Week 34 - The Scales

On Sunday morning I headed north and west towards a campground called "The Scales" in Jefferson National Forest in Virginia. The morning's ride took me through lovely piedmont pastureland, intensely green and dotted with yellow flowers. Having determined that veggie plates at barbecue restaurants can be a good nutrient-dense food option in the hinterlands, I attempted to stop at one near Lexington. I should have known from the state of the parking lot, but it wasn't until I got to the entrance that I saw the place was completely full, with a continuous stream of masked elderly folks packing themselves into the door like sardines. Ah, the combination of the vaccine and a fine spring day after church... my days of eating at mostly-empty restaurants are clearly numbered. I continued toward town and wound up getting a to-go plate from Smiley's, which was also incredibly busy but far more efficient (they had a guy taking orders in the parking lot and running out the food). After lunch the rolling hills gradually became more mountainous, and the wind was crispy with the smell of fir needles. I noticed my gas mileage was getting a lot lower than usual, almost down to 60mpg, and realized it was probably a combination of hauling all my gear uphill and my inexperience driving Punkin on steeper terrain. I started learning just when to downshift while climbing to keep the engine RPM in the sweet spot, although it'll take some time to see how much this helps. I stopped for groceries in Sparta and to top up my tank in Volney, and then on to Fairwood where the really tricky part of the trip began.

To drive up to The Scales, you have to negotiate four miles of very rough road (class 4 in the Colorado system), the major hazard for me being the fields of boulders projecting like spikes. Last summer I'd gotten up and down it on Kiddo without mishap, so I knew Punkin was more than capable, but on the other hand I was carrying substantially more luggage this time. I was mighty glad of all the work I'd done on the suspension as I bounced through deep puddles and over patches of scree. I only fell once, after running over a loose rock that slipped out from under the front wheel, but of course I was going quite slowly and there was no harm done. I was really glad to have such a light motorcycle that I can easily pick up even when it's fully loaded. As I climbed, spring moved in reverse, and all the leaves disappeared from the trees. After nearly 45 minutes of total concentration and precision steering, I crossed the cattle bridge, went through the big metal gate, and arrived.

The Scales is a grassy saddle joining two ridges, with a view to the north over mountain ranges that ripple off into the blue-gray distance. The campground is inside a large corral to keep out the roving gangs of wild ponies that live there year-round and the cattle that are pastured there in the summer, and is mostly bare ground apart from a pit toilet, a sign board, a bear box, and some primitive stone fire rings. Without the deciduous leaves, it was a wild and windswept landscape of ocher hills dotted with reddish brush and the occasional stand of firs or mountain laurels. There were no signs of life apart from an empty SUV parked on one side, and I prepared myself for a solitary week in this high lonesome place (although as it turned out I couldn't have been more wrong). As the sun sank lower and I set up camp, a pair of backpackers arrived on foot and set up their tents. I went to a spring down the road to get water, and returned by moonlight. The backpackers, two women from Philly out for a couple of days, were eating their dinner in the lee of the pit toilets to get out of the wind, and we struck up a conversation about places to go, although most of their recommendations were much farther out west than I'd begun to think about yet. I went to bed and appreciated the luxurious warmth of my new sleeping pad, waking briefly a few times in the night to the bright moon, the tent walls flapping gently in the wind, and the ponies nickering and thundering by on the other side of the fence.

The Scales is located right on the Appalachian Trail, and as it happened there had been some cold and wet weather over the weekend that kept the nobo thru-hikers (i.e. people hiking north from Georgia to Maine) in Damascus, which is the next major resupply point to the south. As the weather cleared, they began to arrive first in a trickle, then in a steady stream. Most would continue on to Old Orchard shelter three miles down the trail, but at least a few would camp every night at The Scales. If you're not familiar, the AT is a sort of loose-knit moving community with its own culture and traditions. For example hikers go by colorful trail names and there are Trail Angels who show generosity (aka Trail Magic) in the form of food, water, shelter, or rides to and from town. In the morning I was talking with a couple of thru-hikers from Maine named Captain Jack and Fun Dip. I told them about how The Scales got its name, back when cattlemen realized that cows going down the mountain would lose ten to fifteen pounds a head in water weight, and they could get a better price by establishing a weighing station up top and letting the buyers come to them. Captain Jack had worked on a lobster boat and told me they employed much the same strategy.

