“Nice haircut!”

“Well, thanks,” I replied, flipping the bottom of my mullet and tossing my complimenter a saucy look, as though I was posing in some sort of Parisian Catwalk. The Catwalk in my case was a pseudo-jog in the rain from my car into the entrance of Sam’s Club. I don’t know very much about fashion, but I’d say that’s basically the same thing.

I’ve only been in a Sam’s Club one other time in my life, and it was in 2016 with my buddy Jessica to pick up several hundred rolls of toilet paper. So I should say, I’ve never been in Sam’s Club alone. I was walking in to pick up the order that Toasty, Dumptruck and I had put together the previous evening over glasses of Allen’s Coffee Brandy. To anyone but hikers, our selection would likely appear truly unhinged.

One may take a glance at what we chose and think “Ah yes, doomsday preppers.” But then there’d be some real head-scratchers that would confuse even the most educated sociologists. Why 500 ziploc bags of various sizes? Why 1,200 baby wipes, but no baby food? Why a box of 200 tiny mayo packets?!

I went to college in Ohio, Dumptruck is from Illinois and Toasty is from Arkansas. In spending time in these places I have found, in general, that everyone in the Midwest is extremely nice. Strangers will chat with each other about just about anything, everyone is polite and ready to party with 5-10 small talk topics ready to go at any given moment. If you’re standing near someone for more than 30 seconds, there’s about a 75% chance that you will be hearing about their grandkids.

I’ve been in Maine for the past 10 years, and I once heard someone describe Mainers as kind but not nice. The longer I’m here the more I see the truth in that. One snowy winter night my rickety, elderly Subaru Outback (nicknamed Rattle Box) slid off the side of the road into a ditch. One of my tires lost a fight with a gigantic rock and was shredded. I didn’t even have time to get out of the driver’s side door before a stranger appeared out of the snowstorm with a pickup truck and chains, and towed me out of the ditch. Then a nearby elderly man came out of his house with a jack, and the three of us had the spare on my car and I was driving away within 10 minutes. No one exchanged names. No one exchanged pleasantries or spoke about the snow. The only words were “Where’s the spare,” and “I’ve got a jack for that.” Even when I tried to thank the men, both of them looked visibly uncomfortable with the level of affection in a “thank you,” and they both gruffly waved me off.

I had no idea that the door of Sam’s Club is a portal from Maine to the Midwest. From the moment I walked into Sam’s Club to the moment I left with my order a few minutes later, I had three separate, spontaneous and honestly rather intimate conversations with strangers. I learned all about how one fellow looking at TVs needed a new one because his son had kicked a soccer ball into their old one, and these off-brand models really are better quality you know, because these companies have to work harder to compensate for lack of name recognition and do you have kids? They’re great but man are they good at breaking stuff, I see you have baby wipes there, why do you have baby wipes if you don’t have kids?

I learned all about my cashier’s friendship with their high school English teacher from 30 years ago and how they re-met because she started shopping at Sam’s Club and they ran into each other and now they get coffee sometimes and isn’t it interesting how people meet you at different times in your life and maybe you know them but then you get to re-meet them and learn who they are all over again and can I check your ID and Sam’s Club card?

To be clear, I am not complaining. It felt oddly nostalgic, and I was at home in a brand new way. Growing up as a military kid and moving constantly I’d say I got pretty good at adjusting to new spaces, cultures and social norms. When I go to the Midwest I adjust my interaction style to match the norms there. I just hadn’t been prepared to be sucked through a wormhole so effectively on a Thursday afternoon in Southern Maine.

This is my first time having to make resupply boxes. We’re making them for the majority of Washington. There are much longer stretches between road-crossings, and even once you make it to a town, the town may have nothing but a post office and a gas station. Furthermore, I have developed a dairy allergy in the past 10 years (hives, yay!), so a lot of shelf-stable food that is good for hikers is now somewhat limited for me, as a lot of dehydrated meals have some form of dairy powder in them. There are for sure plenty of non-dairy made-for-hiking backpacker meals, but those are expensive as heck and we are millennials. I must save money on food so I can waste it on meaningless crap. This is the cross we bear.

So it is that we bought a month’s worth of food for three people, and split them up into boxes that we will put in the mail to ourselves c/o post offices along the way in Washington. All I can say is I’m gonna get really tired of instant potatoes and peanut butter.

I should explain the baby wipe thing. On the AT, we carried baby wipes that we’d dried out. Each night I’d add a little water back to the wipes to rehydrate them, then use them to take a “hiker shower,” by wiping down our whole bodies. It is a small and unnecessary luxury, but man, it feels way better getting into a sleeping bag when I’m not entirely grimy and sticky from a day of hiking. There are fancy gear companies that have caught onto this, and have taken baby wipes, rebranded them as “hiker wipes” and now sell them at ridiculously marked up prices at gear stores. Don’t be fooled. Those are no different than the bargain brand for baby butts.

Our dear friends Viva and Matt came over on Tuesday and voluntarily helped us put our resupply boxes together. They are heroes and I love them.

Love,

Thresher