Tuesday, 4/4/2006
Long nap.
It was over 20 miles of tough hiking today to Derrick Knob Shelter. I felt great early on and took breaks often to enjoy the beautiful weather and the views from the balds. Without the overbearing weight in my pack I was able to make good time and hiked 10 miles by 1pm. I put down my pack on a nice bald and took off my shirt and watched the steam evaporate off my skin. I took out my prayer book and read a few prayers and then slowly closed my eyes. Suddenly I started when several deer galloped onto the trail in front of me. At the sight of me they froze and I slowly took out my camera. They were about 3 yards away and at the sight of my camera they took off into the woods. I followed them for a while and got a couple pictures and then hiked back up to my pack where I promptly flopped onto the grass again and closed my eyes and fell asleep. Sometime later I awoke feeling sunburnt. I still was dreaming as I opened my eyes and I saw the ocean lapping on the sides of the bald. I saw sailboats in the distance. I then saw my pack and realized I had fallen asleep and that I needed to hike again to make it to Derrick knob, another 10 miles away.
The rest of the day was very hard and I suffered greatly. During the last 4 miles I began to see my first "Shelter Mirages" in the woods, after a climb i'd look down the trail and see a roof in the woods and people standing around. I'd get closer and it would be a fallen tree and flowers. I finally made it to the shelter at 7 (I realized then I had slept for a long time) and put my pack down with an enormous grunt and lied down. My muscles hurt. I looked up at Solo, a fast hiker from Maine who was smeared with shaving cream and he looked down on me with understanding. "You look wasted Caveman" "I am. I fell asleep for a while on Siler Bald and thought I wouldn't make it here." He smiled and looked wistfully into the woods with his sunken eyes as he took out a razor and intently shaved. "Why do you shave out here Solo?" "For the ladies partly. But mostly becuase it itches when I let it grow." I cooked dinner and then helped with the fireplace as the temperature dropped with the sun. I slipped into my bag and fell asleep listening to Solo talk to the other hikers about his hunting trip earlier in the year when he had shot a buck while running. Tomorrow I will see Leah and Aaron.
Wednesday, 4/5/2006
I hiked alone this morning for about 7 miles contemplating the reason why I was hiking. As I climbed the mountains I felt all my sins and mistakes and felt despair. I felt like a failure. I begged for God to speak to me. I pushed up the mountains and stopped to listen as hard as I could: birds singing and trees swaying in the wind with ice crystals falling everywhere out of them like diamonds. I found that God is everywhere in the mountains becuase you are forced to listen. I hiked further and like many times before on the trail, my minded reeled with emotion as I thought of the last couple years of my life. You see, you do not go into the wilderness to escape your demons. That a big misconception people have. You confront your demons in the wild, there is no escaping them. St Anthony and other monks went into the desert in the fourth century not to escape from the world, but to find the real world.
Modern life in this country tends to be pure escapism. Feel bad? Just plug in. You never leave the comfort of modernity. You never feel true loneliness, desolation, despair, or boredom. Until last year, I had never even faced the fact of my own impending death. It's considered a morbid thing to do at my age I suppose. I guess one could say that I had a mid-life crisis at the age of 20. Before, I lived as if I was immortal. That is what the comfort and pleasures of life give you-a feeling of untouchability, of immortality. Lacking the ability to escape from the reality of death, hiking in the Appalachians has slowly given me perspective. I could think so clear and my thoughts were unimpended by anything but my own constant fatigue.
Now I listened again to the ice crystals falling from the trees. I felt my own burning hunger and thirst in my body. I've noticed that the deprivation I've experienced so far becomes more and more natural the further I hike. I pushed to the top of Jenkins Knob and stopped. At the top of the mountain I was intoxicated by the aromatic Spruce trees and budding wild flowers and saw the jagged earth of the Appalachians all around me and felt the indians, frontiersmen, mountaineers, and colonists before me that had been there. There was so much to think about, and amazingly, so much time to do so.