In the late morning, a dark red pickup truck appeared, and the driver installed a weather-beaten plywood sign on the front bumper, with TRAIL DEVIL stenciled on it. He would shout something at hikers as they went by, and most would then come over to congregate by the tailgate. Naturally I had to find out what was going on. I headed over to the truck and met WE, a man in his mid-seventies with long gray hair and beard, wearing a battered trucker hat with "Hiker Trash" embroidered on the front over a cross. He'd started hiking the trail in the mid 90's, parts of it many times, but had since gone from a "long term, long distance hiker" to a "long term, short distance walker". He lived in Florida but came up here every year to do nice things for hikers and participate in the Trail Days Festival in Damascus. He had a cooler full of ice and cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and would shout to each hiker "would you like a beer?" to which the usual response was something along the lines of "hell yeah, I'd love a beer!" He explained his choice of Trail Magic: "See most Trail Angels give hikers food, but then they're too full to want to hike. PBR is hydrating and gives them a little sugar to make it up over that hill." We chatted for a while, pausing to include the occasional thirsty hiker in the conversation. He told about finding a black bear rummaging the back of his truck in the night and scaring it away by slamming his hand on the tailgate. He told me about a secret cabin used by the "ridge runners", who walk the trail helping lost or injured hikers. He complained about the "horse people", who it seems are not very well liked by other trail users.

But eventually I had to get back to work, and pitched a shade tarp to protect myself from the hot sun. In the afternoon WE came up and asked me if I liked to read books. When I said yes, he handed me a USB thumb drive, from which I copied a trilogy of books he'd written. "All of it's true," he said, "except the parts which are NOT. See it's about before The Flood, nobody knows what it was like back then." I thanked him and started to read the first book in my spare moments. It was called "Wee Willie the Prince of Whales" and described the adventures of a man named Willie, who traveled around working, fighting, and making friends. There were hand-drawn maps at the beginning (always a good sign), and illustrations in pen and crayon in a naive style with an almost medieval quality. Willie's universe was a genre-bending combination of fantasy and realism. For example, it was peopled with the usual trolls, ogres, goblins, and elves, but also original creatures like manakes (part man part snake), coals (with pincer-like hands and a single glowing eye), and tinkers (tiny people no more than two feet tall). There are recognizable places like Bay City, which has a Golden Bridge, places on the AT like Manassas, and places like "Chu Lie", where Willie went to war and got his title "Prince of Whales". There's also quite a bit of gritty reality tossed in with the fantasy, things like day labor and homeless shelters, and a long episode describing the traditional brick-making process in detail. Apparently most of the characters were given the trail names of AT hikers (one of my favorites is a wagon driver named Where You Ben for his lateness). All in all a very enjoyable read so far.

Further conversations with WE revealed some of the real-life experiences that inspired the story, like being a liaison in Vietnam and, out of politeness, having to appear to enjoy a salad topped with crawling grubs made specially for him, the honored guest. "You can eat half of it if you want," said his translator, "but please make sure they see you eating one of the grubs, because they gave you extra as a sign of respect." As night fell, WE parked his truck on a steep slope facing uphill so as to make the reclined passenger seat almost level and bundled up inside. He thought he might stay Tuesday night as well, but the second case of PBR ran out in the afternoon and he took off. He said he always leaves when he's down to three or four beers, because he doesn't want a slightly larger group to show up and someone to miss out. Later in the week I heard news of him handing out more beers somewhere to the south.

In the evenings I explored the area, hiking around the nearby trails and finding the secret cabin WE had told me about, and then cutting through some gorgeous woods covered in a carpet of trout lillies and running cedar, with neon green patches of solomon's seal. I improved the spring uphill of the campground by making a little rock dam with a spillover that you could put a water bottle under. Getting tired of the metal gates squeaking all the time, I went around and squirted all the hinges with chain lube, after which they were nearly silent. Now that I don't have a house anymore, "home improvement" is simply another form of entertainment. I donated some power to a thru-hiker named Mike from Massachusetts, and had a good conversation with a thru-hiker from Ohio named Letterman, after his resemblance to the talk show host with his post-retirement beard.

