll drop back."

"No, we decided in Vermont that if anyone was to be banished, it should be me. There's no denying I put a strain on even my friends. It's not now for me to argue but to do as I promised, if you've decided."

I asked her if I should go ahead or behind, thinking she'd choose behind as easier for me. She seemed to have confidence in my strength, since she said either. Then it would be ahead. Once I thought she murmured, at least then she'd know I hadn't left the trail. I wanted to ask her why she seemed angry. Why didn't I ask why she was angry?

Morning comes. Very early for I must fly, trinkets on their pillows as a form of goodbye; did we pass in the dawn and did she cry? In that terrible light, I stalked on.

There was a cliff, just as in drama, and the rocks held out their comforting arms. But that would be too permanent a gift for this Santa. Break all the toys, but leave my brow its noon. Walk hard but carefully, up the down hill over, until the dark says no. Is it Smart's Mountain then, the lean-to taken? No company now, I'll go on. Over the top was a cabin, and below it a spring. Night, my church, you have me.

That was twenty miles; today I have to go farther. Here's Mount Cube Lean-to, seven miles. Just as well I didn't get lost trying that in the dark. Eight more, I never saw the Armington Cabin turnoff. Glencliff should be soon; it's not, they've relocated the trail. Won't make Great Bear Cabin, then; bed down to rise early.

Damn, are you going up Mount Moosilauke in storm? Maybe the rain will stop, I wish they hadn't torn down the summit shelter cabin. Bastard local hikers who can choose a dry weekend to climb. A poncho's not so good when the wind blows too, is it? At least it's keeping some out. Here's the carriage road, not too far now, thank God.

The top, and foundation block of the once and future hostel. Well, they should. Three trails, are they trying to confuse me? But well marked, be careful going down, remember the steep places. Out of the wind, it should be warmer now. Look, the ladders have been replaced by wooden chock-steps, bolted to the rock. You have to trust them, it's practically a cliff-side. If the lean-to is taken, I'll lunch by the road. A patch of sun to nearly dry the poncho. Blessed be summer.

This Kinsman ridge is hard and slow; it'll be dark by Eliza Brook Lean-to. And filled it is with happy summer people. No matter, rig the poncho and sleep.

The first of the huts this morning, Lonesome Lake. Well, you said it, not me. The hutgirl thinks there's room at the next, Greenleaf on Mount Lafayette; if I can make it by six there's supper. The pack can stay light that way through the White Mountains. The problem is reservations. At Franconia Notch I'll hitch into North Woodstock for a few supplies; maybe there'll be a letter from curly or the tall one.

How lucky can I get, one ride there and back. You didn't really expect a letter, did you? What can they say? You'll never make supper going over Liberty Spring, roadwalk two miles then and climb Bridal Trail.

Close, even so. Expensive these suppers but good. It's nice what the hutgirl said, that they let the poorest hikers work for meals. Without reservations I may need some mercy myself. The hut register had an entry made by the architect, hiking with his girl, also a mainlander transplanted to Hawaii. At Galehead tonight, they may be caught up with tomorrow if I go on to Zealand Falls.

Good breakfast, too. Be off!

Now I believe it's a hard fourteen miles from Greenleaf to Zealand, but here's supper, no more than five minutes late. There he is, that must be the girl.

Welcome, the architect said after supper, to the Appalachian Mountain Club hut system. We're both members. There was a third with us who had to go back home; why don't you take his reservation and discount, cutting out the hassle at each hut? It'll be slow with us but you're far enough ahead of them now not to have to worry. It's settled then, good.

Busy, warm places the huts are, and I'd been an abstract people-watcher when my loneliness was general. The rich are different from us—they carry light packs. After supper the hut crew is introduced, to much applause; they may stage an impromptu skit, more applause.

Then, invariably, there is a lecture and demonstration of blanket folding. A trivial thing, but I never got it right. Some people are born misfits. In the circles I move in, blanket folding is like dog-talking; the idea is to do it, not do it well. But the rich must learn to fold blankets properly—part of the price of not carrying a sleeping bag, I suppose.

From the crowd scene a group of Canadians detached itself, privy councillors and public servants in Ottawa but blithe tourists in the mountains, with their wives and teenage children marching trimly along from hut to hut, like us enjoying the substantial meals and learning to fold blankets. They spotted my spaniel eyes immediately and expended much sympathy and attention bringing me in from the cold.

Conversation is a more cultivated art among the English and Commonwealth peoples, or is it an unconscious awareness of themselves being out of the mainstream that makes foreigners in the U.S. easier for an outcast to associate with? At Chicago's International House it had been Scandinavians who adopted me; I was so much with them that other residents would compliment me on my English. And the Eskimos think any child is theirs.

Then cheer human nature! Perhaps we do expel green monkeys, as the anthropologists note, but we also take in stray cats. Some of what you lose on the esses, you make up on the straightaway. And if cultural evolution is nonlinear, it is still possible to find excellence in box canyons.

On the high ridge-trail between huts I would walk sometimes with Canadians, sometimes with Hawaiians, and sometimes with myself in an abandon of rocks. There was a bird came to sing for me, not heard before. It had a sad plaintive call, but broad not narrow-noted; most songbirds are thin sopranos. I heard it again with the Canadians; they taught me its name, white-throated sparrow. The architect and his dear friend spoke of climbs up volcanos, and how refreshing are the trade breezes in Hawaii if you live at a certain altitude.

Once distractedly hut-browsing, in a paperback Fitzgerald I saw the dedication to Great Gatsby :

Yes! A gold hat to match my talismanic feathers, but which rock would sell me one?

At Lake of the Clouds Hut some of us walked up Mount Washington for a view before weather closed in. Next morning in fog and wind I escorted a Canadian with hurt knee from the summit bypass back up Washington, so that he might take the cog railway down. The other Canadians left at Madison Hut, inviting us to visit sometime in their Laurentian Highlands. We missed them, and I was nervous, imagining in the wind a strain of piccolo.

The weather had cleared, cool, for a brisk early hike down to Pinkham Notch. There I had confirmed what I'd guessed at Madison, that my friends were close, in fact, were expected that evening. And one is committed to flee.

I waited too long, hoping to thank the Hawaiians and say goodbye, so that Wildcat Ridge had to be done in a hurry. At that, I missed supper in Carter Notch Hut. A pitying hut-chief, however, let me eat later with her crew. I tried to lend a hand with dishes, but we couldn't warm to each other. This hut had seemed sad to me before, when I walked south. A place may reject; some stones are cold, and wood alien.

Approaching Gorham next day, three-mile hitchhike to town, I fought an impulse to keep the thumb out and go west, old man, where perhaps there were warmer stones. In September coming soon the aspen will be gold against Colorado skies, the elk will be readying their bugles.

But your friends will know when you leave, they're counting on you to finish, don't put something so heavy on them. Damn them, I can't take anymore; if there's no letter I'm hitching out. Look Mama, he's here; Rip Van Winkle is home from sleep. Coffee and brownies for the wanderer! Have another cup, we've hardly begun to talk.

