[at-l] Daylight Saving Time

[Felix J]

pudscrawler at aol.com wrote:

> When I was hiking the trail in 1999, DST arrived with an end of 
> extra-cold weather. I thought, for the first time in my life, mind 
> you, that DST was a good thing.

If I may be so bold....When I read that, I was reminded of this:

SUNDOWN
Sundown got his name from his habit of showing up well past sundown. As 
he made his way into the shelter, it looked like he would earn the right 
to keep it one more day. Dusk was becoming a memory. The air was cool 
and moist above the churning waters of Laurel Falls. I moved my stuff 
closer to "my" corner.
"Where have you been?" I asked. "I've been here over an hour."
"I missed the turn-off for the Trail down at that parking lot. There was 
a dog barking at me and I was watching him and just kept walking. I'll 
bet I went over a mile. Then, I had to find the Trail in the dark."
The flame of my candle flickered as Sundown pulled stuff from his pack. 
He nearly blew it out completely when he dropped his Therm-A-Rest into 
place. "What time is it, anyway?" he asked, shaking his sleeping bag 
from its stuff sack.
"Almost 8:30," I said, which was a guess. "Hey, where did you take your 
'Zero Hour'?"
"What zero hour?" he said as he pulled his feet from their boots.
"You know, the Daylight Savings Zero Hour. I took mine at Moreland Gap 
Shelter. It was actually kinda nice to kick back."
"Daylight Savings Zero Hour? What are you talking about?"
"Today is the first day of daylight savings time," I explained. "Since 
the clocks 'spring forward,' hikers have to sit in the same spot for one 
hour because that hour doesn't really exist. Today essentially only had 
23 hours. Surely you've heard of it."
The concept was apparently foreign to him. He was rendered more or less 
motionless as he tried to figure it out.
"Seriously," I said. "Every spring, when the clocks change, hikers have 
to sit in one spot for exactly one hour. Otherwise, they'd be an hour 
ahead of where they should be. That'd mess everything up. That's 
probably why you got here so late. You hiked through the hour that 
didn't exist, even though you didn't go anywhere."
A couple moments of silence and handfuls of M&Ms later, Sundown said, 
"What happens in the fall? What happens when you set your clocks back?"
"In the fall, you have to hike for half an hour, turn around and hike 
back. Or, I suppose you could hike for a whole hour and then turn 
around. I guess it depends on what time zone you're in. Either way, you 
have to hike for an hour that you don't go anywhere. Because that day is 
twenty-five hours long and you'd end up an hour behind schedule if you 
didn't hike for an hour to nowhere. See?"
I don't think he saw. I'll give him credit for trying, though. As he 
started his stove, he'd start a question, and then stop. He either 
couldn't figure out what the question was, or figured out it wasn't a 
question at all.
"So, if the hour...." Silence. "So, if the hour didn't exist, then what 
happens to what you do during that hour?"
"Well, in your case, you made up for it by getting lost for an hour. In 
my case, I rested and read graffiti on the wall of Moreland Gap Shelter. 
There were some doozies, too."
Sundown cooked in silence, either trying to understand what I was 
saying, or figure out if I was telling the truth. It didn't matter 
either way.
"You know how sometimes you experience what they call 'déjà vu'? That's 
the stuff that really happens in those hours that don't happen. Then, 
when they do happen, they seem to be familiar." The more I explained, 
the more I began to believe it myself.
I went back to reading Jack London's "To Build a Fire." I figured I'd 
let Sundown digest his Lipton and 'Zero Hour' lesson for a while.
Before I knew it, I was waking up, my eyes adjusting to the first light 
of day. Sundown was sliding his arms into the shoulder straps of his pack.
"Where you going?" I asked.
"I wanted to get an early start. Gonna see if I can make it to Iron 
Mountain Shelter before dark. Catch ya later, man," he said as he 
crunched off into the frost.
I took my time getting ready to leave. The cold April morning made 
staying in the sleeping bag as long as possible seem like the right 
thing to do. I checked the register as I waited for coffee water to 
boil, and read Sundown's entry:
April 6th
I don't know if I was here or not. If somebody figures it out, let me know.
--Sundown
--------
Felix J. McGillicuddy
ME-->GA '98
"Your Move"
ALT '03 KT '03
http://Felixhikes.tripod.com/