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.

Walnut Mountain Shelter to Hot Springs - AT Day 2

Day two started out great. It didn't suck until later. We woke up in the shelter, dry despite the night's downpour, and I miraculously felt well-rested despite not really sleeping very well. I made instant oatmeal and hot tea for breakfast, laced up my boots and off we went. We had originally planned on doing around nine miles, but the people we stayed with were all headed past the next shelter to Hot Springs, a town, to eat a real meal and sleep in a real bed, so Jill and I decided 13 miles couldn't be that bad. Besides, from the campsite we had one steep climb up to about 5000 feet, and then it was about 3000 feet downhill to town. Downhill! That sounded easy! We set out optimistic. Look how smiley Jill is!

We learned a lot of things on this trip that will make my next hike easier. One of these is to pack a HELL OF A LOT LESS than you think you need. Another is that downhill is just as hard as uphill. And sometimes it's worse. The climb up to Bluff Mountain, the highest point of the day, was hard. And then it WAS all downhill. And the downhill sucked.

This attractive photo was taken with 6.6 miles to go. We did figure out that the trekking poles we saw other people with were not just for old people and cripples, so me and Jill each found ourselves two sticks to use. Not quite as nice as the real deal, but they made a huge difference climbing hills, and helped absorb some of the shock going downhill. Trekking poles are on my list of things to buy before hiking trip number two.
Although the hike itself felt brutal, we saw some cool things along the way. This bear print was in the mud near a spring where we stopped for water. It kind of freaked me out, but it was so perfect I figured I should take a picture of it.

I'd been making an effort to talk a lot, or to sing when me and Jill weren't talking, so as not to come upon any bears unawares. Some people wear a bell for the same purpose, but that just seemed really obnoxious. Although, really, my singing got pretty obnoxious. Especially when I thought I heard a noise in the bushes, and started singing louder and louder. The bear track prompted a substantial uptick in the amount of obnoxious singing.

On the gentler side of nature, there was a big luna moth chilling on the side of the trail at one point. So beautiful!!
Eventually we rounded the far side of the mountain, and could hear the town in the valley below. We could hear it for an agonizingly long time before seeing it, and we could see it for an agonizingly long time before actually getting down off the mountain and walking into it. To make sure I felt as utterly depleted as possible before getting to our destination, an hour or so before we actually got to town, it started raining. Jill was doing better than me, and was a good bit ahead by the time I staggered down the mountain, soaking wet from rain and sweat, exhausted, with my feet hurting more than they ever had.

It was almost 8:00 by the time we sat down in a diner to eat. We ate quickly, then walked up the hill to Elmer's, a kind of bed and breakfast for hikers, where Jill and I got a room, a real bed, and a shower. I felt kind of pathetic being as excited as I was about a bed and a shower when I'd had a shower and woken up in a bed only the day before. But still. For our first time backpacking ever, 13 miles in one shot was kind of ambitious. I was glad for a bed, and I slept like a baby.

We left a lot of food behind at Elmer's for other hikers to grab if they wanted. I sadly abandoned two big ziplocs of homemade granola I'd made two days before. The weight of the left-behind food was significant though, and I was optimistic that the next day's hike would be easier with a somewhat lighter pack.

Appalachian Trail Hike - Day 1

Jill and I started our Appalachian Trail hike last week by getting up at four in the morning and driving to Devil Fork Gap, on the TN/NC border. We'd made arrangements with a guy at a local outfitters to pick us up and drive us to our starting point - my little Camry would stay in a gravel pull-off on the side of the road until we hiked the 56 miles back to her. The weather was sunny and clear and gorgeous by the time Jill and I pulled off to wait for our shuttle. We took a few pictures, watched some guys cut tree limbs away from power lines, and waited for our ride to show up.
The trail crosses 352/212 at this point, and heads north out of the woods (where we'd be coming from) over a stile, through a field and onward up to Maine. I was a little nervous getting started, but really just because I had never done anything like this before, like, ever, and had no idea what to expect. I've done lots of day hikes, and lots of car camping, but I've never hiked out somewhere with all my stuff on my back, never camped more than a short walk away from a road, and I'd never hiked more than maybe five or six miles in a stretch. We were setting out to do 56 miles, over eight days (we would actually wind up cutting this down to a quicker-paced five and a half days), and I had no idea if my body was up for the challenge. Or even what the challenge was, exactly.