Well, hark anyhow, is that wrong-way Corrigan slinking back to the trail, letterless? Are promises nothing today? After a $2.50 bathhouse (cash register trained in Alaska) and a sleep on the church floor and a search in vain for a gold hat, has our hero turned his worn shoes toward Maine, even boreal Maine?

Thumb in pocket, tote that barge. To the glory of Greater Ireland and fame of Vinland the Good: I started, sir, in British Columbia. Not really me, of course, but a dude I know with his brown hat from a cowboy's pawn in Dillon, Montana and a, get this, trusty slingshot. You may ask. It was a lightweight (of course) wrist rocket intended allegorically, forgive me Tolkien, for slaying the continental Goliath. And how does this shaggy earth story come out, for the busy reader? In a Maine muskeg he snubbed his toe, a moose ate him.

Dream Lake, Gentian Pond, then the Maine border—ultima Thule of Appalachian Trail hikers. Don't even try the Carlo Col Shelter; it'll be full, and they'll charge you. Somewhere on Mount Carlo then, we take our bread. A pastel sky, it may rain tomorrow.

There was a sunrise but the rain came as I started walking, a cold one. There are many boardwalks on the trail here, to protect the boggy tundra. The wood didn't become too slippery; I kept going. Full Goose Shelter was full of hikers with enough sense to come in out of the rain; I joined them and thought about staying.

Could I attempt the formidable Mahoosuc Notch in rain? On the other hand the five miles just walked made a short day, and I had promised her to stay ahead. Maybe they would homestead in this rain and maybe not. One of the other hikers spoke up, claiming that the Notch wasn't so bad wet, he had been on it in rain, the steep mud on Fuller Mountain was worse, and the weather might clear—he was going to try. That was enough to tip me out of the sleeping bag and off into the wild wet yonder.

It did slacken, for about ten minutes, then back to cold wet fury. If snow came it wouldn't be so penetrating, I thought. It was safer to have company on such a day. We stuck close; he said he'd met a long-distance hiker once in a lean-to when he and a friend chanced onto the trail after much bushwhacking. Was there another, a white-bearded Irishman singing many songs, I asked? Yes, he had thought I looked familiar; didn't I wear a beard then too? Long gone, my whiskers; an odd Providence it is to put us together again on such a day.

It can be said of the weather that it didn't get worse. I was already wet by the Notch, and couldn't risk a flapping poncho up and down those steep boulders for a mile. He was right though, the rocks gripped well enough—the mud coming down Fuller had been worse. And the climb next of Mahoosuc Arm was the pièce de résistance . It was tremendous work—I didn't realize then how heavy my wet pack had become.

But nonetheless, soaked through I got cold. Exerting like that and still cold meant hypothermia if an accident or injury, even a sprained ankle, stopped me. But with most of my clothes on already, what could be done? I wolfed down some food in a brief pause, and pushed on scared. My companion thoughtfully waited for me several times as I struggled.

Finally there was Speck Pond Shelter, grateful rest and another bite to eat. Wet through, everything, even sleeping bag inside two stuff sacks—how could I have been so stupid as to get in this fix! Does God look after his fools? A trail crew was hiking out a shorter way to their truck and dry civilization. Right now they'd leave—would we like to come along? I would, we would. Just a couple hours more shivering, simpleton, and dry you'll be.

Hot coffee with cream it was, back at Pinkham Lodge while a compassionate crew member dried gear and sleeping bags in their laundry room. Bunks could be found and her meal pass would let us buy breakfast. Supper was finished already, but we'd drive for that in the companion's car (he lived here in New Hampshire).

Over a restaurant meal chatting urbanely, whoever was it got wet and cold on Speck Mountain? Want to know something else? The crew member had had word of my friends. The piccolo had played for them, right there, in a merry evening of someone's birthday. A bright candle shines for days.

Next morning in a thrift shop I bought wool shirt and wool pants. Strike up the band, there's a black stripe down the pants. The proprietress obligingly removed the piping while altering them, ending my musical career. At an outfitter's shop I chose a waterproof raincover for the pack.

Now with liberal use of plastic bags also, it should be possible to cope with Maine weather. We loafed the day long, happy to be dry, and drove in the evening to Gorham to sleep on a church basement floor, after chatting with the minister, a fellow backpacker.

The following day we planned to start again from Grafton Notch, since Success Pond, where the crew truck had been parked, was inaccessible by passenger car. But on arrival at Grafton, rain clouds were back and a mist falling; he decided to go home and finish preparations for a fall-winter hike of the whole trail. I agreed; he'd have plenty of this kind of weather later in the line of duty. With a handshake then, my guide over Mahoosuc Notch and I parted.

Hiding my pack in the brush, taking only the poncho and some food, I set out backtracking five miles over the mountain to Speck Pond Shelter. It was the only way to keep my footsteps continuous from British Columbia and, although the trip meant less to me now than the company of friends, it should be done right if done at all. I was startled not to find their names in the Grafton Notch trail register; perhaps they did not overtake while I dried out. We might meet despite my promise to her, but I had to risk it.

Five miles is a good piece, even without a pack. The first hikers met had heard nothing; then came the architect, and I knew. "She's behind, lunching at the shelter," he said, "they may not come on because of the weather." After greeting him, I explained that it was go on for me, or skip.

I could brace myself before Speck Pond, that was good. Half in the sleeping bag for warmth she sat, brown silken hair, now damp, framing her head; against a post the tall one in a gold-colored baseball cap leaned. She spoke.

"Did you get wet?"

"To the bone; I went out from here, that's why I had to come back."

"Mahoosuc Notch in the rain? A woman broke her leg there, rescued yesterday."

When she spoke, her face was lit. I sat apart munching food like an animal, as if it were giving that got me banished. But the tall one was having none of that. Have a cookie, and he tossed. What are you, some kind of nut, I said, do you feed the birds too?

He grinned, nodding his head at the piccolo as if to say, she does. Now we talked of nothing, and everything, in the blessed interval. I stayed a little longer to help the tall one reserve a place for the Stymies. Then, say hello to them for me, I left.

The next few days were also wet and cool; if this is tropical August, pray for February. Only in the partial clearings did one get glimpses of Maine's legendary wild beauty. I went poorly with a cold in the head, the weather oppressing. It wasn't loneliness in the usual sense; I'd caught up to the architect, who was walking with a physicist now that his girl had returned to Hawaii.

The two were good company, but the fire was out in me. I wouldn't try to stay ahead of my friends anymore, but let them pass at Rangely. With luck, they'd need groceries and I'd see them in town to say goodbye. I would rest, let the cold get better, and then decide whether to continue at all.

Accommodations in Rangely were crowded; the architect and physicist took a motel room some way out of town for an early morning start, while I got a hotel room big enough for curly and the tall one too, in case they made it in that night. There was a meal together and, after laundry, the architect and I sat down to a half gallon of his favorite ice cream, Heavenly Hash. I'll come to Honolulu one day to see some of your buildings and to feel the trade breezes for myself.

