'NETTE EFFECT

Race for the Cure in Lansing

2009-04-26T20:40:00.010-04:00

The fam and I did a 5k race today — the kids' first one ever! It was a Race For the Cure to benefit breast cancer research. This is pretty important to us, as my sister Eva had breast cancer a few years back and, thankfully, is now doing great.

It was a cool experience to be there, especially because there are quite a few people whose T-shirts indicate that they are survivors, or that they're doing the race in honor or in memory of someone with breast cancer. And in this particular race, there were a handful of people whose shirts simply said "I love boobs." No sense mincing words I guess!

Here's Maria and Joe with the state capital in the background:

Maria taking a water break:

Joe in front of the capital (and no, he's not dancing the mambo, he's just trying to pose for my camera without breaking his stride):

Red Rock Canyon

2009-04-13T11:48:00.018-04:00

There are few things better than uninterrupted time with your BFF - unless it's uninterrupted time with your BFF while simultaneously taking in an amazing hike. I was lucky to have that over Easter weekend when Janet and I flew the coop and landed in Vegas. And no, I didn't win big while I was there (alas). Neither of us are big gamblers, at least not in the monetary sense :) ... but we've decided that LV provides a fairly cheap getaway to someplace warm and dry, which for two pastey Michiganders is a welcome respite from the deluge of snow and cold we've had this year. Fact, the kids had a snow day just a week before we left. Snow days in April. Preposterous but true. Give me a blistering-hot desert, please, with a little sunburn on the side.

Last time we went to Las Vegas (has it already been two years?), we went to see the Grand Canyon; this time we stayed local and took a day trip to Red Rock Canyon for an amazing day of hiking and scrambling. Maybe not as spectacular as the Grand Canyon, but the climbing is way more accessible, at least for a midwesterner. It was like a playground of boulders. Beautiful, easy, non-technical, thoroughly do-able - but still pretty thrilling.

We started out attempting the White Rock/La Madre Spring trail, a four-hour loop. It looked like this:

It was cool and all, but the view from that particular trail didn't hold a match to some of the rock formations we'd seen a couple miles to the southeast, an area called Calico Hills. So we bailed on the loop and hightailed it to Calico 1 and 2.

The Calicos are much more suited to thrill-seekers, and we saw quite a few climbers ascending some of the sheer rockfaces nearby. It didn't look quite as benign as Planet Rock, I can assure you.

We busied ourselves happily scrambling and climbing over some of the "smaller" boulders, which ranged in size from a refrigerator to a two-car garage. Awesomeness all around. Here's what it looked like:

There were also some funky desert flowers blooming, including this Indian Paintbrush:

All this was just the shot in the arm we needed to go back and face a few more weeks of cold and damp until spring comes.

The party's over

2008-11-19T23:31:00.000-05:00

So yeah, it was pretty disappointing to have only covered about half of our intended mileage. But it was the right decision to stop. As Bob Peoples shuttled us back to Damascus, we learned that the temps in that area were actually in the teens at lower evelations, and into the single digits at higher points, which was where we were. No wonder our water bottles froze into bricks. And even colder temperatures were on the way for the following night.

We also learned that we weren't the only ones who got blindsided by the weather. The cold and snow were originally expected to hit mostly the regions north of us (West Virginia reportedly got ten inches!) but the front extended further south than anyone predicted. Schools were shut down in the three surrounding counties.

The blessings out of this? Well, we learned a lot and were grateful to have gotten through it without injury to ourselves or to the hound. We also got the pleasure of befriending Bob Peoples, a truly extraordinary man whose Kincora hostel will definitely be the launching point for my next section hike. And hey, I did get a little closer to Katahdin... 410 miles down, 1,765 to go!

On our way out of town, we stopped at a diner and I consumed the most delectable bowl of vegetable soup ever concocted in the history of the planet. And by nightfall we were at a hotel, showered and jammied, and can I just say that we will never take for granted the pleasures of a nice warm, clean bed? Least of all Buster.

AT: Moreland Gap Shelter to USFS 50

2008-11-18T10:42:00.002-05:00

I have never been so cold as I was last night. There are no words to describe it.

When I woke at about 4 a.m., all my water bottles were frozen solid, and there was a good inch of snow covering everything in the shelter, including us. Tim and I discussed contingency plans in muffled voices through the layers of our respective cocoons. We both knew Buster's feet would have a hard time going very far in the new layer of snow, and Tim's feet weren't doing so well either. Last night he wore three pairs of socks, topped by my fluorescent orange hunter gloves, and a raincoat wrapped overtop of all that, and his feet were still numb. I too was starting to feel like I would never get warm. We decided that the best and safest next step would be to go to a hostel about six miles out, called Kincora.

We summited White Rocks Mountain, hoping for an easy descent, but even that was perilous. The plentiful snow, combined with a blanket of fallen leaves and the sharp grade, made it impossible to step carefully. I wiped out again several times, once banging my elbow and leg hard on the rocks (and I now have some nice purple bruises to show for it). I was hiking sloppy, I think, because I'd had nothing to eat or drink that morning — our water was frozen into blocks and so was undrinkable, and it was so painfully cold that to pause and feed ourselves seemed unwise — we just wanted to get to Kincora. So by about an hour into our hike, I was so thirsty that I was scooping up snow from the trailside like a cave woman, just trying to hydrate myself a little. I felt like an animal.

Tim offered to take Buster and clip him to his own pack, which was a big help because even at a petite 30 pounds, that dog can pull like nobody's business. So I gratefully accepted and then spent the rest of our descent fretting that both Buster and Tim would go careening swiftly down the mountain — and then where would I be!? Fortunately, Tim was more surefooted than I, and no further wipeouts ensued.

Finally the trail evened out a bit. The descent became more gentle and I knew the hard part was over.

We made it to the spot where the trail crosses US Forest Service road #50 and hiked the quarter-mile to Kincora, where we gratefully found proprietor Bob Peoples (the same guy who helped build Mountaineer Shelter, where we stayed earlier in our trip) available to shuttle us back to Damascus.

I was really disappointed that I didn't capture more of our experience in photos, but to my delight, I learned later that a fellow Whiteblazer happened to be at Carvers Gap just before we passed through, and he got some great pictures. Many thanks to TwistedToad (yes, that's his trail name — and I'm sure there's an awesome story to go with it!) who was very gracious to share the following photos with me.

AT: Mountaineer Shelter to Moreland Gap Shelter

2008-11-17T22:24:00.016-05:00

There was more snow on the ground when we woke up this morning. Where is all this snow coming from!? This was not in the forecast!

Buster did much better hiking today. He seems to be getting the hang of hiking on a lead. I am concerned about his paws, though. The last mile or so today he was limping a lot and I had to stop many times to clear the ice chunks out from his toe pads. I'm pretty worried about this. I know that if this persists, the webbing between his toes will start to tear and bleed. Today we covered a fairly moderate 10 miles, but later this week we have a 13.5-mile day and a 15.9-mile day. I don't know if his feet are going to hold up.

Here's a view of an Appalachian rhododendron that I photographed today. Snow-covered rhodo leaves just don't compute! I'm accustomed to seeing them vibrant green and decorated with big pink flowers — not frigid and drooping under the weight of snow! Um, hello? Whose idea was it to come here in November!?

We are at Moreland Gap Shelter tonight... not nearly as nice as last night's shelter. This is an old one, built in 1960. Some goofball decided that its open side should face northwest, which means all the cold and wind comes blowing right in. Which maybe isn't a bad thing in the summer, but right now the weather is continuing to decline and snow continues to fall. Tim's got a little portable radio with him, and he picked up a weather report, but there's no way it could be right. They're saying the temp is in the 20's, but we are experiencing terribly bitter wind and cold. As an old mountain man and fellow hiker told me several years ago, the mountains make their own weather.

We tried like crazy to build a fire this evening to dry out our snow-soaked boots, but the fierce wind and dampness from the snow made it impossible.

I cut the sleeves off my wool sweater tonight, so that Buster could wear it more comfortably without getting tangled up in it, and Tim gave up one of his polypropylene hiking shirts so that Buster could also have a base layer to wear. He's making quite the fashion statement in this get-up, let me tell you. He's very, very cold, even when wrapped in the fleece pad that I brought for his bed. Right now I have him bundled up in my sleeping bag with me and he is still shivering.

AT: Route 19E to Mountaineer Shelter

2008-11-16T21:50:00.020-05:00

When we woke up this morning and started getting ready to set off, there was about an inch of snow on the ground at the hostel. Whoa. Didn't expect that. And to Tim's chagrin, since this is the off-season, Mountain Harbour doesn't serve a humongous breakfast like they did when we were here last May. So instead, Tim scored a couple packages of oatmeal from the hiker box and I ate a Clif bar. Buster dined on several pieces of pizza crusts that the 50-mile-runner-guy gave him. Then we were off. I'll admit it was a little hard to leave the cozy woodburning stove at Mountain Harbour.

We got started about 9 a.m., and here's Tim making his way up the side of Buck Mountain in his signature red hat. As we picked up more elevation (about a thousand feet in the first mile and a half), the snow definitely became more plentiful, and more of a problem. Not only did it make for some slippery hiking, but in many places it made the trail almost invisible. It was pretty easy to lose the white blazes on the trees, too, because of the snow clinging to the tree trunks.

The snow really does make the view beautiful, though. It feels a lot like cross-country skiing in Stinchfield Woods — only with 40 pounds of dead weight on my back and an over-anxious dog bumping into the backs of my heels every third step or so. Buster's doing fine overall, but hiking with a lead attached to my backpack definitely takes some getting used to. I can't risk letting him off-leash, because he does have a history of running off after interesting scents or animals, and I would have no way to find him easily if he decided to go off on a wild romp. I don't love hiking with a leash, though. I wiped out a couple of times today because of his pulling.

Right now we're finished with our 8-mile day and snuggled down in Mountaineer Shelter. It's a deluxe place, and only two years old. A very well known trail maintainer named Bob Peoples helped commandeer the team that built it.

Tim's got his hammock strung from the rafters in the upper part of the shelter, and I pitched my bivouac on the lower deck so that I could have a little extra protection from the cold and wind. Buster's curled up inside with me, and he's definitely very cold. In fact I put my wool sweater on him to try to help him conserve some heat.

Here he is all bundled up with Tim. It is going to be a wicked cold night.

The Road to Damascus

2008-11-15T20:28:00.017-05:00

No, not the biblical Damascus where Saul became Paul ... I'm talking about Damascus, Virginia, which is where Tim and I left a car this evening, and where we will eventually end up after hiking north for a week on the Appalachian Trail.

After studying up on the weather forecast all week, it looks like temps will be in the 20's at night and up to the high 40's in the daytime. And no thunderstorms predicted! Woot! So guess who got to come along? Yep, Buster. This will be his first long-distance trek on the AT. If there had been any chance of thunderstorms I would've had to leave him home, since he is deathly afraid of those. He is carrying a small pack which contains his food for the week, two collapsible dog dishes, and about 20 ounces of water. He is rarin' to go. I took this photo of the noble beast taking in a nice deep breath of mountain air.

That red house you see in the background is Mountain Harbour, the same hiker hostel where Rob and Tim and I stayed on the eve of our last big hike in May. Last time we did a southbound segment, and this time we're starting at the same spot but heading north instead. They're very pet-friendly here, as you can see from the treats that were on their shelf.

Also on the shelf here is a "hiker box," which is a common thing to find at a hiker hostel. It's just a big huge box full of all kinds of stuff — food, gear, fuel, maps — and you can take anything you want. Hikers leave whatever they're not going to use, and they take anything that might be helpful to them. How cool is that! Obamanomics, trail-style. Love it.

There are two other guys staying here tonight. One is Ben Davis, an elite athlete who is running (not hiking, but running) the entire AT in 65 days to raise awareness for ALS (see his website here). Sixty-five days!! I think the current speed record is something like 61 days, but to put that in perspective, most thru hikers take at least six months to finish the whole thing. Ben's support person, Rick Cheever, is here too... he meets Ben at specific points along the trail each day and provides food and other resupply items. Right now it's about 8:30 at night, and Rick told us that Ben started running at 2:30 this morning (!!), and he's expecting him to roll in about 11:30 tonight, for a total distance today of 54 miles. Unbelievable.

