Or the Rocky Horror Picture Show, or even just Rocksylvania, but certainly not Rock Bottom.
What I'm trying to say is: Pennsylvania is a surprisingly great state to hike the Appalachian Trail in despite its proclivities towards rocks.
Ah, to be in the north! We write to you from Duncannon, outside of her very own jukebox saloon, pinball and pool hall included, and an upper story hotel to boot--an unadulterated slice on Americana, delivered to you directly in your eardrums...
What preceded? Oh, just some naked hiking, trail magic galore, touch football, high heat, jumping in lakes, rolling and rumbling in the hills, plenty night zazen, and none of that white shit in the kitchen--it's just too darn hot to cook!
I hike too--and my walking generally makes music, only if there's pineapple pizza tonight on the fire? If we can beat the storm..."Don't hug any trees if there's lightning" --Mom
I will never cut my hair. I'm a pacifist for chrissakes!
And with these parting words, I walk north to the Jersey Shore for Independence Day: The woods are my home, my freight train, my womb--deliver me! Let's see how I do.
With Kerouac and attempted mind-space--
B
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Welcome Back, Boots
What defines home?
Is home where you are, or where you go back to? Where you came from or where you feel most comfortable?
And can we have more than one?
These questions seem obvious--but sometimes the simplest musings can be the most noteworthy.
I have my home in Boston--where I'm from. My home in Charlottesville--most comfortable. And of course, that ever-lovin' trail--where I am.
The past week I could never forget.
Thursday: geared up and ready to re-enter as it were, the rain came down too hard so I went to the movies. And yet--a classic hiker move. Transitioning.
Friday: missing my raincoat and shivering in the wet, I walked not 20 minutes before I saw a poncho (and lefty) hanging from a tree. Don't even ask me if the trail provides. Jam sessions and trail pizza ensued.
Saturday: accidentally walked another marathon. I love it when that happens. Saw a bear, 3 bucks, a turtle, 2 rabbits, and a copperhead.
Sunday: hitched to a bar to watch the NBA Finals and hear live music. Night hiked in the midnight rain, where frustration turned to gratitude.
Monday: endured the lingering deluge 16 miles to a resort in the Shenandoahs--and yes, the woman at the front desk did eavesdrop on our quandary (to hike or not to hike?) and graciously offered us rides to her grandma's house for the night--we hiker trashed the town of Luray from top to bottom--thank you Grandma.
Tuesday: our soft-baked companion celebrated 30 years of age--we designed a 30-clue scavenger hunt along the trail, replete with pop-tart cakes, nude photos, and special surprises. Happy birthday, Pretzel.
Wednesday: threatened by rumors of an incoming storm, we not accidentally hiked 32 miles, and liked it.
Thursday: "thayurs a meeeeeen derecho comin' arr way!" No rain, no Maine--but winds like those could keep ya away.
Friday: got our raggedy asses whipper-snapped and trail-magicked up and down, side to side.
How did I find myself bopping my head to dance music at two AM this morning? Let's work backwards: for here, now, we find our hero, yours truly, and your humble narrator, sitting on the steps of our very own national gallery in the Capital, listening to Mozart's 21st in C, yeah, the fucking pinnacle of musical excellence, about to absorb some meaning and reflect upon life--that is what art does.
Tomorrow? Back to the trail to hike 42 miles in 24 hours, crossing 3 state borders into rocky-bottommed Pennsylvania.
Through camaraderie and suffocation, joy and ache, presence and distance--a world of dichotomy--this hiker has found a glimmer of balance in all this chaos--adventure, romance, comedy, EMOTION via the structure of a thin band of brown through green, blazed red, white, and blue, heading north by not-west--and feeling at home.
Self? : approval.
Is home where you are, or where you go back to? Where you came from or where you feel most comfortable?
And can we have more than one?
These questions seem obvious--but sometimes the simplest musings can be the most noteworthy.
I have my home in Boston--where I'm from. My home in Charlottesville--most comfortable. And of course, that ever-lovin' trail--where I am.
The past week I could never forget.
Thursday: geared up and ready to re-enter as it were, the rain came down too hard so I went to the movies. And yet--a classic hiker move. Transitioning.