After the morning's lazy independent breakfast, I left my pack at the hotel and sought a cheaper place to stay. One boarding house was closed temporarily and the other was filled with delegates to the recently held Appalachian Trail Conference, but a farm out of town had rooms. The helpful Chamber of Commerce's secretary thought transportation could be arranged.

As I strolled back to the hotel, my eye met, across the street, a tall figure in a gold cap. Through his moustache the Barbary pirate said, they're in the café and you can walk with us. She'll split, I said. She won't do anything, he said, we talked about it.

Well then, hello Maine! Now the sun shines, cloud or no, and now I walk, cold or no.

We did all stay at the farmhouse, and there was a moment alone.

"It's good to see you again," she said.

"I'll still drop back if I make you uncomfortable," I said, "you'll tell me?"

"It's good to see you again," she said.

Basement cubbys at the farm, a common room with hot plate where we cooked our suppers in dream; for reality there was the television starring a helicopter in Korea, Perils of Hawk-eye. I slept my cough apart. Five of us, but the Stymies were still a half day behind; we had been joined by sun gods, known for their fondness of ultraviolet. They brought us luck, a bright morning somewhat dissipated back in town over blueberry pancakes; then ready the pilgrims except for younger sun god. I didn't take him to raise, teased the elder, he'll catch up.

Thumbs out to hitch back to the trail, we wisely separated to get rides easier. Oh, there she goes with the sun god! But jealousy is not for this happy morning. Anyway, I have to leave any ride before the trail is reached; there will be extra roadwalking for me in order to join up with the old route that I had chosen into town. When you get off, I said to myself, it's alone again.

It took a while for the tall one and me to get a ride. But at the junction, to my joy, the piccolo was there, having also elected to trudge the road. We had hardly finished reassortment when the rest of the cast arrived. That chariot let off curly, Siberia, and Nolichucky!

Baby, where've you been so long? They said nothing of the company I was keeping, but their eyes shone. After the hugs, we didn't have to absent ourselves to make hitching easier for them; someone stopped who would have taken all five of us to town. Does the world smile on hikers today? See you later, Stymies.

Six miles it may have been we walked up the winding pavement; that's goldenrod I said in August, and she taught me pearly everlasting.

On the trail we had lunch and headed for Poplar Ridge Lean-to where the tall one and sun gods would be camping. But already by Piazza Rock it was clear that time was short for getting there. There's an old cabin on Saddleback, she remembered from doing this part of the trail before (not knowing then that she was strong enough to walk the entire route).

A big mountain encased in steep granite slabs, Saddleback is another Mainer bad to be caught on in storm. Up high there was a long slanting ledge offering a more direct route to the top. She nodded toward it inquiringly? Fun, to make our own way in summit fever, and from the top survey wild lakes and crags in late softening light.

The cabin could be seen on the next knob. It wasn't very clean, but the other occupant, whose friend was down slope struggling with a fire, made us welcome. They hadn't found water but the piccolo knew there had to be some. I took their jugs too and, with her guidance, brought back plenty.

With dry twigs and wood scraps from the cabin yard I puffed a small but adequate cook-fire. Meanwhile she had brought our packs to the clearing. Didn't know you were so big, she said, that pack came to my knees. The other hikers returned to the cheerful little fire, and we all had supper.

It seemed right both to be a pilgrim and to be well fed. Back at the cabin we caught the last sky gold and watçhed blue black lines begin to contour the lakes below. An English landscape by, she said...Turner, I continued.

Next day, the clouds came back. We didn't catch our friends ahead, who had boomed on to Stratton, but stopped at Spaulding Mountain Lean-to, in case our friends behind kept moving in the misty weather. We had company at the shelter, a professor of mideastern history doing the trail in sections (I'd camped with him in Shenandoah), a hard-slogging student with a deadline (met at the church in Gorham), and the two youngsters who'd shared the cabin on Saddleback.

The musician played to seal the evening, but too far away for me to hear well. Leaving the shelter conversation to strain my ear toward the precious notes, I saw the professor gazing at me thoughtfully. "You've changed from Virginia," he later said, "I thought then that you'd been alone too long."

Dark came quickly as our peerage settled into sleep. But mine was restless; it helped me to fall asleep to hear her steady breathing, and tonight she wasn't close enough. If there is no cure for night, at least morning is a new life. At that braver time, aside I quoted her an alternate answer to the riddle Siberia had posed us to pass time over Pennsylvania rocks:

Which won this blind tightrope walker a flash from dark eyes.

Then in light rain I hurried on with the professor and the student toward a grocery store at Stratton. I had wanted her to come in with me but she wouldn't, to save money perhaps. All she needed, anyway, was a spoon to replace the one she'd lost. My feet flew, the ride into town came quickly; there it was reunion again, even the Stymies had shown up.

They didn't laugh as I resupplied and bought three spoons instead of one when the grocer wouldn't split a package, but wished me luck as I headed for the edge of town to hitchhike. Where are the cars? Will the hitching dry up (cherish the metaphor in Maine) when a knight has spoons to deliver? Then I'll pay: You, sir, in that driveway waiting, will you put me back on the trail for a couple of dollars? Why not, and it was done.

On the trail at the base of Mount Bigelow, who should I meet but Mrs. Wood hiking with Applachian Trail Conference friends? She had been away when I passed through Dalton; now I thanked her for excellent maintenance of the trail to Cheshire that helped make possible my thirty-mile day in Massachusetts.

After parting it was a steady climb up Bigelow. Late afternoon nearing Horn Pond I heard a silvery treble, no wind's deception now, and joined an enchanted circle of listeners. If you really want solitude, dear piccolo, I thought, you'll have to leave the instrument at home. In camp I offered a spoon: take three, they're small. One the lady accepted. Now I was extra, the spy who came in from the cold with two spare spoons.

"Guess who's in town, the Stymies?"

"Thought you'd stay there then, instead of come up here."

"They didn't even ask, they knew where I'd be."

Next day was very short, three miles to Myron Avery Memorial Lean-to where we awaited our group in rainy weather. In this house by the side of the Appalachian road, we greeted a flock of ardent August hikers, some local, some thru like us, and some Unidentified Flying Objects. What, me sneer? I was an extraterrestrial myself in Massachusetts.

And in this interval there was a music lesson given: Every Good Boy Does Fine, if he doesn't fall on his FACE. Do—re—mi—. When was a student so enraptured? John Berryman said the only thing worse than not having sisters is to be born without the gift of music.

With the arrival of tall man and sun gods, and a Pennsylvanian I'd camped with before Erwin, Tennessee, and other heavy-footed refugees, we overflowed to the tent platforms. There'd have been no room for the Stymies if they'd made it, and the news of them was bad. So many in the towns and farming communities along the trail are good to us that we forget caution, become tame deer in the national park protected.

