My life these days.

My life has been insane lately. Like, utterly and completely filled with work like never before in the history of me. I didn't work half this much last year. I never worked this much in college. And lord knows I didn't work this much at Grosvenor. (Ah...the days of a true 9-5).

Basically, my days go something like this:

5:00 - Alarm #1 goes off (switch phone to vibrate and hit snooze)
5:15 - Alarm #2 goes off (hit snooze again)
5:30 - Get out of bed, boil water for tea while I brush my teeth (I always seem do multitask those two things), throw on clothes that barely match, put my hair in ponytail because I probably didn't shower yesterday, contacts in, grab my external harddrive, throw a yogurt in my lunch bag, make my mug of tea, and rush out the door by 5:45.
6:05 - Get to school, dump my stuff, walk across campus to sign in, make 100 - 400 copies, write stuff on my board, post lesson plans on the door, queue up my powerpoint, set out papers for kids to pick up on the way in, and get ready for kids to walk in the door at...
7:00 - ...when the 'go-to-class' bell rings.
7:11 - First block starts. Teach until...
12:17 - ...third block ends. Eat lunch in the faculty lounge, savor the adult company, inappropriate jokes and swearing for 30 minutes, come back to my trailer to work from...
1:00 - 2:10 - Grade work, enter grades, send emails, enter attendance, make more copies, print off stuff for tomorrow, work on lessons until...
2:10 - 2:20 - ...afternoon duty. Walk back across campus, stand in the courtyard, catch up with students from last year on their way to the bus, encourage everyone to keep moving towards the bus lot.
2:20 - 4:00 - Work at school, meetings, more printing or copying, more grading and entering grades into the computer, more emails, more lesson planning.
4:00 - 6:00 - Drive home, eat something, change my clothes, check my gmail, check facebook, read some online news so I'm not completely clueless about the world outside West Meck, run (if i'm lucky to have the time), shower (if I'm lucky), put off doing dishes/laundry/cleaning because I have no time for such luxuries.
6:00 - 10:30- Plan lessons, type up lesson plans, make worksheets, make quizzes, make tests, make guided notes, make graphic organizers, make powerpoints, make warm up exercises
10:30 (if I'm lucky) - Sleep!!!


My recent conclusion? This is not working. It leaves me with zero time to like, oh, live my life like a normal person. So...I have come up with a plan to get ahead and actually get my weekends free. It doesn't really involve me doing any LESS work, as best I can figure, but it does involve doing it on a schedule and working ahead. Basically, doing more work on the weekdays so I can at least have weekends off.

Isn't it beautiful?!! Okay. It is to me. What's most beautiful? That green circle there? It's a weekend. Notice anything about it? Oh yeah....it DOESN'T HAVE ANY WORK WRITTEN ON IT.


Knock on wood. Next semester my life will be 10 times easier, because my Civics classes start over again, which means I get to use all the plans I've made already this year. And I am being obsessive about naming and organizing files as I make them, so I can find them next semester. But meantime, I'm just trying to figure out little ways to cut down on the work so I don't have to wait until January to have a life. I think my beautiful calendar plan is a good first start.


Also...I still actually kind of love my job. But I need it to be something I can love...that doesn't um, you know, make me go insane and lose all my hair.

"Oh my god Stalonda"

We learned about diversity and multiculturalism the other day in my Civics and Econ class. As part of their homework, I asked them to imagine they were moving to another country and then write an email or facebook message to a friend, telling them what parts of their culture or identity they would change or keep when they moved. I told them to imagine going someplace very different than America. These were some of my favorite responses:

“Oh my god Stalonda, down here the girls suppose to cover up everything but their eyes. I’m like so we can’t show our legs or arms. We not even suppose to speak to the male. I feel like this is a situation that you can get killed if you don’t follow this rules. I will follow the top rules, but as far as my mother cooking changing that not happened. Were not going to be be sitting down here eaten goat when we can still it hamburger. The boy are fine but to bad I can’t talk to them. Well girl I’m out and home to hear from you.”

One girl drew the facebook logo, and then wrote this:

“Heey girl! Smh. Ima miss you! I’m probably gonna have to wear those long body covering things they have those girls wear in Afghanistan! Lmao. I’m lying! I’m not wearing that! But I think I have to learn a different language & change how I act! Man, I don’t wanna go! Text me!”

“Hey, I’m leaving tommorow and I just wanted to remind you. I can’t wait to get to Congo. I plan on just remaining the same fun-spirited person that I am.”

“So I’m going to Saudi Arabia. I guess I’m going to have to learn Arabic. I’m not gonna change how I dress…hopefully the Taliban won’t come after me. Maybe their culture will be really cool.”

“Okay so living here is so strick…I can’t even ask a girl out without paying here parents 10,000 dollars 'as a gift' I cant really express myself as I did in the US. So I must of corse learn arbric and not use curse words…not that I ever did (like once or twice). I miss the USA.”

Intuitive Painting (aka BYOB, we provide the tempera)

Friday night me and Sarah went to an intuitive painting workshop. There was a DJ, people brought snack food, we brought a bottle of wine, and the girl who ran it provided big sheets of paper and big bottles of tempera paint. And then you just kind of went at it. The only rule was that you weren't allowed to say anything, good or bad, about anyone else's work. The idea was to paint for the process, to enjoy the act of painting, and not worry about the finished product. I always worry about the finished product, so it was hard to turn that off, but I really enjoyed playing with goopy tempera on big sheets of paper.

Oil painting is so high-commitment, in that canvas is expensive, paint is expensive, and set up and clean up take a while. If I don't have several hours to devote to painting, I don't do it at all. Which means I haven't painted anything since I made a couple paintings for Christmas gifts this past December. It was really, really good to put colors on a sheet of paper and just enjoy how they looked.

The girl running it would come around and offer suggestions like, "Okay, now if there is one color that you're really feeling pulled by, where you're really feeling that energy draw you in, which one would it be? What would you do with that color?" And things like that. It was awesome.

We had a great time painting, and I was actually really happy with how mine turned out! I'd been wanting something more colorful than my "Girl with the Pearl Earring" print to hang in my living room, and I got it! I might just go out and buy myself some tempera, and leave the oils for the nice Christmas gift paintings. Hooah!

A month of summer condensed into a paragraph.

I haven't written in over a month, it seems. A record, of sorts. I'll give you all a quick rundown of the last month. Ready?

Drove to Florida with my family, saw cousins, giant spiders, drove down nature trails on a golf cart, beach, pool, pool, food, 12 hour drive back to Charlotte, AT for hike number two, Blue Ridge Parkway, hike, sleep in a shelter with a family of bats who dive bomb us, hike, feel like dying, hike hike, EAT MORE FOOD MOLLY, hike hike, get a call in the middle of the wilderness that I have a job back at West Meck teaching Honors Civics and AP Psych, hike, views!!!! sunsets!!!! beautiful!!!!! hike, get a ride to Buena Vista, eat half a delivery pizza, a mexican combo platter, a hotdog, a fried bologna biscuit, and a bag of nachos, drive back to my car through a cloud on the mountain, then back to Charlotte, hurt my foot running, gain five pounds, join the YMCA, Teach for America training, CMS teacher workdays, move my stuff to a trailer classroom, plan like crazy, live at Amelie's for two weeks, wake up at 4:30 this morning, chase a cockroach behind my classroom whiteboard, bell rings, kids arrive!

Whew!

My first day back to school was great. I'm teaching solo this year, which I'm excited about. I'm teaching Honors and AP kids, which is going to be very different in some ways, but I'm excited about it. I'm actually organized to start the year, like, I have binders with all my papers, I'm in the process of making files for each student, I've got my computer file structure all nice and tidy. If you know me you know what a feat this has been. I saw a bunch of my kids from last year at school today, and was reminded again of why I love this job... I love those darn kids.

I'll get some pictures of my classroom once I get my new posters up. And I'll have a new wealth of wonderful student quotes to share, no doubt, although I don't know if anyone can top some of my students from last year for saying the smartest funniest things. A kid today wrote about Civics and Economics, "I thought this class was about cars. But government sounds interesting too."

I love my job. Every so often I just stop and think about leaving Chicago and my hedge fund job and all of that...and I think "Damn.. Best. Decision. Ever." Bring it, school year. I'm ready for you.

Moon lodges, space amoebas, and bare feet

My sister Hannah and I went to the Firefly Gathering last week. It's basically summer camp for hippies (and their kids!) Here is their website. Overall, it was a pretty cool way to spend a couple of days. I didn't ever quite feel like I fit in with most of the crowd, but most people were super friendly and I learned a lot of cool stuff, and more importantly, I think, I'm inspired to go out and learn even more on my own. I had an idea of the crazy hippie vibe I'd be stepping into for a few days, and I tend to veer that way in some things some times, but this was easily the most surreal couple days ever. I'm not quite sure how to sum it all up, so I'm going to try a series of lists. I didn't take a lot of pictures, as it wasn't really the kind of event where people are taking pictures of everything, but I'll share the ones I've got.

List Number One -- Things that were inspiring, refreshing, fascinating, or otherwise really cool:

1. Not wearing shoes for four days. I left them in the car and went barefoot.
2. Little kids running around naked and playing in mud without being told to put clothes on or wash up.

3. Sleeping in a tent in a pine forest.
4. Earthy looking mothers breast feeding infants (and almost-two-year-olds) without anyone being uncomfortable or insisting they wear one of those little cover-yourself-up-lest-we-be-offended breastfeeding capes.

5. Meeting and learning from people who could go out in the wilderness and live entirely off the land, trapping and fishing and hunting and finding water and building shelters. Civilization hasn’t left many of these folks around, but I’d like to count myself in their number some day.

6. Being able to learn and experience skills and knowledge our ancestors had for thousands and thousands of years but that in the last two or three hundred years we’ve lost, like making fire or tanning hides or identifying medicinal plants.

7. Men in kilts. Men without shirts. Men with beards!

8. Un-judgmental hippies, like Natalie Bogwalker, the woman who runs the camp and who taught the hide tanning class I went to. She’d make comments like, “Yeah, I used to think ‘Oh, I need to do this the primitive way! But I’ll tell you, this PVC pipe has made my life so much easier. I figured my 20s were for idealism, and now in my 30s I can be realistic.’”

