Chapter 11
Mount Greylock, Massachusetts
1559 miles down and 609 miles to go

Limestone Springs Lean-to
     "A not particularly restful night at all. Supply Guy and I spent the night thrashing around in our respective sleeping bags, trying to find positions in which we could be safe from the squadrons of ravenous mosquitoes and also be able to breathe. I know I failed, and by the difficulty Supply Guy is having filtering a quart of water, I don't think he got much sleep either. Fortunately we still have our sanity. I think. Ho ho ho hee hee hee ha ha ha."

The Ordainer
GA > Purgatory

     Wayah could see Jones and Squirrel up ahead near the edge of the field. Jones was slapping Squirrel around the back of the head as they had been doing for most of the day. The deer flies loved Squirrel's matted, thick hair, and would gather in it to crawl and bite. Jones had also been targeted by a steady onslaught of bugs. Wayah told him it was because they knew he was taking it personally. Wayah hadn't minded the deer flies so much. Perhaps he had less trouble since he hiked in back, and the flies had their fill of blood by the time he got there. The main reason they didn't get to him, though, was that their bite, while painful, was over when they were gone. What drove him crazy were the mosquitoes. The trail had been dipping by swamps and bogs through Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the evil little armies would rise off the marshy floor in clouds. The Vikings would start hiking faster, hoping to outrun all but the most diligent, but looking down they would see six or ten little insect blood wells set up on each arm and a kind of skittish insanity set in. A moment later, when their arms were coated with second hand blood and little hairlike legs and wings, the itching would start, and the only way to survive was not to scratch.

     Camp became a hurried affair. The luxury of taking off hot stinky boots to air out tired, battered feet was an invitation to bites all over the ankles, feet and toes. For some reason the mosquitoes regarded feet as a delicacy, perhaps it was the smell. More likely, the devils knew how sensitive their feet were and that the bites would itch unbearably. It was right up there with the knuckle on the list of the worst places to be bitten.

     Dinners were cooked, water filtered, and tents set up and sealed faster than ever. For the first time, the Viking's constant relaxed pace was beginning to elude them. The small towns of New England were quaint and pristine, clean and expensive. The wonderful little roadside fruit stands they had patronized in New York and New Jersey were replaced by the pricey deli or cafe. The only things that stayed the same were three-dollar pints of Ben and Jerry's and free water, and as luck would have it, that was all they needed to survive. Whenever they left towns they were quickly back in the swamp.

     The Harper's Ferry crew caught up or passed them occasionally, but they rarely camped together and even more seldom hiked together. The Vikings had left the larger group one evening when the multitude of criss-crossing relationships was having a noticeable effect on the overall mood of the scene. The Vikings hadn't hiked all those hundreds of miles to be returned to the disorienting web of influences in which the world off the trail trapped the soul. This group from Harper's Ferry had lost none of their social intertwining since they all knew each other before their hike. They hadn't experienced the cleansing solitude of beginning the trail alone, or the rebuilding of a hiker personality born of the trail. As long as they stayed together, they were just as they had been, only in a different place. On the evening of their departure the Vikings hiked hard and fast a few more hours in single file to a road and down to a gas station to get water. Cooking dinner on the pavement in front of the dark station they ate together and were one again. Two days later the Harper's Ferry group caught up to them again, but the groups were obviously separate and no longer pot-lucked.

     The Vikings were a unified trio, but spirits flagged a little in spite of their solidarity. During the day they trudged through the heat and mosquitoes and deer flies over pastures and through swamps, and though Squirrel's fortified good nature seemed to be pulling him through, Jones' complaints could be heard for miles, and Wayah was quietly and steadily losing his mind. Every time he looked down and saw his flesh covered with mosquitoes, he thought the next time he would snap. The nights were unusually quiet and without laughter. The muffled sound of scratching and uncomfortable shifting sifted between the tents, and mosquitoes stalked the mesh lining of the tent walls looking for holes. The Vikings got their break just in time.

     Jones had been talking about the Harbor Day festival in his college town for months, and one of his friends drove to the trail to pick them up from the Berkshires and take them clear across New York to Oswego, where the mosquitoes had to fight to survive in the concrete valley. They rested and ate and enjoyed the hospitality of Jones' fraternity brothers and family for almost a week and on Wayah's birthday went to a renaissance festival where they bought colorful leather masks almost like animal faces or wild men. They found the 99 cent Whopper and the 99 cent 7-layer burrito. For the first time in months they could eat in town affordably since four of either of these bargains would fill them nicely. Then they were back in the woods, but the rest had rejuvenated them, allowing them to gather up their spirits. The heat was more bearable, the woods seemed fresher, and Kaptain Krumrnholz wasn't far behind. They had passed him when he was off the trail, taking a break to go to Israel. Now the gap had narrowed during their short break in Oswego allowing him time to catch up.

