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sharkey
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Name: Sharkey!
Location: Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
Gender: Male
Interests: Backpacking, medicine, Apple stuff, cheese, motorcycles, chickens, single malts, travel, languages, and brewing beer.
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
8/21/2006
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| 20 years ago, on my first thru hike,
I walked into a beautiful place in the world called
Grayson Highland State Park in Virginia.
It was a beautiful warm day and wild ponies came up to me
Looking for handouts.
I sat down in a field of green grass,
Taking in the wonder of the day
When an old stoner dude,
Decked out in tie dye and beads
Comes and sits down in the grass beside me.
We chat for a while,
He's following Grateful Dead up the east coast this summer,
Had a day off
And decided to come commune in Nature.
Met me.
We sat in wonder and eventually, he asks,
"Hey, wanna smoke a bowl?"
Now I've only smoked weed twice in my Life before
(I was 30 when this story took place),
The first time I got nuthin,
The second time I just got the munchies but no buzz.
But sitting on that day in Grayson Highlands,
I got a sweet, sweet high.
After leaving the old hippie,
I borrowed an FM radio from a friend
And danced for miles across green fields
Jamming to a Michael Jackson marathon.
Now, fast forward 20 years to March 2012.
Again, I walk into Grayson Highlands on a beautiful day.
Earlier, Rummy and I had met a young guy named Ian.
Cool guy, worked in medical research.
We hiked and talked a while together and then parted ways.
When we got to Massie's Gap, the same place in the park,
I said, "Rummy, drop your pack. We're gonna smoke a bowl."
We sat there smoking quietly, and I felt a tunnel open up
Between 50 year old Sharkey! and 30 year old Sharkey!
Same guy, 20 years apart in time,
Same place, same thru hike, same circumstances, same Joy.
As I looked thru the glass walls of the tunnel,
I saw relationships, marriages, children,
Friends, loss, new degrees and careers.
All visible thru the walls of this 20 year tunnel.
And there I sat, at both ends simultaneously.
I communed with myself from the past for a few seconds.
In this thought, Ian, the guy from earlier, walks up.
"Hey Ian, wanna smoke with us?"
"Sure!"
So we smoke together.
(This is such a basic human communal activity.)
I tell Rummy and Ian the story of the old hippie and me in 1992.
And Ian says,
"Yeah, except now, I'm the young guy and you're the Old Stoner Dude."
And the time tunnel folded in.
I was 100% me who I am now.
The tunnel to 30 year old Sharkey! closed.
There was a Grand Unification of sorts.
I am happy to be the Old Stoner Dude now.
The beard is a thing I am seeking to understand,
Like German and good single malts.
Sharkey! OSD
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| I'm at my brother's house.
Just a few miles from where the trail begins.
Tomorrow morning.
February 15th, 2012 is a date I have been thinking of for years.
The house is quiet.
Everyone still asleep on this cool, rainy day.
I feel empty.
Disconnected already.
Like "Spiritual Walker",
The guy who went into the woods to find himself,
And did! On his first day out.
Well done.
It feels odd to disconnect from the Hive.
I am blogging here,
Clearly not yet as disconnected as I feel.
But tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Insert Annie.
Afraid is not the right word.
I can count that word in my Life on a few fingers.
But the Unknown ahead is a cloud.
Thick and hiding everything.
Hides the past.
Hides the future.
Walking in a cloud of only right here,
Right now.
Insert Jesus Jones.
It takes some faith to walk into a cloud.
| | |
| Remember eWorld?
AOL that Apple didn't have the patience or foresight for?
Steve Capps, smart man.
The hour is soon upon me.
It's time for me to go out into the hardships of the woods to burn off the sloth.
To burn out the noise.
To get back to the core.
To find the boy I love so dearly,
Lost somewhere on this mountain of blubber and comfortable furniture.
Goodbye eWorld.
Having all of my friends in the silver box is going away.
Now, I will have to think of them as actual bodies,
Living somewhere in the same space as me,
Only farther away.
But connecting thru the physical.
I will send letters from my hand to theirs.
They can touch them,
And get whatever diseases I've recently contracted.
When I tell of exhaustion,
It will be written by an exhausted hand.
When I tell of rain,
There will be moisture in the paper.
Cells of my body,
Even my DNA will be sent along.
One day, enough to make a new me,
Could be found on a single paper letter.
Such as today when,
With ultra high res electron microscopy,
We determine melanome patterns of fossils and know:
The Archaeopteryx was a black bird.
I will think a lot about my friendships.
The times we spent in the same spaces.
The times we spent in our virtual conversations
Count the physical days we've spent on hands and toes.
Do we connect more or better in the virtual?
Is it strictly an augmentation of the face time,
Or does it take something away?
I look forward to thinking about these things.
When I hiked in 2008
I wrote Tammie love letters almost every night.
When she left in March 2009
I asked her if she was keeping them.
I was glad to hear she was.
It was my heart clearly.
I hope one day she reads them again.
And still feels good about walking away from us.
Or not.
When a friend dies, then you think of them as static.
As you think of me this year, know I'm not static.
Somewhere in the same space as you,
Just a little farther away,
I am breathing, living,
And writing new chapters for my book.
I'm rambling.
And I'm digging the beard, this is just the beginning...
Sharkey!
GAME 92, GAPA 08
GA->?? 12
| | |
| Is your Life fucked up?
Think about it for a moment.
The secrets, the lies.
So is mine.
So is hers.
So is his.
Fucked up.
It the way Life's sposed to be.
It's ok.
| | |
| Sharkey was a wild west coast long haired young horn dog who'd just finished the A.T.
He meets sweet young elementary school librarian Donna Kay.
Beautiful, smart, funny and loved to fuck.
So sweet, every mama would love this girl.
We had the best time together.
We were amazing - she and I against the world.
We lived together four years in happiness and married in 1996.
My wild and fuckful days of California and Germany were over.
I'd found the perfect woman and it was time to settle down.
My wild oats had been sewn,
It was time for picket fences and babies.
I was 35.
She wanted kids immediately,
Her grandparents had given us 7 acres to build a house
Right next to theirs in the beautiful NC mountains.
Donna was as good of a woman as I could have ever been with.
The setting for our family was straight out of my dreams.
We got married and within six months
I got so claustrophobic and crazy that
She left within a year.
I cheated on her, she didn't know but suspected.
There was brain cancer going on then too,
But my claustrophobia was probably the main cause.
My wild pony heart.
All that to say this:
If you can't trust your heart,
And are gonna follow it anywhere it wants to go,
Recognize that early in Life,
Beware of social norms and religious beliefs,
They will only hurt you.
I follow my heart,
And almost never say no.
To anything or anyone.
And I have lived a Life full of Joy.
I want to meet every one of My Kind I can find.
And I'll usually try to fuck em if they're cute.
I have also left a lot of hurt in my wake.
I wonder if you're like me.
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