Agony Grind

by Jim Doherty

Exhausted.

Embarrassed.

I leaned heavily against the craggy bulk of a giant gray boulder. The compass clipped to my watchband said I was facing North by Northeast. The time was 10:50 A.M. The date was May 17. I scribbled this information on a small piece of paper and thrust it into my top pocket. If things got any worse I figured the coroner would appreciate the details.

I was one tenth of the way up an unending rock-scramble on the Appalachian Trail in New York State. The rock-scramble had a name. It was called "Agony Grind."

Below, I heard cars hum past on New York's Route 17, bringing the harried and brusque sound of mechanized, near-twenty-first century locomotion to my ears.

I did not resent this noisy intrusion. Far from it. The truth be told, I rejoiced in it, for it meant I could hear something other than the ursine panting exploding from my lungs.

My legs had gone numb, mercifully, almost from the start. My shoulders and hips rioted under the weight of a thirty pound pack, complete with sleeping bag, bivvy, too many clothes and too few snacks.

The day was cool, about 50 degrees and cloudy. Even so, sweat poured from my head, made swamps of my armpits and crotch, ran in tingly, chilling rivulets down by back. And my brand new hiking boots were not yet scuffed.

I was here because I was thirty-two, married, with a child. I was here because I had a swivel chair job and a swivel chair waist. Eternity was closing in quick. It was desperation time. It was time to take matters into my own hands. It was time to reshape the body, unleash the soul, and exhume the flame of the adventurer before it was squelched forever.

Thoughts of rekindled flames and purified souls, however, had dissipated quickly. Thoughts of getting through this uninjured and not in need of medical attention had taken form and congealed.

I looked up. Adorning the landscape twenty yards above me was the less then aesthetic sight of my hiking partner's rump. He clung to a sturdy young sapling that had somehow managed to grow horizontally between two large black and green-speckled rocks. His pack rolled and heaved as he sucked globs of precious air into his lungs.

Just when I thought that the experience had reached rock bottom, the rain began. That's aces, I thought. Not only am I on the verge of a stroke, now I'm a candidate for pneumonia.

We had reached our Rubicon. Do we press on past the pain and the crankiness and the lack of snacks in the hopes that our tender, battered bodies would somehow respond? Do we scramble back to the highway, call for a ride home and sell our brand new gear at next weekend's flea market?

My partner looked down at me. Our eyes locked. I knew what he was thinking. I knew that he knew what I was thinking. Each would rather die than be the one to sound the retreat. To bear that albatross was not an option. No way, no sir.

We might have come up short in the conditioning department, but we still possessed an abundant supply of the most important resource available to men of high adventure-outlandish ego.

My partner turned and moved up the slope. Several small rocks, disturbed by his motion, bounced down beside me. The wind kicked up and blew rain into my face. My heart thudded against my ribcage. I drew a large breath and sucked in a bug. Hacking, I hoisted my weary frame from the boulder and staggered up the arched dragon's back of Agony Grind.

***

Daylight does not loiter in the hills. It retreats with a metered urgency, darkening the landscape in degrees of beautifully dappled green and gray. We had made camp. Dinner was boiling on the portable stove. Agony Grind glowered somewhere in the distance. The day had been won. We had climbed the Grind (we climbed it, we earned the right to rhyme it). We had traversed a whopping five miles in six hours and to hear us moan you'd think we just marched around the world. Weekend warriors, however, can't pick and choose their victories, and we were uninjured and relatively in tact. Near the end, even the sun came out and added to the melodrama. Had I any moisture left in my body I would have shed a tear.

We sat in the shadow-crowned light of our lone candle lantern while the tide of night rolled in to surround us.

Our conversation was scarce, our thoughts kept to ourselves. I had come here, in part, to act like a kid again. Mission accomplished. During the day I skinned my knees on rocks, skimmed pebbles on ponds, threw tantrums born of exhaustion, and reveled in not caring how I looked, how I smelled or what time it was.

I had also come out here to find something that I thought I had lost. Even now I couldn't give an exact answer as to what that thing was. Maybe it was passion. Maybe it was courage. Maybe it was just a sense of control over my life. Probably it was a mixture of all of these.

I discovered quickly, however, that the only thing out here was the trail. The trail that, according to maps, runs from Maine to Georgia. The trail that, like most trails in life, really runs to that solitary place buried inside each of us. It is a place shrouded in mist and not easily navigated. It is the place that contains the truth about ourselves.

The thing I thought lost was not. It had just changed. It had matured. It had, like me, grown older. This was where my trail lead this time and it was a somewhat sobering journey. It was also, I feel, a necessary journey and one that I hope to make again and again.

Later that evening I lay staring groggily out of the mesh vent in the top of my bivvy. A strident wind drove the last of the clouds away and turned the trees into a shadowy opera of creaks and moans.

Something hit the earth with a sodden thud nearby. I jumped at the sound. Something else touched down seconds later.

My rational mind asserted that they were only dislodged branches. Hysteria, however, conjured nightmare images. I imagined hordes of foam-spitting raccoons with twisted humpbacks and hooked fangs. They hissed lunatic songs into the wind as they thumped to the ground from hidden perches.

That did it. Sleep retreated.

I snaked my hand out and zipped the rain fly closed. Nature can be as terrifying as it is beautiful, especially for neophytes. And it occurred to me that the relationship between man and nature must be cultivated like any relationship, that is, with patience and a healthy amount of respect.

About the Author

Jim Doherty (James_Doherty@bdsi.com) is a Systems Analyst living in New Jersey with one wife and two children.