That video shot yesterday, we're walking across the Appalachian Trail footbridge over I-70 on South Mountain in Maryland, downhill left towards Frederick, downhill right towards Hagerstown. We parked on 40 and climbed over Knob Hill to the cliffs at Annapolis and Black Rocks, seven good hard miles to and from. My legs are rounding, my knees are rounding, my hips, lungs, and heart are rounding into hiking shape, my fucking ankles, they are fragile motherfucking castanets. Which reminds me of a song:
This is true (and my apologies to those who've heard this before, but Serendipity demands): forty years ago this Spring (in Spring 1974 I would have been fourteen, I didn't do the math until last night, this isn't a planned gag; or rather, it was a planned gag once I saw the bridge, I did the video with this gag in mind though I didn't start the hike with this gag in mind) I and seven other members of Troop 1097's Senior Patrol were on a training hike for a summer trip to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. In Spring 1974 the hottest craze was Roger Miller's The Streak. Five of eight of us did, back and forth, across the AT footbridge over 70. Three split before we streaked, asking for ten minutes to get across the bridge before we streaked so they weren't implicated, we gave it to them, they waahed back to camp. In the video, when the camera nods up and down, that's where we stopped to wave to honking cars. One car didn't honk, a State Trooper, he bloop-blooped his siren, sped south to next exit. We made it almost back to camp thinking we'd won, dopes, but up the trail walks the Trooper and the Scout leaders. The three ratted us. I'll not pig latin their names: Mark Albright and Marshall Dobbins and Richard Bachmann, I hope you did not have the life of hell I wished upon you then, you collaborating motherfucking cowardly leader-worshiping future Fascist future Eagle Scouts, you.
I was going to quit after Philmont anyway. When asked to apologize for disgracing the Scout uniform, I said, how was I disgracing the Scout uniform by streaking?
FLAME
C.D. Wright
the breath the trees the bridge
the road the rain the sheen
the breath the line the skin
the vineyard the fences the leg
the water the breath the shift
the hair the wheels the shoulder
the breath the lane the streak
the lining the hour the reasons
the name the distance the breath
the scent the dogs the blear
the lungs the breath the glove
the signal the turn the need
the steps the lights the door
the mouth the tongue the eyes
the burn the burned the burning