9. Kids running around fighting with sticks and swimming in the lake and climbing things, with no parents in sight. Parents looking for their missing children calmly and without panicking, knowing they’d find them eventually and that kids are supposed to run around and play without their parents. I hope I can be that kind of parent.

10. Natalie Bogwalker, the hide tanner, told us that she had recently butchered a lamb for her friends’ wedding feast. I just loved that it was a ‘feast.’ People in the Bible always seemed to be having wedding feasts, and doesn't a feast sounds so much more joyful and exuberant than a ‘reception’?

11. I went to a class called “When the Shit Hits the Fan” that was supposed to be about how to survive after we reach peak oil/find ourselves in a massive economic collapse/reach the earth’s carrying capacity and suffer a severe drop in population/the apocalypse happens/other nasty disaster scenarios, etc. etc. It was supposed to be about all this before it veered into batshit crazy land (more in List Number Two), but the point is that I realized how woefully unprepared I am to survive without all the infrastructure and services we take for granted. Like if my water and my power went out, and we ran out of gas so I couldn’t drive and the grocery stores were looted and empty, what would I do? I’d like to not feel so helpless, so this list item falls under the category of inspiring/terrifying me into learning more on my own. It also made me want to buy land and learn to shoot a gun.

12. Learning about some edible and medicinal wild plants. This is something I totally am going to learn more about on my own. (This is Indian Tobacco, or Lobelia. You can use it as an anti-spasmodic if someone's having an asthma attack.)

(Not my photo. http://www.prairiemoon.com/image.php?id=2480&type=D)

13. When (part of) our culture puts so much effort into pretending that men and women are exactly the same and should do exactly the same things (What a waste if a woman chooses to stay at home with children! She could be doing REAL things with her life!) because the only real difference between the sexes is genitalia and the habit of leaving up the toilet seat, it was refreshing to hear people acknowledge (even celebrate) that traditional cultures have always had a division of labor, and that women are designed to care for children (hence the breasts) while men then tend to feel more driven to go hunt and fight and things like that. Not that I plan to spend my life barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, but when so much of our culture insistently ignores real life because it's contrary to one ideology or another, it was nice to see a value system/ideology/what-have-you that is actually BASED on reality, instead of trying to deny it.

14. I made a blanket pin out of copper. It started out as two pieces of copper wire, and look how it turned out! Ha!


List Number Two -- Things that were silly, a little obnoxious, straight up crazy, or otherwise less cool.

1. Hannah and I accidentally attended a moon lodge (we were told we were going to a discussion group). There was a fire, and a woman called Sangoma leading the circle and asking people to “bring things to the fire.” We sang songs (“I have the infinite eternal inside of me…!”) and people talked about their chakras, or about having too much empathetic energy, or about African traditions surrounding the moon goddess. Hannah and I wanted to be respectful, so we sat and nodded and held hands when asked. There were ten or twelve women there, and everyone was incredibly serious and sweet. After we “released the directions” by turning to face North, South, East and West and addressing the spirits (or something) of each direction, I walked away being really thankful that my faith is so much simpler than all the ritual and chant and ceremony and complicated collection of goddesses and spirits and energies that these women looked to for meaning. I can’t imagine going through every day feeling like it was up to me to piece together a spirituality for myself, or to tap into the spirit of whatever, or that if I didn’t do this cleansing ceremony or that healing ritual, I’d be trapped by thus and such negative energy. That’s the great thing about being Reformed though. No having to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, no earning anything, no brownie points with God. As the song goes, grace is an amazing thing.

2. The guy who led our “When the Shit Hits the Fan” class veered off at one point from talking about bug-out bags and strategic community building, to talking about the reptilian humanoids who are ruling the world. Basically, there are reptiles that shapeshift into humans who control everything. The Bilderberg Group? The Illuminati? All put in place by the reptiles. The reptiles came from another dimension, or from space (or both?) and they pull all the strings. You can wikipedia a guy named David Icke to get the full story. It’s basically insane. The wikipedia article suggests that the whole idea is perhaps “Swiftian satire.” I hope to god that’s true. We also learned that space is like an ocean with giant miles-long amoebas living in it that suck our energy. Before he could tell us about the space amoebas though, we had to imagine a white protective bubble around us. To keep out the space amoebas, obviously.
3. There was a lot of jargon at Firefly. I could go on about other kinds of jargon that drive me crazy, like the church jargon that says things like “The Lord placed it on my heart…” or uses the single word “walk” to mean “Christian faith, life and daily experience.,” or using “gift” as a verb, as in “God has gifted him with so many talents.” To be perfectly honest, the Church has a ton more awful jargon than the good hippie folk I met, but there were two terms I heard more than once that just made me go “Eh?” One was referring to a woman as a “female-bodied person,” which was odd to me because I heard it from the same people who were talking about women caring for babies while men went out to hunt. Can’t we just say ‘male’ and ‘female’? The other one that I heard a LOT was people referring to their husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, as their “partners.” Straight people with wedding rings on. If you have a wedding ring, I assume you have a husband or a wife. I don’t want to be someone’s ‘partner.’ That makes it sound like the person you’ve committed to spending your life with is on about the same level as the guy who owns the other half of your real estate business. This is why I totally understand why gay people aren’t satisfied with “civil unions.” You want a wife or a husband, not a partner. So I don’t understand why straight people, who CAN ACTUALLY GET MARRIED, would insist on using a lame, businessy term like “partner.” Is marriage just too mainstream?