Around 3pm I reached the parking lot for Clingman's Dome where Aaron and Leah would park. We were supposed to meet at Double Spring Gap shelter (which was about 3 miles south on the trail trail) but I decided to meet them at the parking lot since I was early and then hike back with them. It was strange coming out of the woods to see normally dressed people with their camera's coming out of cars. I had been alone all day and was suddenly surrounded by people. I sat next to a tree and read for a couple hours. They didn't show up so I hitched a ride (20 miles) to Cherokee to make a phone call and make sure they were still coming. Upon arrival I noticed a red van drive by which I figured was them. For good measure I grabbed a Hardee's thickburger and sat at the side of the road while waiting for a ride back. It was a stupid idea to leave the parking lot and goto Cherokee. Long after the burger was consumed I still sat there, waiting with my thumb out. Finally a park ranger stopped and took me back to the parking lot. The red van was there but they were nowhere to be seen and the sun was sinking below the horizon so I put on my headlamp and headed back down the trail. I started jogging in hopes of catching them. As I ran it became dark and I quickly became out of breath from running uphill. I walked peacefully for another half hour when I heard voices and saw lights coming toward me.
At first I didn't think it was them but quickly realized it was as I approached them. They were coming from the other way so had apparently already been to the shelter. I wanted to scare them so I tried to hide in the trees but they spotted me. We were all happy to see each other and quickly headed back towards the shelter. They informed me they had met the hikers at the shelter who knew me, and had been waiting quite awhile. The night was cold already, and once at the shelter we buckled down for a cold night.
Thursday, 4/6/2006
Nero Day (as opposed to Zero, meaning "Nearly Zero")
Aaron and Leah were very cold last night. Aaron coughed on the top shelf all through the night. In the morning both seemed gloomy about their glimpse into my world on the trail. We went and got water from a stream and decided to hike back to the parking lot so I could take a break for the day and eat. I was very grateful they came to see me. We hiked laboriously back to the parking lot and I got behind the wheel for the first time in two weeks. We drove to Gatlinburg (the mecca of rednecks) and got breakfast at an awesome pancake place. I hadn't eaten since the burger the night before, so I ate the breakfast skillet with trembling hands. I ate sausage and bacon and hashbrowns, all topped with gravy and melted cheese. It was almost too much to take. After scraping the plate clean, I still felt hungry. We then drove on winding Appalachian roads to the tiny resort of Fontana Village. We ran low on gas on the way, and stopped at a tiny gas station that had one pump that was locked with a chain. The gas price was 2.99 a gallon. It's a good time to be hiking and not buying gas, I thought. We picked up my rucksack at Fontana and then asked where we could find a Walmart. I needed to resupply badly, I needed hiking poles, food, a stove, fuel, etc. Also, Aaron decided to join me for a section hike until Hot Springs so he needed supplies as well. An hour later we arrived at a town near Asheville that had a Walmart. We also ate at Ryan's, where I ate four plates of food. Having circled the entire Smokey Mountain National Park, we pulled into Newport off the I-40 to get a room at Motel 6. Early the next morning me and Aaron would be dropped off at the trail 15 minutes away, and Leah would go home.
That night all three of us went out and soaked in the hot tub for a while. It was a pleasant change in scenery and felt good. We then went inside and fell asleep watching UFC on the television.
Friday, 4/7/2006
Max Patch.
Leah woke Aaron and I at 6 in the morning. She was anxious to get home and catch her noon shift at Red Lobster. Unfortunately, we didn't feel the rush and went back to sleep. I pulled myself off the bed and wiped the drool on my beard away after Leah struck me several times, first with something soft and then something hard. I stood in front of the mirror. I told myself, more hiking to do- your beard is not nearly long enough. The motel room was a paradise after being in the woods for so long. It's funny the little things one takes for granted every day. Weather means so much more to me now that I live exposed to it for the greater part of every day. Distance is extraordinarily important on the trail and never have I understood the length of a mile, five miles, ten miles so intimately. Brushing my teeth in the poorly constructed bathroom, I thought about all this. What was strange was that even being away from the trail for the most part of a day had almost been hard; the trail felt like home. After we packed up and got in the van, I felt excited to be returning to the trail. Leah raced down the freeway to the exit where the AT crossed and we hastily said goodbye to Leah.