There was lots of rain all day today on our drive down, but that's supposed to go away overnight and give way to clearer skies for the week. I'm pretty excited.

Terrorist? Hiker? Terrified Hiker?

2008-11-11T12:47:00.011-05:00

Check out the new headgear. No, it's not a terrorist get-up... it's my latest in a string of purchases in preparation for next week's adventure on the Appalachian Trail.

On Sunday, my brother Tim and I are setting off from Roan Mountain and hiking north toward Damascus. With temperatures predicted in the mid-20s at night, this Cupcake is, frankly, terrified of freezing her frosting. I've never done an extended hike this late in the year. Last week's snowfall in Michigan didn't help the fear factor.

Hence the headgear: the black thing is called a balaclava (not "baklava," nor "burka," as Joe and Maria have taken to calling it). It's made of fleece and covers my whole head and neck. The hat underneath was a knitting experiment with wool, based on a pattern from my friend Sue. The combo is certain to launch a fashion trend while at the same time (I hope) keep me from dying a cryogenic death in some A.T. shelter next week.

Here are the rest of the layers I'm bringing:

On the top: polypropylene tee, longsleeve synthetic UnderArmour shirt, short sleeve synthetic tee overtop of that, zippered fleece, thermal jacket, vapor-barrier raincoat.
On the bottom: long undies, synthetic lined workout pants, lined ski pants.
On the tootsies: synthetic sock liners, Smartwool socks, fleece booties.
On los manos: I've apparently lost my mind completely and might've singlehandedly rescued the economy from the recent financial collapse, because I blew $55 on a pair of Black Diamond gloves. In a kind of funny twist of irony, overtop of them I'm going to wear a pair of blinding-orange hunting gloves, which I picked up at the thrift store for 85 cents. During the day when we're hiking and I don't need the double layer of gloves, the orange ones are going to be clipped to the top of my backpack and double as the universal sign of please-don't-shoot-me-Mr.-Hunter, since it will be deer season.

As you can imagine, all this extra stuff means that I won't be bringing my usual sassy little ultralight pack, as it can't accommodate all the bulk. So I've upsized to my bigger green Kelty backpack, which I haven't used for a couple of years now. It feels funny to have all this room to spare. I'm pondering bringing along a space heater.

The Great Train Race

2008-09-02T15:47:00.022-04:00

Alright, I have to showboat a little here.

Let me preface what I'm about to say with one important fact: despite my goal of entering at least one 5k or 10k per year for the last who-knows-how-many years, I haven't placed in even one running race since high school. And I'm okay with that, since running really isn't a passion of mine — it's just a mechanism by which I try to maintain some level of physical stamina, so that I can take my twice-annual backpacking trip without fear of a cardiac event. (That, and races are just fun. You get a cool T-shirt and they feed you afterwards.)

Well. Given my past performance, you can imagine my disbelief when I placed second in my age bracket in The Great Train Race, which was held in conjunction with Ypsilanti's Heritage Festival.

I'm only a little bit embarrassed to admit that when I saw the results, for a brief and glorious moment I felt a swell of kinship to Michael Phelps. Yes, I'd like to thank my family and friends for all their support, and especially my training partner, Buster...

Okay, so there was no tear-jerker award ceremony, and at only 140 entrants, it was definitely a very small race. And never mind the fact that I was second out of only 10 women in my age bracket (which was 35-39, since I know you're wondering). And the fact that my time was a leisurely 28:38. And the fact that a 69-year-old man beat me by well over a minute. No matter. I still placed, and that was a pretty big (and unexpected) rush.

The host of the event was The Corner Brewery, a nifty little beer garden and bottler of Arbor Brewing Company beers. No beer for this runner, though, as I wanted to finish The Great Train Race without turning into a Great Train Wreck before the finish line. Plus it was way too early for beer - the race started at 8:10 a.m.

Why 8:10 a.m., you ask? Well, the starting line is right next to the train tracks by the Ypsilanti Farmers Market, and the race officially starts as soon as the 8:10 Amtrak comes barreling past. For a pretty sweet half-minute or so, all the runners run parallel to this massive and thunderous train. It's really cool.

Long story short, I ended up with this kitschy but adorable medal, which the kids are convinced is made of real silver.

I haven't tried to convince them otherwise.

Rock On

2008-08-12T07:17:00.015-04:00

Yesterday the kids and I spent the day at Planet Rock, the local rock-climbing gym in Ann Arbor. What a cool experience! I am definitely a rock-climbing newbie, and now, 16 hours later, I have the aching triceps to prove it. And the embarrassing thing is, all this soreness is due to scant little climbing, since my real purpose in being there was mostly just to belay the kids. "Belay" means "to hold" — so my job was basically to stand on the ground with a death-grip on a rope that was keeping my beautiful babies from careening down a 40-foot rock wall to their deaths. No pressure there.

Fortunately, the kids were quite comfortable with all this, especially Maria, who immediately emerged as the knot-tying expert of our little trio. She had learned all about knots earlier this summer while sailing in Maryland. Joe and I happily deferred to her when roping ourselves in. Here's an example of her lovely little figure-8 knot, which became the basis for the tie-on to our harnesses:

And here's my girl, climbing like a monkey:

Joe made quick work of the initial wall. He scampered straight to the top and touched the ceiling.

We'll definitely be going back. I'm already trolling the REI website for harnesses and chalk bags.

Day 7: Bald Mountain Shelter to Sams Gap

2008-05-24T19:48:00.011-04:00

Our last day of hiking. Ironically, Rob’s missing knife and toothbrush – which we thought were lost three days ago at Cherry Gap Shelter – both turned up this morning. (For the record, as soon as I get home, I am officially retiring the Family Toothbrush that we’ve been sharing for the last three days.)

Like cows headed to the barn, the boys practically ran up Big Bald Mountain today, knowing that by lunchtime we’d be at Sams Gap, where Tim’s car is parked. Here are the two happy campers on the summit of Big Bald, which unfortunately didn’t afford us quite the 360-degree view that we’d hoped for, because there was an impressively low ceiling of clouds gathering.

We traversed eight mountainous miles in a brisk four hours, finishing up just after 11 a.m. On the last peak before our final descent, the boys stopped to appreciate the sight of clouds and fog swirling in Street Gap, from which we’d just ascended.

The last hour or so of our hike, it rained on and off, but we didn’t care in the least. We were mere miles away from a fresh change of clothes and a vehicle that would take us to food and showers.

Good thing, too, because I was seriously jonesing for a Diet Coke.

Once we piled all our gear and our bad smelly selves into Tim’s car, we drove a few miles to a little roadside gas station, where we changed and cleaned up a bit. And of course I slammed a nice cool 20 ounces of caffeinated, carbonated bliss.

Then it was on to Erwin, where we stopped for lunch. I’ve never in my life seen Tim eat with such gusto. Not only did he put away a hefty portion of spaghetti and garlic bread, he even topped off his meal with chocolate cake.

No, that is not a typo. I really did say cake. Since this was possibly the first time in like twenty-five years that he’s eaten anything that indulgent, I had to take a picture for proof. This is the guy who usually eschews all forms of sweets for earthy-tasting concoctions made out of stuff like millet and wheat berries and flax and whatnot. But for that brief moment, Dr. Dog was all about the chocolate.

He would’ve tossed back a beer, too, but when he asked the waitress what she had on tap, she looked like she might whip out a ruler and rap his knuckles. With a serious, unsmiling expression, she explained that “Perhaps you didn’t know, but this is a dry county, sir.” Ah, the south.

It’s been an amazing week. I feel so blessed. How many people on the planet have two crazy brothers who are willing to hike alongside a Cupcake for 73 miles, up and down mountains, through rain and hail, braving mice, risking coffeepots, and sharing toothbrushes? And not only are we all still on speaking terms, we actually still kinda like each other. Seriously, these guys are a treasure to me. I am lucky to have them.

Day 6: No Business Knob Shelter to Bald Mountain Shelter

2008-05-23T19:28:00.004-04:00

Tim was up half the night, going toe-to-toe with the mouse. The mouse didn’t bother me, really – I guess I’ve just accepted mice as one of the inconvenient truths of the AT. There was another kind of interloper invading my space last night, however, that really did some damage. I think a spider took up residence in my sleeping bag, because this morning I had about 25 welt-like bites all over my legs. They have been itching like crazy all day.

We did a go-getting 12.5-mile day today, so we were pretty elated to see this sign, pointing the way to the shelter. Well, it’s either pointing the way to a shelter, or to pi, we weren’t sure.

We’re at Bald Mountain shelter tonight, and I’m kind of sad that it’s our last night on the trail.

There are two other guys here tonight, and one of them has a huge adorable dog named Trekker. He’s about the size of a pony. Here’s a shot of him and our very own Dr. Dog.

The other guy we’re bunking with is probably in his sixties, and kind of chatty. He was interested in the fact that the three of us are siblings, and he wanted to hear all about our family. When he heard that I have a husband and young kids at home, he said “You know, I read about someone similar to you – it was an article in A.T. Journeys maybe a year and a half ago, about a lady who does section hikes on the AT a couple times a year…”

It was kind of fun to tell him that I’m not just similar to the chick he read about – I am her!

Day 5: Curly Maple Gap Shelter to No Business Knob Shelter

2008-05-22T21:45:00.021-04:00

Dr. Dog’s knee is still barking up a storm. But at least there doesn’t seem to be any more swelling. (Cupcake’s taking credit for having the foresight to bring a truckload of ibuprofen and Arnica on this trip. I’m just sayin’.) Plus, one of the many cool things about Tim is that he’s definitely the kind of guy who will muscle through just about anything without complaining. Today would’ve been his last opportunity to bail, since the trail crossed a significant road where he could’ve gotten a bunk at a hiker hostel, or hitched a ride into the little trail town of Erwin, Tennessee. But he barely even slowed down at the crossing, pausing only a couple minutes on the Chestoa Bridge to snap a few shots of the Nolichucky River.

Here's a shot of Uncle Johnny’s hostel, which the trail passes just after crossing the Chestoa Bridge.
Tim forged ahead, but Rob and I stopped in to see if Uncle Johnny might sell us a toothbrush to replace the one Rob lost. No luck.

It was quite the kick-butt climb up to Temple Ridge, so Rob and I enjoyed frequent breaks. Check out those silver shins! Whoa. You might need a pair o'sunglasses to gaze on those babies.

After about ninety minutes and nearly as many switch-backs, we had reached the top of Temple Ridge, and this was the view we had of the river. Pretty respectable climb!

We encountered a couple significant blow-downs today – large trees that had fallen right across the trail, completely blocking our passage. One of them required some rather acrobatic maneuvering and bushwhacking to get up and around the obstruction, and I got a nice little gash on my right knee in the process. Joe will be impressed with that, as he thinks it’s cool when his mom comes home from a hiking trip with some war wounds and good stories to go with them.

We’ve got the No Business Knob shelter to ourselves tonight which is kind of nice. This is the kind of shelter where I’m glad to have company, because it’s so high up and remote that it would be a little spooky to be here alone.

And I guess we’re all a little jumpy, because as we were hunkering down for the night, we heard an odd noise that we could’ve sworn was the squealing of a wild boar (those really do exist in this part of the country, and believe it or not, they're believed to be more dangerous than bears because they're quite aggressive). After further investigation, though, we discovered the noise was actually just the echoing of a woodpecker as he was working on a nearby hemlock. Don’t ask me how we could mistake a woodpecker for a pig – I guess our imaginations are just on overdrive. And it’s not because of Rob’s five-dollar scotch, either – that’s been gone for two days now.

