The Dynamic Duo

Let me just preface this by saying that for years UltraBob has been trying to sell me on the merits of a MacIntosh computer. The Mac is SO much better than Windows-operated PC’s. They never crash. In fact Johnny called the MacIntosh realm “the land of dreams and rainbows”. Well that was the clincher. I am getting an Apple for Christmas. But back to our story of another dreamy, rainbowy land…...............

Ah, Paddy-O. What can I say? He’s an angel; a TRAIL angel that is, and he does a lot of trail magic! When I started describing this next part to my relatives with words like “Trail Angel, Trail Magic and Trail Names, brother-in-law Bill asked, “So, do those AT hikers ever live in the real world, or do they just stay in Make-Believe Land?” It does sound a little goofy, but if you will just click your heels together three times and say “I DO believe in fairies”(you know like Tinker Bell on Peter Pan…THOSE kind of fairies) it will go a lot easier for you.
Okay, a trail angel is, quite simply, someone who does nice things for those who are hiking the trail. This can consist of giving rides, providing food or other amenities or helping with lodging. Paddy-O’s particular brand of trail magic went something like this: he would bring his pickup to a place where he knew hikers would be coming out. His truck was always filled with drinks and food, and he also carried around a portable grill for burgers and hot dogs. He also gave lots of rides, and on this particular occasion, he was willing to drive ahead to the next camping spot with hikers’ gear while they slack-packed for the day. Paddy-O was, of course, a trail name, but we found out later that his real name was Patrick, so not so much of a stretch to Paddy-O. He was a tall, slender man, probably in his 40’s, and he had thru-hiked the trail himself years earlier. He was from New York, and had had a variety of jobs, but if memory serves (and it often does not) he was currently running a tree trimming service. Paddy-O got to know quite a few of the hikers through his efforts, and the previous year had met and quite liked a hiker known as “Skinny.” After hiking the entire trail, Skinny was killed in an auto accident soon afterwards. So, Paddy-O was devoting this entire season of trail-angeling to Skinny, after which he planned to hang up his grill and stay home for a while. He carried a notebook around and asked recipients of his “magic” to write a little entry. He planned to give the notebook to Skinny’s father. I learned all of this at the camp that evening, as the whole thing seemed a little bizarre to me, and I wanted to see if I could figure out what “made him tick.” I came to the conclusion that, while rather odd, Paddy-O’s heart was in the right place.
Of course most everyone decided to slack pack and let Paddy-O transport their gear. Everyone but Sara and Jason, that is, who decided to hang out with us for the day. This was probably the highlight of the entire trip. The hiking was really cool, but camping out was fantastic! Besides, it would have been a shame to lug that tent and sleeping bags and pads all over tarnation without at least trying them out. We were going to experience the wilderness.
We were in the large, slightly yellow rental car, and Paddy-O had given Sara directions to the camping spot for the night. The navigators decided that there was a better way to get there, and we spent several jolly hours driving windy, rutty roads, occasionally turning around and trying another directon. In the end, it was Jason who found the way, but he ruined it by being an insufferable know-it-all… Well, not really, but he did gloat a bit about being so often right. The camping area had been used for that purpose before and was near a river. There were a lot of stone rings that were either a) old fire pits or b) stone circles from an ancient druid civilization who worshipped trees. There was even an outhouse of sorts. Sara had a habit of rating toilet facilities and this one got a mediocre rating. After checking it out, she strongly suggested that we NOT use the stall on the left, and I took her word for it.
We spent the next several hours gathering a mountain of firewood. We also hauled in some longer pieces with which Jason fashioned benches around several sides of the fire pit for campfire sitting. It was fun to watch Jason break the large branches into shorter lengths by smashing them with a large rock. He also levered some between two close trees and broke them that way. Before you could recite The Declaraton of Independence backwards, we had a large pile of neatly stacked firewood and another of smaller twigs for kindling. Jason also stripped off a bit of birch bark for fire starting and coaxing, and had a rather strong reaction when he caught Debi (or Platypus, as was her current trail name preference) wantonly throwing the pieces of bark into the fire.
Armadillo (yes, that is Debi changing her trail name again) had brought Jason a gift, which he liberally used to liven up the conversation. If you have not seen the movie “Napolean Dynamite”, I suggest that you do so. The gift was a small, keychain-sized item that recited, at the touch of a button, 5 or 6 phrases from the movie: “I like your sleeves. They’re real big.” “Do you have some chapstick? My lips hurt really, really bad!” “A liger is pretty much my favorite animal. Its a cross between a lion and a tiger.”, etc. Trust me, its really funny.

