AT Adventures: Day 35, 7-19-07

Midnight. We take a picture, and then strap headlamps on and start walking. It was odd. So quiet, and the dark all around was…weird. It felt very surreal. The blazes became really important. The trail blended in with the forest floor, so going off track was easier than in the daylight. At one point, a deer is next to the trail. We all hit it with our headlamps, and it freezes, but it doesn’t move, it’s just standing there, about 10 feet from us, staring us down as we trundle along. Then it got foggy. This was around…maybe 3 in the am? My headlamp wasn’t as strong as So-Close’s or Calebs, so I was letting them lead. Then I need to stop for a bit, and they kept on going (I told them to, I didn’t want to hold them up). When I started again, the fog had encroached, and all I could see was a tiny little patch of the trail in front of me, and random trees looming out at me. I was walking by feel, if it felt like trail, cool, I’m going on the right path. It was a touch creepy. Blazes became super important. Sure, they are in the daylight, but the trail is always obvious. As night, with fog, they are essential, because getting lost would be terrible. And that would also mean the end of the 40 mile challenge. There were a lot of neat thoughts spawned by that bit of hiking regarding the nature of knowledge. Eventually, I think they got worried because I hadn’t caught up (normally, the person who decided to chill out has motivation to catch up, but I could only move so fast) and waited for me, so that was cool. At around 6-6:30 we find a shelter and plop down for breakfast. We had already covered 14 miles, which was really good. They were going really well too, nothing had been terribly hard. We were starting to get color working into the day though, and that was nice. It’s always nice to be able to see things around you. After a bit we passed a woefully depressing monument to a guy named Nick Grindstaff. The inscription read: ‘Lived alone, suffered along, died alone.’ We hit the 20 mile mark at 9. And kept moving. Ate lunch. Kept moving. At about 2 we hit the 30 mile point (there was a road at about the 20 mile area, and a shelter at the 30). At this point, we all kinda collapse. Our legs are feeling good, but starting to get tired (really?). My feet were just starting to ache from getting pounded on for longer than they had ever been before. 4 miles from Damascus, we come to the TN-VA line. We all took pictures. We still had 4 miles to go. When you cover ground on the trail, you’ve got to stop thinking about covering ground on the trail. We were doing about 2 mph, but that’s nowhere near enough to think about miles slipping by. You have to look around, enjoy the trees/scenery/anything and everything else, or you’ll drive yourself nuts thinking about the ground you aren’t covering. The physical challenge presented to us by 4 more miles wasn’t that bad, compared to the rest of the hike that day. But mentally…I was starting to feel a bit strained around the edges. It was getting harder to stop thinking about the distance. At some point, I just wanted to stop walking. Then we get to Damascus. Finished! 40 miles covered in one day. That’s a lot. Through the day, there were two times I got really sleepy. One time, in the early am, I could feel myself started to nod. It’s a very odd feeling, falling to sleep while you’re walking. I started talking semi-incoherently about Aristotle. It worked out. I forget what I talked about the second time. So we get to Damascus, find the Hostel we were going to be staying at, and drop all our stuff off. It was called ‘The Place’. We go to a Mexican place and kill a burrito with extreme prejudice. Then we went to go get ice cream. There was an ice cream shop right around the corner. Cash only. No biggie, there’s a BB&T next door with an ATM. The ATM promptly eats my card. And then locks up. Nothing is happening. I’m standing there on wobbly legs, after having walked farther than most people ever will in one day, looking at a frozen ATM that is standing in the way of me, and a very richly deserved mound of ice cream. All I wanted was ice cream. That’s all. It was going to be so tasty. So cold and sweet and now this ATM sneered at me with orangy-yellowish letters and said: Press a key to continue. So I walk back to the Place to get a phone, to call the helpline, and get an answer. They tell me to just go back tomorrow when the bank is open. Ok. So-Close and C aid me in my ice cream quest, and we all go back to the Place and crash into an insensate sleep.