Here’s a little family portrait we did tonight after dinner, and you’ll have to excuse my deer-in-the-headlights expression. I think I was just a little distracted because I still had wild boars on my mind. The cool thing about this picture is, the photography was done with the aid of Rob’s trekking pole. Check this out: if you jam the sharp end of his pole into the dirt (so that it stands up by itself), and then unscrew the little knobby handle at the other end, you can actually attach a camera to the screw at the top and use the pole as a monopod! How cool is that?

The other cool photography trick was that we managed to make it look like Rob's pants are on fire.

The big tragedy of the day happened around 6 p.m. when Rob pulled out his espresso maker to brew up a cup, and found that the little bendy thing at the top seems to have broken in transit. Buh-bye, espresso. Rob is beaming smugly, however, over having the foresight to bring a backup coffeepot.

A mouse appeared in the shelter this evening. Might be an eventful night.

Day 4: Cherry Gap Shelter to Curly Maple Gap Shelter

2008-05-21T21:58:00.007-04:00

Tim was the first one up and out this morning, around 7 a.m. He wanted to get going early because he knew today would be full of lots of climbing and descending, and he wasn't feeling too spry due to his still-painful knee. Rob and I wished him well and told him we’d catch up. We set out about 20 minutes later.

Being one of the first hikers to pack up and vacate an overfilled shelter – especially when it’s still not fully light outside – is always hard. There’s gear all over the place, and because there are lots of sleeping hikers lying about, you don’t feel good about bumbling around and making a clatter to collect your stuff. Consequently, you’re never quite sure that you really got all your belongings. Case in point: when we finished hiking this afternoon and began inventorying our stuff, Rob realized he’d left behind his toothbrush and one of the several knives he’d brought. (I think he regards knives just like coffeepots – the more, the better.)

The knife he could live without, but the toothbrush? Ah well, good thing we’re family. We shared.

Saw lots of trillium on the trail today. I never tire of looking at these little beauties. They’re just amazing.

The biggest news of the day was that Cupcake had a near-meltdown when it appeared that it might be necessary to launch a search-and-rescue operation on our first big summit of the day, Unaka Mountain.

Here’s how it happened. By 9 a.m., the three of us had gotten considerably far apart from each other – Tim was way out ahead of me due to his early departure from the shelter, and Rob was quite a ways behind me because he preferred to climb at a slower pace. So for a solid couple of hours, I saw neither brother, which at first didn’t bother me at all – I just figured we’d catch up to one another before Indian Grave Gap, a few miles from Unaka’s peak. But after summiting Unaka and descending down the other side for about an hour, I still hadn't seen either of them.

I hiked and hiked and hiked some more, straining my eyes through the heavy fog, thinking Tim had to be just ahead of me. I even yelled out his name a few times. But I didn’t truly start to fret till I began noticing that every twenty or thirty feet I was running into strands of silken spiderwebs stretched across the trail, which meant no one else had passed through that area yet this morning. So if Tim wasn’t ahead of me, where was he? I started to worry that maybe he’d gotten disoriented at the top of Unaka, since the fog was so dense and the trail was easy to lose in the thick stands of red spruce. What if both brothers got turned around up there? What if they were still up there, wandering around and looking for the trail and each other? What if Tim’s knee blew completely out? What if one of them had a heart attack? Or ran into a bear? Or slipped and fell down the side of the gorge? How would I ever find them?

My heart in my throat, I decided I’d better just sit down and wait for a while, in hopes that one of them would arrive and then we could figure out how to find the other. But after a full 30 minutes of waiting, I lived up to my Cupcake moniker and started to well up with tears. I started to consider how I would break it to my sisters-in-law Michelle and Sue that I had lost their husbands in the wilderness of Unaka Mountain.

I couldn’t just sit there and keep waiting; I needed to go back up the mountain and look for them. I dropped my pack on the side of the trail, took my poles with me, and started climbing. After about 20 minutes (which felt like 20 hours), my eyes caught a flash of yellow: Rob’s shirt. With Rob in it. Sashaying leisurely down the mountain, a relaxed grin on his face. I could see he was listening to his Zune – the wires from his earbuds were flopping around as he walked. I think he was humming a blues tune. Not a care in the world.

“I LOST TIM,” I shrieked wildly, my voice cracking and tears flying out the corners of my eyes as I bounded up to him. Rob gave me a big smooch on the cheek and said “No you didn’t – he’s about five minutes behind me.” I dissolved in a heavy sigh of relief for a few seconds before moxying up my sternest Mom voice so that I could give that Timothy a good talking-to. I strained my eyes through the trees to see him, and there he was, still wearing his jaunty little red hat, stepping gingerly down the mountain so as to protect his knee. When he got within earshot, I fired out a dour “WHERE have you BEEN?”

He looked up, seemingly surprised at the severity in my voice. “I, uh, well… I stepped off the trail for a minute,” he said kind of sheepishly. “You know … when nature calls…”

He got two demerits and strict instructions to never just vanish off the trail again without telling someone. You just can’t mess with Cupcake like that.

The rest of the day involved a blur of – yep – climbing and descending. We hiked through quite a few fire-damaged areas, like the ashen hillside shown here. A passing hiker told us that the Pisgah National Forest had attempted to do some controlled burns recently, and things ended up being, well, not-so-controlled. In fact, some of the shelter logbook entries described how hikers had to walk through still-burning patches of trail as recently as a couple weeks ago. The whole area still smells strongly of smoke.

Right in the midst of a big stretch of fire-damaged landscape, we saw our first rhodo-dendron bloom of the week. Even though the plant itself looked like it had suffered irreparably from the heat and smoke, the flower at the top was open and stunning. Somehow there's something significant in that. It made me think about Isaiah 61:1-4, where God talks about exchanging ashes for a "crown of beauty" - in other words, turning really crummy situations into something good.

This is what the blooms look like just prior to opening up.

Tonight we’re at Curly Maple Gap Shelter, and there are three other hikers staying with us, all around 60. One of them is a dead ringer for Dustin Hoffman, and he’s kept us quite entertained all evening. He was quite impressed at my bear-bagging skills when it came time to hang the food this evening.

We’re thankful that there’s a clean, sparkling spring just a stone’s throw from tonight’s shelter. The last couple of nights, the water source has been kind of far off - and it’s quite a kick in the pants to hike yourself into a stupor all day, then finally collapse at a shelter, only to find that you have another significant distance to go for water.

Oh and check this out: at the little creek by our shelter tonight, some inventive person has fashioned a spout out of a rhododendron leaf and a string of dental floss, so that it’s easier to harvest the water. (Click on the photo to get a closer view.) Aren’t hikers cool?

Day 3: Clyde Smith Shelter to Cherry Gap Shelter

2008-05-20T21:33:00.008-04:00

Just a nine-mile day, but wow is Tim’s knee taking a beating. He’s self-diagnosed it as some form of tendonitis. On Rob’s suggestion, he started out this morning with his knee tightly – and I do mean tightly – wrapped in an ace bandage. And just under the bandage, he cleverly slipped a smooth stone right where the problem seemed to be the worst – the idea being that the stone would put pressure on the offending tendon and keep it from flopping around like an overstretched rubber band. To we three non-medical people, all this seemed like a good idea at the time.

Had a great view from Little Rock Knob, which is where I snapped this shot of Tim. He looks grateful to be sitting down for a moment, no?

About six miles into our hike, we were all getting pretty warm, so we stopped to remove our zip-off pant legs. As Tim examined his gimpy knee, I heard him say, “Uh, I think I’ve got a problem.” I took a look and was more than a little alarmed to see that his shin and calf – that whole area just below the ace bandage and just above the cuff of his sock – had swollen to about twice the normal size. “Dude, looks like you grew a whole new muscle,” Rob said helpfully.

I tried not to be too obvious about it, but I was really worried about Tim's leg. Where was all that swelling coming from? And the bigger question: would it go back down? Not much we could do about it at that moment, however, being several miles from anywhere. So after ruling out the possibility of amputation, we decided to just remove the bandage, rumple Tim’s sock down all the way to his ankle (because then the cuff wouldn’t be so tight around the swollen part), and hope for the best. I also mommed him into taking a megadose of ibuprofen, topped off with a few beads of Arnica Montana. Hey, call it hippie-freak-voodoo medicine if you want, but I think the Arnica was the magic bullet.

A few miles later, when we got to the shelter, he propped his legs up for a while and by bedtime you could hardly tell the swollen knee from the non-swollen one. Reminding him that Cupcake knows best, I made him pinky-swear to not only discontinue the tourniquet-style ace bandages, but also to maintain a steady diet of the ibuprofen/Arnica cocktail. He put the ibuprofen bottle and the tube of Arnica in his shirt pocket.

We were lucky to get to the shelter when we did, because not five minutes after we landed, we experienced more hail – not once, not twice, but three significant stormy downpours. Each wave of the storm was spectacularly loud, on account of the shelter’s metal roof. Over the next couple hours we made room for several more hikers, each of whom had been caught in the hail and arrived covered in icy droplets. Before long we had eight hikers plus a cute little dog named Hank, all crammed into a shelter that supposedly has the capacity of six. And still more people kept coming, huddling under the scant overhang of the roof till the precipitation stopped.

Once the skies dried up at about 6 p.m., all of the overflow people began setting up their tents in the flat areas surrounding the shelter. Within an hour the placed looked like a KOA, with wet gear and clothes hanging from any tree with branches low enough to reach. I counted 10 tents in our line of sight.

The last to arrive in our little makeshift village were a couple of cranky older ladies (yes, you find those even on the AT). They were quite put-out that there wasn’t an inch of room left in the shelter.

Now, before you start thinking that I’m a self-important Gen-X’er with a princess complex and no regard for my elders, let me clarify something. I was totally ready to jump up and give them our spot in the shelter – I even started gathering up my stuff and trying to remember which of us were carrying which pieces of the tent, so that we could mobilize and do a quick set-up. HOWEVAH… as the two ladies approached the shelter, all you could hear was their snarking and complaining,

“Too many damn people on this trail …"
“Yeah, and I see there’s a mangy little dog in that shelter …” (For the record, dear reader, the photo below is evidence that Hank the dog was about as tidy and cute as they come. And clearly too tired to be a nuisance to anyone.)
“Guess we’ve been displaced by a stupid little mutt … “
“You’d think all these damn kids would show a little respect … they’re less than half our age.”

That last comment got Rob’s attention, since he happens to be 55.

“Wow,” he replied, “you two look pretty good for 110.”

I don’t know how old they really were, but they looked to be maybe 70, tops. And we all silently decided they were plenty spry enough to set up their own tent.

So none of us in the shelter had much of a problem with staying put and allowing the old biddies to make their way past the shelter and on to a tent site. An entitlement mindset is such a disagreeable thing, at any age. Hey ladies, this is the AT. You get what you get.

I think Rob’s five-dollar bottle of scotch is starting to taste better. Toward nightfall, it again made the rounds in the shelter as we all tried to shake the chill of the damp evening air.

Day 2: Roan Mountain Shelter to Clyde Smith Shelter

2008-05-19T21:05:00.011-04:00

It was so dang cold this morning that even though we were wide awake by 6, none of us could bear the thought of emerging from our sleeping bags till almost 10 a.m. That’s a new record for me – I don’t think I’ve ever lolled about so late in the morning on a backpacking trip. It felt downright indulgent. I was about to ask if someone could pass me some bonbons, when Rob and Tim finally dragged themselves outside to fire up the isobutane: it was time for their brew-ha-ha.

Here’s Tim in front of Roan Mountain Shelter, hunting for the java.

And while we’re on the subject of coffee, would you believe Rob brought not one but two coffee pots? The man needs options. In this case, a French press and an espresso maker. The French press is definitely second string, though – to be used only if the espresso maker gives up the ghost.

Here are the two back-country baristas, paying homage to the magical font.