4. Judgmental hippies. A lot of people seemed to have a constant need to insert into conversations or discussions the things they DON’T do. As in “Well, I don’t eat canned goods, but if I did I bet that would be tasty.” Or “We don’t have electricity, so we lit candles for the ceremony.” Or “I don’t shop at the grocery store, so I haven’t eaten cereal in a while.” There are some situations where, sure, that’s relevant. But mostly nobody else needs to know that you don’t eat canned goods. Just say “That sounds tasty” and leave out the not-so-subtle judgment.

5. This could go into the jargon category, perhaps, but there was only really one person I heard use these terms so I didn’t want to blanket the whole hippie community with the embarrassment that SHOULD come from making up words. “Shero” instead of “hero.” “Herstory” instead of “history.” Please, please please, just use the English words. I’m all for referring to humanity as “humankind” instead of “mankind,” and I appreciate when pastors say “sisters and brothers” instead of always “brothers and sisters,” but there comes a point when you just sound ridiculous. Please just use the language we already have. It works just fine, as is.


I totally want to go again next year.

White blazes in my own backyard!

Or at least they're within two hours of the backyard I grew up in.

I'm at home in Delaware for a short visit, and since everyone had to work today, I drove out to Berks County, Pennsylvania this morning to find the Appalachian Trail and do a short little hike - only five miles total. The trip served two main purposes. First, after spending a lot of last week in a car, I felt I needed to remind my legs what it's like to hike so that when I set out in August to do another week or so (this time up in VA/MD), I'm not starting from scratch and hating the first 20 miles like I did last time. Secondly, I took 476 up to PA, and 476 conveniently runs through Conshohoken, where the closest REI is located. I wanted to pick up a couple things before Hannah and I venture to the Firefly Gathering on Wednesday.

I also picked up trekking poles!! On my hike two weeks ago me and Jill scrounged up walking sticks after seeing everyone else happily chugging along with fancy-looking trekking poles. I'd always thought the poles were for old people and Europeans (I remember the Austrians walking around parks with them). I was totally wrong. Having four points of impact, essentially four "legs," makes climbing up and down mountains a lot easier. You have better balance, better shock absorption, you get a good rhythm going, and your hands don't get all puffy and swollen from hanging useless at your sides. I got the kids' version. They were 30 bucks cheaper, several ounces lighter, and have a cool snake painted on them.
My mini-hike was lovely. The point I hiked up to is at a relatively low elevation (1200-something feet, I think?) and the forest was more open to sun, and drier, and it was 80-90 degrees out - so it felt really hot. The stretch I hiked went past the Windsor Furnace shelter in Berks County Park. I missed the darker, cooler forest I found in NC two weeks ago, but it was also kind of cool to hike in landscape that looks a little more like the area I grew up in.

It was unpleasantly hot and sunny at Pulpit Rock, but the view was worth it. I ran into a couple south bound thru hikers. We traded taking pictures of each other. One of the guys was just settling into a mushroom trip, after having been given some by "some random guy down the trail." He was enjoying his afternoon.

Some kind soul thought to install an umbrella for shade.

3000 miles in 12 observations

I've been procrastinating writing a blog about my road trip because there is SO MUCH I could write about. We drove through eight states, slept in six towns, covered over 3000 miles, and watched the landscape change dramatically again and again and again. I am not about to give a blow-by-blow account of 3000 miles, so I thought I'd distill the trip down into a few of the biggest things that stuck with me, accompanied by photos. (The full photographic story is on facebook.) These are listed in the order they occurred to me, not in order of significance.

1. As far as I'm concerned, the Appalachian Mountains are still the most beautiful part of our country. I've been thinking more lately about how I can live closer to them.

2. I can never reclaim my five lost years as a vegetarian, but there is something wonderful about a giant pile/sandwich/bowl of meat.


3. I don't think sunsets will ever stop making me feel like I might explode with the crazy beauty of the world God made. And until I stop feeling that way, I will continue to take far too many photos of them.

4. Memorials with sad little personal memories make me cry. We visited the site of the Oklahoma City bombing. This is an Narcotics Anonymous keychain: "Clean and Serene for Eighteen Months."

5. The Texas panhandle is really flat and really dry and I could never, ever live there.

6. Although I don't know about actually living someplace so dry, I can see the appeal of Santa Fe. There are mountains in the distance, cool art and architecture, and their local brewery makes a fine IPA.

7. The desert seems like a hostile and forbidding place to me, but when it cools down and gets windy it feels a little more exciting and makes you want to just stand in the breeze.

8. The next time I visit the Grand Canyon, I want to hike it.

9. I could never have the patience to be an archaeologist, but Native American rock paintings are totally freaking cool in person and in situ.

10. Several years after an unpleasant falling out, gin and I have settled our differences and decided to be friends again.

11. California beaches look a little bit different than Delaware beaches.

12. Just like I finished my first Appalachian Trail hike wanting to hike more of it, I finished my this trip wishing I could spend another couple months driving across the rest of the country. There's so much out there to see!

Westward bound!

