The Last Christmas Present

Have you ever had something just pop into your head fully imagined? That does not usually happen to me. When writing essays, stories or songs, it is something more like I'm on a journey and don't know where I'm going or where I will end up. This time was quite different, it was almost like the story was beamed into my mind. I can still remember standing on the beach and wanting to find paper and pen fast before the vision of the story left me....and yet, it never did.

One thing must be cleared up first......my Dad doesn't surf (he tried once) and he is still around and we get along fine.




ONCE UPON A TIME..............


It fell to me of all people to do this thing. My life has been the road. Everything I need or want fits in a carryon bag and that's how I like it. If I had a hero, it had to be the fictional character, Jack Reacher, the man that tosses his clothes when they get dirty and buys new ones, not in a desire to be wasteful, but in a move to have no dirty laundry to carry around. This life has been good to me and I have been rewarded with a career that demands precision and the ability to make quick decisions and let go of things that don't work well.

So, perhaps it was fitting that upon arrival at my parents' home for the holidays, I found the one thing my mother wanted most was for me to clean out the garage of my father's belongings. He had passed on more than 6 months ago, and no one had the heart to do what needed to be done. My father and I were never close, in fact it would have been difficult to find two people that were as different in personality in the same family. Where I found joy in a minimalist existence, he found happiness in the mementos from his life. His garage was full of those things. I could remember thinking back when I was young that he liked his things more than he liked us. Looking around, all I could see was junk, yet I felt there was something in there somewhere that was worth finding.

My dad was a private man, he spent more time off surfing than he did with us. I can still remember getting sad when I saw how happy he was when he came home with a  new surfboard. I wondered if I would ever see him that happy to play with me. Most of my memories of him involved me watching him waxing boards, hanging up wetsuits, and talking to Mom about the great waves he got after a session at the beach.

I guess this job fell to me because everybody knew that I would be the one that could throw away all of Dad's cherished possessions. I could do that. It wouldn't be that hard for me to get rid of things that nobody needed anymore, but there was something out here in the garage that needed finding. There was one little nagging thing from my youth that I wanted to put to rest for good.

Dad was an odd duck by anybody's standards and one of his little quirks was thinking that objects carried memories with them. I tried on more than a few occasions to get him to demonstrate a provable example of that. He would just shrug and say that it worked for him. He could hold up a toy from his childhood and say that it immediately brought back memories of playing with it, where he was and who he was with. I responded that it was merely visual clues and his brain was doing the work, not the object. Dad paid me no mind and would go about caressing some old knickknack and getting that wistful look that I was quite accustomed to seeing.

There was one truly weird story that Dad told. It had me looking around the garage more closely than I would have. He used to speak of a yellow Hansen surfboard that he owned. I remember it being a big deal because it cost a lot of money and he and Mom argued the day he brought it home. He was really careful with that particular board, but in spite of that, he had an accident while surfing that injured him and the board. The way he told the story, some blood from a cut on his knee, found it's way into the break in the fiberglass on the surfboard and created a bond between them. So far, this was a typical Dad story. He went on to say that the board spoke to him in his mind. It told him if he promised to keep it safe, it would save every memory of every wave he rode and would let him replay that memory by just touching it. That sounded like my Dad alright, but I was a little concerned about the talking board stuff. It wasn't like it was the only crazy thing my Dad ever did or said, but that wasn't the reason I remembered that story.

As my Dad got older and finally got to where he couldn't surf anymore, He still kept that one board around, and it was starting to look old as well. Dad seemed to spend more time near the board and many times, as I thought about it, he was laying a hand on it. Well, if it made him happy in his old age, then what was the harm, right?

And...it wasn't all that hard to find after all. Over in the corner, under a blanket and still covered with dust, there was a dingy, dinged, faded yellow surfboard, brown spots everywhere with "Hansen" on the deck. So, this was it. Are we talking magic? Or one more person falling prey to my Dad's flaky beliefs?

I wondered why I thought it was even possible that it contained memories...that was stupid, and yet, no one was looking and what would it cost me to try?

I reached out....

The Frozen Floridians and Accidental Magic: Part 4

It is difficult to convey how so many different feelings can pass through your mind in such a short time while backpacking. One great feeling is that of being away from the craziness of regular life, heading to a place where all that matters is putting one foot in front of the other and the knowledge that everything you need and can have is right there on your back.

Yes, that is one awesome state of mind to be in, until you find yourself trudging along in the dark and cold, and suddenly realize that you have dropped your hat....somewhere behind you in the night. And your hat is a fantastic Under-Armour beanie that will keep a soul alive in the freezing cold mountain air...and you are bald-headed and the temperature is dropping to a place that you've not experienced since childhood in Minnesota.. It must be mentioned that in this particular case, the hat is black. The chance of finding it on the trail in the dark is about the same as finding a bear....nah, you'd find a bear first.