Aaron had knee surgery in January and he was still weak from this so we planned to take it slow to Hot Springs. We hiked nice and easy for about 6 miles and then took a lunch break ontop of Snowbird Mountain. We took out tortillas and rolled chicken chunks, cheddar cheese, and pepperoni in them. Aaron's knee felt fine, so we pushed it a little harder and at about 3pm we met a man named "Apple" at the top of Hawk's Roost, a wooded peak. He led me and Aaron another mile to Brown Gap where he had a large trail magic operation set up: A ten person tent with propane amenities, hot dogs, donuts, and soda. He told us that the weather report called for extreme thunder storms and possibly tornados in the valley so we decided to stay the night in his massive tent with the heater. We ate several hot dogs and sat in a circle to shoot the breeze with Apple. He was a short, slightly built man from Texas who loved to help hikers. He wasn't much of a hiker himself, he had wanted to Thru-hike this year but only made it 10 miles before quitting. Several more hikers came through, including the Can Do Man. Oh man, I hated this man. He's really a hard guy not to hate- but I hated him even before he opened his mouth, and this is despite the fact as a rule I try not to hate. The man has two replacement hips and quickly informs everyone of this, and that if he makes it he'll be the first one to do so, and that he used to be a Sea-captain and lives in Massachuettes and I know endless amounts of information about him becuase it is all he knows how to talk about and he talks alot. When Can-do man got out of earshot Apple snidely remarks that he wished Can-do man had fallen on his head instead of his hips. Soon, Can-Do left and me and Aaron went to the tent to ride out the storm. Apple went to the Hostel in his pickup a few miles away around 6. The storm didn't come right away so we went back out and made a large fire, just for the hell of it. It then started to rain so we went back inside and slept.
Saturday, 4/8/2006
We woke the next morning dry and talked about the thunder we had heard all night. Apple pulled up and said a tornado had touched down somewhere and that he was tempted to come pick us up last night, but didn't. Aaron quickly discovered that his boots were left outside and full of water. Also, the tarp covering our packs hadn't worked as well as we expected. We got our things together after eating breakfast and prepared for a gloomy day of rain. After three miles we came to Max Patch Rd. where a van was parked in the fog. A couple got out and introduced themselves as former thru-hikers and offered us freshly baked cookies, brownies, and beer. We felt quite spoiled. "Man, we sure feel yall's pain. The weather is horrible for climbing Max Patch." They told us several stories and we finished our beer and snacks and headed up the trail towards Max Patch, the massive bald mountain. Half way there it started raining and Aaron realized he didnt have a rain jacket. He was wearing my waterproof pants though, so I had my lower body exposed to the elements. Also, we both needed to take "wild ones" so we put our packs down and went exploring for a good spot in the light spring rain. Having accomplished this we pressed on despite the rain up the mountain. A half hour later the trees broke and we could see the bald mountain before us. The wind was strong but the rain let off a bit, so we thought we'd get off easy. Struggling up to a ridge, the second we stood on it we were confronted by 30 mile and hour winds and rain coming sideways. It was so bad we were soaked to the bone in mere seconds and comepletely disoriented. "WHERE'S THE TRAIL AARON!!" "I DONT KNOW, DO YOU THINK ITS THAT WAY"
The rain was so bad I considered turning back and kicking it with the trail angels down trail until the storm passed but Aaron found a white blaze a little bit north so we pushed on through the wind. We climbed higher and the storm bared itself in all its fury and I kept stopping to take pictures with the underwater camera which infuriated Aaron to know end. "Kai, IM GOING TO GET HYPOTHERMIA, IM FREEZING, IM GOING TO DIE STOP TAKING PICTURES!!" "YOUR NOT GOING TO DIE, THIS IS AWESOME I WANT TO REMEMBER IT" It went something like that. We reached the peak and the clouds zoomed past us and we saw trees down below us. We raced down the muddy trail, sliding our way to some sort of shelter where we stopped to take a break. We were soaked and quite