What am I going to read?

This question has been troubling me - books are heavy. I can read a novel in a day. I can't carry a load of books with me in my pack. So I have decided to venture down a new path - I am going into poetry. i figure that one poetry book should last me for 6 months, especially if I take on the challenge of learning all the poems.

My poetic memories are very sparse. I can remember in 1965 learning 'Ode to Autumn' (by Keats I think) which started 'Seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness....' the rest is lost to the mists of time, but I do remember enjoying the experience of chanting the whole poem with 39 other 14 year olds in our English class with Mrs Hogan - it was quite a group bonding session. We learnt quite a bit of poetry that year, but Ode to Autumn is the only one that is still with me. I went to speech lessons for 12 months to try and make me talk with less strine, and I can remember 'you are old father william, the young man said, and your hair has become very white'....and then 'the highwayman came riding, riding, the highway man came riding'.....just a few snatches lodged into my subconscious.

In year 12 I quite enjoyed TS Eliot and we studied a bit of Chaucer as well. At university it was John Donne and Gerald Hopkins. Nothing much remembered there but for a phrase 'hairy diadem of gold' .... John Donne describing the pubic hair of his mistress. She must have been a blonde. Then a big effort when I was teaching English myself, to make sure that my own students enjoyed poetry - I didn't want to turn them off it, but I probably did as I had little idea how to 'teach poetry'.

My most vibrant poetic memories are with the Aboriginal kids at Epenarra, where I taught the junior class how to read using 'big books' - huge books with great pictures that we could all read at the same time together. The rhythms of the text were wonderful - 'in went the duck, wishy washy wishy washy, in went the pig, wishy washy, wishy washy. Loud, vibrant, confident we yelled our way through a whole series of texts - and took them with us when we went outside. So a visit to the river, and next minute we are enacting Mrs Wishy Washy and the words are pounded out.

By the time the children turned 8, they realised it wasn't cool to recite stuff any more, and they lost their voice. This usually happened when they moved into the big class.

So I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn some poems and be able to chant them while I am walking, to keep the mind active, and share them with whoever is on the trail as a bit of entertainment. I did a search on google for 'book of australian poetry', and up came a list with this title appealing to me - 60 Classic Australian Poems. so I have ordered it - 60 different poets - and each poem has a page of notes the author describes why he thinks the poem is a classic and unpacks the poem as well. All that symbolism stuff goes straight over my head if nobody points it out. It includes poets from present day and goes right back - I did notice that Lawson and banjo patterson each have one listed on the table of contents. All the others I had never heard of. So that is my intellectual challenge for the walk.

I just hope this is not a heavy book - they don't have the weight of the book when you are shopping!

An update on weather conditions

Appalachian Trail Conservancy Advice to spring break hikers: Winter conditions currently prevail everywhere on the AT from GA to ME. Wear gaiters, footwear for snow & ice, avoid cotton,and have plenty of lightweight, warm layers of clothing. Snow-&-ice traction devices may come in handy (crampons are usu. overkill in the South). Snow is inches high in GA but feet high in tallest mtns of NC, TN, and VA. Plan on lower mileage & carry more food.

Just our luck. This means that lots of walkers will put off the start of the walk until the end of March and start with us - it will be really crowded - a bit like the start of the sydney to surf run. Oh well - we are pretty slow so I guess we will get left behind  soon enough.

Meet a bear

 

In the Appalachian woods, bears hide behind every tree

Photo taken by Rick Bayley (Rick Bayley's Appalachian Journal) 

It's snowing in them thar hills

It's 4 weeks until Digby and I start walking.

I am reading through the internet trail journals of those who have just started on the trail battling the snow and the rain in Georgia. The heaviest snowfalls in Georgia ever. Hikers are freezing in the sub zero sleeping bags, bailing out to stay in towns and wait for the snowstorms to pass. Down jackets are sold out in the towns near the trail. One group orders snow shoes with cleats to be shipped to Franklin, the town they are holed up in, waiting for the weather to improve. They can't hitch a ride back to the trail because the highway crossing the trail is closed. They plan to get a ride as far as they can, then clip on the snowshoes and start walking.

