A Walk in the Woods

It turned out to be an awful day in nearly every way. In the early afternoon, I
discovered that I had lost my backpack raincover (which, may I just say here, was a
completely useless, ill-designed piece of crap anyway, for which I had paid $25) and that
nearly everything in my pack now ranged from disagreeably damp to completely sodden. I
had, fortunately, taken to wrapping my sleeping bag in a double thickness of trash bags
(cost: 35 cents), so it at least was dry. Twenty minutes later, as I sheltered under a
bough waiting for Katz, he arrived and immediately said, "Hey, where's your stick?" I had
lost my beloved walking stick--I suddenly remembered propping it against a tree when I
had stopped to tie a lace--and was filled with despair. That stick had seen me through six
and a half weeks of mountains, had become all but part of me. It was a link with my
children, whom I missed more than I can tell you. I felt like weeping. I told Katz where I
thought I'd left it, at a place called Elkwallow Gap, about four miles back.
"I'll get it for you," he said without hesitation and started to drop his pack. I could have
wept again--he really meant it--but I wouldn't let him go. It was too far, and besides,
Elkwallow Gap was a public place. Someone would have taken it as a souvenir by now.
So we pressed on to a spot called Gravel Springs Hut. It was only half past two when
we got there. We had planned to go at least six miles farther, but we were so soaked and
the rain was so unrelenting that we decided to stop. I had no dry clothes, so I stripped to
my boxer shorts and climbed into my sleeping bag. We spent the longest afternoon I can
ever remember listlessly reading and staring out at the pattering rain.
At about five o'clock, just to make our day complete, a group of six noisy people
arrived, three men and three women, dressed in the most preposterously Ralph Lauren-
style hiking clothes--safari jackets and broad-brimmed canvas hats and suede hiking
boots. These were clothes for sauntering along the veranda at Mackinac or perhaps going
on a jeep safari, but patently not for hiking. One of the women, arriving a few paces
behind the others and walking through the mud as if it were radioactive, peered into the
shelter at me and Katz and said with undisguised distaste, "Ooh, do we have to share?"
They were, to a degree that would have been fascinating in less trying circumstances,
stupid, obnoxious, cheerfully but astonishingly self-absorbed, and not remotely acquainted
with trail etiquette. Katz and I found ourselves carelessly bumped and jostled into the
darkest corners, sprayed with water from clothes being shaken out, and knocked in the
head with casually discarded equipment. In astonishment, we watched as clothes we had
hung up to dry on a small clothesline were pushed and bunched to one side to make
abundant room for their stuff. I sat sullenly, unable to concentrate on my book, while two
of the men crouched beside me, in my light, and had the following conversation:
"I've never done this before."
"What--camp in a shelter?"
"No, look through binoculars with my glasses on."
"Oh, I thought you meant camp in a shelter--ha! ha! ha!"
"No, I meant look through binoculars with my glasses on--ha! ha! ha!"
After about a half an hour of this, Katz came over, knelt beside me, and said in a
whisper, "One of these guys just called me 'Sport.' I'm getting the fuck out of here."
"What're you going to do?"
"Pitch my tent in the clearing. You coming?"
"I'm in my underpants," I said pathetically.