Hikin' Nine to Five: Songs and poetry from the Appalachian Trail
Appalachia, December 2002
By Roger Sheffer
Some hikers carry boomboxes on the trail and don't have to create their own music. Others have committed themselves to a long-distance hike and can't carry a boombox, or even a Walkman (at least the batteries to keep it going beyond the first three days). To save on weight, they carry their music in their heads — music written perhaps by somebody else, remembered exactly or fading into corrupted lyrics and finally parody. In August 1999, a long-distance hiker named Asher stopped at the Massachusetts-Vermont border and wrote the following: "In honor of state 12 [for this northbounder, that would be Vermont], I will be introducing a song I've been working on — it's a serial called 'The Twelve Days of Cynicism' and it's dedicated to Shaft [another northbounder]. Here's day one: 'On the first day of cynicism the trail has given me — one year of physical therapy.' " Where are the other eleven verses? I have no idea. His cynicism may have been quickly replaced by optimism, for Vermont is a lovely state to hike through.
Another hiker's variant on this parody, with all 12 days represented, appears on Oct. 14 the same year, in the Pass Mountain Hut (Virginia) register:
- On the first day of thru-hiking, Mama Appalachia gave to me — a banged up and bruised knee.
- On the second day of hiking Mama Appalachia gave to me — two sore feet and number 1.
- On the third day of hiking Mama Appalachia gave to me — three blisters.
- On the fourth day of hiking Mama Appalachia gave to me — four smoke breaks.
And so on, including five gorgeous days, a six-pack of cold ones, seven doobs a burnin', an eight-second hitchhike, nine socks a stankin', ten bugs a bitin', eleven mice a squeakin', and finally, twelve naked tree nymphs.
The same year, yet another variant appeared in the register kept at the Appalachian Trail Conference headquarters in Harpers Ferry, with some interesting similarities. This hiker's list included the following: one backpack with too much weight, two smelly feet, three huge blisters, four mosquito bites, five days of rain, six bears a-charging, seven streams a-crossing, eight flies a-buzzing, nine mice a-scurrying, ten deer a-leaping, eleven sunny flowers, and twelve majestic mountains.
Here's a parody of a different Christmas song from the following summer, inscribed by "Pine Tree" in Dick's Dome Shelter (Virginia):
Bearbells ring, are ya listenin'?
On your arms, sweat is glistenin'
A steak in your pack
Will make a bear snack
Walkin' on the Appalachian Trail.
In the meadow we can smoke a doobie
And pretend that we are back in town,
The Ranger asks us if we all are sally,
So then we pass another bowl around...
The humor in the parody, of course, derives from the casual substitution of the peaceful and unthreatening lyrics of the original ("Sleighbells ring...") by ominous references to a real risk encountered by backwoods visitors.
Composing a poem keeps the demons away when one is hiking the dullest stretches of trail. Trail songs and poems recorded (if only in fragments) in shelter registers run the gamut from deep depression to optimistic self-cheerleading. On occasion, the song or poem has been rattling around for a while in the hiker's head. And as is so often the case, the hiker has made a new song out of an old one. Here's a June 12, 1999, entry from the Melville Nauheim Shelter (Vermont) register:
"Cuz I gotta have faith-a-faith-a faitha,...Baby." Someone wrote in the Congdon book about how this song was in their head for the whole AT! Now it's stuck in mine. Sometimes it helps on a steep hill, though, if you sing the alternate [sic] lyrics: "I gotta keep pace-a-pace-a-pace, I gotta keep pace, baby." I am a slow snail but I smell much worse. — Swifty
This wonderful entry was annotated by another hiker who identified the song as "Faith" by George Michael. I doubt that the annotation did Swifty much good, as he was already miles north of this shelter by then, still beating himself on the side of the head trying to come up with the source of the musical bug in his brain.
Some hikers run through "playlists," as if they were deejays with their own radio stations. In their register entries they announce the playlist for the day, something like, "Okay, folks, today it's all Beatles," with the implication that a community of like-minded hikers will be getting through that day with the same songs running through their heads.