As I marched along with that single cone of light from my headlamp and started thinking about the predicament I was in, I realized how different life is when you can't just drive a little ways, pull out a credit card and get whatever you need.
The things we take for granted...you're hungry? Pull over and grab a bite at McDonald's. Need a shirt? Drive a few miles in any direction and there will be a clothing store. About as close as you can get to that feeling on the trail in normal life,  is driving far from home and realizing that you left your wallet behind. You realize then, "Hey, I'm going hungry" when a few minutes before, you were imagining a cup of coffee with a chocolate chip cookie..

I was going to have to survive 27 degrees for the next two days without a cover for my head. I thought of using my extra shirt as a head cover, and also wondered why in the world I had not opted for a jacket with a hood instead of the one I did buy that was a few bucks cheaper. Meanwhile, Paul was looking at me curiously over his cigarette at our break, probably wondering if I was going to be a liability and if he and Chase were going to divvy up my food rations and leave me on the trail whimpering alone in the dark. Fortunately, I had brought something extra along for my head. It wouldn't do much to keep me warm, but it was a cover, a buff, they called it in the he-man store, basically a berkah for men.

I pulled it over my head and tried not to think about what I was going to do when the temperature hit rock bottom. This trip I had already experienced the elation of going out with experience under my belt, and the best backpack and sleeping bag I could buy, but I was quickly earning the reputation of being the guy that loses things...as the trail name "One Shoe" started solidifying in my brother's brain as the most apt name he had ever created for a fellow backpacker.

It was late in the evening when we came across another hiker heading back down the mountain. It was beyond pitch black and the moon and stars had taken the night off. They left behind a brisk cold wind that occasionally swooped in and reminded me that I was really going to miss that piece of headgear tonight. We chatted briefly with our newfound friend that was also crazy about hiking in the total dark, and found that we still had a lot to do before reaching our camp at the top of the mountain. As we parted ways, I mentioned that he might find a bit of accidental trail magic on the way down, and to please wear that hat all the way home and remember the guy who donated it....

The Frozen Floridians and Accidental Magic: Part 3

It wasn't long after Paul, Chase and I started down the trail in the freezing cold weather that I started regretting the many layers of clothes I had on. I still find it quite difficult to imagine wearing shorts and a t-shirt in 40 degree weather while hiking, but many if not most hikers have already figured out what happens. And that's how I happened to get left behind on the trail, while Paul and Chase decided to see just who was the fastest backpacker out that particular day.

I was sitting on the ground, struggling to get my long underwear off without getting my butt wet on the ground, when I heard a "good morning! Are you okay?" I looked up to see a solo hiker about my age, looking like he had just found a lost, deranged person in the woods and was deciding how he could help. I explained that I was just making some apparel adjustments and waved him on down the trail. He kept looking back, and I waited a real long time to resume, hoping that I would not be bumping into this guy again soon, certain that I had now become another story told around campfires in the next few nights.

If I thought that I was spooked enough having a guy come up on me alone on the trail while my pants were down, what happened next easily trumped any fears I had previously...gunshots. Yep, it was hunting season. Would I have gone backpacking with that knowledge? Probably not, and here I was alone with sounds like somebody testing out their AK-47 in the woods. I did my very best to not act like a bear or a dear, and started moving quicker, as if I might outrun a bullet somehow. I finally arrived at the spot where I found Chase and Paul waiting for me. Paul was stubbing out his genuine, homemade, healthy cigarette. Paul claimed at one point that his special brand actually prevented cancer, and improved the lives of anyone lucky enough to get some of that second-hand smoke.
As I stood there catching my breath from the long hike up away from the unseen huntsman that was having more fun firing his weapon than I was on my hike, Paul smiled and pointed towards me and said, "Looks like you have a friend." I slowly turned around with dread, wondering what could be back there, and in my already heightened state, it was an easy shift to augment what I saw to what I thought I was seeing. It appeared that Cujo was about 20 yards behind me, standing frozen in attack mode. I'm thinking, "Slowly reach into my pack and retrieve my large survival knife...yes, the one I left home because it weighed too much."

Once I got over the initial fear of that large dog standing on the trail, eyeing me like something to be dealt with, I realized that this was a hunting dog with a big GPS box on his collar and he had somehow gotten separated from the rest of his hunting group. He followed us at a distance for quite some time and then finally found us too boring to hang with and disappeared into the woods. We only saw hunters once on the trip, but the sound of gunfire was frequent. It kind of messed with my Zen and the Woods thing. The other strangeness was how many people we encountered backpacking on the trail, even though this was to be one of the coldest nights yet this year.

