by Brad Listi
14.
A.B. and Jenny met me at the Alamo rental car drop-off at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta. They had recently returned home to Charlotte, North Carolina, after a two-week honeymoon in Peru. They were tan, freshly married, glowing, unemployed, and still in travel mode. We’d spoken on the telephone two days earlier, and they’d offered to give me a ride to the trailhead. They even offered to hike the first four days of the trip with me. Naturally, I accepted without hesitation.
Having them along at the beginning turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. I was happy to see them, of course, and happy to have company, but knowing they would soon be leaving filled me with dark and inescapable dread. Furthermore, witnessing their conjugal bliss, their unity and confidence, had me feeling obnoxiously inept. I did my best to maintain an external air of composure and optimism, but it was difficult. My fears of loneliness and the unknown rendered me speechless much of the time. And I didn’t have the courage to voice them.
By contrast, A.B. and Jenny were in remarkably high spirits from moment one. They were young and in love, and nothing could stop them. I envied them terribly. The inclement weather didn’t really get them down, nor did the physical toil. They took everything in stride. They laughed and smelled the flowers. They threw mud at each other and giggled. They cracked jokes, sang songs. They talked effortlessly and treated each other with unfailing kindness. And at least three times a day, they made a point of telling me how excited they were for me.
“You’re in for such an incredible adventure,” they kept saying. “We’re so excited for you, Fencer. This is going to be the experience of a lifetime.”
“I know,” I said.
As we trudged over mountainsides those first few days, my thoughts kept drifting back to Benton MacKaye. His story had stuck to me. I couldn’t get it off of my mind.
In the wake of his wife’s suicide, MacKaye had been utterly devastated. He spent weeks in a bleak state of emotional turmoil, living at his brother Hal’s place in Yonkers. Family and friends were there to lend their support, doing whatever they could to buoy his spirits. They sent him heartfelt letters of condolence, urging him not to blame himself for Betty’s suicide. They encouraged him to remain strong in the face of adversity. They told him he was numb, that it just hadn’t hit him yet. They tried, in whatever ways they could, to get him excited about life again.
Benton’s brother James, for instance, wrote a highly practical letter in which he advised his grieving sibling to move forward, to immerse himself in work that meant something to him. “The philosophy of utility fits every occasion,” he wrote, “and I am applying the principle in urging you to begin at once to plan for the future—as that is the useful thing to do.”
It was a letter that Benton seemingly took to heart. His sense of purpose and immediacy seemed to grow stronger after reading it. He started to become extraordinarily focused.
He was at a crossroads in his existence.
A few months later, he published a groundbreaking proposal in the October 1921 edition of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects entitled “An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning.” In it, he outlined his vision for a footpath running from the highest reaches of the northern Appalachian Mountains all the way to the highest reaches of the southern Appalachian Mountains. The footpath, as MacKaye envisioned it, would connect work camps, study camps, and farms where human beings worn out from the stresses of urban industrial existence could live, work, and play. According to the proposal, the necessity of such a footpath could be argued for thusly:
Something has been going on these past few strenuous years which, in the din of war and general upheaval, has been somewhat lost from the public mind. It is the slow quiet development of the recreational camp. It is something neither urban nor rural. It escapes the hecticness of the one, and the loneliness of the other. And it escapes also the common curse of both—the high-powered tension of the economic scramble. All communities face an “economic” problem, but in different ways. The camp faces it through cooperation and mutual helpfulness, the others through competition and mutual fleecing….
…The problem of living is at bottom an economic one. And this alone is bad enough, even in a period of so-called “normalcy.” But living has been considerably complicated of late in various ways—by war, by questions of personal liberty, and by “menaces” of one kind or another. There have been created bitter antagonisms. We are undergoing also the bad combination of high prices and unemployment. This situation is worldwide—the result of a worldwide war.
It is no purpose of this little article to indulge in coping with any of these big questions. The nearest we come to such effrontery is to suggest more comfortable seats and more fresh air for those who have to consider them. A great professor once said that “optimism is oxygen.” Are we getting all the “oxygen” we might for the big tasks before us?
“Let us wait,” we are told, “till we solve this cussed labor problem. Then we’ll have the leisure to do great things.”
But suppose that while we wait the chance for doing them is passed?
15.
The Appalachian Trail was officially completed on August 14, 1937. After years of hard work, Benton MacKaye’s dream of a continuous footpath tracing the ridgecrests of the Appalachian Mountains became a reality. Its successful completion was the end result of MacKaye’s fundamental vision and the tireless efforts of many men, most of whom were unpaid volunteers.
Over the years, one of the traditions that evolved on the Appalachian Trail was the adoption of a “trail name,” which was a hiker’s nickname, essentially. Those who endeavored to stay on the trail for an extended period of time tended to adopt trail names. Generally speaking, it was a symbolic gesture representative of a man’s desire to transform himself from what he was into what he wished to be.
