I don’t have the right gear to do any cold weather camping (because that stuff is SO FRICKEN’ EXPENSIVE!) so I have had to kind of hibernate as of late and dream about the warmer months and the adventures pending.
One of those adventures is called the Pacific Crest Trail. It runs from Mexico to Canada and on the way passes through deserts and mountains and forests and bogs and caverns and meadows and lakes and rivers and snow banks and dells and glens and foliage and underbrush and mountain peaks and … you get the idea. I will never be able to take six months off of work to hike the thing, but a section of it runs through a small town about ten miles east of my apartment. And some days I can hear it calling to me, “Jamie …” it whispers on the breath of the night breeze, “Jamie, come here so I can kill you with wilderness …”
I enjoy the outdoors, but for obvious reasons, I do not trust it.
Well the Pacific Crest Trail is one of three long trails in the United States. It is the West Coast one. There’s one more or less in the middle called the Continental Divide Trail and there is a much storied one on the East Coast called the Appalachian Trail, which you have most likely heard of if you have been keeping up with your news from like three years ago about adulterous Republican governors.
Well the Appalachian Trail is the famous one of these long trails and it runs from Georgia to Maine and along the way it winds through Connecticut … got that? That will be important information later …
Okay, now over Christmas I went to New York State and while there, got to drive up to Connecticut to see the beautiful and palatial house that my sister and brother-in-law are building (the master bedroom in this place reminded me of a studio apartment I almost rented in LA for $800.00 a month).
Well my sister had mentioned that the Appalachian Trail – apparently – ran somewhere behind the house. Well I had nothing better to do so started tromping up the hillside with my brother Kevin the Kinesiologist and his girlfriend. So there we were: in nature. Headed thoughtlessly into the wild. Bounding through fallen leaves and danger, without even a second thought. Dangerously setting out on a perilous journey of dangerousness! Without even a compass, a map, any water, any food, any device or ability with which to make fire or shelter, or to hunt. And only half a Rock Star left! On all sides of us stretched nothing but the primeval and legendarily dangerous state of Connecticut … And then we crested the hill, the chill in the air only hardening our bottomless determination and heroic resolve … but then suddenly, we were on a trail and my heightened spidey senses said to my brain, “Perhaps this trail will lead to THE APPALACIAN TRAIL!”
But then I looked around and saw that the trees on the trail were marked with spots of paint and realized that we were – in point of wilderness-danger fact! – ON THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL! Excitement! Joy! Goal achieved! Celebration! But then … concern, trepidation, bewilderment.
Our epic trek to track the trail had lasted all of about two minutes.
Turns out that The Appalachian Trail does not run somewhere behind my sister’s house; it IS behind my sister’s house.
From parts of the trail one can SEE my sister’s house.
This began to concern me a little because, come summer time there are going to be so many dirty hippies tramping through there that the place is going to smell like a bongo drum trade show at the Patchouli Convention Center.
This would be all fine and good if it were the West Coast, where people are civilized and demarcate their property lines with tall and beautiful, vista-obscuring fences, but NO! We are talking about the East Coast where no one – apparently – has fences! Hey: Dear The East Coast, here’s a tip: Fences!
Anyway.
In case you can’t tell, this post went off the rails some time ago. The point was supposed to be: LOOK! I WAS ON THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL! THAT’S IT! RIGHT THERE!
I shall see you again The Appalachian Trail, yes I will …
.
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment