Trail Magic, Miss Janet, and HYOH
It’s Sunday today, and it's my seventh day on the trail. I started off at the Blue Mountain shelter, which is reasonably high up. I think it's about 3,800 feet. When I woke up, it was freezing cold and still dark, and I’d intended to get going on the trail by 8 o'clock, but I wasn't jazzed about getting out of bed. So I decided to wait a little bit and got started at about 8:30 instead.
Last night, I tented near a retired math teacher who’s 69 years old, and it's been his lifelong dream to hike the trail. And man, does he have a story. He’s one of eight kids, used to camp, he just retired, and he's had cancer twice. He had both colon cancer and Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. I certainly admire his grit.
This morning, while everyone at the campsite was getting ready to head out, someone checked the Far Out app and saw that there was going to be some Trail Magic at Unicoi Gap, which is about two and a half miles down the trail from where we were. So while I was taking down camp, I ate a CLIF bar just to put something in my stomach and then hit the trail.
Getting from Blue Mountain down to Unicoi was a super steep drop. We went from around 4,000 feet to 2,800 feet. But when we got down, there were eggs and toast and cinnamon rolls and fruit and water. And boy, it was really, really nice to have that there. It was really cold, so not only was it great to get a warm breakfast, but it was also great to get it just before the huge ascent out of Unicoi Gap.
While I was enjoying my egg sandwich, this old Dodge van with all sorts of sayings on it showed up. And it was this nice lady named Miss Janet. Miss Janet is a legend among Appalachian Trail thru hikers. She shows up where there’s Trail Magic and helps drive people places. She says she also offers “free unsolicited advice.” I heard her talking to a bunch of people and had the privilege of meeting her myself. And I have to say, if she was selling advice, I’d probably buy it. She's just a really, really nice person. And you could just tell that she has the kindest heart.
[Wife note: I’m a little annoyed here that he didn’t mention the DOG! Look at that spicy, adorable little guy! I did some digging and found out his name is Dexter.]
After I’d eaten, I started my ascent. Someone had commented that it's supposed to be the hardest climb in Georgia, and I don't disagree with that. But I'll just go over some of the math. I started at about 3,800 feet at the campsite, went up to 4,000, then down to 2,800 at Unicoi Gap. Then I went up Rock Mountain (Nice name there. Real original.) back to 4,000 feet and then down again to Indian Grave Gap, which is at 3,100 feet, and then up Tray Mountain, which is 4,400 feet. That’s the campsite I’m at. It’s just off the peak of Tray Mountain. So if you do that math, sort of back of the envelope, the total vertical climb today was at least 2,700 feet, which was a big day.
For dinner, I ate one of my freeze-dried meals — the “country style chicken pot pie.” Before I left on the hike, S. and I got together with two of our friends, and we did a taste test of a couple of the freeze-dried meals I was thinking about bringing. We created a rubric to evaluate each meal’s mouthfeel, difficulty (in preparing), aroma, appearance, verisimilitude, and pleasantness (basically, just whether or not we liked it and would want to eat it). This one was the unanimous favorite. So good. And as I ate it, it made me think about that night back in the kitchen with our friends. So that was nice.
I spent some time today thinking about the really simple idea of “hike your own hike” (HYOH). And I was trying to figure out what my hike is. I don’t mean this as a melancholy thought, but more, maybe, an optimistic one.
But it can be difficult when you see hikers leaving the campsite at 7 o'clock in the morning. Like, should I be doing that? Or you look at all the different types of gear people have, or the distances they travel per day, or if they're taking a zero day. You know, is that part of my hike? Should it be?
One thing I did today that I haven't done for the past five days was just sit down and look at the view for a little while. [Wife note: *wags finger admonishingly*] I've seen so many people just charge by me and not look at the views, and it’s easy to get caught up in that. But maybe my hike is just trying to enjoy the ride all the way.
I can't be like Ferdinand and just sit there and smell the flowers all day, obviously. I've got a distance to cover. But maybe my hike is just doing my best to enjoy every moment. To be honest, I’ve never been very good at that. Ever. I’m sure this isn't the last time I'll touch on this topic...