Appalachian Trail etiquette dictated that trail names must be given to a person. As a matter of protocol, you weren’t allowed to give yourself a trail name—which was good. I agreed with this dictum completely. People who gave themselves nicknames tended to irk me. It had always been my belief that a nickname should be given to a man by someone other than himself. I mentioned this to A.B. and Jenny on the first day of the trip. We were standing beside a rushing creek in a deep ravine, refilling our water bottles. The weather was deteriorating. Storm clouds were rolling in, and the tops of the trees were bending in the wind.
“People who nickname themselves should be quarantined,” I said.
“I think it’s kind of funny,” said Jenny.
“I think it’s a sign of mental illness,” I said. “Someone else has to name me. Otherwise, I’m not doing it.”
Thunder rumbled overhead.
“Why don’t you call yourself Wolfgang?” said A.B.
“Wolfgang?” I said.
“Wolfgang,” he said.
“Why Wolfgang?” I said.
“I don’t know. It just popped into my head.”
Jenny laughed.
16.
It rained steadily throughout those first four days. The ground was a muddy soup. The north Georgia forest was pure gloom. My feet were blistered and my back ached. My body wasn’t responding well to the rigors of trail life. Neither was my spirit. In a matter of twenty-four hours, I was having second thoughts, filled with doubt and terror, unsure if I could hack it. The thought of quitting crossed my mind on several occasions. I found myself dreaming of escape routes, formulating plans. I had sexual fantasies about cigarettes, which I had given up, cold turkey, the moment I stepped on the trail. My mind raced through strategies and rationales. I concocted excuses and constructed fantastically logical explanations for an abrupt and unceremonious exit.
Ultimately, though, the concept didn’t sit well. My pride won out. I couldn’t quit. Not yet, anyway. There was too much on the line. If I backed out immediately, my parents would feel justified in their trepidations. It would validate their concerns over my t
rajectory. More to the point, I feared that quitting would do irreparable damage to my self-confidence. I didn’t want to wake up one day down the road, haunted by the fact that I had turned my back on the greatest adventures of my wayward youth. The bottom line was, I had chosen this route. I’d made the call. Now I had to tough it out.
At night in my tent, I would give myself pep talks before going to sleep, in an effort to embolden myself. The pep talks went something like this:
Quit being a pussy, you lame, sheltered, weak, white-bread, suburban piece of shit.
pussy n., pl. pussies
1.) Informal: A cat.
2.) Botany: A fuzzy catkin, especially of the pussy willow.
3.) Vulgar slang:
a. The vulva.
b. Sexual intercourse with a woman.
4.) Offensive slang: Used as a disparaging term for a woman.
5.) Slang: A man regarded as weak, timid, or unmanly.
17.
A.B., Jenny, and I were forty miles up the trail at a place called Neels Gap, a rest stop of sorts along Highway 19, in a valley between two mountains. I was famished and weary. My body was reeling from the toil of ten-hour days struggling over hill and dale. I wasn’t doing too hot mentally, either. But I tried my best to put on a good show.
The three of us bought candy bars and Coca-Colas at the Neels Gap camp store. Then we went outside and sat on our packs in the parking lot and ate. The skies were gray, and it was unseasonably cool. The rain had let up momentarily, and the valley wind smelled of earthworms and mud. A.B. and Jenny would be leaving me within minutes. I was feeling desperately sad.
“How do you feel?” A.B. asked me.
“Fine,” I told him.
We talked about the past for a while, about college, about our friends. Then we talked about the future, with a little less certainty. We ate our candy bars and drank our Cokes. We wondered aloud what would become of us.
“It’s impossible to say,” said Jenny. “I couldn’t even begin to predict.”
“Me neither,” I said.
“We live in the nuclear age,” said A.B.
“It’s a crapshoot,” said Jenny.
“Anything could happen,” said A.B.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said.
“It’s not necessarily a bad thing,” said A.B.
“Let’s hope so,” I said.
“This is par for the course,” said A.B. “This is what’s supposed to be happening. We’re supposed to be confused right now. We’re supposed to be stupid, wandering around in the trees. The next few years, we take our punches. If the world doesn’t explode, maybe we’ll get to impose our will on it in 2020.”
“Ha,” said Jenny.
“I’ll drink to that,” I said.
“To 2020,” said Jenny.
“To the wildly uncertain future,” said A.B.
“Let’s try not to fuck it up,” I said.
“To being mired in the design phase,” said Jenny.
“Confused in the blueprint phase,” said A.B.
“Lost in space,” I said.
“This is only the beginning,” said Jenny.
“The beginning of the end,” I said.
“Hear, hear,” said A.B.
It started to sprinkle a little bit.
We raised our cans of Coke and offered cheers.
blueprint n.
1.) A contact print of a drawing or other image rendered as white lines on a blue background, especially such a print of an architectural plan or technical drawing. Also called cyanotype.
2.) A mechanical drawing produced by any of various similar photographic processes, such as one that creates blue or black lines on a white background.
3.) A detailed plan of action. See synonyms at plan.
4.) A model or prototype.
An hour or so later, I thumbed a ride to the town of Blairsville to get some supplies and stay the night in a cheap motel. The guy who picked me up was a college student named Greg. He was short and friendly, pudgy and vaguely bohemian. He pulled off to the side of the road and waited while I gathered my pack.
