Campsite at mile 2190 to Rock Creek (mile 2166)
In the last miles of the day we have a 2,000 foot climb. Straight up and over a ridge, through forest so thick you cannot see approaching hikers until they’re right on top of you. The trees hang limp with humidity, positively dripping with it, no breeze to stir the air. A passing hiker jokes “if I wanted humidity like this, I would have hiked the AT.” My smile turns grimace as sweat rolls into my eyes, the trees aren’t the only things dripping and drooping in this heat. I need music, I need something capable of rousing my tired bones up the trail. It takes an eternity to operate my phone with my damp hands, the only thing I can dry my fingers on is my damp shirt, and the only thing Spotify has managed to download is half a playlist; Happy Folk.
So be it.
Folk music has a way of embodying the west. The first reedy twang of guitar and the world contracts and expands all at once, a Hitchcockian camera trick of the mind. The songs could have been written just for you. The way the west feels both endless and intimate, warm light through gently swaying trees. A world of possibly and yet the concrete now.
Well if you could reinvent my name,
Well if you could redirect my day,
Folk is the music of long car rides and vast horizons, of contemplative looks towards the sunset. The great wide west is where young folks go to make themselves, the land of opportunity as told to you by the mandolin.
‘Cause I was lost in comparison
Always pretending I knew
The familiar ache of poignant nostalgia swells in my chest, threatening to overwhelm me with the sheer luck of it all. This body and mind, to be alive in this country at this point in time. Maybe I should play the lottery, clearly I am the luckiest person alive.
I’ve read the script
And the costume fits,
So I play my part