But someone invited curly and beautiful Siberia to his home, dined and drank with them, and then turned his hunter eyes on her. It seemed that with the help of the man's wife, he was controlled before it got awful, but Siberia we heard from the tall one was still sometimes sick with fear, and even merry curly had seemed pale and quiet when I saw him in Stratton.

It's a disease they say, drunkenness, and we should pity. Praise the Salvation Army, put a nickel on the drum, save another dirty bum. But when it's my friends being attacked, I turn bigot. In a helpless rage, imagining it worse than it was, I knew for a while the raw need of vengeance. I could kill or imagine I could, but the temple of law, that we build to be better than ourselves, must not.

Next morning, in some rain but with spots of clearing, we neared the end of mountainous Maine at a decision point in the trail. We'd done Bigelow; at issue was Little Bigelow, which some said was a little mother. Now the gold-capped tall one in his raised eyebrows seemed to expect a purist vote from the piccolo and me, but we disappointed him.

Dirt road, ho! Gravel roads, when they existed, made especially good routes in bad weather. I was a fanatic about walking every step, but perfectly willing to second-guess trail designers in some places, usually where an old stretch of trail still existed as a blue-blazed alternate.

Swing out in the open then, stretch the legs after steepness, onward to the pond wilderness. At each his pace we enjoyed the change. What's this, how could I have gained so quickly on the piccolo? Did she just come back from that wrong-turn jeep trail? Did my dependable route-finder get absent-minded? An angry grin confirmed it. More companionable anyway to walk together the wide track and talk.

What is a persona for, really? Do we don the mask to hide, or does it enable a primordial sorting out, a first self-classification of the human chaos into types? As if the logician could set all blue-joke-tellers-after-two-drinks into an equivalence class of good-time charlies? Just as a convenience to the imagination?

Or could it be an outline, a charcoal sketch of the angel we admire and would like to become? God created a persona in six days, then on the Sabbath stepped into the role and played it ever after. Is another life another role—was there an inspired comedian who swore he meant to come back as money?

Met Him Pike Hoses. That's how James Joyce's Finnegan pronounced metempsychosis, transmigration of souls. If a beginner were to read Joyce, what order would an English major advise? Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegan's Wake, the author's order. He was a moody man, too jealous of his wife.

You got that wrong, the persona conversation was on another road in a sun-filled day. So I did.

At East Carry Pond Lean-to the others were already setting up camp. I contributed to the war effort by chopping wood, caveman style. This meant bashing an old tree-limb against some outstanding rock, preferably sharp. With young or middle-aged wood you get a vibration down to the toes, but if the wood is seasoned enough, you get a swift woodpile spectacularly.

The first time curly saw it, he breathed: animal! This time a flying chunk missed the musician by only inches, and the animal took his self-rage to the forest awhile. Then a forgiving sun threw in turn, from across the pristine pond, soft red on the accepting faces of our company.

In a clear morning we walked quickly the six miles to Pierce Pond and nearby "Carrying Place". It's true that arrangements can be made here for crossing in a boat the Kennebec River, but what this lodge carried for us was pancakes, by the number, by the score.

For some miles, over campfires and at lunch breaks, we had deliberated a trichotomy: Is the number of pancakes that can be consumed by the piccolo and Siberia together, less than, equal to, or greater than the capacity of curly, who was certainly the most redoubtable eater we knew or hoped to know? Unfortunately this battle of the plate could not now be fought in person, since the Stymies hadn't caught up yet, but it was decided to wage it anyway and chalk up a result with which to taunt the other contestant.

While the cook readied pans for guess-what, we stalked in a meadow of books. Here, does Capulet still challenge Montague? There's a place that always bothered me, she said. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd/ retain that dear perfection that he owes/ without that title. I think you're right, I answered, the last is redundant—a mathematician's crime. (I wanted to take the book with me to reread what she'd read, but perhaps that too would have been redundant while the dream still dreamt itself.)

Are the pancakes ready? Pass the butter, please. No fair leaving off either butter or syrup. Valiantly we trenched, I say. Must the numbers be remembered? Twenty-three or four each for the piccolo and me, with a dark–horse winner at this sitting in the person of the blondest sun god. Where did he come from around the rail? But curly is surely done for. Even if Siberia has an off day, together she and the piccolo have forty. And no human being can eat forty pancakes, with butter and syrup.

Don't shove me, I'm heavy-laden. Stand away, now. Slowly they filtered back to the pond, to think or swim. After a chat with the cook about how she and her husband enjoyed their life in the woods, I joined my friends in the sun.

Pondside was not coeducational; I swam (sic) with the men's college. A trifle of mint soap, if you please, Jeeves; begad, it's good to be clean. When the lizards were done lounging they hied to the banks of the mighty Kennebec.

Do you know, it's a long way over there, maybe as much wider than the Connecticut as you said in Hanover? No gravel bars to be seen now, but the water should be down in the morning. There were hotel pines to camp under, but I was overruled in favor of pitching on the bank itself, by the river flowing.

Firewood found and supper done, there came a bumping of boot and strain of packstrap. The Stymies are here! They'd passed up pancakes even, to join us for the crossing. The more the merrier, I thought. Fording this deep, fast stream was something I wouldn't even have considered when alone. It was the group gave me strength.

After making supper on their stoves, curly telling wild stories almost like himself again, the women laid their sleeping bags under the piccolo's plastic tarp rather than crowd another tent by that of the sun gods. By my tarp curly threw down, but refused to get under; he wanted to see the sky even if it meant a face full of dew. Perhaps wisely; without tree or shrub for attachment my shelter and tall man's too were so flimsily set up under poles that a spider's breath might have blown them over.

The stars came out. Why did we throw so many rocks into the faintly shimmering water, to try to fill it up? Was everyone as taut as I was? I don't remember any music. So distant she seemed from me that night. Scorpio was a jewelled present laid in the south, but I had no skill to pick it up and deliver. The swift river flows, and nobody knows. I'm afeared, little flute, I'm afeared.

We woke to a fog thick enough to obscure the far bank, but the water level was down, gravel bars could be seen. Let's hit it before they release water from the dam upstream! After a hasty breakfast we lined the bank, they with poles cut in the evening, the piccolo and I relying on the dogwood staves we were used to.

We stepped in; tall man and the elder sun god, both good swimmers, were to be our fathers in the river, going ahead to leave loads and guard downstream in case of mishap. I don't remember a plan to buddy; in the water we seemed to slip into it as the obvious thing to do. And whose hand should I draw but the touch I'd have been willing to drown for?

To the first gravel bar was easy; off with the packs and move about to get feeling back in the toes. Good we kept our boots on, the rocks are slippery and wool socks give some warmth even wet. To the next bar, faster and deeper, we knew we were in a river. I was glad my buddy could swim.

