Project Eveningland

To begin the blog at the first post of my 2023 Appalachian Trail journey (the original purpose of the blog), click this link. Additional navigation shortcuts are available in the sidebar. Spoilers ahead, highlight the next block to read:

Around about day 140, a 1000-year rainstorm caught me in Harriman State Park in New York. The Appalachian Trail in Vermont and Maine was a mess, and I had been slowed to a crawl by the lingering effects of the meds I had to take to treat giardiasis and so was running out of time anyway. I decided to switch to the Colorado trail for another 100 miles or so and dry out and make the finish less sad than a “failed” thru-hike, so that’s why the last posts are in Colorado, if you were wondering. There is no such thing as a “failed” thru-hike, by the way!

Anyway, enjoy the blog! I’ll add future journeys as I go. I hiked 100 miles on the AT in Georgia and North Carolina in February/March of 2024 to help work on my book. I may add those entries if the time is right–it was a very personal journey. I plan to hike and write and research throughout 2024, and will add posts and pictures as I see fit. Subscribe so you don’t miss out!

4/16/2023 Sunday

I knew there was weather coming. When the AT broke my body in 2021, the healed injury left me with an “old” foot that can sense bad weather, or so I tell myself. The light throbbing I felt this morning and a bit in the afternoon had me worried that we were in for a downpour.

4/15/2023 Saturday

Today I heard a respectable southern woman (the owner of the hostel) speak the following phrase with no irony or awkwardness at all: “here’s your dinner, Hot Legs.”

4/14/2023 Friday

We woke to see rains outside our motel window. We delayed leaving until shortly before nine, when it tapered off. The shuttler had barely charged us anything last night and said that we could just call him whenever we wanted to depart this morning because he only lives 15 minutes away.

4/13/2023 Thursday

One last breakfast at the Quarter Way Inn! Fried eggs with “everything bagel” seasoning. Amazing sausage (patties this time), pancakes, yogurt with homemade granola, cornbread, and fruit salad. We headed back up to VA-623 in Tina’s SUV with Hazelnut riding along. We resumed heading north.

I started in minimal layers. We finished that rocky ridge (Garden Mountain I think?) and landed at Jenkins Shelter for lunch where we were joined by an exhausted, thirsty Zandry, who’d made an error—the kind that can happen to any hiker—and had to hike six miles on a difficult ridge with no water. That’s a rough way to start the day.

We hydrated aggressively. Wedge said he felt wonderful today. I remain, as ever, deeply thrilled for him. We reached a large creek with a bridge and lots of flat rock to sit on. We filtered water because it was an eight mile dry stretch and a hot, sunny day with no foliage yet. I wanted to stay by the creek for an hour and soak my feet, but we have a bit of a deadline—a shuttle booked for “around six-ish.”

We will run out of hostels soon—they are really only common in the south. Wedge thinks we should make the most of them while we’re here, because there’re big gaps coming up, and I suppose that’s persuasive enough. The transportation-related deadlines and rapid-fire town in-and-outs are hard on me, but I do agree.

We hiked 16 miles today, then caught a shuttle to the Big Walker Motel (with a detour for a meal at a diner).

We created an itinerary for tomorrow that gives us maximum flexibility on a rainy day. We can go 10, 13, or 18 and all three paths end at the same hostel (18 would have us walking directly to the hostel; the other two distances would require getting picked up).

I’m looking forward to some quieter days in the forest. Probably soon.

Later this month Ben will visit with Zoey in tow. Ben and I have decided to make this trip “sheepdog summer camp” for our gal pal Zoey. We are gonna take her hiking and she’s gonna have the time of her life with her favorite people. Just two gays, doting on an old English sheepdog. What could be more American than that? Rural Virginia is gonna love us!

4/12/2023 Wednesday

Are you really gonna make us leave this place? That’s the question my body asked me. Later I asked Wedge the same question over baked eggs, spicy pimento and cheese grits, some kind of flaky tart with sour cream and jam, and I can’t remember what else. I did the math on our average. Look, I said, with the miles we’ve done in the last three days, we have enough to cover four days with a 12-mile average and also add three miles toward bringing our overall average up to 12. And that’s if we take the whole day off. Hint hint.

4/11/2023 Tuesday

Let us call today a mistake of “hopeful math,” a failure to calculate time and mileage to see the obvious until the die had been cast.

“When I’m lost with myself I see lions,
lying golden on beaches of white. 
I see men with their boats in the weather. 
Carry me as I drift in the night”
-San Fermin (“Methuselah”) 

4/10/2023 Monday Day 55

Forget yesterday. Forget our chilling encounter. Everything changed in Eveningland Meadow. Again.

4/9/2023 Sunday

Wedge and I are not in a good situation as I’m writing this. We’re staying in the old schoolhouse and something’s wrong.

4/8/2023 Saturday

I slept like a little lamb in my cozy bunk! It was actually too warm! Everyone around here has been rendered a little cold-wary, a little rain-shy, by this latest batch of cold wet weather.

4/7/2023 Friday

We struck our tents precisely as the rains began. I would have loved to hike a day in the 40s if it had been dry. But it wasn’t dry.