Our shuttle driver Dan rolled up from Hot Springs, NC, a little town directly on the Appalachian Trail. He drove us the hour and a half to our starting point at Max Patch. As he drove, he talked. Constantly. He told us about a guy and a girl who hiked up to Max Patch one day, because the guy was going to propose to the girl at the top. They got to the top, a storm blew up, they both got zapped with lightning, the girl died, and the guy had to crawl back to the road because he couldn't use his legs. He also talked about hunting mushrooms (something I really really need to learn about), and collecting bee balm to make tea from (he pointed out the red flowers along the road) and about the reintroduction of elk to the region.

We arrived at Max Patch, hauled our packs out the minivan, and Dan drove off. And then up the hill we went!
It was basically a path that went straight up. We got to the top incredibly winded, sweaty and after all of 15 minutes or so of walking, wondering what in the hell we'd signed up for. Six days later, I can look back and say psh, poor little body hadn't gotten in shape yet. But for someone whose only physical activity is running 2 or 3 miles a few times a week...carrying a giant (wayyyy too heavy) pack up a hill in the hot sun wasn't quite the gentle introduction to backpacking I'd imagined.

We moved off over the hill, through a clearing, and down into the woods. It rained. We put on ponchos and pack covers, as it started to pour, and kept on walking. A flock of wild turkeys flew up out of a ravine as we walked through.

Jill bought a water pump, so once the rain let up we stopped and topped off our Nalgenes from a stream, where I almost stepped on the first of many salamanders we'd see over the next week. I kind of love reptiles and amphibians, and I got overly excited about this salamander and took a zillion pictures. How cool is he?!
Our first day's hike was only 7.5 miles, and we made it to Walnut Mountain Shelter by late afternoon. One of the best parts of the trip, and one I really hadn't anticipated, was the cool people you meet, eat dinner with, and then sleep next to, at the shelters. Our friends the first night were Nick, on the left in the photo, a guy from Australia trying for 1000 miles in the three months his visa lasts, and Seth and Rachel, a brother and sister from Asheville. Rachel was only 15, but made me feel like a huge baby for thinking our little seven mile hike was hard. She and her brother had done 20 miles that day, and she arrived with the most hideous collection of blisters I'd ever seen. Between her and her brother doing 20 miles that day, and Nick on his way to cover 1000, I realized I was going to have to push myself a lot harder if I wanted to cover 56 miles.

My first night sleeping in a shelter wasn't very comfortable, and I slept in fits and starts. There are mice in most of the shelters. We heard them running around the walls and across the sleeping platform, and I felt one run across my feet at one point. Nick had one run through his hair. There was a big rain storm all night, which was actually kind of soothing and made me feel safe. The noise of the rain on the tin roof drowned out any sounds from the forest that might have been scary, and I told myself that if it was pouring rain surely the bears would stay in their little bear dens and not come out. I had never slept this far away from civilization (I know 7.5 miles isn't exactly far, but from the middle of the woods it felt far), and it was a kind of cool feeling to wake up and realize that I hadn't died, I was safe and dry (thanks to a tarp we hung over the door) and I didn't need an apartment and a bed to sleep. It sounds obvious, maybe, but when you've really only ever slept in buildings, or in big roomy tents staked next to cars, it was a freeing thing to realize.

The Adventure Approaches

Jill is on her way from Chicago as I type. She'll get here tomorrow. We leave the next day. Holy hell.

I went to REI today, spent a lot of money, and bought a lot of stuff. Despite my Dave Ramsey-indoctrinated hatred of spending money, I was okay with my purchases. All of it is stuff we need - no backcountry ice cream maker, or camp kitchen espresso machine - and it's stuff that now I own and won't have to buy the next time I go camping (which hopefully is sooner than next summer). When I got home, I watched some youtube videos about how to hang a bear bag. Then I read up on lightning safety. Then I pulled out my maps and freaked out...but just a little.

Things I am afraid of: 1) tornadoes/lightning storms/flying branches/hail, 2) bears, 3) dehydration and heat stroke, 4) ticks carrying Lyme disease.

Things I am excited about: 1) being outside with trees and birds and such, 2) the most gorgeous mountains ever, 3) watching the sun rise and set on a landscape that isn't my driveway, 4) not looking at a computer for a week, 5) knowing that I can live just fine without all the civilizedness I'm used to.