Gathering firewood and working on the fire pit

And now for the fun part: setting up the tents! This tent was light years away from the large 8-person tent my family used to take camping. I still have that tent, and actually got to where I could set it up by myself in the yard for summer overnighters, but it required about 1/2 hour of time and lots of lugging. As Sara & Jason demonstrated with their tent, just like ours, this little REI two-person tent practically set itself up. As we began unfolding the supports, they sprang together and we merely had to secure them to the tent, put on the raincover, and do a little staking. Of course, under the tent, we put the “footprint”, a groundcloth type thing, I was interested in talking to UltraBob yesterday to discover that a footprint is also, in computer lingo, the amount of disk space required by an application, or space taken up by hardware. I am a bit of a word nut, but my previous experiences with footprints had been limited to muddy tracks on my clean kitchen floor. We arranged our sleeping pads and bags and laid out our headlamps.

Setting up the tents

Then Paddy-O showed up with the other campers’ gear, and we set up 3 more tents for Jay, Pace & Ricky. Somehow, we didn’t have or perhaps didn’t know how to set up, No Hurry’s tent, so he was the only worn-out hiker not overjoyed to behold his sleeping quarters ready and waiting.
The campfire was terrific and the company couldn’t have been better. As I said before, noone ever made us feel like we didn’t belong or like we were in the way. That morning, before they set off for the day’s hike, I had presented Jay with a neon orange bandana for Honey. Hunting season was in full swing, and I did NOT want that yellow dog mistaken for a deer, albeit a very short one. As Jay tied in around her neck, he said, “I’m so glad y’all are going to be camping with us tonight.” It made us feel very good.
Panther (yes, that’s Debi again) and I got out the hot dogs and marshmallows we had purchased earlier, and Paddy-O fired up his grill with burgers. In his notebook, I had noticed several hikers referring to his “Mango-Tango” juice and I begged him to let me try some. “It’s non-alcoholic,” he warned me. That was fine with me. “There is only one store in the world where they sell this stuff,” he informed us. “It’s where I buy everything. Stew Leonards. Their stock is limited, but their prices are unbeatable.” The mango-tango juice was cold and sweet and I could see why hot, thirsty hikers would be grateful for a glassful.
Paddy-O had a rather circular way of talking, making it rather challenging sometimes to see what point he was trying to make. I went over to his truck to see if I could help him lay out the feast, and he countered with a question for me: “Do you know who Roger Williams was?” “Uh, no, I don’t think so.” “Not much of a history buff?” “History? You mean the Roger Williams of Rhode Island founding fame?” “Yeah. He was an independant kind of guy. I’m kind of like that in a way.” “So, you are saying you’d rather do it yourself?” “No, not really, you know?” By then I was totally confused, and wandered back to the campfire. I didn’t really want to help anyway! The funny thing is that later on, he did allow Sara to grill burgers and dogs and then told her she was the only one who had ever helped him. Go figure.

