Day 30, 7-14-07

Another late start, but no worries, because the terrain was totally in our favor today. No huge obstacles until Roan Mountain at the end of the day. I had another day of awe at the forest, it kept striking me as a beautiful living entity of its own, an interconnected web of life, death, decomposition, and rebirth. Every tree seemed to be marvelously alive, and as I looked at them, it seemed as if they looked back at me, acknowledging my existence as I acknowledged their own. It was a moment of communion with the forest that lasted all day. Wonderful. We reached the road that signaled the beginning of the ascent up Roan Mountain. I looked at this mountain, and it looked back at me, and I thought, ‘oh yeah? You wanna piece of me?’ It just looked back. I took that for a yes. So I decided to crush the remaining mile and a half up this thing. Caleb and I started out, and I started flying. I got down into my trek poles, and I rolled. I practically ran up that mountain. C saw this and just rolled his eyes and kept moving. I reached the campsite, dropped my pack and went to find the water, which wasn’t very good. Sigh. Then went back up to find a spot. Found a good spot, and in the middle of setting up C rambles in. We bum about a little more and talk about our tomorrow. C presented this thought: we had yet to accomplish a 20 miler day, but we were considering doing 40 in one day. So we should probably get a 20 in at some point before the big push. That sounded good, so we decided to push for about 20 the next day. C and I had a tasty dinner. Those dehydrated meals? Awesome! (although I had a not-so-awesome one a few days later…) There was an odd terrible screeching noise that we threw rocks at, and it eventually wandered off. Not sure what that was, but something. I had a moment, between yesterday and today, of consideration. It started with the conversation Mom and I had yesterday at the bald patch. She asked if I was sorry I wasn’t thru-hiking. I had to answer yes. I really yearn for the thru-hike, and being out there and doing some of it…well, it wants to be done. It wants to be finished. I already was thinking of ways to swing it. There was Harper’s Ferry, I could flip up to Katahdin and then head south from there…it was very tempting. I looked hard at that possibility. There were a few obstacles but…they could be surmounted.

A neat window to a mountain.













A cool feather. No idea what kind of bird it belongs to.


















Me on a boulder. The climber in me keeps shunting me up these things.

















A wonderful view. I miss the mountains.