Project Eveningland

5/1/2023 Monday

The shelter grime at Cove Mountain Shelter was less than at nearly any other shelter I’ve been to. The floor wood was still almost honey colored! I mean, it was still gross, just less so. There were only three of us there last night, two in the shelter. I was last out, and loving it.

I mean, that privy! I could almost sleep in there it was so nice. It has a venting stack so it really didn’t stink at all. Kind of dark in there though. I hit the trail just before eight. I could have spared—i.e., not hauled up the mountain—a whole liter. I only took four because I knew I’d be spending 16 hours there and I didn’t want to restrict my water intake.

I reached a road crossing three miles into the day and stopped to snack and apply my outrageously toxic 100% Deet. After I sprayed it on my legs a bald eagle fell from the sky and landed next to me, dead. Those things are huge!

The grasses have gotten long enough to brush unnervingly against my bare, beautiful shins. Chigger bites are so fucking itchy. It’s horrifying. You slather on ointment but it wears off in 40 minutes. Better to prevent them with repellent. (No, I cannot wear pants to hike the AT—I encourage you to try on a hot day).

I wonder if some readers will tsk-tsk my use of noxious substances out in the wild. But before you go all Rachel Carson on me, hear me out. These 21st century ticks do not fucking play. Wedge got bit by one that made him allergic to meat. That shit can be for life! I treat my clothes with permethrin, but it’s not enough, it’s not enough. The Deet effing works. I don’t find ticks on me when I’m wearing it. I do find them when I’m not.

Enough tick-talk. Let’s chat about these winds today. I would describe them as insistent. They seem more regal than the winds back in CO, because the trees are so tall and sway so elegantly here. There’s so much mass to slow down the movement. It becomes a lazy back-and-forth.

I’ve never read more than a few pages of Walking with Spring, but I see Earl Schaffer’s point about a northbound journey on the AT being like, um, “walking with spring.” I’d describe it more as dipping in and out of spring. When I started in February, the trees down low, in town, were already blooming. Today, in May, I regained an elevation that spring has hardly reached, but not until the afternoon.

First there were pointless ups and downs, the psychological equivalent of making someone dig a huge hole and then immediately fill it. The trail goes up 1500 feet to a nondescript wooded summit with enough flat space for two tents, then proceeds directly down again. It’s not a ridge; it’s a hill. There’s nothing, other than perhaps land-access limitations, stopping the trail from just skirting the side of the hill. No other trail I’ve been on does this. It happened a few times today.

I’ve been examining a plant on the forest floor that seems to be everywhere in this area. It’s got fun shaped leaves and I think it’s a thistle of some kind. It’s readying flowers but I couldn’t find one in bloom.

I stopped at Bryant Ridge Shelter midday, which is multi-level and enormous. It’s another memorial shelter, to someone who died at age 24. The Dutch guy who’d been the third person at Cove Mountain last night—super quiet, maybe shy about his English?—was there drying out his tent. I lingered wanting to eat a full lunch to make it up all the hills ahead.

I listened to more legal podcasts. All my audiobooks are just too heavy. Podcasts have the advantage of not lingering on anything. I love the Expanse series (what I’ve been listening to) but it can be a little preachy and repetitive. We get it; humans are our own worst enemies. My question is, are we sure the same could not be said of, say, beavers or whatever? I’ve known some seriously self-destructive beavers.

I reached the endpoint of my 2021 hike early afternoon, with decidedly mixed feelings. Mostly my feelings were mixed because I let my tummy get too empty and girl did it get mad at me. Back in 2021, I got off the trail at an intersection with another trail so there’s a sign to mark the spot. I honestly felt a bit nervous stepping into the “unknown,” though I can hardly imagine a more well-known unknown. And do you know, the trail did change! It went up, up, up and all the leaves disappeared. The last 2.5 miles were rough stuff at the end of a nearly 18 mile day. I walked under “the Guillotine.”

It’s cold up on Apple Orchard Mountain! There’s a big radar or Doppler or whatever on top. It made it possible to see my destination from six miles way. Extremely depressing.

It’s been cold all day. It feels like February up here! The sky was a steel gray. I descended to Thunder Hill Shelter, where I found Wedge resting. We caught up on our respective adventures.

Some southbound weekenders arrived and Wedge and they struck up a conversation I wasn’t interested in. It was partly the one guy explaining redlining to us with such outrage. I think it’s a horrid practice, a clear example of the seeping perniciousness of systemic racism, but my awareness of it stretches back long enough that I can’t really get riled in the way he seemed to want us to. And then he talked about his detailed plans to thru hike in… 15 years. Yikes. Waiting until you are 60 and retired is a real roll of the dice if you ask me. Also, he’s sure he won’t stay at hostels. I said, “it’s funny now to think of the things I thought I would never do before I started thru hiking.” And then I walked back to my tent a hundred feet or so from the shelter. Mostly I just wanted to get warm! But also I was being a bitch.

I did not do well with nutrition or hydration today. It was a long, often uncomfortable walk. I’m eager to get into Glasgow and warm up tomorrow. Where did all this chilly weather come from? It’s sleeting outside my tent.