Last week I hiked 56 miles at a little over 2 mph. This week I'm driving 2500 miles at 60 mph. If the road trip is anywhere close to as cool as the backpacking trip, I'll be in good shape.

Our departure time was pushed back to tomorrow evening, so we had to make some adjustments to our itinerary. Roswell didn't make the cut, but it was replaced by the Grand Canyon, which I think is a more-than-adequate substitute. I've never seen the Canyon, or anything remotely resembling a desert, or any of that other red-colored landscape I've seen pictures of out west, so I'm really excited. If we get a chance to hike around a little bit, even better.

Just like the last trip, I went out and bought a few new things. Difference being, I went to Anthropologie instead of REI, and the weight of my purchases was not a consideration. It's nice to not have to think about carrying all my stuff. I am a little worried though about feeling really fidgety and lazy sitting in a car for so long. I ran yesterday, and ran again today, and will run again tomorrow before we leave, but I feel like I'm in better shape now than I have been in a while and I know my tendency to eat massive amounts of fast food on car trips.

My arthritis was entirely absent for my hike, and despite splurging on biscuits and white gravy and waffles on the last day, has continued to stay away. I'm hoping this means I can have wheat in small amounts every now and then without causing everything to flare up. Because damn do I love some biscuits. It is a really good feeling to have such a long, solid stretch of feeling like my body can do what I want it to, and that I don't have to worry about what joint will be sore in the morning. That said, I'm willing to deal with a stiff knuckle or two this week in order to enjoy food. I will be eating whatever Route 40 puts in front of me with no regrets.

Ah!! I'm really excited!! I'm going to get to camp in the desert, and see beautiful nature, and swim (well, okay, I use the term loosely) in the Pacific, and eat new food, and see a lot of America I've never seen before! I have a feeling that, just like the AT hike, this is only going to make me want more. Next time I'll just take a different highway, maybe camp along the way... but okay, first things first...Nashville tomorrow!

Little Laurel Shelter to Devil Fork Gap - The last two days!

I slept great all night, and woke up feeling energized and ready to get going. Everyone we met had been telling me that it takes about three or four days before your body starts getting used to the level of exertion and starts feeling better every day instead of worse. I felt better on day four than I did on day three, and a LOT better on day five than on day four. We had initially planned to only hike 6.8 miles this day, but we realized if we pushed through an extra 6 miles, it would leave us with an easy 2.7 mile hike to the car the next day. Jill and I figured we could handle 13 miles now a lot easier than we handled 13 miles three days ago, so we decided to go for it.

This day’s hike was easily my favorite. Partly because I was finally getting into better shape than when I started, so it was physically less difficult and I moved a lot faster (still not very fast, but relatively speaking), and partly because the terrain was a lot more varied. The day started out with the usual uphill through the woods, but also included big gorgeous stretches of meadow, lots of clambering through rocks, and the most amazing views we experienced the whole trip.

Before we left for the morning though, we discovered a little red salamander hanging out on a log behind the shelter. He was completely unafraid of us, and he let us pick him up!  I looked him up later, and have learned he was the juvenile stage of the red spotted newt. Like all amphibians, he started out as a little aquatic larva, but then turns into this bright red, terrestrial juvenile for two or three years before making his way back to the water and turning into a greenish-colored adult. Wikipedia even tells me that the red juveniles use magnetic orientation to find their way home. Nature blows my mind sometimes. We hiked up through a lot of rhododendron, and over a lot of rocks. As we got higher, there were side trails leading out to rocky cliffs, so we followed one out to take a look. Completely worth it. When you’ve been hiking up and up through pretty dense forest, and then the sky starts to open up a little, there’s a little more sun, the air feels a little cooler, and you finally step up and out of the tree line and can see everything below and around the mountain you’ve just climbed, and you feel that first gust of a breeze as you step out from the cover of the trees…my photos are completely inadequate to capture that, is all I’m saying.

The top of our rock climbing hike was Firescald Knob. We took our packs off and took it all in for a while. The views were breathtaking, but like I just said, the feeling of having climbed five miles up to see them is not something I can convey in words or pictures. The breeze felt so good, and the sun felt so good, instead of being exhausted like I had been most of the trip, I felt exhilarated and giddy.

There were significantly more rocks on this day’s hike than on any other day, which although it meant using your hands to climb in parts, was a welcome break from the endless straight shots up and down hills in the woods. They also provided some nice seating and shade.

We took a rest in a clearing where there were some Civil War memorial stones. Some family had joined the Union army (we’re hiking through the South, remember) and had returned back to their cabin to be ambushed by the Confederates. Or something like that. It was a beautiful clearing, with grass and logs to sit on and beautiful low sunlight through the trees.

Our initial plan had been to stay at Jerry’s Cabin Shelter. Since we’d decided to push on to Flint Mountain and do the 13 miles instead, we took the shelter as a halfway break and relaxed for a few minutes before moving on. Grace and Kathy caught up with us, and they stayed at the shelter for the night while we headed on to Flint Mountain. We were glad we weren’t staying there, because it was easily the buggiest and most run down shelter we’d seen so far.

