I did protest a bit much, but only enough to satisfy my honor, before I, unhandcuffed, slid into the backseat of the police cruiser...
I've had the itch to go on a hike for a few weeks now, but the holidays and the various events surrounding Pop's retirement had conspired to keep me relatively Charleston bound. Finally freed from obligations I jumped into the car and headed up towards Holly Hill to pick up where I left off the last time I went hiking.
I had learned from my mistakes last time and made sure to carry much less gear this time around, especially since my goal was merely Columbia, not the Pacific; however, in a fit of last minute brilliance I crammed a few more things in the backpack as I was locking up the car in a pleasant speech-impaired Vietnam Vet's yard ("Oo cah pah da cah udda da tree...eh eh chickabay...on tay innawin"), thus filling the pack and effectively making it as cumbersome and heavy as I didn't want it to be. That being said, hiking in December is much more pleasant than in September, as the side benefit of lugging a fifty pound ruck is that it acts as a magnificent heater.
It was already late afternoon as I trudged down Highway 176 and I walked on the edge of the mostly empty oncoming lane, but for when there happened to be cars and I stepped off onto the grass. I wasn't concerned about getting hit by cars since I could see them coming, especially once it became dark, but I still was almost killed when a creme Dodge station wagon, going my direction down the two-lane road, decided to pass a car and nearly grazed me with the sideview mirror. After that, when I heard cars coming from behind I stepped off into the grass too.
That first night was rather uneventful. I walked into Holly Hill, ate at the Hardee's, sat and read in the warmth of the restaurant, and then walked for another hour. I was going to go into the woods to camp for the night but I didn't really want to be in the woods rustling around the next morning when hunters were out, so I found a small field shielded from the road by a copse of trees and set up the tent there. I messed around with a fire, but for no real purpose since I'd already eaten and I didn't need it for warmth and eventually I put it out, crawled in my zero degree sleeping bag and went to sleep. I had put in about fifteen miles for the day.
The next morning I felt horrible, as I suspected I would. The famous saying is "know thyself" and I am lucky that I know that I'm a complete [sissy] when it comes to dealing with being sore. I fought off the urge to get the hell back to the car and go home and set my sights on Cameron, the next "town" on the road.
Cameron was at least twenty- one miles away, which is by far the farthest I ever would have hiked in a day (particularly with a pack), but I walked and walked and walked and walked and walked. I got into a very nice rhythm of convincing myself to quit, cussing at myself for being a [sissy], realizing I'd walked for an hour and taking a five to ten minute break, and then repeating all of that. I did that for seven hours and finally got to where I could see the lights of Cameron (well, it was one flashing yellow light, really).
My shoulders burned, I was relatively sure that I'd destroyed the sole of my left foot, and my knees ached. Nonetheless, I was going to make it to that Cameron town marker come hell or high water. It turns out that being stopped by the police is more of a deterrent to me than hell or high water.
As it was already dark, it was quite obvious to me that I was being "pulled", as the cop drove up behind me in the other lane and turned the sun lamp on me. I'd been rather surprised that I hadn't seen a police car the entire day and so it wasn't completely unexpected. The officer, a nice older black man with a stutter, questioned me as to what I was doing and asked for my ID. I gave him my driver's license plus my reserve ID card, which did the trick.
After he had called in my information, to make sure that I wasn't a serial killer on the lam I suppose, he asked me, "So you're just gonna go sleep in the woods?"
"Yup."
"Aren't you scared?"
"Nope...wasn't last night."
"I'd be scared."
Despite his fear, he bid me farewell and went on his way. I went back over to the oncoming lane and set back out to reaching Cameron.
I'd made it another ten minutes or so when a cruiser came up from behind me and parked ahead of me. This time a younger white officer with a crew cut stepped out.
"Lemme give you a ride," he said.
"No, thanks. I don't need a ride. I'm hiking."
We went through a similar conversation as I'd had with the other policeman, but it was relatively obvious he wanted me to get in the car. The back of my mind played out my First Blood fantasy, but I calmly asked if there were a problem.
It turned out that all the nice people that had passed by me, whom I had waved to without fail to show that I was a friendly guy, had called the law on the "vagrant walking on the road," as the officer put it.
I quickly realized that he didn't have a problem with me so much as he just wanted to have an easy night and not get pestered anymore, which was pretty easy since Calhoun County has only 8000 inhabitants, 21 policemen, two townships and NO motels or hotels, as I was to discover later . I agreed to let him give me a ride to the other side of town, about three miles, though it really chapped me not to get to that sign.
After I got in the car he asked me about my route and I explained that I was probably going down Bluff road to get into Columbia. That was all he needed as he politely, yet firmly, insisted on giving me a ride out of Calhoun County down to the start of Bluff road. (I had done at least twenty miles that day as we had barely gotten rolling when we passed the Cameron sign).
I was more than a bit ticked that I was having a sizeable chunk taken out of my journey, though admittedly also pleased since I had a credible excuse. There was nothing to do for it but chat with the officer while we made our way and, as is my talent, I took the conversation to a relatively strange place, considering the circumstances.
There I was in the backseat of a Calhoun County Police Cruiser, behind the plexiglas, craned forward so that I could hear him, and somehow I got him to explain how to make Methamphetamine. What really got to me was that I couldn't understand hide nor tail of what he was saying since he lost me at the part where he said one had to mix sudafed or actifed with "anhydrous ammonia". Then he started talking gibberish involving "covalent bonds", "ions", "hydrites", "hydrates" and a host of other things I didn't understand the first time, back when I was getting a C- in HS Chemistry.
Suitably impressed, though clearly baffled, I shook my head and said, "Wow, that's a hell of a thing they teach you at police academy!"
He shook his head and replied, "Aw, hell naw, this here's an agricultural area. I grew up here. Gotta know that stuff." I'm not quite sure how that works since I remember a lot of the farmer kids back in HS in Beaufort doing a hell of a lot worse than my C- in chemistry, but I nodded nonetheless.
He dropped me off and I skidaddled to a field where I slept for the next 14 hours after popping the blister that was my left foot.
That was pretty much all the excitement (or non-excitement), I have to report as the next two days involved me lurching down the road in my quest to get to Columbia. The only way that I was able to get there was because the first night on Bluff road I stayed at a friend's house that was at about the halfway mark and real food (not the cold, canned corned-beef-hash, or snickers I'd been eating) and beer resurrected me. The next day, reinvigorated, I made it in to town, having managed over sixty miles in four days.