Jay, Debi,Paddy-O, Sara, Jason Pace, Ricky, No Hurry (David) and Honey of course, with the “Paddy Wagon”

You can get some good discussions going around a campfire. Ricky liked to tell people he was a scientist, but actually his degree was in political science. What can you do with a degree like that? Help out with running the family ice business of course. The others joked that he would be an ice scientist. Jay told a little about what it was like growing up in South Carolina. “I used to hate it when I got whipped and had to choose my own switch,” he said. “In the south, they grow regular switch trees. You can buy them at Walmart.”
Ricky had particularly requested the marshmallow s’mores, so I perfectly toasted marshmallows and slid them between chocolate lined graham crackers until he was practically sick. At this time, I decided to, once again, force the issue of our Trail Names. “So, how about Cougar?” I asked for probably the 5th time. “Well,” said Ricky, “Do you want tough or sweet?” “Tough!” I promptly replied. “How about this: your tral name will be S’More. Tough graham cracker crust, but sweet and warm on the inside.” “Wow Ricky,” I said grudgingly, “I hope you are going into ice sales.” S’More. Well, it could have been worse, as I was soon to find out.
Several of the guys were, once again, rolling their own cigarettes when one of them made a comment about “doobies” or “joints” or something like that. They grinned and winked at each other, and Debi knew. “Sara told you, didn’t she? She told you I thought you were smoking marijuana. And she promised she wouldn’t until after I was gone!” “It was just too good, Mom,” Sara said, only a little contritely, “And everyone thought it was cute.” “In fact,” said Jason, rising to the occasion, “I think your trail name should be “Joint.” And so it was.
We also heard a few more trail stories Jason was forever losing his belongings and demanding that others search their packs, but this had happened so often with the result being that the item was in his own pack, that the requests were now usually ignored. Pack bomb described the chaos that ensued when everyone emptied their pack and spread the contents about the camping area. We actually witnessed this, and the term is apt. They could end up camping with some “interesting” people on occasion. One time they were in a shelter with a young man who seemed a bit mentally disturbed. They awoke to find him painting his water bottle. Jason’s shirt also received a few artistic strokes. “Look,” said the artist, waggling his fingers, “I’m all painty.” This, as you may imagine, became a kind of catch phrase.

Sitting around the campfire
Jay, Paddy-O, Pace, Ricky David and UltraMom

It was great fun, in the dark, to finally get to try out our headlamps. They worked great, and were so small and lightweight. When UltraDad used to flood irrigate the farm, he had to go out every couple of hours, day and night to set dams in ditches and “change the water.” HIS headlight was efficiently fueled by four D-cell batteries that were housed in a case he clipped to his belt or back pocket. A large wire ran up to the wide elastic band that encircled his head. The lamp part was about the size of a doorknob. But this was much better than me having to go along to hold a lantern or flashlight, which happened on occasion.
We slept like logs, or very tired women, in the cozy warmth of our mummy sleeping bags. When I crawled out of my bag fairly early the next morning lured by the “call of nature”, I found Paddy-O brisk and smiling, getting ready to fire up the grill to toast breakfast bagels. “How are you this morning?” I inquired politely. “Great! Just great! I just went for a swim in the river. I try to do that every morning.”
It felt about 15 degrees F out there. I decided I would just stink for awhile longer.

Honey-Dog gets an early morning drink from the river

“Joint” rolled out of her bag soon after, and together, we got the campfire going again, determined to burn every scrap of wood we had gathered. “Hey S’more,” she said cheerfully. (Joint is most decidedly a morning person) “Its great to be out here in the wilderness.” “I know, I know. It really isn’t bad at all. Of course the bathroom thing could be a bit better, but we’re getting pretty good at this fire thing, aren’t we Joint?” After trying out our new trail names a couple of more times, we decided to go back to “Cougar” and “Panther” when we were just talking amongst ourselves. They just seemed to fit us better.
The hikers would be heading towards Karatunk today, and word on the street, or rather trail, was that there was, besides a large river that you must be ferried across, an awesome hostel. Laundry facilities, dry clean sleeping areas….in fact the group decided they would zero there and get a few housekeeping chores done. “What is zeroing, Cougar?” whispered Panther. “Stopping and hiking zero miles for a day,Panther old chap,” I said smugly, proud to have actually remembered something. “Try to keep up.”
Sara, Jason, Debi and I would drive there and check out the hostel. After that, it would be time for Cougar and Panther to leave the wilderness and the trail and start making their way back to civilization and the real world…....

to be continued