cold. We hiked a mile and a half passing up a very strange boy scout troop and took shelter in Roaring Fork Shelter. We made a fire out of small sticks we found under the shelter and attempted to dry some of our clothing. Railroad and Critter pulled in, as well as Centipede and the Coast Guard guy. We waited for a while for the rain to stop, then the boy scout troop came. They had serious issues. One scout leader was handing out asian fish snacks, while several of the scouts seemed to the point of tears. "Am I going to die scoutmaster?" one asked. They really shouldnt have been out there. For the rest of the day the weather was rain-free and we hiked to Old Roaring Fork Shelter which we shared with Railroad and Critter. We spent several hours making a fire from wet stick sufficient enough to dry our boots and socks slightly, then cozied in for bed.
Sunday, 4/9/2006
Hot Springs
The morning was clear and we quickly ate and left for a 15 mile hike to Hot Springs. Aaron had some trouble getting up, but he had to pee really bad so he finally left the warm sleeping bag for the cold air. We hiked really fast in the morning and made great time for the first 10 miles. Throughout the day we would pass other hikers and Aaron would shout, "Yeah man. We SCHOOLED THEM!!" which means, apparently, we passed them. As happens with certain combinations of people, when me and Aaron talked to each other it always disinegrated into ebonics and rap. Then I did my "Appalachian Trail Radio" for several hours where I sing songs and take callers. We made it to Deer Park MTn. Shelter around 430pm which was only a couple miles from Hot Springs. The last stretch was hard on Aaron's knees as it was quite steep, but we pulled in around 530 ecstatically happy to be in town. We hiked all the way to the campground to get a 5$ spot by the French Broad River, and then went to the Paddler's Pub for burgers. Aaron devoured his and praised the backpacking life simultaneously which was interesting to watch. I also ate earnestly and then we were quickly joined by other hikers: Centipede and Coast Guard guy, Can-do man, and double shot. When Can-do man was walking nearby, I called him over just to be spiteful to all of us hikers. Without even greeting us he pulled up a chair and starts running his mouth about him self. Aaron gave me a menacing look. We ordered a pitcher of Guiness and quickly drank it. Can-do left, thankfully and then it got cold, so we went inside and played pool and drank till about 11pm when we hiked in the cold to the campground. We made a small fire and sat by it and I laid back and looked at the stars and felt a tickle in my throat. I coughed. I thought it must be the smoke. We went to bed around midnight.
Monday, 4/10/2006
I woke seriously in incredible pain. I opened my eyes and immediately wished I hadn't. My head felt as if a large fissure had opened up during the night and I had tunnel vision. At first it occured to me that I may have drank too much the night before, but after a quick mental count of the drinks I had drank it became clear that I wasn't having a hangover. I climbed out the tent and was cold and my feet got wet in the grass. A train chugged by across the campground and the wailing horn only increased my suffering. The back of my throat felt parched and burnt. Had I breathed in too much smoke at the campfire the night before? I coughed and then tried the smell but only suceeding in sending a shot of flem into the back of my throat. I spit and hobbled over to my bag and took 3 ibuprofen's and then grabbed some Dr. Bronner's and walked to the showers. It was a fine campground, besides the railroad near by, and the shower room was so warm. I blew my nose, took off my putrid clothes, turned on the water, waited a half-minute for the water to get scorching hot and stepped in. I have never experience such rapture at the feeling of hot water in my life. I watched the black water off my body splatter below on the white surface and dissapear into the drain. My hair was so dirty it was thick with dust and grim. It was so sastisfying to run the water in it and feel the dirt leave. Before I even lathered up I slid to the seductively slippery floor and propped my legs up and enjoyed being warm and temporary relief from pain. I squirted a large gob of Dr. Bronners into my hand and as I scrubbed while sitting I couldn't even smell the peppermint. I almost slept in the shower but after a half an hour or more I left.