But the last stretch, to a bank now easily seen, was the worst. When the water was waistover and urgently swift, then terror would lick at the corners of my mind. Under,under to yield and flow surely this bark out to the sea. But each time, her hand pushed the terror back. In the clean violence of a river running we walked together. And there was never such a together for me before.

Nor was it all I but somewhat we, for once she slipped and downstream I felt her weight against me, a need between arms until she steadied. On the bank that came too soon we flung our packs, and I kissed the hand that led me. "Boogah!", she cried, "now I won't ever think there's anything I can't do."

Then back into the water we went to encourage the others through the deep place as tall man and sun god had done for us. Now when the whole company was over, exulting in what we'd done, the sun gods couldn't leave our shining Kennebec but plunged back in for a swim.

With the sun out, we dried briefly before climbing a little bluff to the road that led to the village of Caratunk. There an indulgent storekeeper let us drape wet gear outside in the sun while we treated ourselves to ice cream and madeleine cakes.

Did you ever know someone well enough that she could forget herself and unabashedly admire a pale blue warm cap with Appalachian Hiker woven on it? She'd never let me buy her things, but on this exceptional day, when she wasn't looking, I paid the storekeeper and slipped it into her pale blue pack.

How could you come off that cloud and put one foot before the other? Putting one foot was part of it; in this appointed progression we gained Pleasant Pond Mountain Lean-to, and then Joe's Hole Brook Lean-to where council was held. Late, it may rain, by a miracle this shelter is empty, better stop here. But Nolichucky and the piccolo were both expecting vital mail (money) at the post office in Monson.

To be sure of getting there early tomorrow, some of the twenty-one miles had to be cut off. That could be done by going over a mountain five miles to Moxie Bald Lean-to. You'll never make it by dark, and we hear there'll be a Boy Scout troop there.

But they elected to dash, and glad I was to be a part of it, although hoping to convince them that an old tower on the mountain itself would be better shelter. Pushing hard we reached by dusk the summit, where my idea of taking a side trail to the old tower was voted down.

What, me worry? Now I wanted room for us in the next lean-to; without speaking I set off, slow first, then faster and faster until it seemed my feet were golden plovers, migrating over vast reaches of ocean. I got there before dark; the Scouts could see this honest face, which proceeded to trade, for the first time, shamelessly on the length of a journey for room at an inn.

Something worked; they rearranged themselves to make a place for us (which probably they'd have done anyway). Nolichucky and the piccolo arrived after dark to shelter, hardly believing I'd been there so long. When I was done puttering with the fire (shouldn't have started it anyway, too late), I saw that the Scouts hadn't made enough room for three, and that my tired one had quietly taken a dirt space under the eaves, leaving me the level floor.

Next morning early we sped to Monson, whose post office yielded its bounty. Moreover, the money orders could be cashed there without hitching to a larger town. Nolichucky was met by a friend who whisked her away, while I scouted again for shelter. There weren't many possibilities; when the first, a converted church, seemed depressing, we chose a boarding house recommended by other hikers as expensive but worth every penny. Friendly, unassuming, serving excellent and bountiful meals, it earned our testimonials also.

The boarding house was full of exuberant hikers, many of whom we knew; it was pleasant to swap stories and share in the glow of Katahdin around the corner. To be so close after coming so far could at times bring a reverent hush to even the most excited. One hundred and fourteen miles to go, with no other store through wilderness Maine until Abol Bridge, which is just five miles from BAXTER PEAK, KATAHDIN.

It didn't detract from my happiness to hear, as if through an ocean shell, the piccolo answering a hiker's question: Bill and I have no schedule, but we'll finish on the first with others in our group who are committed to be there then. Little flute, you needn't stake a claim to a mine you own fee simple.

And there was the chocolate. Back in Virginia I'd heard them chiding her for not eating enough to stay alive, and her protesting that she did too eat. That gentle tease of our songbird having gone far enough, I started a counter-myth claiming she was, in fact, a ravenous eater. This production then ran so long I was afraid she'd get sick on pancakes at the "Carrying Place" living up to her reputation.

Now the tall one and curly had spied some time ago a big eight-ounce chocolate bar in her pack, that she explained was to last to Monson. They laughed, no way that will make it so far, not with your sweet tooth and hollow leg. It was a healthy last chunk of this bar she handed me, smiling as she said, you eat this and tell them how frugal I was. Who was that kid getting his first valentine? On another cloud he sailed through the tasks of repairing pack straps that were coming apart, and supplying for a week on the trail by wilderness ponds through fir and birch forest to the base of high Katahdin.

In a morning of clouds we did more shopping for the long carry ahead and waited for the others, who came in soon from a nearby camp to do their laundry and resupply. When ready we charged off ahead as usual. Siberia came with us, there being some strain between her and Nolichucky; the others meant to bend an elbow in honor of thirst—past, present, and potential future. There was a light rain falling. Does Nolichucky ahead have the tent and stove? No matter, our combined tarps will take three, and that Indian yonder has become a formidable firebuilder.

If subways are for sleeping, do you know what roads are for? Conversation, naturally; we chatter to pass away the miles. This time perhaps the coma was too deep. Have you seen a white blaze lately? Me neither. Well, the road parts are never well marked. Still, to come so far without a blaze. Then out with the maps! Are you ready to feel stupid? How about not a half mile on the wrong road, not a couple even, but six or seven bleeping miles of wasted steps. I should have been warned when curly said, you can't miss it. He and I can always miss it; better elect another general (I'd been walking a little ahead).

Done now; forget it, but let's hitch back to the right road. Quickly accomplished; a big truck stopped, letting us into the Stygian darkness of its closed van. Thank you, sir; now on the right way we trudged miles behind the group. Once there was a glimpse of hiker before he disappeared around a far bend. The younger sun god, we presumed.

You know we'll never be allowed to live this down, said the piccolo. How about if a farmer insisted we come in and sip gin and tonics with him, much better than mint juleps in the Maine rain, you see? When we finally caught up to them resting in a clearing, this concoction was gravely delivered and gravely received. Not even a slight smile could be detected in the audience. Well yes, I am still a little dizzy. What can you do, not to hurt a farmer's feelings?

We all made for a shed that report allowed could keep the rain off both us and its native gravel. When found, the heaps of road filler were not appealing. Only the piccolo and I levelled sleeping places under it; the others went to tents or took their chances with the rain returning. Shelter decided, the piccolo, curly, and Siberia visited over their little roaring stoves. Tall man and I helped a car-camping woman with children build up their nearby smoky fire to a blaze adequate for broiling steaks and cooking mulligans.

Supper done, I returned to the shed to find the piccolo and Siberia earnestly conversing by candlelight. I slipped away for a walk by the river bridge to see clouds leave and welcome stars appear. When I returned, she was reading. You needn't have gone, she said. I moved my bag up to the more level place made for Siberia in case she joined us. Two candles make more light for reading.

Next morning walking ahead I was offered a lift near Bodfish Farm by a couple in an old pickup. Something about their sad and disconnected speech, rough clothes or reluctance to accept my refusal made me apprehensive for those behind.