A.B. and Jenny had seen me off. They were headed in the opposite direction, back to Amiacola Falls, to pick up their truck. I was headed into the wilderness for an unspecified amount of time, and they were headed back to Charlotte. I was headed into the bush, a bachelor with no prospects, and they were getting ready to move into a well-appointed condominium somewhere near the heart of downtown.
We said good-bye at the side of the road.
“Good luck, Fencer,” A.B. said. “Keep your head on straight. And try not to get eaten by a bear.”
“Okay,” I said.
“And write us letters,” Jenny said. “Let us know how you’re doing.”
I told them I would.
18.
As a young man hiking through the north Georgia forest alone, the movie Deliverance was never far from my mind. One way or another, the visions preyed upon me. One way or another, the visions won. The woods haunted me. The rivers haunted me. The faces of the nameless hillbillies haunted me. Ned Beatty’s utterly authentic performance haunted me in particular: the look of pure torture…the desperate scramble…the sound of those awful, pathetic squeals….
It was inevitable.
Deliverance. Warner Brothers, 1972. John Boorman, producer. Vilmos Zsigmond, cinematographer. Tom Priestley, editor. Fred Harpman, art director. Marcel Vercoutere, special effects. Bucky Rous, costume designer. Eric Weissberg, composer. James Dickey, screenwriter. Based on the novel by James Dickey. Directed by John Boorman. Rated R.
Synopsis:
Burt Reynolds stars as Lewis Medlock, a hyper-macho Atlanta yuppie who leads his three buddies—Bobby Trippe (Ned Beatty), Drew Ballinger (Ronny Cox), and Ed Gentry (Jon Voight)—on a weekend canoe trip down north Georgia’s soon-to-be-dammed Cahulawassee River. The trip begins promisingly but soon turns nightmarish, as evil, inexperience, and calamity conspire to catapult Medlock and company into a desperate fight for their yuppie lives. Nominated for three Academy Awards, Deliverance is a powerful meditation on the powers of nature and the dangers inherent in masculine ritual.
I think the machines are going to fail, the political systems are going to fail, and a few men are going to take to the hills and start over.
—Lewis Medlock, Deliverance
* * *
Sometimes you gotta lose yourself before you can find anything.
—Lewis Medlock, Deliverance
* * *
About halfway through Deliverance, Bobby and Ed get separated from Lewis and Drew while navigating a particularly technical stretch of Cahulawassee white water. They reach the landing point ahead of their friends, dock their canoe, and step on shore. There they are greeted by a pair of menacing hillbillies, played with frightening authenticity by screen actors Bill McKinney and Herbert “Cowboy” Coward.
The hillbillies hold Bobby and Ed at gunpoint and force them to walk back into the woods. After a few minutes of uncomfortable, foreboding dialogue, McKinney’s character beats and humiliates Bobby, ordering him to remove his pants and underwear. Then, with twisted glee, McKinney’s character sodomizes Bobby, mocking him for his portly physical stature and imploring him to “squeal like a pig” with each and every savage thrust.
This utterly disturbing transaction tends to leave an indelible mark on the minds of all who witness it.
It is widely regarded as the finest hillbilly rape scene ever captured on film.
Deliverance, in the strangest of ways, has managed, over the years, to achieve accidental-comedy status.
I like to think of it as accidental black comedy.
The infamous hillbilly rape scene is the film’s defining, unintentionally comic moment.
It is funny in the worst possible way.
In his scintillating 1994 autobiography My Life (Hyperion Books), screen legend Burt Reynolds recalls the filming of the infamous hillbilly rape scene in the following manner:
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…The day before we shot the scene I noticed McKinney hovering beside Ned and sat down between them. I wanted him to see I was Ned’s friend. No different than in the script. Then I asked him how he planned to handle the rape scene….
…Staring straight at Ned, he whispered, “I’ve always wanted to try that. Always have.”
…When it came down to shooting it, Cowboy and McKinney were hands-down brilliant. Scared the shit out of everybody…. None of that creepy “Squeal, piggy, piggy” stuff was in the script.
But McKinney, I swear to God, really wanted to hump Ned. And I think he was going to. He had it up and he was going to bang him. It’s the first and only time I have ever seen camera operators turn their heads away.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I ran into the scene, dove on McKinney, and pulled him off.
19.
18 June 2000
Somewhere in the north Georgia hills
Dear A.B. + Jenny,
Every time I hear a twig snap, I whirl around, terrified that a sadistic, boy-crazy hillbilly is going to come bounding out of the underbrush wielding a high-powered rifle.
Aside from that, everything’s great.
At the moment, I’m in my tent near the Deep Gap Shelter, writing by the light of my headlamp, nursing incredibly sore joints and a collection of large, pustulant foot blisters. I’ve taken to covering them in duct tape each morning before I set out—it’s the only method I’ve found that provides anything resembling relief. Been trekking all day long, nonstop, wincing with every step, at a daily pace of about fifteen miles. Overdoing it, certainly, but there really isn’t much time for rest. Food supply is limited. If I don’t move, I’ll starve. Have to get to the next road, the next town, to resupply. That’s the way it goes.