“Not Even Worth Saying Goodbye”

AT Day 107

Miles Today: 10.92

AT Mile: 1720.0

(Stony Brook [tent])

Part 1: The Yellow Deli Hiker Hostel (9:15am)

My heart has felt broken the last several days. No doubt that finishing the Long Trail was destabalizing, and that was to be expected. But the extent of my feelings of instability around that have been surprising.

I guess there have been a lot of pieces at play…

Someone told me that “Mercury is in retrograde” and I struggled to keep myself composed. I guess it depends on which astrologer you ask and which books they’re referencing, or which star guides maybe…

Two weeks ago was the annaversary of my wedding getting called off. Yesterday would have been our two-year annaversary and six years together. We don’t speak anymore. The last time we did was extremely bad. Some of the things that were said still haunt me.

I have to wonder if that created some trauma.

What is trauma anyways?

Yesterday was challenging for me.

It’s been difficult being with Plinko lately. It was a few days ago that he mostly stopped talking to me. Two days ago that I noticed he seemed to be no longer making eye contact when we spoke. This morning he was packed and he left.

It’s impossible for me not to wonder what I did wrong. I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt and anxiety around offending or wronging him in some way, and I don’t have the slightest idea what it was…

He walked out of the hostel with his pack and I chased down the stairs after him. He wasn’t far, but I had to shout his name twice. The first time he didn’t turn around. The second time I shouted his name he turned his head to look back over his shoulder.

I yelled out, “It’s been good hiking with you.” And he threw up a hand, with as much effort as it would have taken to throw up a middle finger. Then he kept on walking.

He left without so much as saying goodbye. After walking these mountains together for nearly a thousand miles, after planning to hike long trails together the next two summers, after everything we have shared, our parting wasn’t worth even a “goodbye.”

It’s hurt me tremendously.

I can’t help but reflect back on the departure of my exfiance and all the other abandonment scenarios that I’ve gone through. It brings back a lot. Asking what I did wrong. Wondering why they won’t speak to me. Questioning every little action and wondering if I’m saying the right thing.

It’s like the dreams I was having on the nights where I took melatonin earlier in the trail–the Kafkaesque dreams of being found guilty of something that I didn’t even know I’d done wrong.

I came out here to the Appalacahin Trail to get away from some of these kinds of feelings. But then again… “wherever you go, there you are.” It makes me wonder if maybe the lesson in this is that it isn’t a place or a circumstance that brings about these feelings, but rather something that lives inside of me.

I’m sorry if this isn’t what you wanted from a “trail journal.” I’m sorry if you came here looking for monologues about blossoming flowers and colorful sunsets. That’s not where my soul is today.

Today I’m incredibly hurt.

—

Last night left me charged, no doubt.

Last night was extremely uncomfortable for me. Not just because of it being the annaversary of tragedy, but because of my conversation with one of the staff members of the Yellow Deli, where I’ve been staying the last two nights.

The place is considered to be a cult. It’s definitely a commune, though they don’t like to call it that. They call it a “community.” But there have been some court cases about this place, specifically about child abuse and some stuff along that line. I didn’t know that before yesterday afternooon when I did some research on The Twelve Tribes, which is the group that runs the Yellow Deli. They were good to me the first time I stayed here, and to be fair, they offer a donation based hostel, which is extremely helpful to hikers. But some of their views and beliefs landed on the table last night, and it really upset me.

One of the members here was explicitly condoning slavery and saying some absolutely awful shit. It went on for two hours. I’m not exaggerating. He was talking about how to deal with the people of Rutland who have drug dependency issues by saying “They should be made into slaves for the government” (I do not think I’m amending the quote at all; his beliefs were disgusting).

The conversation started with me sitting down and writing and he just walked into the common room and asked if I was writing a book or something. I explained briefly, and he started into some kind of debate. I immediately said that I have passionate views on the topic, and I’m not comfortable discussing them, and that I really just want to have time to myself to write about the Long Trail tonight.

But he would not leave me alone. For two hours it was just the two of us, and what started as a conversation ended with shouting and my literally breaking down into tears. Yes, I’m emotionally fragile right now, but I don’t think that where I am is completely a bad thing. I was telling this guy about how I try to have compassion for the people who are in need or in drug addiction, but all he kept saying is that they are evil and that people are just selfish and make bad choices, and “they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps” attitude. It was absolutely deplorable, and I was way too invested in it. Like I said, there was shouting.

“The things you’re saying are *cruel*!” I shouted at him after the third time of his not hearing a word that I was saying. “You have zero compassion for anyone outside of yourself.”

And he just smiled, and told me I was wrong, and that the solutions is for everyone to live the life that he’s living. That he has the solution to all of this bullshit… fuck man… I’m getting upset about it again.

All I’m saying is that I want to have some fucking compassion for the people who have it harder than I do. And I’d like to see that sense of compassion from others a little bit.

Again, I’m sorry if this is not what you came here to read.

Maybe backpacker.com has some cool articles about mountain climbing if this isn’t your jam. Because today my heart is an open wound and my passion is intense.

I’m passionate.

I’m abandoned.

I’m hurt and feel broken.

I feel guilt, but don’t know what to feel that guilt towards.