We finally got to the Flint Mountain shelter to find a giant campfire being tended by two men dressed in camo. Two slightly awkward college guys were sitting at the picnic table; we'd met them briefly the day before when they'd hiked into camp in the dark while we poked at the fire, but they'd gone off to camp elsewhere. But the guys in camo, Joe and Will…they were something else. They were out hunting ginseng, they told us. And they had the most extraordinary Tennessee mountain accents I have ever heard in my life. Ever ever. Will’s was the best, and as hard as I tried to watch his mouth move to pick out the words he was saying, I felt like there were just a whole lot of extraneous southern-sounding noises that he was mixing in with the actual words, which meant I maybe understood half of what he said. But he did explain the ginseng hunting.

Apparently, wild ginseng is native to the forests in Appalachians down here, into the Smokies, and up into NC. Apparently it also gets $400 a pound. You dig up the roots, which are small tubers. It is also illegal to collect it in national park land, a point which Will and Joe were quite open about. They had tales of evading park rangers and told us tricks to avoid getting caught (put the top of the plant into the hole and smooth over the hole with leaves...no one will ever know there's a plant missing!) Will and Joe had parked at the road 3 miles away (they told me my Camry was safe and sound) and hiked up into the woods to dig up ginseng roots. They’d come equipped with cigarettes, Mountain Dew, and cargo pockets to smuggle out the plants. The conversation around the camp fire was one of the most entertaining I’ve ever been a part of, in that way where you’re sitting there just astonished that this is real life. Friendly guys, but a little rough and tumble. Will told us the story of how some guy had let the air out of his tires (in retribution for some slight) and so Will had sprayed him in the face with bear spray. Serious pepper spray in a giant ass can. He had no qualms about it at all. “Motherfucker shouldna gon and messed with my damn truck. You don’t go messin’ around with a man’s veehicle.” Fair enough.

We settled in for the night once it started getting dark. The ginseng hunters stayed out by the fire until after it was dark and we’d fallen asleep, but they kept turning lights on and talking and waking us up and we couldn’t figure out what in the hell they were doing. At one point, Will popped up from the other side of the shelter and asked, “Y’all still awake over there? Goddamn I can’t sleep in this rat hole!” A normal kind of observation, because as usual, there were mice, except we had no idea he was there to start out so it was startling to hear him suddenly call out from the pitch dark. His buddy Joe was snoring outside someplace, but we’re still not sure if he just passed out on the picnic table or set up a sleeping bag or what. Eventually Will and Joe packed up and moved out of camp. We assured them that they could hike the three miles back to their car in an easy hour.

The mice left me alone that night though, and I went to sleep starting to be a little sad to be heading home the next day. The next morning I woke up with more energy than I’d had the whole trip. The 2.7 miles back to the car was easy and maybe took an hour and a few minutes. The best thing about getting back to the car was being able to put on a dry t-shirt I found in my trunk. We packed up the car and went to find the biggest meal we could in Erwin, TN, the closest town that was likely to have restaurants. It was Sunday, and apparently southerners don’t eat on Sundays, but we were able to find a Huddle House that was open. My arthritis had been non-existent all trip, so I figured I’d splurge and eat some biscuits. And part of a waffle. And white sausage gravy. And bacon and sausage and cheese and eggs. It was the grossest, biggest plate of breakfast food I’d ever seen, and it tasted amazing.

We got back on 26, and three hours later were back in Charlotte, taking showers and putting on clean clothes.

I could write a little paragraph summing up the trip, or giving my reflections on the whole thing, but it would be pretty weak, I think. I'll just say that I’d never done anything like this before, and over the course of six days went from being miserable to being hooked.

Spring Mountain Shelter to Little Laurel Shelter - AT Day 4

We said goodbye to the dad and son we'd spent the night with at Spring Mountain shelter, and we continued north while they headed south towards Hot Springs. We had 8.6 miles to go, and it started uphill, with some steps. The AT has a lot more steps than I'd like, although they're better going up than going down. Going up you might get winded, but you can pause for a second and then keep on going. When you're going down steps, your knees take a real beating, and it doesn't matter how often you pause, they're still going to hurt again as soon as you start back up again.

The trail crossed another highway, which seemed like a good place to stop and eat something. A spring ran down the mountain into a creek alongside the road, so we filled up our Nalgenes before heading on. The pump Jill bought turned out to be a great purchase. It filters a lot more than the iodine tablets can kill, so we could pump water out of basically anywhere and it was safe to drink.

I mentioned before how our clothes were perpetually damp? They were. It was gross. I had some synthetic fiber shorts, so my pants were at least mostly dry most of the time. But I learned the hard way that cotton sucks when it's damp, and it doesn't dry easily. When you're walking through a forest, in pretty consistent shade, with a lot of moisture in the air and a sweaty pack on your back, things just stay wet. When we got to the road though, I realized it was the only sustained, dry sun we'd had in a while, so I took my wet clothes and spread them out to dry for 20 minutes. And...they actually mostly dried. Amazing.
This was the first day that I felt pretty good for almost the whole day, wasn't ready to drop dead by the end, and actually didn't mind getting up and moving again after a break. It was a nice change from the previous days, and I hoped the trend would continue.

