Project Eveningland

4/21/2023 Friday

The guy with the long silver hair, the luscious silver hair, is called Witcher. It’s a good trail name. He is no Geralt, that’s for sure, but those locks! As I gazed upon them with awe, I heard my mother’s voice again: “if you want soft hair, wash it with Palmolive and then rinse with vinegar.”

Today is gonna be a long strange adventure. Last night I thought, fuck it, it’s too damn hot to hike all day. Wedge and I couldn’t quite figure out what we wanted to do last night, but I’d gotten the impression that he did want to night hike. He stopped by my tent to chat before leaving this morning (he got out earlier to beat some of the heat). We agreed to make Pickle Branch Shelter our two-day meetup point in case we get separated. I thought for sure I’d see him at Laurel Creek Shelter, six miles in.

The trail out of Warspur spends about a mile and a half in a gentle, green, moist little valley. Then the climb to Kelly Knob begins, and it’s a bit of a ball kicker—that’s the second “Kelly Knob” with an atrocious climb directly preceding it. I stopped by a tiny creek to refill (even though I’d walked out of camp two miles earlier with two full liters). First electrolytes of the day. I ate a whole other breakfast and cooled my undercarriage on a flat rock sheltered by thick rhododendron. A fine redoubt on a hot morning before a hot day.

After that the hill felt much better. I even managed to sing along here and there. It took until about three whole liters for me to have to pee. Clear. And I kept it clear for the next two hours by just constantly drinking. I am killing this, I thought.

I arrived at Laurel Creek Shelter to find it deserted. Wedge must have arrived, taken an hour break, and then moved on. I hope he is on a fine adventure too! I thought he’d wait and I could talk him into napping into the late afternoon and then night hiking.

I went down to the creek for water and ran into two hikers—a father and daughter—that Trip and I met at Cody Gap (mile 154ish) in 2021. Just out of nowhere! They’re doing the whole trail section by section and I guess I caught ‘em again. Bear Bait has blossomed into a strong, confident young woman! They remembered me when I said my trail name, Rhetoric, and said they’d just been talking about me the other day. I think their minds were a little blown. I say, speak of the devil and he shall appear. I sent a message for Wedge with them so they could share my updated plans and he’d know.

Speaking of updated plans, here they are. I’m gonna spend six hours at Laurel Creek Shelter, and sleep and rest through the hottest part of the day. That’s where I am now, writing this. I’ve spent two hours now hanging with people while they have lunch. I traded some info on the trail ahead for some toilet paper (I hope I served those section hikers well—I’d have given them better info for double ply!).

So I’m gonna nap here. Might try to sleep for three hours. There’s rain coming early tomorrow morning. I’d like to get past that ridge (above the Keffer Oak, where the Eastern Continental Divide is) before it gets wet and slippery. When I wake I will eat a meal, use the privy, and hike into the dark, as long as my body will let me.

I have never been more social on trail. I talked with almost two dozen people at the shelter as group after group came and went. My offbeat schedule today was worth it for the novelty alone. The shelter area is so peaceful and quiet now, at 1:45PM. This is the summer afternoon feeling I have been after.

I may not have much time to add detail before I go to sleep tonight (could be well past midnight). I may not share much. Oh, who am I kidding? Here you go:

I walked back out onto the path around 5:30PM. It was still hot but I found myself too excited to wait any longer. It reminded me of training for the Air Force marathon back in 2015. I remember waiting and waiting for it to cool down enough for me to do my 20 mile training run—the longest training run before the actual marathon. It was a delight to do something different on the hike, as much as it was a delight to beat the heat.

The heat slowly receded as I made my way through several miles of gorgeous spring pasture. I reached the Keffer Oak—Alabama Chowder and his wife had stopped at the roadside to say hello to me on their way to a weekend together. At that point sunset really began. I refilled on water and began the green climb up Sinking Creek Mountain. An old cabin fell gracefully into disrepair above the trail.

I caught up by phone with Mom and Benny—now in the same room, because Ben is stopped over at my parents’ house on his way to find me. I climbed up rocky inclines as I listened to Mom list all the wonderful food she’s sending with Ben.

It still wasn’t dark enough for a headlamp. The sunset over the farmlands of central Virginia was a very mellow, unpretentious little symphony. The cooling air and excitement at the hike ahead took me back to my adolescence. I remembered going jogging in the cooling summer evening air. To my 15 year old self, the energy of a summer night was so lively. It felt like everyone was out and about in our tiny town, walking dogs and chatting. There was a similar liveliness here, though I felt very much alone. I knew people were around. In tents mostly, which I saw as dark ship hulks floating by in the night.

Frame of mind is essential to enjoying a night hike. You have to let go of all those this-is-wrong and I-shouldn’t-be-out-here feelings. You have to silence the find-shelter-now! urges. If you can’t find a way to think of it as an adventure, your brain will tag it as an emergency.

Wedge texted when I got service and told me that he’d made it to Niday! And that he felt great! What a wonderful surprise to hear that after a brutally hot day. I look forward to hearing all about his adventure when we reconnect.

I reached the rocky ridge surrounding the side trail to Sarver’s Gap Shelter (too far downhill to be worth a visit). I stopped to eat several times. I am in the dark, literally and figuratively. How much should I eat? How much water do I need? I tried my best but didn’t land anywhere near optimum.

The whippoorwills sing. Dark brown millipedes dot the trail, rocks, and logs. I don’t care for them. They are gross. But it’s hard to be mad at a disgusting bug just because it’s trundling through the forest at night doing its job. I did everything I could to step around them, which became downright difficult when I hit the path atop Brush Mountain early in the morning. There are piles of the things. *Shudder* Also dotting the path were tiny reflections glinting back. I thought perhaps they were flakes of mica or something reflecting my small headlamp. They were spiders. Their tiny eyes glinted at me in the dark allowing me to instantly find even the best camouflaged ones among the dead leaves. I probably saw a dozen different species.

The path along Sinking Creek Mountain turned rocky and began traversing large tilted slabs of rock. I reached the turnoff for Niday Gap Shelter, where I knew Wedge was sleeping. I couldn’t face setting up a tent after an 18-mile day knowing that I’d need to wake in six hours to walk ten more miles in the pouring rain.

So I kept walking. I walked all night. Between Warspur Shelter, where I began my hike at 7:30AM on 4/21, to Pickle Branch shelter, which I reached at 6:30AM on 4/22, I hiked just shy of 30 miles, with a six hour break at Laurel Creek Shelter. The last five miles were the hardest. I became nauseated and extremely tired. I am out of my depth on nutrition/hydration for this kind of mileage. I just don’t have the experience.

I made it to Pickle Branch just in time—and I mean just in time—for my morning constitutional. There were four very friendly old men in the shelter who had on offer an apparently bottomless supply of utterly empty conversation. One smokes cigarettes—I breath more cigarette smoke on trail than in the city. There just weren’t good tenting spots far enough away from the shelter for it to be quiet. But these old timers’d be audible from fucking Springer goddamn Mountain! “I BRING A LITTLE BAG TO PUT MY PHONE IN IN CASE IT’S WET.” That’s not shouting, just loud talkin’.