I’m profoundly saddened.

… I’m going to trail.

—

Part 2: Stony Brook

The blessing in all of this has been my friend Geoff. He and I go back about 8 years or so, when we both worked for an off road Jeep tour company in Sedona, Arizona called Pink Jeep Tours. We met there, but since then he’s dabbled in thru hiking the Colorado Trail and part of the PCT this summer, and in a lot of ways we’ve become incredibly close.

For reasons that aren’t worth going into here, he had to come off the PCT to be with family in New York for the rest of the summer, and wanted to come spend a day or two with me on the trail. By and by the plan became for him to come out this weekend, and we met at the Yellow Deli two days ago in Rutland.

So Geoff’s been with me yesterday and today, and it’s been really good (or maybe “important”) having him. As things have dissolved with Plinko over the last 72 hours, I’ve had someone who I can still talk to and feel like I have some value around. Geoff has always treated me well–much better than I’ve deserved at times. Then, when Plinko walked out this morning, I wasn’t left alone with it; I still had my friend Geoff.

—

I sent Plinko a text message after he had left, thanking him for hiking the Long Trail with me and for being with me over the last thousand miles. He responded with several things that honestly all sounded like excuses. None of it made any sense, and honestly doesn’t feel worth repeating here.

I also don’t want to speak poorly about Plinko on here. I enjoyed our time together, he was really open with me about parts of his life that I doubt that he wants spread across my journals, and as a whole, I’ve had a lot of respect for the guy since before we met. Granted, I lost a tremendous amount of that respect after his leaving me high and dry this morning, I still don’t want to speak poorly on him. Rather, what I wish to express is that what he did left me severely hurt.

The last message that I sent him just said this:

You could have said goodbye.

It would have gone a long ways.

I don’t expect to see or speak to Plinko again.

It’s hard not to feel like I’ve been through this many times before. It’s hard not to ask myself what’s wrong with me that lead people I care about to drop me so abruptly. It’s hard not to think there must be something wrong with me if people I call my friends are so ready to leave me alone like that. It’s hard not to feel shame anger towards my self for the way things have played out.

It’s hard not to feel like I’ve been here before…

—

But the fact that I still had a friend here today–my buddy Geoff–made getting through it possible.

There’s a book in itself that needs to someday be written about the times that he and I have shared.

—

As for the trail today, it was amazing to be back on the Appalacahin Trail! The climbs were mellow, the vegetation is more cleared, and it feels familiar and something like home.

I will say that it hit me profoundly and in a physical way when I got to trail and realized that Plinko was gone now. I could feel it in my chest. He was such a good friend to me, and it honestly made me a little bit afraid to feel like I’m on the trail alone again. Just as quickly I realized that it was a silly thing to feel, but I felt it no less. To feel alone in the world again. Who cares that I’ve been here before.

The dark waters of isolation are daunting. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.

It’s often terrifying out in those dark waters alone.

But having my friend Geoff here for today and tomorrow morning made a big difference.

We hiked only a bit over ten miles in hot humidity without any breeze, but there was also some amazing trail magic where I got to meet an incredible group of former AT thru hikers. They also had a super chill kid named Oliver with them, and when I asked if I could give one of them in the group a coyote tooth, Oliver picked out the one he liked the most and it seemed to make an impression on him. He was a super cool kid. Maybe 7 or 8 years old? I’m really bad at aging kids…

On that note, I guess I should say something more on the coyote teeth. They have sort of become a thing on the Appalachian Trail, in that I’ve met people who have remarked “Oh–you’re the guy with the coyote teeth; I’ve heard about you.” And I even had one hiker directly ask if she could have a coyote tooth when I introduced myself as Wormwood.

That’s kind of cool in my mind. That I’ve been sprinkling these coyote teeth up the trail all summer, not knowing the stories that people tell about them or about me afterwords, but now I’ve had the chance to learn about some of it.

Part of how I’ve got to glimpse back into the ripples of the coyote teeth has been because I took those 11 days on the LT and that let so many people who were behind me catch up. So now a lot of people that I met way earlier on in the trail are now in the same area that I’m hiking again.

Anyways, the coyote teeth are one of my favorite things to have come from the AT, and people seem to really vibe with the story of the coyote skull and the Witch of Waynesboro.

—

Tonight Geoff and I are camped beside Stony Brook, which is appropriate given the state of mind this evening. We built a small camp fire that burned for an hour or so while we ate dinners of pasta with the river flowing in the background.

A raindrop or two has fallen, but it doesn’t feel like it’s going to rain.

—

Tomorrow Geoff will have 13 miles to get to the place where he left his car, and from there we will say our goodbyes. I will be alone on trail again for the first time in almost two months. I can’t help but feel heartache for losing my friend today, and I can’t help but wonder if there’s something that I did wrong. But I met someone else at the hostel today–a guy named Chief–who gave me some really good perspective on things. We talked for the better part of an hour, and I really appreciated meeting him. I wish I had the time and energy left this evening to write more on him, but I think that for now it’ll have to wait, suffice to say that he was one of the ten thousand important parts of this story of the AT that just don’t fit onto the page this evening.

Will write again.

Campfire smoke in the background.

White noise of a flowing stream close by.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Wormwood.