Project Eveningland

4/6/2023 Thursday

Had I decided to sleep in the shelter last night (I ultimately decided to tent) I would have been awakened near midnight by the arrival of Honey Badger and SQRL (pronounced “squirrel”).

But I didn’t sleep in the shelter. And I had problems of my own in the tent starting with temperature regulation and… uh… general wetness? It was that weird sort of weather where you can’t decide if you’re cold or hot, but you’re pretty sure you’d prefer to be drier. My body didn’t wake me to address the problem until I was already sweaty as hell. Trying to get dry left me shivering. And back and forth and so on. I need a summer bag.

In the morning I headed to the shelter to have breakfast and use the privy, whereupon I ran into Honey Badger, who told me about arriving late. Sounds like a fucking nightmare to me, but he had had an adventure.

I walked out onto the rocky path. The first 4-5 miles of the day were challenging. Rocks and lots of stuff where you wanna place your feet deliberately, maybe even use your hands here and there. The morning light was pink and diffused by thick clouds. Tiny little rainstorms seemed to follow at a respectful distance. (They were, to quote Han Solo, “flying casual” so as not to attract attention). The dry weather made such a difference. On an exposed rocky trail, rain means lots of slipping around.

Met Wedge at Massie Gap (or, rather, the intersection with the side trail that leads to Massie Gap). We chatted with a dad and his seven year old (both had cowboy hats). “What would it be like,” I asked as we watched the boy cavort around on the rugged terrain, “to have joints that feel that good?” The dad (trail name Early Bear) had thru hiked in 2009. He said he hopes to do it again someday with his son.

Wedge and I both felt glad of company. He talked about “what a difference a day makes,” because he’d been considering hitting the trail a day early and letting his wife and kids hit Dollywood without him. He imagined an alternate universe in which he had resumed the trail alone, been depressed to say goodbye to his family, and then felt shitty because his body had needed another day. Happily he had gone with his family, taken an extra day to heal, and was having a fun day on trail with his old bud Rhetoric.

It makes an enormous difference not to be alone. For Wedge it was easier to say goodbye to his sons and wife when he knew he wouldn’t be alone. It’s so much harder to buoy yourself on a bad day than it is to buoy someone else. There’s a lot of buoying to be done out here, folks.

There are wild ponies throughout the Grayson Highlands and no one has brushed them in ages! They need it. They look shaggy and unkempt. They are profoundly unconcerned by hikers.

The landscape turned gentle, the inclines were mitigated by lovely, even tread. We lunched in the “human corral” (a green field hemmed in by fences to keep horses out and allow people to tent camp without worry of being trampled in the night). There’s plenty of pony shit in the corral though, so they’re gettin’ in somehow. I propose that we kill just one pony and put the corpse at the entrance to the corral to warn the other ponies not to enter. I looked around for a ranger to share my idea with but we were alone.

Wedge is hiking with me in part because he wants a slower pace. I keep trying not to take this as an insult. Let’s say he’s hiking with me because he wants a “moderated” pace. You know you’ve got a real high-pressure trail culture when one Douglas S. Cloud is seen as “relaxed” by comparison. Me! Relaxed! Things have gotten serious out here!

I see the mileage-problem (people in a rush, in a hurry) as both new and old. Old: it takes experience and confidence to make the choice to not hike as far as you possibly can, as fast as you can. I doubt Whitman needed lessons, but us moderns do. New: too many successful, ambitious professional types are out here hiking! They brought the rat race with ‘em. Ah, well. The trail will adapt. Its culture and “sayings” change to fit the needs of the people walking it. I refuse to succumb to moral panic. Trails are human creations; they change with the times.

For example, I was reading an article in Outside about a murder on the AT back in the 1990s. The author had hiked in the same year as the victims and remembered reading their names in trail registers (which were a major channel of communication on trail before cellphones and social media). Anyway, the writer told a story about waking up in a shelter and getting into such a fun conversation that they all stayed until lunch. I tell this story on trail a lot and people have the same reaction I do: it’s hard to imagine that happening on the 2023 AT. It’s a shame to lose that spontaneity, but it’s gone. I don’t think it’s coming back anytime soon. So we must make the best of it. We must savor the delights of today’s trail.

I did 17 miles; Wedge did 14 (because he joined me partway in). My body is doing great—foot felt really nice—but I’m still having some GI discomfort. Not like before, thank god, but enough to make me crabby come afternoon.

We stopped to camp near Hurricane Mountain shelter. No tent sites near shelter, so we’re tenting in a creek ravine a tenth of a mile or so away. We think we are still in range of the privy though. Walking there, or digging a hole on the slope, would take roughly the same amount of time.

It’s supposed to rain semi-mightily tomorrow. We contemplated doing a 19 into Marion, but we’d have to get there by six to catch a shuttle. I’m not doing a 19 in the rain with a ticking clock in the background. I don’t have the heart to fight the weather right now. And cold moisture isn’t a friend to my joints, neither.