06/19/09 Neil Young "Old Man" (I'm a lot like you were)

The Silverish Suburban lurches to the right as Randy aims for the small dirt shoulder.

"You're a redsox fan! Outta the truck."

He's noticed my blue, sweat-stained Red Sox cap.

His voice sounds serious and I strain to study his eyes in the rearview mirror but he is wearing dark reflective sunglasses and I cannot get a sense of his meaning. I glance at his companions sharing the backseat with me and the middle-aged woman is dancing to Fleetwood Mac's 'Change' with a large grin on her face. As she nudges me playfully with her shoulder and passes me a brief wink, I can see Randy's order is in jest.

"Nah Sam, I'm just kiddin, I'm from the bronx and a yanks fan, but some of my best buddies are from boston. I love to rag on em whenever the yankees take one. In fact, one of my best friends I met while hitching from san fran to nyc. He had a big sign that said 'boston' on it. I said to put that thing away and the first car stops and drives us both 3000 miles."


The Chevy twists and turns up the peak, bottoming out occasionally much to the delight of the intoxicated passengers and much to the painful chagrin of the driver with the brutally thick new york accent. I am unable to locate us on a map and am worried.



I fear we may be on a road running away from my trailhead. As the truck rumbles along the passengers notice my apprehension and ask how I'm doing. My answer is full of worry, I've only mildly bothered to dress it up in gratitude.

"Fine. I'm great"

Technically, I am cheating, although I figure in order to cheat, there must be some sort of faithful trail to betray. I'm getting a ride 4 miles up a road to the trailhead.

The road hasn't bothered to be true to me, therefore I have no qualms about double-crossing it. It never seems like we are honestly working together. The comrarderie that I've felt with other trails or roads - I can always find them on a map or when I make a wrong turn I am still found - is lacking with this combination of paths I've taken. We are in a constant struggle and I often am on the losing end.




This time though, the trail appears as an offshoot of the dusty brown jeep road that the chevy is climbing. I hop out. Grateful to be at the trailhead and to be out of the squeezed backseat.


"Sam, you better go buy a lottery ticket because today is your lucky day"


Randy yelps from the cockpit of his truck and drives off with his merry cargo.

I suddenly note that it is odd to know where I am while I see someone else that is lost.

So often over the past few weeks, the situation has been reversed. Randy now needed the finding, I was going north.



The pine trees filtered the gleaming yellow light in small vertical stripes that shone across my clothing as if I was in a prison with steel bars of shadow. I traversed along the eastern ridges of the heavily sloped Mt. Princeton. The grade allowed for few camping spots. I considered camping on the trail, right in the middle, thought better of it, it was rocky and I didn't know what sort of day hikers I might encounter next morning as I was between two trailheads.




My feet were feeling better, but on occasion, and without provocation, the pain in my heel would charge into me as if I had hooked an electrode to my feet and given the 'on' switch to a slightly michievious toddler.

Large thunderclouds swirled overhead, spinning slightly, and spread out extending from the top of the hill over my head, sweeping over the valley to my right. It looked as if a scientist had eyedropped a fast-growing, grey and white organism in the blue petri dish of the sky.



The cloud creature threatened as I madly searched for a level place to sleep. And even though I knew I would eventually find a place (or get rained on), I was suddenly filled with terror. Terror of not knowing when the sharp mountains would plateau. Terror of exhaustion (my right hip flexor was screaming at me). Terror of making these decisions and perhaps making the wrong one in the face of an enemy neither benign nor malignant. Nature never would choose my side.

It was a terror of not having control. Just as I froze up in the chevy when I should have been enjoying the ride, i shivered here. Stepping over the loose rock, I had to consciously tell myself to let go of this terror, because, well, I'd go insane trying to control everything out here. The trail would never obey, the hills would never abate, I wouldn't always be able to get a hitch to my exact specifications. The wind ripped across the valley against the mountain swinging wildly in temperature between 40 degrees and 80. The terror too passed in and out of me. The uncontrollable terror of not having control. And perhaps in that I have found one reason to continue my trip. Continue to terrify myself. Let go.






Song Honorable Mention:

Talking Heads, The "Houses in Motion"