‘Trail Magic’ is defined as ‘an unexpected act of kindness’ received by someone hiking the Appalachian Trail (which takes months to complete, should people even manage to do it). Isn’t that a lovely shared experience? Especially when your other shared experiences on this particular hike would consist of sharing very bad body odour, and poop scoops?

Really, I really do think it’s a nice thing, this ‘Trail Magic’. I was trying to imagine what I might do as an act of kindness for others in this circumstance. Likely, it would be offering motor-propelled rides off the fucking trail and back into civilization where they can take a hot shower and stop sharing their over-odour and digging graves for their kaka.

Anyway. Are any of you campey hikey people? I am curious about those who hang out in forests, sleep in sacs, and eat canned food for days on end in the name of getting in touch with nature. I might even be curious enough to do it for a 48 hour stint, AT ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM. But I’d really have to love the person with whom I was doing it.

I mean. It’s not that I don’t love nature, because I do. It’s that nature makes me very itchy inside of my head.

I worry that some kind of a tree-snake will fall on me. That an insect will burrow into my sleeping sac and then into my hair. What if I run out of water? Am I allowed to eat leaves, long as I avoid berries? What do I do with my garbage? What if I run into Leonardo DiCaprio’s bear? Is there Wi-Fi? How can I avoid the ricochet splash of pee when squatting? And for poo, do I dig a hole and then aim, or poo first and then transfer the poo to the hole? What if I run out of toilet paper? How will I carry my bidet into the woods? Honestly. HOW?

I think I would simply lay on my back, a turned up turtle, refusing to move, whispering about how I miss having a clean ass.

***No Appalachian Trail hikers were harmed in the writing of this piece. (Much respect, honestly, for such drive into the wilderness. I’ll meet you at the street café once you’re done.)

Today, I am grateful for:
1. Generators. Did you lose electricity tonight? We were at Lowe’s when the lights went out and the generators kicked in, so yeah. Generators.
2. My new phone’s keyboard. I slid my hand across it accidentally and discovered that I can type by swooping my fingers around the screen. The keyboard looks like a hockey puck is making swoops across it! (That’s for you, Americans. Happy belated day!)
3. The sound of rain crashing into a massive warehouse and echoing throughout. Sounds just like Noah’s Ark, I imagine.

Ottawa | Day 217 | July 5, 2019

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