Hygiene

You know, I can't really remember what I've written about on this blog thing. I really want to discuss hygiene with you, but have the feeling that I've opined on this subject briefly already. At the same time if I have it would imply a sort of obsession. I can't say that I'd be able to deny it, but in a roundabout sort of way.

There's a certain smell that we hikers carry with us, and it is unfortunately not a pleasant one. It is not campfire smoke (also known as camping deoderant) and that it is not patchouli is for the best. We all smell like B.O.

You figure out early on that there's no amount of deoderant that will be able to mask the combined smells of not showering and hiking fifteen miles a day. The two smells sort of combine into a horrible mixture of stink/deoderant and eventually the stink kills the efforts of the deoderant. That's just how it goes.

On the trail, however, none of this matters. Dudes and chicks alike are out here on the trail hiking and sweating and being filthy. It's hard to tell if you get used to it or immune to it. There's a difference between the two. You become painfully aware of you stink when you hitch into town or enter into the sphere of the public. On the weekends you come across Weekenders on the trail who reek of perfume. Smells of this sort become very hard to be around because they are so false and, ironically, unnatural. To the weekender you are Wild, and have lost much of your ablity to function in society in a positive way. I understand their angst as I recently read Freud's Civilization and It's Discontent. Very informative.

There are some funny stories concerning this subject. Spaceman and Intents (we all have trail names...it's a little silly I admit but if you do this it'll happen to you, too. Mine's Honey Do) were taking a little time out in Roanoke to visit Spaceman's cousin who's in some kind of fraternity and they were all going to some frat party. It gets lonely on the trail and after a few months of not seeing town-girls you sort of really really want to. Spaceman and Intents showered and the whole nine and, this is sad, the girls at the party just said that they stank and needed showers. No action for them. I guess they just sat there watching all the other dudes make some kind of progress. You just can't scrub it off, I swear. It becomes a part of you.

Some funny stuff has happened with kids, too. I was walking up the street in my town clothes in Buena Vista and this poor kid was terrified of me (I sort of have to admit that I can, to some, look like a convict) and actually ran around the bushes and watched me pass. He did not come out until I was sufficiently past. However far that is I don't really know for the rest of them, but for him it wasn't too far. He couldn't stop staring at me. This other kid was with his mom and upon seeing me as I walked past them he yanked on mom and told her how much he wanted to look like me when he got older. That's got to be a pretty emotional thing for a mom to hear her five-year old say.

You feel guilty gettin into people's cars when they give you rides, but it's also sort of a safety net. I know that we smell much worse than a criminal can stand, so really any though of unkindness towards us is probably met with a more emphatic need to actually be rid of us. The windows go down and the air stays on. I'm not kidding.

All in all though, we strive for cleanliness in its more profound sense. You sort of have to. Out in the woods there's privies or else you did a cathole. You need to have your hand sanitizer at the ready. You don't shake hands anymore because there are all these diseases going around all the time. There was the Hiker Plague, as we called it, that chased me up the trail, got ahead of me somehow and through carefulness I never got it. It was a doozy of a bad time, though. Vomiting and expulsion of all kinds. You wash up when you can, or you try to. It's a very hard thing to do out here, staying clean.

Right now I am clean. I am camping out at the YMCA down by the river and they also let us use the showers there. They also provide soap and shampoo and towels for us for free. They are awesome.

Later on,

Jonathan

(Currently in Waynesville, VA)