After the boys had tanked up on the requisite amount of caffeine, we packed our things and got a move-on. We took our time noticing cool things like this amazing tree, which somehow still clung to life despite the fact that a person could pass right through its middle. It was a good day to dawdle a little, since today is our shortest-mileage day – just a seven-mile hike to Clyde Smith Shelter. All very fortunate, because Tim’s right knee has started giving him a fair amount of pain, especially on the descents. He’s a powerhouse when we’re climbing uphill, but put him on a downward slope and he slows to a crawl. Tonight he’s working on fashioning a second trekking pole out of a sturdy branch. He already had one hiking stick, which he picked up from the side of the trail early in the day yesterday, but his bossy sister told him he’d be much better off with two, especially when trying to negotiate a steep downhill grade.

As you can see from the picture, he’s either really determined to get it just right, or he’s silently cursing the day he decided to let me talk him into backpacking. (Click on it for a closer view of that furrowed brow - if I didn't know better, I might think it's a picture of our dad.)

We’re thankful that today ended up being totally rain-free and sunny, which meant that all our stuff that got soaked in yesterday’s hail-ish rain had a chance to dry out. In fact, by late afternoon it got downright steamy, and Tim and Rob started disrobing, which prompted some bawdy talk about how we might’ve just created the hiker version of Manhattan’s Naked Cowboy. Fortunately, though, there were no sightings of tighty whities. I’m all about being close to the earth and all, but you gotta draw the line somewhere.

We met a thru-hiker today who tortures - I mean entertains - other hikers by telling riddles. Really hard, complicated, annoying ones. The kind that aren't really designed to be solved by non-Mensa types. Especially non-Mensa types whose brains have turned mushy after a physically and mentally draining day of beating oneself to a pulp by hiking over miles of mountains. So if any of you reading this might know how five hooks and a broken matchstick, all found in an otherwise empty room with a dead man, could have resulted in the man's death, Rob and Tim and I would be most grateful if you'd email one of us.

I realized yesterday that I’d forgotten to ’splain to the boys the phenomenon of trail names. We met another hiker who introduced himself as "Medium Rare," and this quite perplexed my brothers. Rob tilted his head slightly to one side, raised one eyebrow, and studied the guy for a second. I think he was trying to decide whether to beat him up or just back away slowly. See, many section hikers, and almost all thru-hikers, assume some sort of colorful or symbolic nickname that they use during their hike. Some of the trail names I’ve heard on this trip include Mr. Cowpie, Twisted Sister, Storyteller, Wingfoot, Privy Monster, Prometheus, El Jefe, Kerosene, Black Cloud, Bear Bait, and Captain Jack. Sometimes people come up with their own trail names, and sometimes the names are sort of conferred on them by other hikers. People typically use their trail names when signing the shelter logbooks, and even when talking with or about one another – in fact, it’s common for people to hike alongside each other for days or weeks or even months and never know each other’s real names. (I know. Weird.)

It’s something I’ve never gotten into, so before this hike I didn’t have a trail name. But the tradition quite intrigued Rob, and he decided “Silver Shins” would be a particularly fitting name for himself, due to the fact that his Michigan legs are blinding white. For Tim, we decided on the name “Dr. Dog,” because not only does he love dogs, but his zillions of hours spent volunteering as a dog trainer for the Humane Society have turned him into an amazing expert in animal behavior. And it shows when he encounters dogs on the trail – every pooch we’ve seen out here really responds to Tim.

And me? Well, Silver Shins and Dr. Dog have decided that “Cupcake” is a fitting trail name. Why? Maybe it's just a funny bit of irony, since I actually aspire to be sort of an anti-cupcake. Or maybe it's because there’s no changing the fact that I’m still the baby sister (even though they both know I can kick their arses on this trail). Or maybe it’s just because I’m so sweet.

Yeah, that’s gotta be it.

Day 1: US19E to Roan Mountain Shelter

2008-05-18T20:54:00.000-04:00

After hiking nearly 16 miles and gaining 3,380 feet of elevation, with two hours of rain and a hailstorm thrown in for good measure, we’re finally done for the day.

It was a very punishing 10-hour climb, which started out under overcast skies. We summitted a couple of peaks, including one called Jane Bald, where I snapped this photo to send to our cousin Jane in England – she’ll get a kick out of that.

Jane Bald is also where I risked a limb to keep from bruising the only piece of fresh produce I brought with me: a small red apple. We had stopped to catch our breath at a little rocky outcrop on the summit, and I set my apple and my trekking poles on a boulder. As I started to writhe my way out of the shoulder straps of my backpack, out of the corner of my eye I saw the apple teetering off the rock and threatening to skitter down the slope. I leapt to catch it, slipped on a loose rock, and bloodied my elbow against the rough edge of a boulder. Now that smarts. I lost about a four-inch patch of skin. But hey, I didn’t bruise the apple.

As we continued from Jane Bald on to Roan Mountain, the temperature dropped, the skies turned dark, and it started to rain – and then, mercilessly, during our last hour of hiking, the rain turned to hail. It was quite a sight, hiking behind Tim and watching marble-sized balls of ice bouncing off of him and his backpack. As Rob aptly put it, “Um, I don’t think this was in the brochure.”

We made it to the Roan Mountain shelter a little after 6 p.m., soaked and frigid. At 6,275 feet, this is the highest shelter on the whole AT. In a previous life, it was a firewarden’s cabin, and might I just add that we’re darn lucky that it has four walls and a door that closes? (Most shelters have only three walls and a roof, with the fourth side totally open to the wind.) But lest you think we’re reclining in luxury, I need to clarify that we're sleeping on a dusty wooden floor with five other hikers and evidence of mice, and even with all these bodies inside the shelter, it’s a nippy 40 degrees inside (according to a fellow hiker’s clip-on thermometer) and we can see our breath. Never mind what the temperature might be outside, where the wind is howling and rain is still coming down in sheets. Some things, it’s just better not to know.

To warm our insides a bit, Rob passed around a small bottle of liquid fire masquerading as scotch – I think the price tag on the bottle said something like $4.99. Because he’s just classy like that.

I gotta admit, I’m questioning how well the synapses were firing last week when I decided on bringing my new ultralight Mountain Hardwear sleeping bag on this trip. It’s rated for a balmy 45 degrees or above. At the time, I was all starry-eyed about the fact that it weighs a mere 12 ounces – which explains why it has about as much warmth as a swatch of burlap. I’m currently cocooned in said sleeping bag, along with three layers of clothes, a pair of fleece gloves, and earmuffs.

And I’m still shivering like an Aspen in a windstorm.

Embarking Upon Seven Days With My Brothers

2008-05-17T20:00:00.029-04:00

Tomorrow begins seven days with my brothers. And this is no spinoff of some smarmy Nicholas Sparks chick lit – this is the real deal. First thing in the morning, Tim and Rob and I will set foot into the woods to cover 70-some miles on the Appalachian Trail.

When I put the plans together for this hike, I assumed I’d be going it alone. After all, people don’t usually line up and beat my door down to accompany me on these things. But in early February, I was talking with Tim about the Meredith Emerson tragedy, and that seemed to spin my twice-annual Appalachian Trail experience in a different light. Tim is a serious, contemplative type, and I think Meredith’s death raised some concerns about his darling baby sister (yes, that’s me, and quit laughing). So I told him maybe he ought to come with me as my bodyguard.

I was really just joking and he knew it – I mean, he’d never been on a long-distance hike before, and I sure as Sheol don’t consider myself in need of a bodyguard. But the more we talked, the more it seemed like a fun opportunity for both of us. We come from a tribe of 10 siblings, where the decibel level at family gatherings rivals that of a Guess Who concert, so the idea of a little quality time in a peaceful setting seemed kind of appealing. I found myself twisting his arm a bit, cajoling him into the idea of coming along. In typical Tim style – temperate, deliberate, reserved – he said he’d think about it.

Rob, on the other hand — the bodacious and wild-eyed firstborn — needed no cajoling. When he heard I’d planned a trip for mid-May – just two weeks after he was scheduled to retire from Ford Motor Company – he was ready to sign on the dotted line. It also helps that he’s a seasoned hiker who’s done quite a bit of backpacking with his wife Sue, not only in Michigan but also out west. What better way to launch into his retirement than a wicked-cool backpacking trip?

Here’s a shot of Rob and me in March, after spending a giddy 60 minutes poring over topo maps and the AT data book in preparation for our trip.

By early April, we hadn’t heard a definitive yes from Tim, so it was looking like he’d probably opt out. Then, out of the blue, I got a two-line email message: “I’ve decided to go on the backpacking trip. Just wanted you to know so you could plan on me.” After several practice hikes with a 40-pound bag of kitty litter in his backpack, and a few excursions to my favorite store, he was good to go.

Here’s a shot I snapped of him earlier today in his bossy new trail hat. Isn’t he the nattiest thing this side of Roan Mountain?

So we got a crazy-early start this morning, tackling the 10-hour drive from Michigan to Sams Gap, where we parked Tim’s car at the trailhead parking area for the week. (By the way, no, I didn't forget the apostrophe in "Sams Gap"; all of the maps and data books express it without one. And yes, being a technical writer, that drives me nuts.)

A softspoken man named Terry Hill picked us up at Sams Gap and shuttled us to Mountain Harbour, a little place he owns with his wife Mary. It’s just a third of a mile from the AT trailhead at US-19E, and they offer both a hiker hostel and a bed-and-breakfast.

It was a long 90-minute shuttle ride over and around the mountains. Tim and I sat in the back seat of the pickup, and I could hear Rob up front, chatting away to Terry. At one point, I heard Terry ask Rob politely, “So what do the three of you do for a living?” Rob explained that he was newly retired, and that Tim works for Ford. And then he said very matter-of-factly, with the most deadpan expression, “And my sister Jeanie – well, she won the lottery awhile back, so she doesn’t really need to work, but she does exotic dancing on the weekends for fun.” I know. That’s just the kind of sense of humor Rob has. Poor Terry just stared straight ahead at the road in front of him.

When we arrived at Mountain Harbour, the boys began bee-lining it up to the main building, a very pretty Cape-Cod-style home where the bed-and-breakfast guests stay. I had to redirect them. “Um, guys, we’re not staying up there. That’s the b&b. Our bunks are in the hostel.” I nodded toward the much humbler-looking outbuilding, a rustic barn with steps leading up to a loft. Some goats were running around, chasing each other in and out of the barn door.

Tim looked at me quizzically and blinked, not sure if I was joking.

“Really? With the goats?”

“Um, yeah.”

Actually, we weren’t really with the goats – we were above them. In the loft. And it was much nicer than you might think. Running water, a little kitchen, and comfy bunks.

Rob even managed to find a guitar leaning in the corner, to which he helped himself.

Like the shelters along the trail, this hostel has a little journal in which sojourners often jot a line or two during their stay. Tim’s entry from the following morning is shown here, right below an entry written by a guy named Murphy, whom we met at the hostel.

Murphy’s a very friendly sort and is finishing up a thru-hike that he started last year. He explained to us that he intended to hike the whole trail in 2007 but had to stop about two-thirds of the way through because he kept falling and injuring himself. We thought at first that he must be extraordinarily clumsy – I mean, even in sections where the trail is hard, it’s rare for a typical hiker to fall (I’ve only taken a bad spill once in the last seven section-hikes). But later, when we saw Murphy walking around in shorts, we realized he isn’t a typical hiker. The man has two prosthetic legs. Incredible. What an amazing guy.

I am really antsy to get hiking. I cannot wait to put my feet on that trail tomorrow.

Contemplating, Counting Down, and Remembering Meredith

2008-01-20T05:38:00.000-05:00

My initial plans for a fall AT hiking trip in 2007 got scrapped. Maria was having major ear trouble at the time, and we had a string of consultations with her ENT throughout the fall. Wouldn't you know, the culmination of it all - the ENT appointment that would determine whether or not she had to endure a routine but uncomfortable ear surgery to fix a problem with a tube in her ear canal - happened to fall smack in the middle of the week that I had planned to be on the trail. I spent several days weighing my options before finally cancelling my trip. As my friend Mary wisely said, you gotta just think about which thing you would regret missing more: the hiking trip or the medical stuff? And by far, it was the medical stuff. If I had gone ahead with my hiking plans that week, I just don't think I could've really gotten any wind in my hair, knowing that at the very time I was hiking, my girl might be getting prepped for ear surgery. So I stayed home. And her ear ended up being fine. No surgery needed, and no more ENT visits till summer.

I was totally okay with my decision to stay home, but it produced a major itch to get back on the trail, so Christmas week found me spending more than a few hours poring over maps and the AT data book and putting together plans for a spring trip.

A couple days into the New Year, I happened to be trolling http://www.whiteblaze.net/ for some details on the section I plan on covering in the spring, and I gasped right out loud to see the most active thread on the forum: a 24-year-old woman hiking on Blood Mountain on New Year's Day was missing, and it was eventually learned that she was murdered. My heart was in my throat as I read about how this terrible crime had been committed against a sister hiker in a place I knew and loved and remembered so well. I was sick. I could not stop crying for this woman and her family — people hundreds of miles away whom I don't even know but feel somehow connected with.

In the days after learning of Meredith's death, I was so shaken that I could not fathom returning to the trail, especially alone. I even said out loud the words "I am definitely not going back" when Jay and I were lying in bed one night and he asked about my plans for my next hike. Meredith's murderer had taken not only the life of a vibrant and strong young woman, but had violated the many, many other solo hikers — male and female — who now won't be able to venture out in the woods without at least a sliver of fear.

Fast-forward another week, and I'm out for a short hike with Buster in Hudson Mills, still ruminating on how my days of section-hiking the AT were probably over. The Huron River was wide and fast that day because of the thawing of a huge snowfall followed by several days of rain. As I neared the lowest area of the park, I was stunned to see that the river had not only risen unusually high, it had spilled out into a grassy area and completely covered the trail for about a quarter of a mile. I could see to the other side, and even started to cross the flooded area, thinking it couldn't be that deep, but soon realized the current would be thigh-high at the middle. I couldn't believe it. I had never seen the trail this way. All that grass, those trees — so much of the landscape harmed or even destroyed by all the flooding.

I checked my watch. I couldn't afford to turn back — I really needed to push on in order to make it home by the time the kids got home. But there was no way that I and the dog could get through all that water. So we scouted around for an alternative path and ended up taking a spongy walk through some not-very-promising-looking underbrush. We finally made it to the dry ground on the other side of the flooded area, a little muddy and burr-covered, but pretty happy to be where we wanted to be.

And I realized that maybe God's statement to me in all this was that I needed to view the Meredith incident the same way. To acknowledge it as an unexpected, terrible, destructive event, certainly — but to also know that I can't afford not to press on. That I just need to scout around and find a safe way through to the place I need to be. Because the place I need to be is on the Appalachian Trail; I do know this.

So I've changed my mind. I am going back, and I'm counting down the days till mid-May when my boots can hit that trail again. And like many other whiteblazers, on my pack will be this sticker (made in massive quantities by another whiteblaze member and distributed to every AT hiker he can find) to honor Meredith, and a green ribbon to memorialize all hikers who have died on the trail. These are small ways of commemorating these fellow travelers, and also a small way to take a stand and not allow fear to control me.

Running Wild for the Detroit Zoo

2007-09-16T13:09:00.000-04:00

Today the whole fam went out to the Detroit Zoo for the annual "Run Wild" race — a benefit for the zoo sponsored by LaSalle Bank. Our friends the Talberts came too. The dads and kids did the one-mile family walk, Sue did the 5K, and I did the 10K. It was my first time doing that great of a distance — I mean, I've run that far a handful of times at Hudson Mills and around my neighborhood and stuff, but never in an official timed event. This first picture is Sue and I after we were done. For the record, we are glowing in this photo, not perspiring.

It felt good to conquer 6.2 miles, but before you get all impressed, let me just tell you I was pretty darn slow. I'd done the 5K at the zoo a couple years ago at 28:44 (yeah, I was slow then too!) so I thought I should be able to run the 10K in about double the time. But I ended up clocking in at a little over that, at 1:01:17. Hey, I'm getting older! I'm actually pretty impressed with myself for keeping my pace at just under 10 minutes per mile. Regardless of my speed — or lack thereof — it was a fun day and it certainly gave me a good reason to get up off my arse these last several weeks.

Plus the post-race party is a lot of fun. There's food and entertainment, and you get to hang out at the zoo for as long as you want. Here are a few shots from our afternoon:

Porcupine Mountains, Day 5

2007-08-24T06:54:00.000-04:00

So today our trip has ended. It was a lovely string of days that I think we'll all remember for a long time. Jay took a few parting photos of his handiwork - he spent part of his week making a log bench for the little fire ring in front of our cabin.

And, aided by an underage work crew of four cheerful rock haulers, he also engineered and built this very cool little stone entry at the base of our cabin steps. It would be fun to come back here in a few years and see if it's still here, or if some other hikers have added to it.

So off we go down the trail and, after a week of eating only backpacker food, we all have visions of yummy food in our heads. Maria, of course has her affections set on broccoli cheddar soup. Jay and Pete are envisioning anything besides black beans and beef stroganoff, respectively, since that's pretty much the only thing Cindy and I fed them all week.

Goodbye to our Porkies and our amazing Lake Superior!

Porcupine Mountains, Day 4

2007-08-23T18:01:00.000-04:00

Today was our biggest hiking day. We set out early enough to tackle an eight-mile day, the destination being Trapper's Falls for lunch. It was a big undertaking, and we weren't at all sure how the kids would do. They all did great, but I was especially proud of Maria. She started out pretty surly this morning and didn't have much good to say about today's adventure, but she must've reached down deep and found some gumption, because she bucked up and made it through the day beautifully - smiling, even! Her main coping tactic was to chant, "BROCCOLI CHEDDAR SOUP! IN A BREAD BOWL!" as she marched down the trail. That's her favorite menu item at Panera, and she decided that her reward for muscling through today should be a huge lunch at the first Panera we see when we head home tomorrow.

The falls were really beautiful - mainly made up of two or three huge slabs of gently sloping rock with shallow water flowing over them. Because of the low rainfall here lately, much of the rock was more exposed than usual, and it made it fun and easy to explore. We lunched, lounged, played, and chased a frog before heading back to the cabins.

When we got back from our hike, Pete and Cindy's cabin stunk to high heaven. After some investigation we learned that one of the mousetraps in the cabin (each have several, to keep the mouse population under control) contained a sizeable specimen who apparently had been there for a few days. Pew.

We've had no trouble with mice in our cabin, though we've heard some scratching in the walls at night. I think having Buster in the cabin keeps other critters at bay.

Porcupine Mountains, Day 3

2007-08-22T17:21:00.000-04:00

Today was a lounge day. We mostly hung around the cabins - just reading, playing, and fishing. Still no fish, but that's not deterring the kids a bit.

One of the rocks on which the Carp River bridge is built has a geological marker on it. The U.S. Geological Survey places these markers all over the country - sometimes in absurdly remote places - and then measures their position periodically to determine degrees of movement. Kind of cool.

The bravest among us (read: the kids) went swimming in the river, which to my body feels like about 32.1 degrees. I did go in for a nanosecond after much cajoling from Joe and Maria, but only to rinse off; I was back out and in dry clothes within minutes! The big splash in this picture is Joe doing a cannonball.

... And here's Matt ...

Spent some nice time in the afternoon and evening just hanging out at the beach. The first shot here is Maria and Hannah, enjoying the view of Lake Superior.

We decided it had rained plenty hard yesterday to qualify us for a campfire, so we had a lovely one this evening, and then ended the day with another sunset.

Porcupine Mountains, Day 2

2007-08-21T18:00:00.000-04:00

We decided to do a little lunchtime hike today to a place called Shining Cloud Falls. Except the clouds weren't exactly shining; in fact, on our return hike, they produced quite a bit of precipitation. But here's how cool the four kiddos are: they thought the rain made the hike more fun. Can you beat that? I think they realized that a big downpour could mean we'd cash in on the ranger's statement from yesterday, when he said that we could have a campfire if the surrounding woods first got a good soaking.

The falls were really pretty, and though we hung out there for quite a while, we somehow didn't take any photos of the falls themselves! But Maria and Hannah amused themselves snapping photos of each other, and here is a sample of the result.

Jay found a very righteous-looking stick on the banks of the river, which he and the kids named "the staff of Gondor" after the kingdom in The Lord of the Rings. Here is Matt displaying it. Click it for a close-up - you'll swear the top of the stick is actually a deer antler.

During our break, Matt and Joe busied themselves with one of their favorite activities: moving rocks around. Hey, who needs Nintendo when you can play with rocks?

The rest of us, including Buster, just hung out and relaxed. Here's a shot of me with my dingo, just downstream from the falls.
Luckily the rain held off till we were done eating lunch. Jay snapped this kinda cool photo of the rocks on the edge of the falls, just as it started sprinkling and we were preparing to head back.

Once we got back to our cabins, it was pouring, so we hunkered down and listened to the rain and I read aloud from Harry Potter for a while. Here was part of my audience.

It wasn't too long before the skies cleared a bit, so the kids ran out to the bridge near our cabin and commenced fishing from the Big Carp River, which unfortunately produced no big carps or any other kind of fish. But at least it was entertaining!

While the kids fished, Jay got all manly with an axe and firewood. The axe, incidentally, was in the cabin when we arrived... it's not part of the gear we would normally schlep miles into the woods.

By evening, the weather had cleared enough to provide us with a beautiful view of the sunset over Lake Superior.

Porcupine Mountains, Day 1

2007-08-20T17:06:00.000-04:00

The Brooks fam made it to the Porkies, amazed that we can drive ten and a half hours from home and still be in the state of Michigan. Boggles the mind. We're in the U.P., almost to Wisconsin, where you see the red pin in this map.

We met Pete, Cindy, Matt, and Hannah last night in Silver City, and this morning after filling the kids up on waffles and yogurt, we hit the Pinkerton Trail, off of South Boundary Road in Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. We had a four and a half mile hike ahead of us. The kids were awesome! About a third of the way there, we took a break at Pinkerton Creek and as the kids frolicked on the banks of the creek, I heard Matthew say to Joe, "This just gets funner and funner!"

The kids are each carrying between 15 and 20 pounds of weight. Jay and I have about 35 pounds apiece, and Buster's doing his part by carring about 5.5 pounds (comprised mainly of dog food and our first aid kit).

The record-setter of the group, though, is Pete who, in addition to the usual stuff a dad would carry in his pack, is toting along a 50-pound car battery. Yes, fifty. That's five zero. Cindy estimates his total pack weight to be around 80 or 90 pounds. (He declined to weigh it prior to leaving their house - some things, it's just better not to know!) The next two photos show Pete and Cindy after a short break about two miles in, getting ready to conquer the rest of our hike. If you click on the first shot for a close-up, you'll find that Pete's expression says it all. ☺

Why carry a car battery, you ask? No, he's not training for a strongman contest. He needs a sleep-apnea mask at night to regulate his breathing, and the mask requires power. Of which there is none here. Without the mask, his sleep is constantly disrupted and he gets terrible migraines the next day. And we decided early on that migraines would not be allowed on this trip. So the car battery was the only way he could ensure power for the mask for four nights. Crazy, huh?

It's amazing to be staying right on the shore of Lake Superior (or Gitchee-Gumee, as it's called in the Ojibwa language). Superior has always seemed so powerful, mysterious, beautiful. Cindy tells me it's her favorite Great Lake. Our cabin's situated right where the Big Carp River empties into Superior. Pete and Cindy's cabin is just across the river.

This afternoon we were sitting on the wooden bridge over the river and were startled by some very energetic waterfowl that came flapping and splashing down the river, half-flying, half-running across the water, making their way under the bridge and out to Lake Superior. They are really cool-looking ducks - the way they dive under the water for food makes them almost resemble penguins. We found out later they're called Common Mergansers. They come through in groups, several times a day, and they're quite entertaining to watch. The kids helpfully yell "DUCK! DUCK! DUCK!" when they see a group of them approaching, so that we can run over and watch them pass.

We were sad to learn that we couldn't have a campfire tonight because it has been so terribly dry here all summer. There have been widespread forest fires east of here, in the central part of the U.P. So we improvised and ended our day with s'mores over the Pocket Rocket tonight. The kids are hopeful, though, because before we started hiking today, a ranger told us that if we get a good heavy rain in the next couple days, we'd be fine to have a small fire. This might be the first time I've ever hoped for rain on a backpacking trip.

A.T. Hike, Spring 2007 - Day 6,In Which I Said Goodbye to the Trail Till Next Time

2007-06-09T20:52:00.000-04:00

Hogback Ridge Shelter to Sams Gap

Well, after six days on the trail, I and everything I’m wearing smell like Buster after he’s rolled around in the grass on a rainy day. It’s pretty disgusting.

Since today’s hike was short and sweet with very few big vistas, I snapped several pictures of the flowers that decorate the mountains. Spring is such an amazing time to be in this part of the country. I have always been an abysmal gardener, but that doesn't stop me from appreciating the wild beauty of flowers like these.

This one has the unfortunate name of spider wort, which in my mind detracts quite a bit from its splendor. I think it deserves a much daintier name, don’t you?

This is my favorite: mountain laurel. These grow on trees and their blooms drop to the ground in early June; in fact, many trees this week had already lost all their flowers, and some parts of the trail were covered in white because of it. It felt wrong to walk on something so exquisite. The blooms are so lovely and delicate, they look like they belong on a wedding cake. Even the underside of each flower is intricate and perfect.

Here’s something called a flame azalea, also known as rhododendron. They come in other colors too, but the orange ones were really plentiful this week. In some spots, these bushes surround the trail on the left and right, with their branches having grown together about 10 feet above you, forming a sort of tunnel to walk through.

This one’s a firepink. Aren’t those petals cool? I love their shape.

I’m a little embarrassed to say that when I finally neared Sams Gap, where the A.T. intersects with a paved interstate at a trailhead parking area, I actually let out a primitive little whoop when I saw my car. I don’t think I’ve ever thought of that rusty little Altima as beautiful until today. I love the trail, but I also love leaving it after this many days. So I said goodbye to the A.T. till probably this fall.

As of today, I have 314.4 miles down, 1,855.6 to go!

A.T. Hike, Spring 2007 - Day 5,In Which I Joined Some Hippies

2007-06-09T07:35:00.000-04:00

Jerry Cabin Shelter to Hogback Ridge Shelter, 14.7 miles

The first order of business today was to summit a peak called Big Butt – now there’s a mountain I can really relate to! (Who names these things, anyway!?) At 4,750 feet, it’s the highest peak of this trip. On my way, I met a pretty sizeable turtle who was sunning himself in the middle of the trail. Here he is – unfortunately he was too shy to peek out and look at my camera.

Though it was fun getting to the top of the mountain, the real reward was in pressing on to a spring four miles past, where I was finally able to take in some much-needed water. At a shelter near the spring, I ran into four hippie types – thru-hikers who were just starting their day. As I stopped to chat with them and take a brief rest, two of them rolled their own cigarettes, another lit a stick of incense, and the fourth practiced yoga. (I am not making this up!) The whole scene reminded me of a humorous book I read recently in which a sort of uptight conservative guy finds himself “living in the woods with some beatniks” for a few months. Here I was, kind of doing the same thing, feeling all Bohemian-like and almost fitting in. I totally blew my cover, though, when the hippies happened to mention that we were in a spot with a great cell signal: I took out my phone to call Jay, and my inner Bohemian got immediately upstaged by my Midwestern Pollyanna self as I started chattering. “Hi Honey! How are the kids? How was Joe’s T-ball game? Did Maria do okay at 5th-grade camp? Have you been watering my flowers?” After I put my phone away it occurred to me I must’ve come across just like Florence Brady to these four earthy hikers. Ah well.

Turns out the hippies ended up at the same place as me tonight: Hogback Ridge Shelter. I’m glad to be with people tonight, after spending several evenings solo. Also at this shelter is an older couple named Bonnie and Phil. Being from Indiana, they bring the evening’s Midwestern Pollyanna count up to three, including me. They are in their seventies and are so adorable together. They have a very meticulous routine for cooking their dinner – they brought their own homemade backpacker food which they had dehydrated themselves, and I must admit, it looked a lot better than my reconstituted black bean soup. As I chatted with Bonnie after dinner about Michigan and my family, her eyes lit up and she asked, “You didn’t happen to write an article for the ATC last month did you?” I felt like such a celebrity! She had read the article just before beginning this trip. Even the hippies fussed over me for a few minutes.

Tomorrow will be my last day on the trail. I had intended to hike for seven days, but since my plans got all bungled due to the bear problems at Walnut Mountain, I’ll end up covering all my planned miles in six days rather than seven. I don’t mind admitting that my body is completely spent and I’m absolutely giddy about finishing early.

A.T. Hike, Spring 2007 - Day 4,In Which I Did a Poor Impression of a Billygoat

2007-06-08T20:24:00.000-04:00

Spring Mountain Shelter to Jerry Cabin Shelter, 15.4 miles

There was a very persistent mouse in my shelter last night. At one point I was lying on my stomach, looking out the front of the shelter, and the little pest ran right in front of my face, close enough that I'm quite sure I felt fur brush the tip of my nose. Due to that unnerving episode, I slept with my Petzl in my hand all night and turned it on about nine hundred times in the night to shine him out whenever he got too close.

I thought today was going to be fairly easy because in the profile on my topo map, there’s a several-mile stretch of what looks like fairly level ground. “Level” being a relative term, of course – meaning that there are certainly ascents and descents, but none of them resulting in an altitude change of more than 500 feet. What the topo map doesn’t show is that the terrain for that stretch is really not a footpath at all – it’s a series of boulders perched high atop an exposed ridge - a ridge so high and exposed, in fact, that if there is any sign of bad weather, you're supposed to instead follow a blue-blazed trail that takes you to a lower elevation beneath the tree canopy so that you don't become a lightning rod. Since the weather was perfect today, I of course opted for the ridge, not realizing at first that instead of hiking, I'd find myself “scrambling” for about two and a half hours. This is hiker vernacular for half-crawling, half-climbing like a billygoat over boulders the size of cars, your hands and feet groping wildly for any secure crevice that might keep you from cartwheeling down the side of the ridge into either Tennessee (cartwheel left) or North Carolina (cartwheel right); the trail at this point is exactly on the state line. Contributing to the drama in my case was the swinging counterweight of a 30-pound pack flopping about on my back. I was white-knuckling it the whole way during this segment, and my progress slowed to about a mile an hour. I tried to focus on the spectacular view instead of my chances of snapping a bone. Here’s what I saw to my left and to my right as I scrambled:

Finally, a grueling nine net hiking hours after starting my day, I made it to the shelter. Like last night, there is a mouse here. He made an appearance while I was eating my dinner. My biggest concern, though, is not the mouse but rather the fact that the spring near this shelter is completely dry, and I had been counting on really tanking up my water supply when I got here. I am so very thirsty, but I need to carefully conserve my water for the first six miles of my day tomorrow - first thing in the morning I have a very big climb (you know, for a change).

A.T. Hike, Spring 2007 - Day 3,In Which I Ate a Bug

2007-06-07T07:47:00.000-04:00

Deer Park Mountain Shelter to Spring Mountain Shelter, 14.2 miles

I descended from Deer Park Mountain about 6:30 this morning and was treated to some amazing views. I love being so high up on a very clear morning like this, and looking down at those swirling clouds gathered between the mountains! Click on the photo for a close-up. Believe it or not, under those clouds is an entire town (Hot Springs, NC), and to the people down there, it looked like a cloudy, gray day until the sun burned through a few hours later.

After the descent, I followed the trail through the main drag of Hot Springs, where the trail is marked on the city sidewalk by these cool inlaid symbols. Hot Springs might seem like just a sleepy little burg to the casual onlooker, but it’s definitely a storied locale for thru-hikers – they fantasize for miles about this place, because not only is it one of the few places in the eastern U.S. where you can experience natural hot mineral springs, but the town also features an outfitter, an ice cream shop, a pub, and several little places where you can rent a room and sleep in a real bed for the night. I didn’t stick around to explore, though, because I had hours of hiking ahead of me.

After you get through town, the trail takes you alongside the French Broad River (can you beat that name!?) and then attempts to inflict a slow and painful death via a steady, steep climb up to the top of Lovers Leap Rock. If that’s not enough to do you in, there’s more: a lung-burning trek to the top of Rich Mountain. It was during that particular ascent that I inhaled a bug. Saw it coming, felt it go in. Swallowed it. Didn’t care. It was a rather businesslike decision, really, to just suck it down the old hatch and keep moving. It’s just that I was so determinedly making upward progress on that mountain, and every step was so hard-earned; it seemed like far too much energy and distraction to stop and spit the thing out. I guess now that I’m a bug eater, I could qualify for being on “Survivor” – if I looked better in a bikini.

My lawnmower blister is healing nicely, but I’m worried about another one cooking on my toe - that abnormally long toe next to my big toe on my left foot. This morning I encased the entire digit in moleskin on all sides. It still hurts though, even now that I’m stopped for the night. I’m afraid to take the moleskin off to see what’s underneath. I think I’ll just leave it be and see how it feels in the morning.

I’m alone again tonight and much too tired to worry about bears.

A.T. Hike, Spring 2007 - Day 2,In Which I Met a Loon

2007-06-06T20:25:00.000-04:00

Roaring Fork Shelter to Deer Park Mountain Shelter, 14.7 miles

After the storm rolled in yesterday afternoon, it rained in torrents till about midnight, but today turned out to be a beauty day. Here’s a neat photo, courtesy of a very industrious spider who must’ve gotten an early start on her web when the air was still very moist last night. Click on the picture to see a closer view.

Summited Walnut Mountain and then Bluff Mountain this morning. No small feat, either of them. It’s really a pity that with many of these mountains, the vegetation is so tall and thick that even after you make it to the top of a really challenging peak, the view is usually obstructed by all the trees surrounding you. The shot below was the best vista I could snap from the top of Bluff Mountain.

I met my first loon on the trail today, and I don’t mean the wildlife variety. I was just coming down from the peak of Bluff Mountain when I noticed another hiker approaching from the opposite direction. He looked normal enough from a distance – late fifties, kind of Paul-Newman-ish. Then I noticed that everything he was carrying – his pack, his sleeping pad, everything – was made completely of Tyvek. I also noticed that he was barefoot – yes, completely without shoes or socks. (Loon or not, you gotta admit that’s pretty impressive. There were no roads or towns around for at least five and a half miles, so you know he hiked at least that far over a rocky, root-ridden trail without a stitch on his feet.) He immediately came a little too close and said a little too loudly: “Who are you?” At which point I thought, this is it. This is the end of me. This nutjob is going to kill me and cut me into little pieces with a Swiss army knife and leave my body in the woods for the bears to eat.

It was the first time I’ve felt threatened by another person on the trail. But as it turned out, he wasn’t dangerous at all, just quirky. His hike is part of a publicity effort – he’s pushing for legislation that would require all troops to go through a counseling program upon returning to the States, I guess in an attempt to stave off post-traumatic stress disorder (see his website, http://www.thelongwalkhome.org/ ). Interesting and noble concept, but he sure could use some help with his marketing plan, and some congeniality lessons wouldn't hurt either. Not to mention the fact that the barefoot/Tyvek getup had me ready to throw off my backpack and start doing Tae Bo moves in an effort to protect myself. The photo above is from his website, which I looked up after I got home.

Here’s my home for the night: Deer Park Mountain Shelter. I’m alone here and only slightly worried about bears. I did find a decent tree in which to hang my food, but I’m afraid an enterprising bear could probably have it down and eaten in mere minutes.

A.T. Hike, Spring 2007 - Day 1,In Which I Saw Two Bears

2007-06-05T20:06:00.000-04:00

Standing Bear Farm to Roaring Fork Shelter, 15.5 miles

My hiking has begun! It was a wicked-long day and I am toast.