Even with all of the excitement and the cold, I was definitely up for the adventure and was loving my new ultra-light Osprey pack and was looking forward to trying out my new sleeping bag. Even as we hiked up into the darkness of the evening, looking for the best stealth campsite around, I was feeling good about the whole trip, until the time that Paul looked at me and said "You've lost the eye of the tiger"....and I had. I knew I was doomed, and it was just the first night..

The Frozen Floridians and Accidental Magic: Part 2

"This is not what it looks like..."
Yup, those were the words I said to a complete stranger that came up to me alone on the Appalachian Trail, sitting there with my pants down...in 30 degree weather.

We had a long eventful drive to North Carolina on a Wednesday afternoon, and as we drove north, the weather progressively got worse, the little sprinkles of rain progressively came down until the windshield wipers were going constantly and I started naming off other fun things we could do in the mountains besides backpacking in freezing cold rain. I offered a trip to the mall, movies, or perhaps even driving back south of all of this stuff.
Paul would have none of this. "We're going to sleep in the woods" I kept hearing him mutter under his breath. For some strange reason this day was starting to get really long and dark and we were heading to a spot where there were few hotels. We needed a hotel to get one good night's sleep (for me anyway) and then a big breakfast before the shuttle driver picked us up and dropped us off at the trail. I was debating at what point a smart person might say, "I'll just stay in the hotel and wait for you guys". I just never quite got there. The night almost came to an early end when I pulled up the driveway to the mountain top hotel and found it was on a winding road that had no guardrail. The night was pitch dark and still raining, not a star or moon to be found. It wasn't until the next morning that I saw just how scary that little road was in the daylight.

The hotel was a really nice clean place, that was packed full of construction workers, many of whom we saw the next day, out driving bulldozers and holding flags in the road repair areas on the freeway. There were so many burly men in bright orange vests and boots that when you heard a woman's voice, all heads turned in unison. There was supposed to be some kind of continental breakfast, but we had better plans. There was an IHOP only a mile down the road and even Paul wanted to go there...although I think the reason he wanted to go was to find out if they had 100% real maple syrup.

We all slept pretty bad that night. I was worrying about the weather, Paul and Chase were chomping at the bit to get out in the woods. In the morning, I took a quick run outside to check the weather in the dark, and ran back in to put on every single piece of clothing I had. Paul was clucking at me, saying that I would be stripping all those clothes off 10 minutes after we started hiking. "Ha!" I said. "You only wished you were smart enough to bring your UnderArmour Compression Longjohns with you!"

The Frozen Floridians And Accidental Magic: Part 1

When you first decide to plan a hike, you know that you are at the mercy of mother nature. My very first planned trip was postponed due to a hurricane, and I narrowly missed getting a first hand look at a forest fire right after that. This trip, we got the arctic cold blast that arrived the same day we did in North Carolina. It had gone from nicer fall afternoons to the point where the locals were stocking up on canned goods....while us Florida boys took off to the woods with our packs on our backs. We had some worse ideas in our lives, but this one was up there somewhere with the bad ones.

Now, you may think that the word "Pivoting" is mostly used for business these days, but when it finally got to me that instead of our trip being in the 40's - 60's in temperature, and we were looking at 27 degrees, I took a serious look at my sleeping gear. Truth is, you don't know nothing, until you go into the woods and think about how you're going to live through the night with what you're carrying on your back, especially when the temperature drops like that. For us Floridians, we're busting out the jackets when it goes below 70, so I knew I was in for a shock, and my quilt and sleeping bag liner hadn't worked that great earlier this year when it was mostly warm. I was finally told that I was putting everyone in danger by skimping on this one piece of gear. Even Pam told me to go out and get what you need to stay warm, and so it was that I ended up with a $300 sleeping bag on the trip. That's probably more than I spend on most anything like that, but by the second day of the trip, I would have taken on anybody that tried to pry it from my frozen fingers.

Where all your money goes in backpacking is in trying to stay light. Everything light costs a lot of money, and I, like most people said "well sir, I will just carry a little bit more weight". You don't say that for too long. The only people that ever say that, are sitting home in a chair with a blanket around their knees, a beer in one hand and a bag of Doritos in the other. Once you've hiked with a 40 pound pack a few days and find out that you can almost cut that in half...you are ready to whip out the checkbook.

This trip was my first trip with Ultralight gear and I loved it. My pack was around 25 pounds, more than 10 pounds lighter than last trip, and that was including everything I needed to eat and stay warm. We were going to hike 30 something miles of the Appalachian Trail near Bryson City, NC. I was pretty sure that we were the only people in the whole world that would be out in the mountains that weekend....man, was I wrong.

This first thing I would have liked to know after the 27 degree temperature prediction, would have been that it was BEAR season..... 

