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Hiking the Appalachian Trail was six months of camping out, six months of the ultimate freedom from jobs: no boss, no office, no clock.
Once a week or so I left the Trail and hitched or hiked into a small town to get supplies, using money I had saved before leaving on the hike. By the time I reached New Hampshire, I'd been on the Trail for five months. The money was gone and my freedom from jobs had led to an unpleasant side effect: freedom from money. The tread on my boots was so worn that I had already slipped and fallen down--sometimes off cliffs--more times than I could count. So far, I'd been lucky and always landed on my pack, but this luck might not last through the tough terrain of the White Mountains.
"Maybe," we said. "What kind of work?" "Scottish festival. Up at Lone Mountain resort. We need people to sell hot dogs, things like that." "We have to hike." "It's gonna storm up in the mountains. Bad. There's a hurricane coming. You think about it. Under the table. Seven bucks an hour. Cash, no questions asked. If you want work, come ask at the cafe across the street. I'll be over there. Tell your hiker friends, if any more of you come into town." Even apart from my boot problems, I was tired. I didn't want to hike out of town that afternoon, straight up the side of yet another mountain in the wind and pouring rain; I was still rattled from a recent fall and hypothermic near-death experience on Kinsman Mountain, which we had hiked over in freezing rain the night before. BB was in better shape than I was, but we both needed a rest. Work at a Scottish festival sounded restful, even entertaining. And we would get free food. How bad could it be? On the first day of the festival we worked in the Fried Dough tent with Dorlene and Ardis, locals who had been running the tent for the past ten years. Ardis was large, blond, and cheerful; Dorlene was a wizened old woman with dyed black hair and eyebrows and a mouth like a dead carp's. She gave us the once-over and turned her back. Ardis smiled at us and shrugged. They were not used to help and did not want any, although the manager insisted that we stay in the booth anyway. Caught between this crossfire, we spent the morning in the booth, drinking free Cokes and eating free donuts and talking, discussing the merits and demerits of kilts as throngs of Scottish men walked by, while the two women worked and refused our help. We had never heard so many bagpipes in our lives; even when the music stopped, the noise rang in our ears, like ten thousand mosquitos in the tent at night. Periodically we went over to watch the "Heavy Event" athletic competition: brawny men in plaid skirts with knives tucked in their socks tossing what looked like telephone poles, forking huge sheaves of wheat over high bars, and carrying gigantic stones. |
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