I started out at 7 a.m. and about an hour into the climb up Snowbird Mountain, while walking along a switchback, I suddenly heard a lot of branches breaking and something big crashing around about 40 feet to my right. See, that’s the cool thing about bears –they’re a little scary, but at least you usually have some warning that they’re around because they’re big enough and clumsy enough that they make a lot of noise. Anyway, through the trees I saw this ball of black fur, maybe a 100-pounder, and I had apparently scared him because he made quick work of loping away from me. I watched him till I couldn’t see him any more; then I started to move on, thinking smugly, “How fun, I saw a bear my first day, and look at me – such a seasoned hiker that my heart’s not even racing.”

Then a second bear darted right in front of me, maybe 30 feet ahead, and bumbled his way up the mountain. That’s when I nearly fell over backward and my heart rate doubled. See, both bears were juveniles, which meant their mother was probably close by, and here I was, between her two darlings. Probably not the safest place to be. I quickened my pace and was all nerved up for about an hour, until I had gotten well out of whatever feeding territory of theirs I had apparently invaded.

I noticed lots of evidence of wild hogs on the trail today. There are many areas where hundreds and hundreds of Mayapples (these grow in Michigan too and look like the one in this photo) have been rooted up and scattered about, and many upturned areas of soil where the hogs have looked for truffles. I’m guessing the weather has caused a food shortage for them as well as for the bears.

Below is a view from the summit of Max Patch, which was one of the coolest sights today – I’d heard a lot about it. It’s a bald, about 4,600 ft. in elevation, and it used to be the site of an old logging camp. It’s very pretty at the top but a storm was collecting in the distance so I didn’t linger too long there. The rain started about 4 p.m. so the last half-mile of my hike was wet.

At tonight’s shelter I met two young guys who are thru-hiking at the rate of 25 miles per day (hot doggers!) and they offered to hang my food bag with theirs, to which I readily agreed. Chivalry does come in handy at times.

No blisters yet, unless you count the one on my thumb which, actually, I brought with me. I produced it while pushing the lawn mower on the day before I left. Now that’s an outdoorswoman for you – I get a blister while lawnmowing. It broke open and had started to heal by the time I hit the trail. Today it resembles a small piece of prosciutto.

I drank more than six liters of water today.

A.T. Hike, Spring 2007 - Day 0,In Which I Scrap My Carefully Planned Itinerary

2007-06-04T19:57:00.000-04:00

I’m at Standing Bear Farm, the hiker hostel just off the A.T. (same place where Cindy and I stayed for a night last year) and will get on the trail early tomorrow morning. The Steve Miller Band and I enjoyed a great drive down to Tennessee; James Taylor and Norah Jones joined in for about a hundred miles too. Thank goodness for the iPod or else I’d most certainly go catatonic being cooped up in the car by myself for so long.

Unfortunately, I found out from a few other hikers here at the hostel that in the last couple days there’s been a lot of aggressive bear activity at Walnut Mountain Shelter, which is (rather, was) my destination two nights from now. Apparently the other night a bear absconded with eleven hikers’ food bags. He also played piñata with what he thought was one giant food bag – but which was actually a hiker sleeping in a hammock just outside the shelter. Oy. I’m told the bears are very hungry right now because, due to a late cold snap and a recent drought, a lot of the berries they rely on for food did not produce very well this spring.

Anyway, hikers are being advised to stay away from that shelter for now, especially when hiking alone. This presents a problem for me, because skipping that shelter means more than doubling my planned mileage tomorrow. I had kind of looked forward to easing into my hike with a nice easy 7.5- mile day. Now it looks like it will be 15.5 miles. Crud.

A.T. Journeys Article

2007-05-26T20:38:00.000-04:00

A.T. Journeys, which is the magazine of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, published a little thing I wrote about my hiking odyssey. You can read the full text of it here.

It's my first non-work-related stuff to ever get published. So who woulda thunk I'd have writer's remorse about that?! But now that it's actually in print and has been mailed to 40,000 people, so much of it sounds so... goofy. But it felt inspired at the time that I wrote it, so there you go.

South Rim of the Grand Canyon

2007-04-08T15:11:00.000-04:00

While indulging in a long weekend in Las Vegas during spring break, Janet and I spent an amazing few hours at Grand Canyon National Park. When we signed up for this "luxury motor coach tour," I had no idea that it involved a wicked-long 4.5-hour bus ride. But I must say, despite the very bad food they served us and the really annoying humor of the bus driver, it was totally worth it. The Grand Canyon is astounding. Breathtaking. Enormous. Majestic. Actually none of those words even begin to describe it. It's like nothing I've ever seen. I need to go back there some day and backpack the switchback trail down to the canyon floor.

So. The bus drops us off at the south rim and gives us some time (not nearly enough) to hike around. First thing we see is a lovely little lookout point — crammed, of course, with hordes of sunburned, camera-toting tourists, because it's the closest viewing area to the parking lot. We shuffle through the crowd, waiting our turn to look over the edge. When we make it up to the front, we're gazing out at the canyon from the safety of the lookout point — which, by the way, features a comforting, solid metal railing all the way around the edge — and Janet spies a distant, unguarded precipice much further down the trail. In a serious, determined tone, she says, "We're going over there."

As she starts hoofing it down the trail, I follow her line of vision to the gigantic column of rock about a quarter-mile away. It's a peninsular cliff that is alarmingly narrow at the top, forming a teeny-tiny little flat part — what I would call a mere sliver of a rock table, actually. There is absolutely no railing around any of it, and there are 5,000-foot dropoffs on all three sides. This is not a place you'd find those little binocular viewers on metal stands that give you a close-up of the vista for 25 cents. "Uh... I don't know... do you think they really let people climb out there...?" I call weakly after her, wincing. "I mean, it doesn't really look like an official lookout..." But she's already twenty paces ahead of me, chirping merrily, "Hey, it can't be worse than when when we hiked to the top of Angel's Landing!" Before I have a chance to reason with her, I'm scrambling after her over the rocky trail, trying to catch up while glancing longingly back at the guard rail.

Ten minutes later, I'm at what feels like the edge of the earth. I'm pretty sure I've blocked out most of what it took to get there, but I vaguely recall crawling in a rather undignified manner on all fours for some distance, until reaching Janet at the point where the photo above was snapped. What this shot doesn't reveal (thankfully) is that my heart is racing at about 250 beats per minute and I'm about to hyperventilate. And believe me, there's a reason why I'm crouching — I was pretty sure that if I stood fully up, a swift gust would sweep me neatly over the edge, affording me what some call "the one-minute Grand Canyon tour." And that would be the end of me.

This next shot, though it looks nearly as scary as the one above, was actually much less death-defying. See, just off to my right (but out of the view of the camera) is a large, flat, secure space that I could easily throw myself onto should I feel a surge of vertigo coming on. Trust me, I wouldn't have hesitated to do it.

By the time we made our way back to the real trail — I mean the one that normal people walk on — I was so hopped up on adrenaline that I felt like I had just run a 10k. Can I count that as a workout, I wonder?

Potawatami in the Spring

2007-03-18T14:48:00.000-04:00

Great hike today! Pete and Cindy had the kiddos overnight, so Jay and I took advantage of the time by getting out on the Poto for most of the day. It was a little blustery and there was still some snow on the ground here and there. We didn't do the whole 18 miles, but we did accomplish a pretty respectable 12-mile loop. It was a good breaking-in of two important items: (1) Buster's new backpack and (2) my new Merrell trail shoes.

We procured the doggie backpack because the dingo's going to need to schlep his own food and water this summer when we hike through the Porcupine Mountains. Today was a good test for that. He was kind enough to carry our lunch on one side of his pack, and a water bottle on the other. Total payload: about three pounds. Good boy. He made it through our 12-mile day just fine, which tells me that our hikes in the Porkies (which will probably be shorter than 12 miles) will be a cakewalk for him.

The Merrells, well, they did just okay. This is a new adventure in footwear for me... I am moving away from my heavy, leather, Vibram-soled Salomon hiking boots, and attempting to go ultralight with these featherweight hiking shoes. I've had the shoes for a couple months but today was the first time I'd worn them for any kind of distance. I'm still slightly concerned about what they're doing to the back of my right heel. They didn't produce any blisters today, but there was definitely a hotspot back there by the time we were done. I'm banking on my baby-thin heel skin toughening up a bit between now and June.

Seen on patagonia.com

2007-03-16T18:26:00.000-04:00

I'm setting my sights on my next AT segment. In June I'll do another 80 miles or so on the Tennessee/North Carolina border. As I was perusing the superhighway of backpacking equipment available online, I found the following quote on the Patagonia website. What a perfect statement of why I love backpacking.

"We enjoy silent, human-powered sports done in nature, where the reward involves no audience and no prize other than hard-won grace. These entail risk, require soul and invite reflection. They bring us closer to the natural world and to ourselves."

Joe's First Backpacking Trip

2006-09-08T14:07:00.000-04:00

Joe's been wanting for a while now to try out backpacking, and this weekend we finally made time to get that boy on the trail. This being his first time, the theme of our adventure was "easy and fun." Maria (who, after backpacking the Nordhouse Dunes trail along Lake Michigan a couple of years ago, considers herself quite an expert hiker) helped me map out a short overnighter on the Potowatami, with our destination being the campsite at the edge of Blind Lake. It was just the three of us, since Jay was up north backpacking the Porcupine Mountains with some buddies.

We parked at Mark and Diane's house and picked up the trail near the bridge at the end of Crescent Drive. It was less than two miles to the campsite, but there's a significant climb right at the beginning of this hike, and a significant drop near the end. Made it feel like we were working some, so that's good. Joe had a great time, even though we outfitted him with some very makeshift equipment. Looks like it's time to log onto the REI website and start procuring that boy some gear!

The lure of roasted marshmallows definitely increased everyone's interest level in taking this trip! And it was perfect that the Blind Lake campsite has this awesome firepit where you can make a nice little campfire without too much trouble. We even scored a burning log from an empty neighboring campsite, which made it really easy to get some flames going. Someone had apparently had a fire there the night before and we noticed there were still some smoldering logs in it. (We won't mention that the children nearly witnessed their mother burn half her hand off, trying to procure the firewood from the other campsite and drag it over to ours.)

Mark and Diane boated over after dinner time to check on us and hang out for a little while. Uncle Mark entertained a wide-eyed Joe with all sorts of stories about wildebeests that live in these forests (thank you, Mark) while Maria discussed Harry Potter with Aunt Diane. They headed home a little before dark and the three of us plus Buster got settled into our tent.

This was Buster's first backpacking trip too. He did okay until about 9 p.m., when someone across the lake started setting off fireworks. Buster has this phobia about any loud noises that resemble thunder. They turn him into a drooling, trembling mess, and in this particular instance, also produced a bad case of flatulence. (It didn't help that, a couple hours earlier, Buster had sneaked off with a large bag of our yogurt raisins and consumed them all before we realized they and he were missing.) If our tent hadn't been staked down, that baby would've gone up like the Hindenburg. Jay continues to express his gratefulness that he happened to miss this particular trip.

Overall, though, this adventure was a big success. I can't wait to give the kids a more substantial backpacpking experience. It's definitely on our list for next summer!

Lower Tahquamenon Falls

2006-08-02T19:02:00.000-04:00

Remember my grandiose idea of taking the kids on a big hike at least once a week this summer? Well, my nicely laid plans got foiled by Joe's broken tibia. At the end of April he had a wipeout on his bike which landed us at Chelsea Hospital for several hours and resulted in my boy lying immobile on the couch for eight straight days. Not exactly conducive to hiking. Once his leg was in a cast, over the next seven weeks he progressed from the couch to a walker, and then to crutches. It was nearly the end of June before his cast came off and he was able to amble around without restrictions — gingerly at first, but quickly ramping up to his usual whirling-dervish pace. And let me tell you, he was good and ready to make up for seven weeks of lost time.

