Backpacker

66 10.2017purpose.” (No such app has launched, yet.)Riff Raff was born of this environment in 2006,when a sextet of uncouth young males—thru-hikerswith trail names such as Six Pack, Squirrel, and RatPuke—slouched north from Georgia, wearing bluejeans and smoking cigarettes. By the time they reachedTrail Days, they were notorious—and when other hikersdismissed them as “riff raff,” they took ownership ofthe name. They drank by their campfire each evening.Heavily. They tossed their bottles and cans into the dirt.When they left Trail Days, their party site was a mess,and it seemed that the camp would die young.But no. For at that long-ago Trail Days, the RiffRaffers befriended another, more enterprising hiker.Steve Jennette had just graduated from Michigan StateUniversity, where he was a competitive swimmer. Hewas rangy and long-limbed, and he’d gotten his trailname, Superman, by virtually f lying over the southernstretches of the AT.But Superman was not merely a jock. At MSU, he’dall but minored in partying, sharing a house with rugbyplayers and throwing galas that drew 100 roister-ers. There was a long-stemmed beer bong perpetuallywound around the banister leading to the basement.In 2007, Superman wasn’t hiking the AT, but hetook up the Riff Raff banner. He arrived in Damascusearly, and then—to Riff Raffers, this moment is holy,akin to Moses bringing the stone tablets down fromMt. Sinai—he crested a small rise, into a sparse patchof forest infested, knee deep, with poison oak. “Rightthen,” says Superman, who has a trim beard and a soft-spoken manner, “I saw the whole [camp]. I saw that wecould weed out the poison oak. I saw the place for ourfire pit.” Yes, there were other recurring encampmentsat Trail Days, which was founded 31 years ago, but theywere simply not Superman’s speed.“Camp Mellow,” he says, with vague derision, “isjust super-old hippies. Some of them are even in their60s, and they just sit on their asses and smoke weed.”Billville is, to his mind, more dynamic. It stages massivehiker feeds, but Superman says it does no recruitmentand its members are “just the same guys doing the samestuff every year, and getting older.” Wonderland, mean-while, is for “hippies who like wooden flutes.” MissJanet’s camp, run by the trail’s premier philosopher andguru—Janet Hensley, who drives a hiker’s shuttle vanalong the length of the trail—is a transient collection ofcurrent-year thru-hikers.“I wanted to make Riff Raff something that couldlast forever,” Superman says, “and I wanted to throw thebiggest party at Trail Days.” In his mind’s eye, he couldsee 200 revelers in what would become the coolest, mostyouth-friendly quadrant of the festival. He saw, too, thatRiff Raff would be altruistic, bestowing “trail magic” onits guests in the form of free food and beer.Indeed, Superman realized that his vision for RiffRaff was so bomber that it had better start the partyearly. In that same holy moment he conceived an aux-iliary event, Pre Days, a four-night warm-up and acoming together of the tribe within the tribe.WHEN I PULL IN on the last afternoon ofPre Days’s malt beverage marathon—a daybefore Trail Days—a freewheeling vibe pre-vails. Something like 30 shirted Riff Raffers camp inDividing Ridge campground in Hampton, Tennessee, a``````stone’s throw from the AT and 40 miles south-west of Damascus. Roughly 75 thru-hikers jointhe throng, enticed by the freebies.In the open-air kitchen, a random array ofcampers chop vegetables for a one-pot chili.Heaped on the grass is a towering pile ofsnacks—chips, cookies, and peanut butter crackers donated by a Riff Raffer withconnections to the vending industry. There’s a smoky campfire and a couple self-styled troubadours sitting beside it, strumming guitars. A tranquil spirit of gen-erosity suffuses the place.I’m st a r ting to thin k of R if f R a f f a s more Mer r y Pra n k sters tha n Hell’s A ngels,but then one member, insisting on anonymity, describes the camp as “the islandof broken toys.”“We’re not good at social situations,” he says. “We don’t do well in the realworld, but here we’re on the trajectory of making family.”Are they really that marginal? Superman is, at 34, a self-employed landscaper.Other Riff Raffers I talk to include a delivery truck driver, a high-angle rescuespecialist, a carpenter, and a chef.After night falls, I sit fireside with a bartender who’s made his recent living bymixing drinks for Barnum & Bailey Circus. Joseph—that’s the only name I get—is a thru-hiker drawn here by Riff Raff ’s “pirate” v ibe. He’s a lean and w ir y man,a high school wrestling champ, now 40 or so, with a raspy voice and an unnervinghabit of breaking spontaneously into rap incantation, replete with impromptulyrics too crude to print. “I’m not the kind of guy you’d want to mentor your kids,”he tells me. “If I get money, I spend it on strippers and whores.”The next morning, I start asking around to see what kind of trouble Riff Raffmay have made in Damascus. As it turns out, the answer is none. “I’ve had noincidents with Riff Raff,” says Mike Hounshell, Damascus’s new chief of police.“Every time I’ve spoken to them they’ve been polite and courteous.”THE PARTY MOVES up the trail to Damascus. When I step into RiffRaff’s camp by Laurel Creek, Superman is lounging by the fire pit,wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sipping a beer with the relaxed air of amovie star on holiday. It’s not immediately clear how he ended up king of theisland of misfit toys, even though he’s the group’s de facto coordinator. It is heand Michael “G Hippie” Muzzillo who send out the emails and he who overseesthe almost hourly camp cleanups. When Riff Raff enters a chili cook-off hostedby Billville, it is Superman who dons the chef ’s hat and toils over the camp stove,stirring a seven-alarm concoction so f laming hot that it seems it wasn’t made tobe eaten so much as brand tongues with Riff Raff ’s name.``````Riff Raff founder Steve“Superman” Jennettepreps his camp’s entry intoa chili cook-off. The resultwas hot enough to scorchtaste buds.