We called Leah and she annouced she would arrive around 4pm. We split a breakfast skillet for two at a small diner. We went to the library so I could update my blog and then we went to campground so I could lie down. I walked to the river I slept alongside it. I woke up after being bit by several insects and realized Aaron had cleaned everything up and was waiting at the front of the campground waiting for Leah. I gathered my sleeping pad and joined him. A little later Leah pulled up wanting to hang out in town but I wanted to leave as I felt bad.
We drove to Asheville, about 40 minutes away, and got a room. I was going to rest and then the next day we would go back to Hot Springs to go in the Springs and hang out and then Aaron and Leah would go home. Leah was angry at me becuase I was mean to her the whole time. I didn't feel like dealing with it so she was angry until she helped me do laundry in the evening and I explained how bad I felt. That night I awoke feverish and wet. I became aware I was awake and crawled across the room to Leah and woke her. The sun extinguished in the sky. My fellow hikers gasped and the warmth sucked from my body like a soul leaves at death. I told Leah I was hot and she felt me and gasped. We hid in a cave and watched the earth darken and the world freeze. We huddled, souless, and lamented the loss of the sun. I have never felt such sorrow in my life. It was terrible. I felt a wet cloth being drapped over my forehead and felt the feeling a child feels towards his mother towards the feminine face looking down on me. Why had the sun left us?
Tuesday, 4/11/2006
In morning I was sicker so Leah bought another night to give me a day to feel better and hike again. I stayed in bed for the most part, we tried to do some things but I felt bad even walking. The dream still haunted me and I looked anxiously at the sun several times during the day. Don't leave. I understood fully why man has since the beginning had a burning desire to worship the sun. So glorious above and so generous in it's warmth, I felt deeply grateful to it. Don't ever leave us. In the room I watched stupid television and Leah went and got groceries and thermometer. 103.5 was my temperature. I thought of everything I could have: spotted fever, lyme's disease, the flu- the possibilities were endless after hiking for so long. Later I was coerced by Leah into taking a lukewarm bath which is probably one of the worst experiences in my life. I was so chilled I moaned like a 7 year old in the water and left immediately and slid back into bed. I was fed chicken soup and 7-up. I awoke again that night soaking wet and on fire several times.
Wednesday, 4/12/2006
It was obvious to us all that I was too sick to hike so in the morning we packed the van and we drove back to Columbia where I planned to recover in a couple days. I was greatly annoyed by my sickness. I slept on the way. Once there I slept all the day but walked around apparently in my sleep several time. At dinner I acted like a crappy 70 year old and walked decrepit and with effort. Leah gave up her room for me and slept in the living room.
Thursday, 4/13/2006
I declared in the morning I would return to the trail on the following monday as I felt a little better, only the cough was worse. My fever stabilized but I was still hot. I still slept all day.
Friday, 4/14/2006
I felt worse that day. I dreamt and slept and ate pretty much. I ventured outside once, and hated the wind immensely.
Saturday, 4/15/2006
I coughed incessantly and longed for the trail with great passion. I spoke about it all the time, how I was going back on monday. I was up for more of the day and went on a couple errands with Leah.
Sunday, 4/16/2006
I realized I was too sick to go back and I put off returning to the trail until I felt better, which couldn't be too far away. My dreams were wild and I lived in them. I was so frustrated and could feel all my fellow hikers push north ahead of me while I lied in bed.