Friday: missing my raincoat and shivering in the wet, I walked not 20 minutes before I saw a poncho (and lefty) hanging from a tree. Don't even ask me if the trail provides. Jam sessions and trail pizza ensued.
Saturday: accidentally walked another marathon. I love it when that happens. Saw a bear, 3 bucks, a turtle, 2 rabbits, and a copperhead.
Sunday: hitched to a bar to watch the NBA Finals and hear live music. Night hiked in the midnight rain, where frustration turned to gratitude.
Monday: endured the lingering deluge 16 miles to a resort in the Shenandoahs--and yes, the woman at the front desk did eavesdrop on our quandary (to hike or not to hike?) and graciously offered us rides to her grandma's house for the night--we hiker trashed the town of Luray from top to bottom--thank you Grandma.
Tuesday: our soft-baked companion celebrated 30 years of age--we designed a 30-clue scavenger hunt along the trail, replete with pop-tart cakes, nude photos, and special surprises. Happy birthday, Pretzel.
Wednesday: threatened by rumors of an incoming storm, we not accidentally hiked 32 miles, and liked it.
Thursday: "thayurs a meeeeeen derecho comin' arr way!" No rain, no Maine--but winds like those could keep ya away.
Friday: got our raggedy asses whipper-snapped and trail-magicked up and down, side to side.
How did I find myself bopping my head to dance music at two AM this morning? Let's work backwards: for here, now, we find our hero, yours truly, and your humble narrator, sitting on the steps of our very own national gallery in the Capital, listening to Mozart's 21st in C, yeah, the fucking pinnacle of musical excellence, about to absorb some meaning and reflect upon life--that is what art does.
Tomorrow? Back to the trail to hike 42 miles in 24 hours, crossing 3 state borders into rocky-bottommed Pennsylvania.
Through camaraderie and suffocation, joy and ache, presence and distance--a world of dichotomy--this hiker has found a glimmer of balance in all this chaos--adventure, romance, comedy, EMOTION via the structure of a thin band of brown through green, blazed red, white, and blue, heading north by not-west--and feeling at home.
Self? : approval.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Milestones
Not just because this is post 100.
On Saturday, plagued by rain, chafing, loneliness, boredom, and endless sunflower seeds, I got off the trail.
Amidst 5 days of romantic desires to drop it all and go out West, indecision, and good ol' fashion home-time comfort, I have decided to resume my journey north through the woods.
Life never gives up on you. It will always force you to grow (I cannot take credit for such simple eloquence--the words came through a misty evening coolness). So it's true that I could never have rejected such a rich opportunity to travel through the darkness of the soul (thank you, post-synaptic density) to discern the healthful way "to be."
Details are relevant but insignificant--all you need to know is THE JOURNEY provides.
And North through Shenandoah Valley we go.
--Boots
On Saturday, plagued by rain, chafing, loneliness, boredom, and endless sunflower seeds, I got off the trail.
Amidst 5 days of romantic desires to drop it all and go out West, indecision, and good ol' fashion home-time comfort, I have decided to resume my journey north through the woods.
Life never gives up on you. It will always force you to grow (I cannot take credit for such simple eloquence--the words came through a misty evening coolness). So it's true that I could never have rejected such a rich opportunity to travel through the darkness of the soul (thank you, post-synaptic density) to discern the healthful way "to be."
Details are relevant but insignificant--all you need to know is THE JOURNEY provides.
And North through Shenandoah Valley we go.
--Boots
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
The Seductions of Home
My father told me, "Do not be seduced by the comforts of home!" last week when I ventured back into the world for a sniff.
Seduced, yes--and did I succumb?
This concept of "the real world." Why do we, as hikers, refer to life off-trail as "the real world?" Hiking the Appalachian Trail is no more or less real than anything else in life--I am not taking a break out here, nor am I returning to something when I reach Katahdin--I am in the midst of a continuous flow, and the trick is to surrender to it.
I can no longer claim to carry 40 pounds on my back. Some may consider my preoccupation with weight an unhealthy obsession. And yet, when your whole world is on your back and in your eyes, when there is nothing else to be preoccupied with, why not consider weight heaily? Yes--I ditched my sleeping bag. Yes, I cut tags out of shirts. Yes, I walk around camp barefoot. Yes, I am sometimes cold, suddenly clueless about how to properly wash my clothing, and reckoning with a perpetually dirty crust on the bottoms of my feet. And do I regret the lack of these comforts? I honestly do sometimes. But the ease with which I am now gliding generally outweighs any moments of shivering, confusion, or hoof-skin picking.