     The night of their return they caught Screaming Coyote, limping along the trail, and camped with him at the shelter. Squirrel had met him before when he was blazing through Pennsylvania to catch up, but Wayah and Jones had only heard about him. That night he told them his story. A year earlier he had been wrestling with a friend and hurt his neck a little. A blood clot in his neck formed silently and fired off into his brain, causing a stroke that paralyzed his left side. Doctors said he would probably never walk again, which he took as a challenge. After a year of physical therapy, he started the Appalachian Trail on the anniversary of his stroke. He had trouble moving his left arm and his left leg seemed unwieldy, but he had made it 1,500 miles and it didn't look like he planned on stopping. He handed his water bottle to Wayah, asking if he could open it for him. The question caught him off guard, but he looked down at Coyote's left hand, slightly twisted, and up at his face, wry and smiling, with curly blonde hair and scraggly beard dangling around his broad forehead and deep set, bright eyes, and Wayah was truly impressed. Not because Coyote had hiked so far or suffered through so much, but because he was loving it all. He could have been fighting his way along just to spite his doctors and his body, but he had risen higher. Anger is the least of the powers available to the human spirit and the easiest. Coyote had found a greater strength in joy and good company, and he was a Viking long before he met the Horde.

     Two days later in Dalton, Massachusetts, in the midst of the overwhelming hospitality of Tom Levardi, who was letting hikers camp in his yard and feeding them tremendously, they saw Flash Shurpa again with another new partner, Brutus; Tadpole and Danger Moose with his hula-hoop; and two brothers from Denmark who were hiking a section. First thing in the morning, the Kaptain came strolling down the street grinning through his huge red beard, which had grown noticeably since Trail Days. He had realized they were just ahead and had come in early from the shelter a few miles back. The sunlight washed kindly over the trail that day.

     In his Dalton mail drop, Wayah got a new pair of spandex bike shorts. They were just in time. He wore them under his shorts to cut down on chaffing, and the pairs he had were worn out and about to burst. That night he put them on, ready to feel the clean material against his skin, but they were too tight and the fabric rough. He tried to break them in by sleeping in them, but apparently spandex is stronger than flesh, and after a few hours of hiking the next morning, Wayah realized that he was loosing the grinding battle with the shorts, and worse, they were chaffing him in the most unspeakable of places. He couldn't go on. The Vikings gathered to discuss solutions to his unusual and embarrassing dilemma. Wayah had put his old spandex back on, but it was too late. Every step tormented his new wound.

     "What's in your first aid kit?" asked Jones. "Could you just wrap some tape around it?" Squirrel started laughing. Wayah laughed too between grimaces. Wayah looked through his first aid kit for relief. He had antibiotic ointment to heal it, but he needed something to protect and cover the wound. Gauze wrapping and medical tape. He had a whole roll of each. He had begun to question the logic of carrying medical supplies with so few uses, but today, they were all that would help him.
     "I'm sorry, but I can't be with you for this," said Squirrel, half smiling, "I'm going to head on. Good luck."
     "That's all right. I'd kind of like to be alone right now anyway. " Wayah wobbled off into the woods to begin his bandaging.  The operation did the trick and he was up and walking again soon, if carefully.

     The morning was hazy and cool as they climbed up Mt. Greylock and rainy as they climbed down the steep slope starting to run with mud. Wayah took a nasty spill driving his knee into a rock just as the rain began to come down hard. His boots filled with water despite his gaiters, and his raincoat was doing him no good. The air was so warm that he was as wet from sweat in the jacket as he would have been from rain outside. Rain dripped off the brim of his hat, into his face, and ran down his arms and legs into his boots. Sloshing along, favoring his bashed knee, he was about to scream out that he was having the worst day of the trail when he thought of his genitals wrapped carefully in gauze and secured with medical tape and he began to laugh. Every jolt of pain or uncomfortable slosh of spongy sock made the comedy greater and he laughed uncontrollably down the trail, imagining how foolish he must seem.

     Wayah couldn't remember when anything had happened that had made him seriously consider leaving the trail, and by the time they reached the halfway point, such thoughts seemed impossible, Even now, with the heat and the mosquitoes and his bad day, nothing was more obvious than the fact that the day would end (likely on a good note). The heat was beginning to wane with the coming of September, and with it would go the mosquitoes. They had only 600 miles and three states left to go, and even though they had two months of the hardest hiking on the trail left, Mount Katahdin began to seem within reach. It had always loomed behind their shorter goals, but now it didn't seem so far away considering how far they had already come. Remembering the long map on the wall in Hot Springs, North Carolina, Wayah saw that it was now a trek more behind them than ahead of them. In their minds the Vikings had already begun the assault on Katahdin.