Meanwhile, we sit in tropical Queensland, sweating in high temperatures and high humidity and read about the hiker who has worn all the clothes he has to sleep in, and is still cold. Counting down the days, wondering what extra gear we should be taking - down jackets had not been on the agenda.

How much can the weather improve in 4 weeks? I am glued to the journals and read the latest updates each night. Getting mentally prepared to freeze my bum off.

Pouring over the maps and the guide books

The more I read in the walking guides to the trail, the more I realise how amazing this journey is going to be. Here are some of the things that have stuck in my mind.

When we are walking the trail in New York State, you can actually see the skyscrapers of Manhatten in the distance. There is a railway station ON the trail - the train only stops on weekends and public holidays at this station - and you can catch a train right into the heart of New York at Grand Central Station. We could go in and catch a Broadway Show!

Mobile phones are able to work on a lot of the trail. One of the services available is Dial a Pizza. When the trail crosses a highway near a town, it is possible to ring up and have a pizza delivered. You can also ring hostels and motels who have special hiking packages where they will pick you up from the trail, take you back to the town, dirve you to the supermarket, the bushwalking outfitter, the laundromat, etc - you stay the night and they take you back to the trail the following morning. Great customer service.

In South West Virginia, a researcher studying deer in the forest in the early 1980s, stumbled across an old log cabin, abandoned in the forest, close to the Appalachian Trail. He was able to buy the cabin, and established a hostel for Appalachian hikers. He died in 1987 and then his wife continued to run it after his death until her death in the early 2000s, when their children took it over and now run it. I want to stay there, but Digby says according to our schedule we arrive there at 11.00am in the morning and can't waste the afternoon by not walking. We'll see......

The philanthropy is amazing, with many families donating large parcels of land to the national park organisations to enable the forest to be maintained. The ribbon of land which the trail follows becomes wider and wider with more acquisitions. In the 1930s south west Virginia mountains were completely denuded from logging, and the state bought the land and replanted forest using depression labour. These forests are now 80 years old and extend for miles and miles on both sides of the trail. The locals still hunt bear and deer in this forest and during the hunting season (Oct-Nov) hikers have to wear bright yellow safety jackets so they won't be mistaken as prey!

In the Shenandoah National Park, they estimate that the black bear population is now 1-2 bears per square mile. In the 1930s the bears were completely shot out of the area. Gradually since that time they have migrated back to the area from mountains in the west. We really might meet a bear.

Going for broke - fitting 2175 miles into 180 days

I have always been competitive and like to finish what projects I start - the thought of going to the US and walking 95% of the Appalachian trail and then flying home without finishing it, is not something that makes me happy. So initially we are going for it - it means longer average days and less rest days. Digby is working on a new schedule that has us reaching Mt Katahdin within our allotted time.

But who knows what will happen - six months is a long time.

The US Embassy gives us a 6 month visa

Any traveller from Australia to the US receives a 90 day entry visa on arrival, and to extend this visa you must leave the continent. We decided to apply for a longer stay visitor visa so that we could complete the walk without having to exit the continent and return.

The process is quite complicated - fill out a 20 page application on line, insert photo into online application, pay an application fee of $152 per person to the local post office and receive a receipt, book your appointment online for a face to face interview at the embassy. The choice was Sydney or Melbourne - we chose Melbourne so we could visit Mum and Dad at the same time and have a 'family gathering' - our last until our return.

The interview process took an hour and a half - think sheepyards and cattle dip. It was very streamlined - the body search, the luggage stored, the escort to the 6th floor, the checking of our passport, and then released into the holding pen with a number. Numbers were being called over the microphone and up on the electronic screen - a little like waiting in the delicatessen for your number to be called.

We got called up twice - the first time to collect our paperwork and make sure that everything was in order, and to take our fingerprints - I guessed that was why we had to have a face to face interview - fingerprints are a bit hard to verify when sent through the post. The second call was the actual interview - it lasted about 4 minutes. Do you own your own house? What do you do to earn a living? You are walking the Appalachian Trail? I can give you a 6 month visa, but no more for a B1B2 visitor visa.

So we have a problem - how do we squash a 7 month walk into a 6 month time frame? Just walk faster??? We are considering our options.

As I write this the postman has arrived in the driveway with our passports stamped with our visas. Our journey moves closer to kick off.