Last week I saw few people. I vacillated between lonesomeness and elation--wildly. Too wildly (but who's to judge?). I felt whipped around in an ocean of (I can't say emotion). Blah blah blah, the trail provides, but it does. No two ways about it. It just does.
And attending a Memorial Day celebration yesterday, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed with grief concerning humanity's preoccupation with war, and afterwards in the car, criss-crossing through America's homogeneity of fast-food chains and strip malls, which I generally so thoughtlessly support (thoughtless due to once-conscious ignore-ance), just about (no, actually) broke down in helpless remorse, guilt, shame, for we as people, who cannot just be kind to each other...
Am I just running away from it all in the woods? What am I currently contributing?
I've stopped checking my bank statement, because it is more laborious to worry about money than spend it. I have boiled my life down to searching for the simplest ways to go about anything. Am I becoming lazy or just efficient? Clear-headed or foolhardy?
Either way, the addition of a small guitar quite nicely compliments my pre-existing harmonica & hackysack conditions, and the smell of this river sure beats the smell of my armpits, and life rolls on as I continue to walk north in style, with or without (or within!) purpose, and striving to act never around but always through love.
--Boot
Seduced, yes--and did I succumb?
This concept of "the real world." Why do we, as hikers, refer to life off-trail as "the real world?" Hiking the Appalachian Trail is no more or less real than anything else in life--I am not taking a break out here, nor am I returning to something when I reach Katahdin--I am in the midst of a continuous flow, and the trick is to surrender to it.
I can no longer claim to carry 40 pounds on my back. Some may consider my preoccupation with weight an unhealthy obsession. And yet, when your whole world is on your back and in your eyes, when there is nothing else to be preoccupied with, why not consider weight heaily? Yes--I ditched my sleeping bag. Yes, I cut tags out of shirts. Yes, I walk around camp barefoot. Yes, I am sometimes cold, suddenly clueless about how to properly wash my clothing, and reckoning with a perpetually dirty crust on the bottoms of my feet. And do I regret the lack of these comforts? I honestly do sometimes. But the ease with which I am now gliding generally outweighs any moments of shivering, confusion, or hoof-skin picking.
Last week I saw few people. I vacillated between lonesomeness and elation--wildly. Too wildly (but who's to judge?). I felt whipped around in an ocean of (I can't say emotion). Blah blah blah, the trail provides, but it does. No two ways about it. It just does.
And attending a Memorial Day celebration yesterday, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed with grief concerning humanity's preoccupation with war, and afterwards in the car, criss-crossing through America's homogeneity of fast-food chains and strip malls, which I generally so thoughtlessly support (thoughtless due to once-conscious ignore-ance), just about (no, actually) broke down in helpless remorse, guilt, shame, for we as people, who cannot just be kind to each other...
Am I just running away from it all in the woods? What am I currently contributing?
I've stopped checking my bank statement, because it is more laborious to worry about money than spend it. I have boiled my life down to searching for the simplest ways to go about anything. Am I becoming lazy or just efficient? Clear-headed or foolhardy?
Either way, the addition of a small guitar quite nicely compliments my pre-existing harmonica & hackysack conditions, and the smell of this river sure beats the smell of my armpits, and life rolls on as I continue to walk north in style, with or without (or within!) purpose, and striving to act never around but always through love.
--Boot
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Foibles, Fables, Faubles
And yes, our travels (and by our I mean we as in we) have brought us into a grassy valley, smelling of magic and wet rhododendrons, in the foothills of Virginia Appalachia, and in this valley, there is a camp, a farm, and 24 thru-hikers.
I marched them in after 10 days of solid rain, whacking bush, amidst naysayers and doubting Thomases, only to be self-corroborated in what I knew would bring peace, joy, and love to their hearts and mine, and to the valley itself...
Enough of all that.
We worked together. We grew together. We love each other. And with a quick jaunt home to taste (yet not swallow) it's seductions, it is back to trail life for this Bootsy Bootlegger.