I failed to take photos of our last two shelters, but we stayed this night at Little Laurel shelter. There were two kids from Clemson who stayed in tents on the hill behind the shelter, and we never got their names, although they were nice enough. We shared the shelter with a woman named Leigh, a section hiker who had been hiking the trail piece by piece since 1991. She was probably pushing 60, wasn't any bigger than I am, and looked wirey. She worked for the Department of Agriculture doing plant inspections and, but told us that every year she tries to get out to do another section.

"People tell me I should go ahead and do Katahdin before I get too old," she told us. "But I'm funny that way, I'm just gonna go piece by piece in order, and if I don't get to Katahdin, I don't get there." I kind of want to be like her when I get old. She had hurt her knee climbing some rocks on her hike that day (she was coming from the way we were about to be going) and she was worried she wouldn't get to finish her hike, or that she might have to go to a doctor. We gave her an ace bandage and I showed her how to wrap her knee before we all went to bed.

The three of us got in our bags in the shelter before it was dark out, and the two Clemson kids retired to their tents. We lay there for a little while, exchanging a few words here and there but mostly just starting to slowly doze off. It was almost dark out, but we weren't quite asleep, when the guy who had been hiking since Key West rolled into camp. He introduced himself as Rich and asked if we minded if he started a fire. Nobody objected, and Jill and Leigh lay back down to go to sleep.  I felt like if he'd just shown up someone should be sociable, so I got out of my sleeping bag and went over to help with the fire.

The fire was the saddest fire ever. The wood was all soaking wet, so we spent about two hours feeding kindling in between wet logs, getting excited for a few minutes of actual flame, then enjoying the warmth from the coals for a little before shoving more kindling in. It got dark shortly after starting the fire, and we started hearing sounds from the bear cables, like something was messing with them. Clanging and squeaking. At first we couldn’t see anything with flashlights, and I was, naturally, terrified it was a bear. Finally, Rich got up to go see what was going on, and called back that it was chipmunks on the food bags. On MY foodbag, specifically. He chucked rocks at them, and hit a couple, but they seemed to jump or fall off the bag and disappear. Finally I got up to come see for myself. And I saw one of the little bastards FLY from the food bag to a tree that was wayyy too far away for a regular chipmunk or squirrel to jump. My food bag was being attacked by FLYING SQUIRRELS which are, I later learned, native to the mountains of NC and TN. Rich pegged a couple more of them with rocks, and we watched them glide off the cable to neighboring trees. Despite getting nailed with rocks, the damn things kept climbing back up the cables, so we finally went back to watch the fire die and let the flying squirrels do what they wanted. I was pissed in the morning when one of my trail mix bags was eaten into, but if it had to be eaten by something, a flying squirrel makes a much better story than a chipmunk. And it really was pretty wild to watch these things fly through the trees in the dark.

It was also kind of incredible just to sit in the forest in the pitch black (the tiny glowing embers of the fire didn’t amount to much light). Other nights I'd always been in my sleeping bag in the shelter before it got dark and this was the first time I’d been in the forest in the pitch black. And it was pitch black, except for the sky, which was overcast and glowing a dark blue…just enough contrast that you could see the contours of the tree tops when you looked up. It's humbling to realize that, apart from all the civilized stuff we’ve created, you’re left pretty vulnerable and very small. Sitting by the fire, with rocks to throw at animals, I wasn't afraid of anything coming to get us. But if I’d walked in any direction for more than a few minutes, I'd have been completely alone in complete darkness. (I can see now why Prometheus was such a big deal.) The night was beautiful though - the first one that it hadn’t rained, and just chilly enough that the fire felt good. The bastard flying squirrels kept disturbing the silence by shaking up the bear cables, but apart from that it was incredibly quiet, and incredibly dark, and I felt incredibly peaceful.

Hot Springs to Spring Mountain Shelter - AT Day 3

Waking up in Hot Springs I felt like I'd slept better than I'd ever slept, but my body still hurt and had about half the energy I wanted it to. The night before we had both felt so miserable we were tempted to try and get a ride to some place further up on the trail, just to shorten the trip a little. By day four I'd think back and wonder what in the hell we were thinking, but we were both so seriously caught off guard by how physically difficult the hiking would be, and how exhausted and in pain we were by the end of the second day, that for a few hours all we wanted to do was go home. Thankfully, we both decided it would be kind of f-ing lame to back down after 48 hours, so we planned out a new schedule, figuring we'd be a day ahead of schedule if we could keep up the pace we'd set. Eleven miles planned for our third day. With our blisters taped up with moleskin and band-aids, we walked downstairs to breakfast.

Our host Elmer was an older guy, a little gruff, but nice, and a good cook. Breakfast was wonderful, and it was nice to sit around and chat with folks who had been doing this backpacking thing for a good deal more time than we had. We were joined by Seth and Rachel from our first shelter, and also met Grace and Kathy, a mom and daughter from Texas, in the middle of a 30-day trip, who were super sweet. At our first shelter, Nick the Australian had told us about a guy he'd run into who had started walking north from the Florida Keys. (Nick wasn't sure what the Florida Keys were, but he had been led to understand that it meant the very bottom of Florida.) The guy who'd started in Florida showed up to breakfast too. Florida! I couldn't imagine wanting to walk around much of anywhere in Florida, much less straight through the whole thing. Insane, but impressive.