I bought a little bottle of iodine tablets, and a little bottle of 'neutralizer' tablets that you put in after the iodine is done working. The neutralizer tablets are just ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) and they really do magically make the water not taste like iodine (something about molecules bonding, I think). So that's nice, because I was not trying to buy the $90 UV light water purifier device, but I didn't much want to have to gag down my water.

Dinners are going to be instant mashed potatoes (of which I have fond memories from my wisdom tooth extraction recovery...and they have cheesy ones!) and those foil packets of tuna and salmon. Got some quinoa too. I made a big bag of trail mix, and I'm going to make another bag or two of granola. Peanut butter was buy-one-get-one-free at Harris Teeter, so I've got two jars. I'm going to miss fresh vegetables for a week, but I'm pretty sure I won't starve.

I'm really excited, but I think I'll be more excited once we make it through the first night and haven't died, starved, fallen gravely ill, been mauled by anything, zapped by anything, or had our tent blown away by gale force winds. I just have to keep reminding myself that people lived in the woods for thousands and thousands of years just fine before the white people showed up. And they weren't, as far as I know, routinely zapped by lightning or eaten by bears. Granted, they had some serious skills, but the fact is nature isn't some hostile, alien place. We're just oddly isolated from it, and so it just seems a little scary. But. I'm really excited to go get acquainted with nature a little better.

Summer is actually here, though, which is pretty surreal given how long I've been looking forward to it (since sometime around the first day of school this past August). Speaking of, I still don't know where I'm going to be next year. My friends at West Meck who were in the same situation have both found out their placements, and my email to our principal has thus far gone unanswered, so I'm getting kind of antsy. There are now social studies jobs posted internally, but I feel like if I signed a contract then someone, somewhere must have a job for me, right?

Custom Vans for Portal fans

The shoes I made for my sister were much admired by her friends at college. I was happy just to get the compliments, but a friend of hers asked if I could paint shoes for him, too. Given that I'm also happy to make a couple bucks where I can, I agreed. He wanted me to paint characters from some video game called Portal. I don't play video games, and had never heard of Portal, but evidently one of the characters from this game, the Weighted Companion Cube, is very popular. I googled it to find reference photos, and discovered crocheted versions, costume versions, cakes made to look like it, plush toys, one made out of chain mail, and so on. (I didn't see any shoes though....!) The other character is some kind of robotic guide with a British accent named Wheatley. I don't know. It was all very confusing. But...it doesn't matter if I understand the appeal of this Portal game or not. I just had to put the pictures on the shoes.
I'm very happy with how they turned out. And given my incredible ability to procrastinate any artistic endeavor that might take longer than twenty minutes, it was good to have the accountability of someone paying me for them. Plus, it's always fun to start from nothing and wind up with something that looks cool. Anyone want some shoes?

I'm 26, and I have a job (again!)

The school year is over! I write that with an exclamation point of surprise and near disbelief, rather than the exclamation point of relief. And that's a good thing. I ended the year loving my job, loving my kids, and hoping to God that I'd get the chance to do the same job (better) next year. Because there are approximately 389 things I will do better the second time around. I spent the last two weeks administering the end-of-course standardized test (this included giving five read alouds, in which you read, aloud, 100 questions and 400 answer choices) and saying goodbye to kids with "I don't know if I'll be back next year." I'd been reading the Observer religiously, hoping for news on the Board of County Commissioner's budget, and found out they'd be making a decision on my birthday, this past Wednesday. The day after my birthday I found out they'd be restoring a bunch of positions. And then on Friday...I got a contract in my email! The county voted to give the district enough money to bring back many of the jobs they had initially said would be cut. Not everyone got their job back, although the State still has to solidify their budget, but I got mine, and I'm grateful. Well, I don't know yet if I got MY job back, but I got SOME job back. I could be back at West Meck teaching Civics, which is what I really want, but I could be placed at some other school, teaching World History. I don't get any say in it though, so I get to wait and see. We're supposed to get an email this week with our assignments.

But for now, I'm ready for the summer. Tuesday is the last day I have to show up for work. And a week after that I'll be heading out with my friend Jill to hike for a week. Not sure if I'm anywhere near ready for that, but what the hell...I've got a backpack, a sleeping bag, and boots. Figure I'm good to go, right? Day after I get back from that little excursion, me and Sarah set out across the country to California, and then at the end of July it looks like me, the sibs, and our dad are heading down to Parrish, FL to visit my dad's side of the family. I've got a nice little summer planned out, and now that I know I'll have a paycheck come August, I can start to relax and enjoy it!