Thus when a youngster stepped from his yard to abruptly ask what was in the pack and how far would it be going, I was glad of an excuse to wait there talking until the piccolo caught up. An odd insistence in the boy's questioning added to my misgiving, but when a man in his seventies joined us, clear blue eyes twinkling in a wrinkled face framed by white hair, I began to be reassured.

Perhaps there was nothing amiss here but that it had been a while since I saw true proverty. That gray shack with the broken toys and unabashed litter, did it remind me of a shanty in Alabama where another tow-headed youngster in another age shot a shotgun into the air to scare away neighborhood rock-throwers?

Are you his grandfather, Mister Donovan Drew, with your stories of how you and Myron Avery established the Appalachian Trail while driving about in Myron's old car, and of how you brought a young woman with her child to this lonely farm, and she left but the lad remained?

Then the pickup rumbled by to fetch the youngster for berrying, an occupation in Washington County, and my time travel halted with the piccolo's arrival and a proud introduction of the gentleman to her. We chatted some more and then walked on. The boy showed up again at Long Pond Stream Lean-to while we lunched. His questions hadn't become any more endearing.

Late in the afternoon we camped at Chairback Gap Lean-to with a French Canadian and his friend. He was a strong hiker despite age, but the friend had suffered from their day's toil and was now absent-minded and distracted in conversation. That late, we wondered if our group would come in by midnight express? I kept the fire going awhile in case. But by a slightly different route they were actually already camped ahead of us, just short of Pleasant River, as we learned later.

Bad weather came with the morning. It was to be a day of storm, inner as well as outer. The evening before, our co-dwellers had decided to cut short their vacation hike if it rained, and had questioned us closely about easier routes back to a highway. But this morning the stronger French Canadian decided to push on in our direction. I was concerned about the other, but both assured me he could get out safely. They left then in opposite directions; we delayed to search for something lost.

And underway there was a quarrel, I don't remember over what. Certainly I was much underfoot; she needed more solitude to reflect on the long walk ending soon. The resolution I remember, that we'd walk apart more in the day, but with a tear still in her eye, she softened the sentence by a slogan, "together to Katahdin." I repeated it, thinking she was good to give me that after I gave her tears.

Then I walked on in the light rain that turned into a real storm as I got higher on Gulf Hagus Mountain. On one of its ridges in cold wind-driven gusts, a group of wet hikers came toward me. To my surprise the French Canadian was with them. They'd convinced him that there was no shelter ahead and that he'd better come back with them. He asked what I thought?

I said we'd have heard if there was no shelter, these people must have come by another route, but that undoubtedly his quickest and safest way out was with them. He went on and I continued along the ridge, but worrying more and more about the wisdom of the piccolo and me walking separately in that weather. Finally I could take it no longer and huddled by a tree to wait. It was a while, I'd done a good job getting ahead.

Then she and the French Canadian, who had changed his mind again, arrived, and we conferred in the fog and rain. He asked if he was welcome to come with us, saying he'd try to go fast enough? Of course, I said, and don't worry about speed, just be careful not to slip.

He went on and I motioned her ahead, wanting them both in front so I could help fast if they got in trouble. It is customary with mountain climbers for the more experienced to so shepherd the less, especially in storm. But on the Appalachian Trail with other seasoned and independent thru-hikers, you help only if asked to.

When she preferred to walk behind I blew up, cursing and raving about professionalism in the mountains, but neglecting to mention that a good leader keeps his temper. She claimed justly that she needed no apron strings. Regaining my senses I realized that on this day I had both made her cry and cursed, and wondered what other savagery my soul had in store?

Then I went on, to not let him get far ahead, and she followed close behind. At a lull when I told her my shame at the outburst, it was a soft reply given that she too had said things ashamed of. Off the mountain the storm abated, and we followed mist to White Cap Lean-to where our group was rejoined, and all camped together. Perhaps the day had been hard on the French Canadian too, for he coughed most of the night.

Next morning before my dejected, slow start was accomplished he bade us goodbye, making a special point to thank me for leading them through the storm. I was surprised, not having noticed any leadership, but appreciated his kindness. He also seemed to regard me as a magician with fires, especially in wet weather; that praise perked me up a bit, since I secretly believed it myself.

The clouds rolled back as we walked fourteen miles to Cooper Brook Lean-to, all together now except for Nolichucky who was hiking with the sun gods, in front by a half day. It's early; shall we rest here and bask under clear skies by that delicious pool, or push forward like mindless automatons?

Since you put the case so fairly—. Stretch out the damp gear to dry then, that lizard rock downstream for me. Doesn't the sun feel good? Curly, already, is blowing soap bubbles! Where'd he get the pipe? Aren't they lovely? We tried to catch the iridescent Venusians in our hands, against sweaters, and on our noses.

Then we gathered by the pool; some swam, and organized-flailers watched. Welcome the murmuring water but when the brown-haired naiad emerged shining, there was a loathsome leech attached to her foot. Get it off, she screamed to curly who was closest. But I was fastest, and whacked the little monster back into water with my hand, a procedure not medically sound perhaps, but morally satisfying.

And it was I who mended her pack strap by moving an attachment pin to the more vital spot. I knew I should stay back, give her room, but it wasn't in me. I did have enough sense to stop showing off with fires, and asked the tall man to start one, hoping she'd join us again at the blaze with her battered cookpot. That worked.

Supper done, coals glowing, we sat by the water in the dusk of a clear evening. What's that they're passing, is this a night to smoke? A curious rite, the burning of Maine incense when my musician will leave me again. Could you pretend it's a faroff city she's gone to for a concert? When I leave for Milan, give me your hand, give me your hand. When I leave for Milan, give me your hand, I will return.

But not this night arrivaderci . When she'd puffed, she quietly handed it to me, and I quietly accepted. Siberia's eyes were wide in astonishment, but she needn't have been surprised. What I'd said when they offered before was, not yet. The tall one laughed, refusing to take part in this kid stuff.

Was my life transformed? Not exactly. What was I supposed to feel, I asked? She half-giggled. Third or fourth time for me, she said, and I haven't felt anything yet. Is it a relativistic journey when the train simply never leaves the platform? I don't want a refund; just standing at the station with her altered my consciousness.

In the morning early, walking fast, I reached Lower Joe-Mary Pond. By the big tree resting I thought, not fast enough, as she caught up. I knew her solitude was broken again. But as I readied to leave, this time she asked if I were going so soon? And so we had another few precious minutes of mutuality. Are you aware that this account may be unduly weighted with proofs that your friend was not completely indifferent to you? Guilty.

Hiking in front this way, thinking of Vermont when I had made so many pleas, and thinking of the future when there'd be no reader behind, I began to publish again in the trail registers. It may have been at Potawadjo Spring Lean-to this one was left:

Jarrell whose favorite Rilke quotation was, "Whenever I found something that could ring, I rang!". Jarrell whose bat poet loved unwisely and couldn't live his days upside down like other bats. Jarrell who kept an obscure appointment with a Carolina highway truck, and left us crying.