It's All Downhill From Maine: Part 7 - Coming Into Shaw's Landing

The thing about backpacking is you look forward to going and then you really look forward to it ending. There is nothing much like that very last 5 mile stretch, when you're running out of food and know there is plenty of great food ahead and things like showers, clean clothes and being able to walk without carrying a 35 pound pack on your shoulders.
In this particular instance, we were heading to the town of Monson and Shaw's Landing. There is quite a buzz among hikers about this place and it truly lived up to the legend. Try to imagine a little hick town in the middle of nowhere and then think of an old ramshackle two story house. Now, add to that a yard full of hipsters, old folks, young couples, and mountain men, filling the area, throwing Frisbees, drinking beer, and mainly just taking it easy. The house rents out rooms to backpackers, and offers a breakfast of endless pancakes that is loved by all. I fully expected to be let down by this experience, but it is now one of the top 10 meals I've had. If I had one wish, it would be that I could have done this in my 20's like some of the guests there. Paul and I got a room with 2 beds and then a common bathroom that we shared with everyone on the floor. There were girls and guys all about and everyone had that relieved look of finally getting clean for a bit, before they move on to finish the AT. Paul and I were getting off here and flying back home, but a part of me wished that I was going on to the finish as well. I can still remember the old lady that used to run the place telling us that every once in a while, some hikers just decided to stay...and sooner or later she'd had to push them back out on the trail. I can understand why.

In addition to Shaw's, there were other businesses in this little town that catered to the grizzled group of folks passing through on their way to Mount Katahdin. One place that really had me excited was this old time BBQ restaurant that we had heard about for days from other hikers. We walked the several miles to get there, my stomach rumbling the whole way, only to find that we had arrived at the one day of the week they were closed.
I had made Paul promise that we would hold out for a really good dinner, not just some takeout from the gas station...and where did we end up eating? Takeout burgers from the gas station, sitting in their backyard at a picnic table...it couldn't get more ghetto, but I must say, that was the best tasting burger and fries I ever had. I realized when we were sitting there, that I had been there once before long ago, with Pam and her folks. We had been driving through Maine and had stopped for directions and saw the big grill inside and took a chance on some rough country food. I did remember that it was very good, and from what other hikers told me, we weren't the only ones that found this place was one of the best worst-kept secrets in rural Maine....so if you're ever in Monson....stop at the gas station..

It's All Downhill From Maine: Part 6 - The Best Worst Breakfast Ever

The strangest thing I could ever imagine was happening...Paul was trying to wake me up. Even I struggled to sit up and remember where I was, I realized just how odd the whole situation was. Normal is me lying awake all night while Paul snores peacefully like a bear in the tent next to mine. I understood that I had finally found the magic elixir that could enable me to sleep like a baby while backpacking: Hike straight up a mountain all day, and then get lost in the dark and hike back down until 2am in the morning, knowing that you are running low on food and water, and you are about 10 miles behind where you need to be to get resupplied...and the phones aren't working...yup, that put me right to sleep.

Once I was awake and for the first time, saw where we were, I was a little bit excited. There was a road in sight, and a car was going quickly away from us, leaving a large cloud of dust behind. Yes, we were close. I realized that we had ended up camping on a overgrown dirt side road that was used for snowmobiles in the winter. I quickly fixed my last cup of coffee and considered just how much oatmeal I could eat, in the event that we might still have to hike out of here.

It was touch and go for a bit, but Paul finally walked until his phone worked and we found somebody that would come pick us up. It would cost $100, but at that point, the money wasn't the thing. We waited 2 hours for an "immediate" pickup, which means something different in Maine than it means in Florida. I think it means they are coming when they are good and ready. We drove back in almost total silence with a young man that said that he and his father ran the hotel where we would be staying. By silence, I mean that all attempts by Paul to engage him in conversation were met with a stone wall. Until....he heard Paul and I talking about something he knew, then suddenly he talked non-stop the rest of the way to the hotel...I still haven't quite figured that out, but I'm guessing Mainer's like to take your measure before they decide if you're worth talking to.

The Sterling Inn, our warm place with a bed for the night, was not known for loving backpackers. They preferred the Bed and Breakfast crowd, the only problem being that there wasn't such a crowd around and they were sitting right near the Appalachian Trail, so there were plenty of backpackers needing a place to resupply and shower. In fact, if there was a singlular fact I knew about the Sterling, it was that everyone griped about the included breakfast, being just cold food, nothing cooked. I will say this, nobody that complained was a hiker. I had fruit, muffins, cold cereal and all the coffee I could drink...I was a happy guy and so was Paul.

The Sterling Inn had gotten smart about one thing...hikers need to get food they can take on the trail and they had a nice little store of just the kind of stuff we wanted. All in all, these guys saved us, and that really was one of the better breakfasts on the trip...but there was one that topped everything I'd ever had before....