I don't need a guide book. I don't need a watch. I need: sun. water. food. legs. a heart. a sense of God.
And thus, I will walk to Maine.
In, out of, and with love,
Boots
I marched them in after 10 days of solid rain, whacking bush, amidst naysayers and doubting Thomases, only to be self-corroborated in what I knew would bring peace, joy, and love to their hearts and mine, and to the valley itself...
Enough of all that.
We worked together. We grew together. We love each other. And with a quick jaunt home to taste (yet not swallow) it's seductions, it is back to trail life for this Bootsy Bootlegger.
I don't need a guide book. I don't need a watch. I need: sun. water. food. legs. a heart. a sense of God.
And thus, I will walk to Maine.
In, out of, and with love,
Boots
Monday, May 6, 2013
Johnson City, Tennessee--like the song
Life truly is but a song, no? No! Of course not. It isn't a stage either, though we sure do like to play...
Life itself, truly, is far too unpredictable for either such comparisons! And yet, as in a song or a theater, life does seem to flow melodiously, tense and release, through all the plot twists and scene changes...
Ok, enough of this small talk, let's shoot!
It's true that I do not walk south. But driving south is a different story. But ah, but ah, but ah--before we begin to speak of the present, we must first divulge the past.
Leaving Carver's Gap last Wednesday (for those of you who left your maps at home, Carver's Gap lies at the base of Roan Mountain in eastern Tennessee) I felt alone. Facing the magnificent beauty of the bald mountaintops ahead, I could not tear my mind away from the sheets of Holiday Inn, amidst thoughts of sauerkraut and almond butter, all graciously provided by my valiant father, Moosejaw. Looking ahead towards the wilderness and back towards civilization, I felt torn between two worlds.
And yes, my friends, the trail provides, and yes, the trail does provide. When will I internalize this eternal lesson? This time, it took a dip into the rhododendrons to relieve myself of the previous night's culinary adventures to reacquaint myself with life on the trail. Thus, the chimera was broken, and Bootless hiked upwards.
Why bore you with the mundane (yes, I mean earthly, but surely not lacking in divine element!) details of my days? My routine is unfaltering: wake/eat/walk/eat/make fire/eat/sleep--and yes, I do grant the occasional creek bath/harmonica jam/hackysack session in there. And the great paradox: each moment is utterly novel. Each leaf, each mountain, each fire--so I manage to stay on my toes, so to speak.
So, I could speak of more interesting matters, such as rushing to the sumptuous Watauga Lake to grill hot dogs and smores, only to arrive on a desolate and windy beach with a smiling dead goose being lapped at by the dirty waves, but I will spare you--or I could allude to certain situations without granting them any real significance while still cleverly offering them up!
But the lesson is: expectations are dangerous, and yes, the trail does provide, and yes, life is not a song nor a play, but something far more ephemeral and inexplicable, only to be experienced and never to be understood. Like, perhaps, a song or a play.
I was wondering: must art be necessarily audienced? Or perhaps the opposite is true--art can only be genuine if no audience applauds or boos in the mind of the artist. Musings of an otherwise unoccupied mind.
Yes, I did promise an explanation for my current state of affairs: after exactly 26.2 miles of wet and windy hiking (wait, is it May?) I found myself singing Madonna and taking off my clothes in a karaoke bar in my home state of Virginia (467 miles down!), in the town of Damascus, precisely (a Damascathon!), and who but the studly Cayce Harper himself struts in to whisk 3 other (now full of pizza and burgers) hikers and myself back to his homestead in Johnson City, where we have dawdled the day away, eating often, attending films, playing music....
And tomorrow, I continue north, back to Damascus, back to the woods. If I were asked how I was feeling, I'd say elatedly exhausted, calm, poised, and ready to keep learning. I am free, I am an adventure, I am love.
Thank you.
--Bootsy
Life itself, truly, is far too unpredictable for either such comparisons! And yet, as in a song or a theater, life does seem to flow melodiously, tense and release, through all the plot twists and scene changes...
Ok, enough of this small talk, let's shoot!
It's true that I do not walk south. But driving south is a different story. But ah, but ah, but ah--before we begin to speak of the present, we must first divulge the past.