Eighteen short miles it was to Nahmakanta Lake that glowed in the afternoon sun. Reading the lean-to register as usual, we noted that there were supposed to be freshwater mussels out there for the scooping. But before water and wood could be fetched, to our amazement, Nolichucky appeared, limping and in tears.

"What happened", asked the piccolo?

"We were off trail around the lake on stones when I slipped and hit the knee. They've gone on; a fisherman brought me across in his boat. Will it get better, can I go on?"

All we could do was to put wet compresses around the already badly swollen knee, and hope. Sometimes cold works wonders; the swelling might be down in the morning. We puttered about to make her comfortable, abashed that a theoretical mishap would dare strike home to us.

After wood was collected, the piccolo offered to start a fire if I wanted to try my luck. With a plastic bag in hand, I waded out in the lake. They're crazy, nothing out here but rocks. Then I found one, then an empty shell, and then another mussel and another until the bag was heavy with nature's bounty. I stood cold-footed in that wide water, and gratefully watched the sun sink. Of all the roles we get to play, provider is not the least.

Back at the shelter, around a cum laude fire our circle had grown. With the tall one, curly, and Siberia had arrived two other friends of the piccolo, young women who'd also walked up from Georgia. One played a pocket harmonica and the other, from Texas, did the most authentic "boy, hi-dee" I'd heard in years.

But there was plenty and that evening, dare I say it, in the mulligans there was mussel. At supper's end, the desserts, our hasty puddings, were passed around. Then at dusk when my friend withdrew to play, I, making no bones of the worship, approached to hearing distance, and laid a good ear to that sweet night.

Next morning the swollen knee was no better; that close to Katahdin, Nolichucky had to go out in a car with the fisherman's family. We walked on in sunshine.

The light in Maine seemed unreal, with a hint of paleness as if it remembered storm and snow. We had peered for days for a look at the sovereign mountain; now, before Rainbow Lake, the signpost claimed a viewpoint off trail up a nearby ridge.

Leaning my pack against the sign in hopes the piccolo would follow, I set off. A fair climb with only a glimpse of the peak because of hovering clouds, and no friend. The Greek for sin means only that the mark was missed. Well, back down then; she'll have passed you now, perhaps you'll see her at the lake.

There is the anchorite on her rock, only a skip and blue jump from shore. Are you mad at me? Why should I be mad at you? Because I bounded off to see the peak without you. Of course not, did you see it? Of course not.

We rarely talked easily, perhaps because of my awkward intensity, but this time was different. She bubbled over with laughter about the southbound thru-hikers she'd met whose backs hadn't yet taught them not to overload. I couldn't believe one of them was carrying a monkey wrench for his motorcycle, she said. I roared, too. Was it trained to meet him on the trail when it needed maintenance?

That was fun, but we all carry too much. Perhaps one man's fetish is another's monkey wrench. Texas and friend want to camp with me this evening, she said. Am I specifically excluded? She doubted it. Then I'll tag along quietly. Rainbow Ledges—the tall one and Stymies claimed yesterday they'd head for there too, she mused, maybe we'll see the mountain.

Let's load up with water here; there'll be none on the dry ledges. Take my metal canteen then, please, since I broke the top of your plastic one; along with the gallon jug we'll have enough. At one point I scrambled up ledges, but still couldn't see anything. We climbed awhile, then rested near the top.

I scouted ahead a few yards for a better campsite. Good place, and a boulder with view if there's one anywhere, I reported. We moved our packs to the site, which had enough room for my tarp and hers, and a tent; then we approached the boulder.

Can you get up, take my hand? Ah, there now! Holy Shit, it's big! A mighty ridge culminating in Baxter Peak of Katahdin spread itself before us. Gray rock of ages, above the green forest, amid blue sky and drifting, eldritch clouds of Maine.

Down a boulder is harder than up, let my long reach go first. These hands then were her foothold, and as the momentum took them nearly to earth, she cried out. No smash, it's all right, I said. But what harm would it have done to let her check my hands?

When we'd finished supper there was still no sign of Texas and friend, tall one or Stymies. Those clouds may mean nothing, but let's consolidate the tarps now in case. Again we built together our house against the weather. I don't know if it was that night or next morning I touched the tip of her nose, but she gave a little shiver.

When I returned from a last trip outside, her sleeping bag was huddled against the tarp wall. Don't go so far, I thought, aren't there enough barriers between us without your adding centimeters? On those rocky ledges there were no wood thrushes to call—come over here, come over here, stupid, stupid; nor did the white-throated sparrow remember its sad note. Only the wind, and a few drops that fell against our roof. When her breathing came slow and measured, I too dropped off.

Sweet is the sleep of tired friends against the earth; again in first light I saw, blue blur of sleeping bag and her madonna face. In the rush of morning and purloined sip of coffee I asked her what a date was?

Is it sweaty palms in a movie house, hushed breath at a concert beginning, or goodnight with perhaps a timid pass? Should I have skipped high school, the season to learn, and can a man go fifteen years unmarried? She laughed in the clear morning, thereby rendering all discussion academic.

Off rock ledges did we ramble, in pale air did we proceed? Together to Katahdin.

At Hurd Brook Lean-to there were more French Canadian campers to remind us how close we were hiking to La Belle Province , but they soon departed, leaving us in sole possession of this last teahouse of the August moon. Its rude simple timbers were worn smooth by grateful touch of hikers, among them the lean exegetes from Georgia, now one day from their grail of Katahdin.

Its air held alchemical traces of woodsmoke and birdsong. In its register or Appalachian journal, we published notes of appreciation for the many friends we'd made on the world's longest continuously marked footpath. I thanked the piccolo and her friends for walking and camping with me, for "carrying" a beaten fighter the last rounds of his endurance event. And I left this which had come five minutes before:

Then there was an easy three miles to Abol Bridge, whose store inexplicably had no ice cream of any kind. We could have lived on air, sir, so close to the mountain, but chose on this occasion a full lunch of sandwiches topped by coffee and little pecan pies. I'd have brought you a second cup, she said, but didn't know what you put in it. Of course you do, I said, have you ever heard any complaints?

As we sipped coffee in the sun, there was a great truck idling, its driver off somewhere. But he'd left a totem behind, huge trick-sunglasses hanging in place of dice or St. Christopher's medal. She peered at the deep-set dinosaur with its owl eyes, and I remarked, I've sunk to a new low—jealous of a truck.

Away from the store there was road to be walked before regaining the trail. We often left notes or signs for those behind, patteran to our fellow gypsies. Now in the dirt canvas I saw her sketching a range. Was it to be the ridge of Katahdin? No, much longer; I saw a peak marked "S" for Springer, and at the end a "K". It was a panoramic profile of our route from Georgia. See what we have done, compañeros : exultant art. With a smile then a light foot I walked ahead.

