V24|NO21
The Choice
Sometimes a little mud is worth the experience A couple of weeks ago, I read Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods,” an account of his attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail. I think I avoided reading Bryson for so long because I got caught up in his reputation as a writer whom, more than anything else, people read so that they could feel as if they were putting in just enough effort to make the reading of a book seem an accomplishment. A couple miles north of Tom Clancy, a couple south of Hemingway, you know? I was, like many college- or grad school-aged kids tend to be, a little haughty for my own good, and mildly scoffed when, staying at a hostel in Salida, Colorado, during my tenure on the Southwest Conservation Corps, a fellow guest recommended the book to me. It was — let’s be honest, predictably — sitting on the common room bookshelf in between copies of the I Ching and a slim volume of poetry by Robinson Jeffers (along with Gary Snyder, a sort of poet laureate of the Earth Mother). This guy obviously knew what he was talking about: he was in the middle of hiking the Arizona Trail — a 1,300-mile jaunt that stretches from the U.S.-Mexico border all the way the hell up to Utah — and physically, at 60, made most 20-year-olds look bad. I told him I might give it a shot, then went back to reading Thomas Pynchon, because I was a gibbering ass who didn’t know the first thing about literature, still. Anyway, I finally picked up “A Walk in the Woods” because I had just finished reading a biography of David Foster Wallace, a memoir by Nick Flynn and a book of awesome but bats**t crazy poetry by Matthew Rohrer, and I needed respite. Spoiler alert: I actually ended up liking the book quite a lot, for two reasons: the aforementioned break it gave my brain and attention span. Bryson’s good, but reading his work does not mandate absolute commitment and monastic focus. His writing is exhaustively researched, though colloquially presented, and it helps that he’s also funny as hell (“What would I do if I encountered a bear? Why, I would die, of course.”) Fast-forward to now: seven hours ago, I completed a five-mile “mud run” here in Madison. If you’ve never done one of these things, I assure you that it is exactly what it sounds like it is: five miles of jogging through ankle-, knee- and hip-deep mud, interspersed with obstacles like eight-foot walls, dish soapsoaked inclines, balance beams slicked by refuse, eventually carrying about 20 extra pounds of mud-
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soaked clothes while doing so. At the end, you get a bratwurst and a couple of beers — Capital beers, but still — to try and dull the fact that you paid $50 to wade through muck for an hour. I initially started writing this column because I picked out some rather obvious parallels between the mud run narrative and Bryson’s expedition: of course the
somewhat truncated treks through the wilderness or something resembling it, the sense of community, etc. What I really want to get into, though, is the dichotomy of the shared — I think, by humanity in general — to break the monotony of paint-by-numbers life, held up against the still-controlled manner in which we do it. My own motivations for doing the run were simple, and rooted in a similar reasoning that took me out
to Colorado to carve out precipitation-diverting trenches: why not? And while my Conservation Corps experience was exponentially wilder — filtering our own water, avoiding javalinas at night in the desert — than an organized charity event like today’s, we were never truly alone, never truly helpless. Still — and this is key — we didn’t have to do it. Had I not been hired by the SWCC, there would have been any number of ever-willing candidates for the position, probably more enthusiastic than me (seriously, talk to anyone from Prescott College). I didn’t have to wear the same two T-shirts without laundry for two weeks straight, eat granola with powdered milk every morning for breakfast, or shake scorpions out of my boots. Likewise, I didn’t have to spend a perfectly good Sunday morning slogging through filth for charity and a brat; I certainly didn’t have to pay for it. It is a great privilege and responsibility to be afforded the choice as to whether or not you will complicate your own life. Some — Flynn, who was born to an alcoholic, delusional father and a psychologically unstable mother; Wallace, who couldn’t resolve either his own demons or the impossibility of perfection — have no control over where and how their lives take root, and therefore no control, to an extent, over how it unfolds. Maybe that’s why they turned out to be geniuses; circumstances demanded it. What puts us all — and I mean all — on the same rhetorical and existential playing field, however, is this: when presented with that choice, we decided to make things difficult, even more so than they already were. Bryson, middle-aged and successful, chose to hike the AT; a soft college boy went to dig ditches in the woods; Flynn, rather than put the nightmares of his early life behind him, instead chooses to live with them in order to support himself. I’m not saying you should live a dirty life. But a little jog through the muck every now and again? That makes for killer hindsight, and for remarkable perspective — whether you crawl or barrel forward.
JOSHRUFFIN, a Metro Spirit alum, is a published
journalist and poet who just received his MFA from Georgia College & State University. He was once the most un-intimidating bouncer at Soul Bar.
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GROW ON TREES (Although some local tree services must believe belililiev be evee it does ev ddoe oess according oe acco ac cord co rdin rd ingg to their in tthe heir he ir estimates!) est estim sttim imat ates at ess!))
23MAY2013