Backpack Jack
By R.W. Clinger
I see him on Hollandale Trail, just as I’ve seen other men on the hiking trail near my A-Frame along Lake Erie in western Pennsylvania. He’s just one of a few handsome men in the last handful of years that have passed through my life. Frick Donovan. Jory Oliver. Cannon Donaldson. Nate Bachman. But this hiker is handsomer than those men. This one has thick black hair, eyebrows you can use a mower on, narrow nose at its tip, and a day’s stubble on his cheeks and chin. He might be Italian, or Nordic. I place him at six-three and one hundred and eighty pounds, thin but muscular; one of those no-fat bodies hikers sometimes have. He has to be thirty-two or -three. And he blends in with the summertime oaks and maples because of the green T-shirt covering his slim c