As I've mentioned, one of the coolest parts of hiking the trail seems to be the people you meet. I got a chance to talk to Grace for a little bit, and got a new perspective on the landscape I've always kind of taken for granted. I thought things were all supposed to be bigger in Texas, but Grace told me she thought everything was bigger here: bigger bugs, bigger trees, bigger flowers. She also couldn't believe how much fungus there was. She made one observation I thought was kind of interesting. In Texas, she said, she'd always seen people plant gardens that were layered, with terraces or plants growing up the side of something. She'd always thought it was just people being creative until she came out into the Appalachians and saw plants growing up the sides of mountains. Living in Texas, it had never occurred to her that plants cascaded, or grew up things.

Resolved to keep going despite still feeling pretty beat, Jill and I picked up some more moleskin at the local outfitters and headed back to the mountains. The AT turns into the sidewalk for the length of the town, so we followed it across a bridge, over the French Broad River, and up a mountain. Like, seriously UP a mountain.
This was our warning that the hike up out of Hot Springs would be steep. It was also insanely humid. My glasses wouldn't stay un-fogged, so I finally took them off and decided I'd rather hike without distance vision than hike with the visual equivalent of cataracts. I put the glasses back on for the views though, which were pretty gorgeous.
You can see the steam rising out of the valley. It was like hiking in a greenhouse. Beautiful, but clammy as all hell. This day was the start of our both being perpetually damp. On the list of lessons learned for the next trip: cotton is the devil's fabric.

We hiked through the mountains for a while, and gradually the humidity let up and the incline did as well. The terrain opened up and we walked through some big meadows with blackberry bushes growing like crazy. If they'd been ripe, it would have been one incredible snack.
The big excitement of the day came while we were on an overpass over 70. I got cell service (love me some Verizon) and called my dad to check in. "Seen any bears yet?" he asked. I told him that, thank God, we had not. I got off the phone, finished my lunch, and me and Jill stood up to finish crossing the highway and continue up the mountain on the other side.
And then Jill yelled the four-letter word I'd been hoping not to hear: "Bear!!!!"

She had looked down at the highway and seen a bear running across the road. Running from where we'd just come from to where we were going. I kind of freaked out. I knew we had to keep going, but I didn't let Jill get more than five feet ahead of me and we hauled ass up that next mountain. Instead of singing to keep the bears away, I started talking. And because I didn't have anything in particular to talk about, I started running through all the supreme court cases I'd taught my civics class this year, organized by relevant constitutional amendment, with descriptions of each case and their lasting significance. I realize this is incredibly lame both because a) I am embarrassingly over-afraid of bears and b) rattling off court cases is pretty nerdy, but I really didn't care. It wasn't like there was anyone around to see me anyway. Except Jill, who thankfully has the patience of a saint. Or at least she got really good at tuning out my bear-paranoia-induced ramblings.

We finally got far enough away from the highway that I relaxed a little bit. I know bears are afraid of us, and I know there was no reason for a bear to come off the highway, stalk us and hunt us down five miles into the woods. Sitting down for a water break felt great. Don't I look relaxed?
Bear sighting behind us, we made it to Spring Mountain shelter, which was the same style as the first one we'd slept in. Five wooden sections to sleep on, sloped tin roof, and a healthy mouse population. Someone had a sense of humor and attached this outlet box to a wooden post.

Our bunk mates for this evening were a dad and his grown son, who were doing three days of four or five miles each. Our three days so far had been 7.5, 13, and 11 miles respectively, so we finally felt a little better about our slow pace. They were really nice though, like everyone else we'd met on the trail so far.
There were two things we learned you need to do when staying in shelters on the trail. You have to hang your food out away from the campsite so bears can't get it. I knew about this already, and had hung food once or twice while camping. What I did not know about was protecting your stuff from mice. You have to hang your pack up so mice can't get in it, and then you have to leave all the packets of your bag unzipped so if mice DO get up to the bag they can run in and out without chewing holes in things. The shelters mostly came equipped with strings hanging from the ceiling with tin can baffles to keep the mice from climbing down the string. We were one tin can baffle short at this shelter, so the son of the father/son team wound up with a mouse in his bag. He had left a cough drop in his bag and the mouse had chewed through several things to try and find it.

All the shelters we stayed at also had privies, in one state of upkeep or another. This one wasn't actually bad, although I had to wield a spray can of deet to fend off a group of bumble bees who seemed to have made a home in the pile of crap collecting under the toilet. Surprisingly they didn't really smell bad though. There was a bag of leaf litter hanging next to each one for you to throw in the privy after you were finished. This keeps the pile aerated so it can compost, which keeps it from smelling. I was kind of impressed. Maybe not so impressed by this particular example...but I had expected to have to dig holes for that particular piece of business, so it was nice to just be able to use a toilet, however rudimentary.

This was the note written on the inside of the door.

It rained again in the night, so none of the clothes I'd foolishly hung up to dry out (from sweat) got any dryer over night. Still, I kind of love sleeping through rain on a tin roof, and I woke up finally feeling like my body was starting to get itself in gear. I'd been told that it takes until day three or four before you start feeling better each day instead of worse, and I was encouraged to actually feel energized and ready to go in the morning. I put on my cold, damp cotton clothes, put more moleskin around my blisters (which appeared to be growing, but at least not popping) and Jill and I headed out.