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.
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