Leaving Carver's Gap last Wednesday (for those of you who left your maps at home, Carver's Gap lies at the base of Roan Mountain in eastern Tennessee) I felt alone. Facing the magnificent beauty of the bald mountaintops ahead, I could not tear my mind away from the sheets of Holiday Inn, amidst thoughts of sauerkraut and almond butter, all graciously provided by my valiant father, Moosejaw. Looking ahead towards the wilderness and back towards civilization, I felt torn between two worlds.
And yes, my friends, the trail provides, and yes, the trail does provide. When will I internalize this eternal lesson? This time, it took a dip into the rhododendrons to relieve myself of the previous night's culinary adventures to reacquaint myself with life on the trail. Thus, the chimera was broken, and Bootless hiked upwards.
Why bore you with the mundane (yes, I mean earthly, but surely not lacking in divine element!) details of my days? My routine is unfaltering: wake/eat/walk/eat/make fire/eat/sleep--and yes, I do grant the occasional creek bath/harmonica jam/hackysack session in there. And the great paradox: each moment is utterly novel. Each leaf, each mountain, each fire--so I manage to stay on my toes, so to speak.
So, I could speak of more interesting matters, such as rushing to the sumptuous Watauga Lake to grill hot dogs and smores, only to arrive on a desolate and windy beach with a smiling dead goose being lapped at by the dirty waves, but I will spare you--or I could allude to certain situations without granting them any real significance while still cleverly offering them up!
But the lesson is: expectations are dangerous, and yes, the trail does provide, and yes, life is not a song nor a play, but something far more ephemeral and inexplicable, only to be experienced and never to be understood. Like, perhaps, a song or a play.
I was wondering: must art be necessarily audienced? Or perhaps the opposite is true--art can only be genuine if no audience applauds or boos in the mind of the artist. Musings of an otherwise unoccupied mind.
Yes, I did promise an explanation for my current state of affairs: after exactly 26.2 miles of wet and windy hiking (wait, is it May?) I found myself singing Madonna and taking off my clothes in a karaoke bar in my home state of Virginia (467 miles down!), in the town of Damascus, precisely (a Damascathon!), and who but the studly Cayce Harper himself struts in to whisk 3 other (now full of pizza and burgers) hikers and myself back to his homestead in Johnson City, where we have dawdled the day away, eating often, attending films, playing music....
And tomorrow, I continue north, back to Damascus, back to the woods. If I were asked how I was feeling, I'd say elatedly exhausted, calm, poised, and ready to keep learning. I am free, I am an adventure, I am love.
Thank you.
--Bootsy
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Uncle Johnny's Nolichucky Hostel
Friends, family, boon-time companions...
I write to you in haste from Chestoa Bridge, nestled in Tennessee's own Blue Ridge.
Haste because Charlie Weather predicts rain--rain folks, rain for 10 days, or in my world, 150 miles.
Haste because sickness haunts this place, not sickness of the soul my friends, no, one far less insidious and far more temporary: a plague of the body, resulting in devilish violence within the bowels.
Haste not because I don't love this town, not because five years ago when I breached these sandy shores began a new era of my life, not because my father waits patiently for me to add buttermilk to our oatmeal and put sauerkraut in baggies...
But haste because here marks uncharted territory for yours truly, your humble narrator, and as always, because the mountains call.
Today, in haste, joy abounds, amidst minor tribulations.
You are never alone as long as you still can sing.
In love,
--Bootless
I write to you in haste from Chestoa Bridge, nestled in Tennessee's own Blue Ridge.
Haste because Charlie Weather predicts rain--rain folks, rain for 10 days, or in my world, 150 miles.
Haste because sickness haunts this place, not sickness of the soul my friends, no, one far less insidious and far more temporary: a plague of the body, resulting in devilish violence within the bowels.
Haste not because I don't love this town, not because five years ago when I breached these sandy shores began a new era of my life, not because my father waits patiently for me to add buttermilk to our oatmeal and put sauerkraut in baggies...
But haste because here marks uncharted territory for yours truly, your humble narrator, and as always, because the mountains call.
Today, in haste, joy abounds, amidst minor tribulations.
You are never alone as long as you still can sing.
In love,
--Bootless
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