On Thursday some high winds swept in, with gusts around 40 or 50 miles per hour, and as I was sitting in my tent the central pole gave way under the pressure and started to bend. Luckily I caught it in time, removed it, and straightened it out, but I knew rain was coming overnight along with the wind, and I didn't want to be stuck doing tent repairs in the wet at midnight. So I struck the tent and reduced my camp to the bare essentials, pitching my tarp in the "plow" configuration with one corner tied to a fence post and the other three staked to the ground. A stick with a sock on the end provided some tension on the upwind side. The rain came in while it was still light, so I went to bed early and hunkered down for a long night, falling asleep easily despite the constant flapping of the tarp in the wind. At 11pm the corner of the tarp that was tied to the fence post suddenly ripped and gave way and I woke up to rain on my face. Luckily it was only sprinkling at the time, and I was able to quickly improvise a new tie point from a ball of string, this time attaching it very low on the fence post to catch the minimum amount of wind. Just as I got back into my sleeping bag, the tarp was battered by a series of squalls, the rain coming in almost horizontally. Some water leaked onto one side of me, but I was able to stay mostly dry and mostly warm for the rest of the night, and got up at dawn to a crystal clear sky and a lovely sunrise. There were three other campers, two thru-hikers in tents and one who'd spent the night in one of the pit toilets. We talked about what a crazy night it had been. It felt like we'd made it through something.

On Friday it was sunny but the wind continued all day, so I simplified my camp even more, until it was just the tarp staked down at all four corners, with gear underneath propping it up enough to make a little tunnel for me to sleep in. Some trucks arrived to drop off supplies for a 50 mile trail race that was coming through in the morning, and by evening the campground was positively crowded. Since I was low on fuel alcohol and hadn't used my firewood stash, I made a fire to heat up a can of beans for dinner, building it in a channel of rocks angled in the direction of the wind, so that it was like cooking with a blast furnace. Not terribly efficient, but on the other hand there was barely any smoke. I went to bed under my tarp with just my head poking out so I could look at the stars. By sunrise the wind had dropped and so had the temperature, just touching freezing before warming back up from the sun.

It was a lovely morning, and I went over to the aid station that had been set up for the race to enjoy the social scene. The volunteers were very sweet, and offered me hot breakfast, beer, even a bloody mary. I declined breakfast because I enjoy my routine of tea and oatmeal, and the alcohol because getting down the mountain was going to be hard enough already. But I enjoyed their fire and conversation, and shortly after 7am the first runner arrived, then steadily more and more of them. The aid station had coolers of water and Gatorade of course, but also an interesting selection of snacks: quesadillas, cold pizza, a pile of bacon, slices of avocado, small potatoes peeled and boiled, pickles, bananas, and shots of a cinnamon-infused whiskey called Fireball. They didn't have any salt for the potatoes so I donated some. One runner filled his water bottle halfway up with pickle juice and topped it off with water. One of the volunteers tended to the bloody knees of a woman who'd taken a spill. So many of the runners thanked them for being there that the volunteers remarked on how nice runners were, which led to a ranking of the politeness of various trail users: horse people are apparently the rudest, followed by mountain bikers, and hikers and runners are the most polite. "Motorcycle people are always nice," said one volunteer. "No really, they are," she said to dispel any suspicion that she was trying to flatter me.

After awhile the 50 kilometre runners, who were doing a smaller loop, started to arrive in droves and I took that as my cue to go pack up and head out. Waving goodbye to the race people, I picked my way carefully down through the rocks, barely using the engine. On the way I passed some 50 mile runners on their way back from the extra loop, including the guy in the lead, and one of them even stopped briefly to take a photo of me. As I descended, spring moved forward again, and the leaves reappeared on the trees.

Things I Learned

• Being a ridge runner seems like an awesome job, at least for the right type of person. I met the current ridge runner, who was very friendly and seemed to really enjoy conversation and walking, although he said he had to spend a lot of time picking up trash.
• A surprising number of AT hikers have dogs, who carry their own food in cute little side bags. They were some of the chillest and happiest dogs I've ever seen, presumably because they have to beg not to go on a walk.
• There's a Baptist preacher (trail name Circuit Rider) that has a church of the Appalachian Trail, and takes donations to keep him hiking and spreading the gospel.
• There's a pizza restaurant that delivers to one of the AT shelters. I overheard a couple of hikers calling them to make sure it was really true. "He had an Italian accent!" gushed Tater Tot after getting off the phone, "Giovanni (I'm going to pretend his name was Giovanni) said that if we get the order in by 9pm they can do it." "Can you send me the menu?" asked Coach, "I want to fall asleep to it tonight."

Wonderful Things

• A bird flying by, trailing a streamer of nesting material.
• A spindly-legged foal curled up next to its mother.
• Cloud shadows passing across a field of dandelions.
• The full moon rising slowly over grazing ponies.
• Frogs singing from hidden pools.