No Lions or Tigers, But...

Today is Sunday, May 5, and I'm at the Trimpi Shelter at mile 524.5. I hiked about 13.5 miles today. Last night, it rained a good portion of the night, and I’m happy to report that my tent patching efforts are still holding up, so that's great. Fortunately, it stopped raining early enough that my tent had mostly dried by the time I needed to put it back into its stuff sack, so I was thankful for that.

I've been trying to bump up my departure time by a little bit each day so that by the time the weather gets hot, I'm more conditioned to leaving earlier. When I first started the trail, I would push things a little later in the morning for two reasons. The first was that it was still pitch black outside, and I didn't want to get ready in the dark. The second was that it was freezing cold. Now, though, it's not so chilly in the mornings, and it's getting lighter earlier.

So this morning, I was on the trail by 7:01. I didn't eat anything before I headed out, because I was going to wait until I got to the road crossing about 1.8 miles down the trail. From what I’d heard from other hikers, it sounded like it would be a nice place to have breakfast. Plus, I was told that there was an actual restroom there.

But when I got there, it was just a gravel parking lot. It turns out, the place people had been telling me about was actually about a quarter mile down the road, not right at the trailhead, as I’d expected. That was a bit of a disappointment. So I just sat on a rock and had some breakfast and did not have access to a nice restroom, as I’d been hoping.

But today’s hike was really just about getting from point A to point B, unlike yesterday, when I was going through the Grayson Highlands and seeing ponies and getting all that Trail Magic. That was a fairly exceptional day.

The sort of knock-on effect of spending so much time with those guys at The Scales was that it put me back a few miles behind where I had intended to be at this point. But that's not something I should be focused on, you know? I should be focusing on What's a good hike for the day? And not necessarily Where do I have to be in X number of days? To a certain extent, though, you do have to think about and plan resupply points. Ultimately, my being quote-unquote behind schedule in my mileage kind of worked out in a way.

While I was eating lunch, I was looking at the resupply points coming up and reading through the guidebooks a little more, and I realized that the resupply point I’d originally been planning on going to a few miles down the trail wasn't going to be a good one. So I decided to scale some miles back and go into Marion, Virginia, tomorrow and stay at a hostel that's above an outfitter. That’s going to be a much better option. Although my food bag is still pretty full from “the great resupply” that S. helped me with in Damascus, I don't have enough food to get me to Bland, Virginia, which is about 60 miles up the trail.

After I finished my lunch, I started hiking up a hill and got to a bit of a clearing in the forest. I looked over to my left, and there were two bear cubs, but I didn’t see the mama bear anywhere. And I was immediately taken aback, because seeing bear cubs but not seeing the mama bear is a bit of an iffy situation. You never want to get between a mama bear and her cubs, and it’s kind of hard to know whether you’re getting in between them when you don’t know where the mama bear is.

I immediately called S., in part so I could be talking and making noise and also because I wanted to kind of document the moment and say, “Hey, I'm looking at bears right now.” Before too long, the mama bear popped out from behind a tree a little distance away and stared at me. I just kept still and kept talking to S., and eventually, the trio scurried up the hill and over the ridge, out of sight and moving in the opposite direction from where the trail was headed.

 [Wife note: Me, wondering whether I’m about to hear Rob get mauled to death while I’m on the phone with him…]

So, that was my first bear sighting on the trail! But aside from that bit of excitement, it was a fairly dull day. Dull within the context of, you know, there was nothing really eye-catching about the scenery or the trail, but that's going to happen. Some days are just about getting from one campsite to the next.

And this is a little bit of a preview, or maybe just me talking a little bit about how I'm processing making progress, but on June 2, I’ll be going home for a few days. I want to be home to celebrate my anniversary on the 3rd, and I also want to see my father before he heads off to visit friends and family in Canada.

So right now, I’m at mile 524.5, and the distance to Rockfish Gap, which is where S. would pick me up, is around 320 miles. And if you take the number of days and average it out, I need to hike an average of 12 miles a day to get to Rockfish Gap by June 2. That is totally feasible, and I feel pretty good about doing that. My goal over the next couple of weeks, then, is to stay in that 13- to 15-mile range each day, which is definitely possible and within my comfort zone. I think anything beyond 15 miles at this point gets to be a little bit cumbersome. Or maybe a little tiresome, I should say.

And in between now and then, my friend Charlie is going to join me on the trail for a while. We'll probably scale back the daily mileage a bit for that stretch. But if I get in a few extra miles before I join up with Charlie and then make up some extra mileage a little bit after, I don’t see why I couldn’t make it to Rockfish by June 2.

Which begs the question Should I even be calculating this? Or should I just simply walk and let the chips fall where they may? If I'm a little bit behind schedule, S. can just pick me up on the Blue Ridge Parkway somewhere. I don’t have to make it Rockfish Gap if it doesn’t play out that way. So I'm still trying to process that and figure out what the best approach would be.

I mean, I like the idea of goal orientation, but I’m hesitant to completely maintain that mind-set, just because I'm supposed to be living in the moment. But to be fair, I can't really help it. I'm just very excited to get home for a bit. I've missed home, and I've missed S. quite a lot, even though I just saw her in Damascus.

I'll maybe opine on this or sort of philosophize about it in the coming weeks, and maybe you guys can offer some thoughts in the comments. I'd really appreciate that. Let me know what you think.