The way led as was its wont by rushing streams and limpid pools. There were weekend hikers willing to talk to shy fugitives, but I was somehow too full. At a divergence of brook and trail I wandered off to a secluded place to bathe. Shock of water, and peace of baptism.

A mystic afternoon led inevitably to Daicey Pond Campground. Where is she, summer rose, and where are the lean-tos, our appointed shelter? The trail had been re-routed to a ranger office rather than by the lean-tos; that settled one question. Then a pale blue pack, pensive grin, and dogwood staff companionate to mine arrived to answer the other.

We paid campground fees, told the ranger to expect more of us, and ambled downhill away from cottages to a pair of small lean-to shelters. The primitive home but adequate. She would share the fire; we set about gathering sticks.

As we gathered, day hikers traipsed by sternly denouncing me for depleting the forest in defiance of rules. Well, I wondered, am I now a campground enemy? The piccolo was furious in my behalf. Have you come so far to be berated by the likes of these, she asked? It was touching to be defended by her, and a faint pride stirred in me. If the end of the walk weren't the eve of your loss, I thought, what a hero I'd be.

The ranger, when asked, said that campgrounders were indeed too many to be allowed fires, but it was legal for Appalachian Trail hikers. Our last camp could thus have a blaze to cook mulligans, or macaroni and cheese. In ancient Greece the usual dinner consisted of two courses, the first a kind of porridge, and the second, a kind of porridge.

Now the tall one, curly, and Siberia arrived. Did you come by way of the Hima-lay-as? How about waiting around sometime at lunch till we get there? Did you see the mountain? Is it a temple or the place ol' sun first hits the U.S.? Then came Texas and her friend who could play Beethoven on the harmonica, and a couple one of whose parents would car camp nearby, and finally the sun gods down from their climb of Katahdin to tell how beautiful it was and camp this night with us.

Add a stick to the fire, thru-hiker; soon our black pots will sing. Then chocolate we passed as a sweetness of camps remembered. There was joy in this last gathering, but also a sadness of something about to end. I added to that sadness by rebelling against the sleeping arrangement. Wanting to hear her fall asleep again, I lawyered and lost.

The fracas did include one of those ridiculous but heartwarming sessions in which the piccolo and I drew apart from everyone and earnestly argued. It was settled by her staying in the lean-to and my bedding down just in front under the eaves. When Siberia understood, she'd have given her place, but by then I was ashamed of dissent in the shadow of Katahdin and stayed put. A cold night to bring in September. Was the tall one restless too, out of the other lean-to and sleeping by the fire?

Morning called the faithful to prayers. Up there you know the sun lives in dark rock. A breakfast fire, m'lad, to help the sun rise. And my feelings were under control until we'd eaten and the cameras appeared. When I was thinking, the only time I get to touch her is in group photographs, and still couldn't keep from reaching out to a shoulder, then the storm broke again in me. I went out to the hazel wood because a fire was in my head. What does it matter if I run, since I'm usually first out?

But they knew, and stayed close behind not to abandon an idiot so near the mountain. At the ranger station remember your name if not your serial number. Then on the porch were my friends. How you doing? asked curly softly.

Numbly I waved a thumb to say I'd rather be hitching out of here. I don't need this archipelago of pain. But there was the piccolo murmuring, it's good to see you. And when we put aside extra gear not to carry it up, I saw she was wearing for the first time a pale blue cap that said Appalachian Hiker.

On the mountain very fast maybe it can be done if I stay ahead. But the tall one and curly decided to out-crazy me by passing. When the piccolo neared, to her questioning eyes I admitted my fear of quitting. Then she'd stay right behind. No, go on; I can't stand anymore to emotionally blackmail you, but go fast, please.

She flew, but after a while paused to say she couldn't go that fast. Neither could I; with the fever leaving, it was hard to keep up. Go your usual pace then, that has already gotten us up so many mountains. By the time we reached the rocks, which are steep enough that the iron railings are helpful, I was myself again. Siberia had caught up and I was strong enough to help them, if they had needed it. No problem, just Pennsylvania rocks arranged vertically.

At Thoreau Spring the tall one and curly were waiting in the midst of other Katahdin pilgrims. Up there in the sky a mile more by foot was our grail. Below, the light blue lakes and blue green forest brooded peacefully. Can you remember the motion, swim-trail or scramble gently, for one more mile?

It seemed we could, or in a dream there was this throng of penitents gone too high for prayer, at a point beyond negotiation, alone together beneath an unmarred Sistine Chapel. The friends embraced, and our musician played her little flute. I had walked seven thousand miles to hear a theme from Masterpiece Theatre. Clasp that, too.

On the way what goes up must go we noted that like weekenders and unlike thru-hikers our descent of the mountain was by the same route as ascent, a clear change of status. And there is a quietness about victory not altogether pleasing. But as for the company of friends against rock and sky, surely that will go on forever.

There was forest and then the need to repack gear. To Millinocket we will go for dinner! She and I hitched together and were lucky. Of course the nephew of one of my Chicago professors of old came along to offer a lift. Which cassette of classical music shall I play, he asked?

Baroque, I said; Beethoven, she countered. At least I didn't sell my watch to buy her a comb for the hair she'd sold to buy me a chain for the watch. And the golden strains of a late quartet seemed to preserve us in amber, like insects who loved.

In the town, the tall one, curly, and Siberia caught up. Will you sell me your gold cap to go bouncing? At the dinner there was lobster, steak, and curlicues not found in the common mulligan. Back in our ROOMS FOR RENT, came a one-gun salute of bubbly as the awkward man wasted some of it onto his laid-aside spectacles.

Is that how the Rothschilds live, washing their glasses in champagne? A toast to Nolichucky and Siberia, in their faroff California college, and to curly who'll join them this fall! To the tall one, may he do well in solar energy! And to the new teaching assistant, née piccolo, in a Florida graduate school, may she not throw rocks at administrators!

In the morning what do thru-warriors do but their laundry? Away from the giddy machines, she and I talked:

"To ford the Kennebec is a paradigm of life together."

"My life is biased to independence."

"The independent production of a baby would be a sin."

"That could come if I were in love; you know we mustn't see one another again."

"I know but I've kept the information classified. Can a knight interest his absent lady in the slaying of dragons, the writing of a book or solving of a science?"

"Yes."

And I thanked her for having allowed us to achieve form, that form by which life teaches death a little lesson. When we returned they'd finished the laundry and folded our clothes for us.

In the noon who is that afro-shocked dude at the wheel of his father's long limousine? Curly Charon come to bear my friends away? In peacetime it is the sons who bury their fathers. I met the parents, and helped pack. Not long enough the chariot, but room was made for two dogwood staves bound together, mine cut off as a present to her father.

All in is said, will the cargo cult depart? Don't cry for us, Siberia, we're holding up. But there were tears, and brown silk against my lips, the hug not in a group photograph. Mustn't close the door on a finger. And I found myself in new seas, uncharted.

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