It was the perfect time to head north.

We had planned this trip earlier in the year and were thankful that it coincided nicely with Joe's leg healing. Two days after the cast came off, we drove up to Mackinaw City and set up our home base there at a little beachside cabin, from which we could see both the Mackinac Bridge and Mackinac Island. After spending a day and a half swimming and frolicking, we slipped into our Tevas and headed even further north for a day trip to Tahquamenon Falls.

After we crossed the Big Mac (which, incidentally, is the world's longest suspension bridge), the drive was peaceful and remote in that Upper-Peninsula kind of way. We spent a good hour traveling down a two-laner lined with righteous-looking forests on either side, seeing only a handful of other motorists going to or fro. Except for the forests, the two biggest attractions during the drive were (1) a dead porcupine on the side of the road (yes, we did stop to gawk; you will thank me that there are no pictures), and (2) a town called Paradise (quite paradoxically named, by the way) which boasts an ice cream shop called, cleverly, the Troll Trap. Don't worry if you don't get the joke — it's kind of a Michigan thing.

When we got to the park, the four of us plus the hound got in a boat and rowed across the Tahquamenon River to a little island in the middle of the lower falls. There we found a winding path to the falls and set about the serious business of exploring.

It was a lot like what we experienced when we hiked the Virgin River in Utah — the best part being that you can get right in the water and wade for miles! Once you pass the first and biggest cascade (shown below — click on the picture to get some perspective of its size) at a large observation deck, the remaining drops in the lower falls are very small, gentle, and inviting. In fact it's not too crazy of a thought to actually hike all the way up the river and get a good view of the much larger and grandiose upper falls. For a fleeting and ambitious moment we thought we might do just that. After all, most spots in the river between upper and lower are only about six or eight inches deep — plenty manageable for even the shortest-legged member of our party (Buster). But the distance to the upper falls is eight miles, and considering we covered only about two miles in a little over an hour, we decided to head back.

This is a great hike for kids, because what's not to like about getting into a rowboat, rowing to an island, and splashing around a bit in some waterfalls? We would go back again in a heartbeat. Even if we didn't get to see a dead porcupine.

Cosby Knob Shelter to Standing Bear Farm

2006-06-03T22:05:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 10.4 miles

It rained all night, but at least the rain noise covered up the cacophony of snoring from all those men. We were up, fed, packed, and hiking out a little before 7, a new record for us. It wasn't a moment too soon. That was probably the most unpleasant shelter experience I've ever had. I will confess to taking a little bit of guilty pleasure in making a small ruckus this morning as we packed up. I didn't feel at all bad that we might be disturbing the sleep of the steak-eating snorers. Way I saw it, it was paybacks for the previous 10 hours.

By 8 it started clearing up and turned into a really beautiful day -- a great way to end a great week. The sun streaming in through the trees was such a beautiful sight. It felt and looked like we were walking through a rainforest, only without the muggy heat.

Summitting Mt. Cammerer this morning was a little bittersweet, as it was the last big climb we'd experience in Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Here's a really great view from the side of that mountain -- aren't those clouds amazing?

We took the remaining downhill miles pretty quickly, enjoying the mountain laurel blooming along the way, and lunching at Davenport Gap Shelter. After that it was only one more mile till we finished the park, and four miles to our car. Here we are at Davenport Gap, which is the end of the GSMNP section of the AT:

Of the remaining few miles, about two of them followed an amazing riverside trail along the Pigeon River.

The big surprise of the day was that we had another climb to get back to Standing Bear Farm -- I hadn't really planned on that! My topo map only took us through Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and all I knew was that Standing Bear was three miles past the park border. Who knew it was uphill!? But we took it on the chin and muscled through to the end. It sure was a beautiful sight when we finally came to the intersection of the AT and Waterville School Road...
...and an even more beautiful sight when Cindy's Trailblazer came into view. We are now on our way to a hot shower, a huge dinner, and real beds with real sheets and real pillows.

Tricorner Knob Shelter to Cosby Knob Shelter

2006-06-02T21:51:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 7.7 miles

It was very cold here last night; I slept in two pairs of pants, my fleece, and my raincoat. I could see my breath this morning. The journal inside the shelter indicated that there had been two feet of snow here just a couple weeks ago. I've read that this is the coldest area of Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Mt. Guyot, which we summitted this morning, is only 20 feet lower than Clingmans Dome, but because of its position, it gets more exposure to extreme weather.

The bruised part of my arm is killing me. It is turning all different shades of purple and black. Nice.

I was thankful for a short mileage day today, especially because it rained a lot again throughout the day. We hiked through some beautiful wild rhododendron thickets on the way to Cosby Knob. We arrived at the shelter around lunchtime and I enjoyed a delicious two-hour nap plus ample time to read and relax. My feet appreciated the break.

And thank goodness we got here early enough to stake out a little corner of the shelter, because it is Friday night, and a slew of weekend-warrior type men showed up about 5 p.m. after hiking in from Davenport Gap. They actually brought with them a huge hunk of steak and cooked it in the shelter since it was raining cats and dogs outside. The sight of someone pulling raw meat out of a stinky backpack and then cooking it up about four feet from my head was enough to turn my stomach. And I couldn't quit thinking about how these men had just infused the entire shelter with enough food odors to attract probably every bear north of Clingmans Dome.

It kept raining all evening, and more hikers kept coming, some of them thru-hikers who were wrapping up a 20-mile day. You can't really say "oh sorry, there's really no more room" when the rain is coming down in torrents, so we just kept squeezing in. All told, I believe we currently have 18 people crammed into a shelter that is supposed to accommodate 12. It is quite uncomfortable. We're going to blow out of here as early as possible tomorrow morning.

Icewater Springs Shelter to Tricorner Knob Shelter

2006-06-01T18:25:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 12.6 miles

The sunrise this morning at Icewater Springs was lovely. Though the highest peak of our trip was yesterday, we are still really high up. There is a strong scent of pine in this altitude because more conifers seem to grow at the higher elevations. It's a wonderful smell.

And speaking of smell, I'm happy to say that hygiene is on the upswing. Last night just before going to bed, I sponged the grime and sweat off my body and switched into my second set of hiking clothes. Typically, for a one-week trip, you bring only two sets of hiking clothes: one to wear for the first three or four days, and one to wear for the second three or four days. Yes, I did write that correctly: you wear the same clothes for days. You can imagine how close to the earth you feel (and smell) after hiking and sweating in the same garments for that long. But extra clothing equals extra weight, and there's no room for frivolous ounces in an already heavy pack. Princess that I am, I also bring my "black ensemble" for changing into at the end of each day: a lightweight black long-sleeved capilene shirt and long-john pants. These offer dryness and warmth -- which is important because hypothermia can happen even in spring and summer if you get caught in rain and your body temperature dips too low.

Also on the topic of clothing: this time I brought with me a homemade hiking kilt that I made out of ripstop quick-dry nylon. Kilts are all the rage among female and male hikers these days. In fact, just yesterday we saw a guy wearing a kilt on the trail. Mine's not working out though. It's comfortable and all, but it's too long to stay clean -- it drags in the wet grass and gets caught on stuff. Any shorter, though, and I'd feel like it offers too much potential for flashing other hikers. So I won't bring it again. For this trip, I'm putting it to use as a pillowcase by wrapping it around my frontpack, which doubles as a pillow.

Today's highlight was Charlie's Bunion. (You gotta love a mountain that's named after a foot deformity! Especially after spending the last several days abusing our feet with all this climbing!) Getting to the top reminded me of hiking Angel's Landing in Utah a couple years ago. It was pretty breathtaking. The photo of Cindy and I was taken at the top. It's hard to appreciate how high up we were; I wish I would've photographed this spot from a few different angles.

Here's that hazy view that the Smokies are famous for. This was taken from the top of Charlie's Bunion.

And here's a great view I snapped about a mile later, showing the backside of Charlie's Bunion.

This afternoon it started to rain pretty intensely and we got soaked on the way to Tricorner Knob. I still don't have any blisters, but I'm feeling a lot of hotspots from all the friction produced by wet feet sloshing inside of wet boots. My feet were absolutely pruney by the time I took my boots off at the shelter tonight. I'm sad to say, I think I need to lay these boots to rest when I get home. They've lived a long and happy life, but they're really starting to fall apart.

I slipped on a wet log this afternoon and I went down really hard. I cut my leg and hand, and I'm afraid I really injured the back of my arm. You know that spot where I should have a sinewy little tricep but which is actually pretty soft and fleshy? Well, when I fell it got slammed (badly) between a rock and my pack. I think I'm going to have a gigantic bruise there; it's quite sore. I'm lucky I didn't break anything, especially since our location at the moment is considered to be the most remote shelter area in the park. Actually, pretty much everyplace in this park feels remote and wild. Unlike previous sections of the AT, there are very few places where you feel at all close to civilization. In the entire stretch of Great Smoky Mountain National Park, the AT only crosses a road twice, and both of those times were yesterday. Once at Clingmans Dome and the other at Newfound Gap. As Dan the Bear Man put it, "You should try not to get hurt; it takes a long time to get help. Sometimes we have to carry dead people out of here."

Speaking of Newfound Gap, it felt so weird to emerge from the wild and see a parking lot, a rest area, sidewalks, and people! We felt like a freak show. We were covered with dead bugs, grime, and sweat. We drew curious looks from more than a few tourists. It felt good to get back into the woods.

Double Spring Gap Shelter to Icewater Springs Shelter

2006-05-31T18:05:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 13.8 miles

It wasn't exactly great timing, the fact that our longest hiking day came on the heels of our night with the bear. We had gotten maybe half the sleep that we normally would've. But our itinerary had no wiggle room, so we were up and out at dawn this morning, our first hurdle being Clingmans Dome, the highest point on the entire Appalachian Trail. In this photo, we're about a quarter of a mile from the summit, and I'm trying to negotiate a steep and rocky part of the ascent.

For breakfast, in addition to my usual protein bar, I had my most prized menu item: a cup of applesauce. It was a good day to carb-load, since the climb ahead was hard. Plus, better to consume the heaviest item in my food bag on a hard day than to carry it!

The trees at this elevation show a lot of signs of the harsh elements. A lot of them look like this stick of a pine tree -- ravaged by extreme heat in summer and extreme cold and wind in winter.

We summitted Clingmans Dome at 8:45 a.m. and it was such a rush. It really redeemed the disappointment I had felt over our previous AT trip fizzling. The morning was clear and beautiful, and there was not a soul at the observation tower. I was really glad for a moment of peace up there, because sometimes that tower can get really clogged with tourists. This is one of the few points in the park where the trail intersects with civilization. An access road allows tourists to drive within half a mile of the summit, and then they can walk a paved path all the way to the top.

At the top of the observation tower I finally got a strong enough signal to phone home, though it took several attempts. It was so sweet to hear Jay's voice. No matter that he was in the middle of an interview at work and, once off the phone, probably had to explain to the poor interviewee what a kook he has for a wife! We couldn't talk long, but long enough for me to find out that Joe's little virus had run its course and that he and Maria were doing fine. I miss those three terribly.

We are at Icewater Springs now, with several other hikers, having made it through the longest day of our hike. All of us had to hike the last couple miles (which were very rugged) in the rain. I am filthy and sweaty. Everyone stinks but no one really cares. It's remarkable the way you lose your sense of decorum out here. Case in point: Tonight there were several lengths of rope strung across the shelter, with everyone's stinky, sweaty underwear and socks hanging from them. Mine were right up there along with everyone else's.

Night of the Living Bear

2006-05-31T10:13:00.000-04:00

I'm including the following events as a separate entry because the hours between nightfall on May 30 and the earliest part of May 31 turned into such an adventure that it felt like a whole separate day!

After dinner, Dan the Bear Man set up the bear snare behind the shelter. The snare consists of a clamp and a metal cable secured to a tree, all hidden with branches and baited with a can of tuna. Bear Man explained that bears love tuna, but that he sometimes uses bacon because bears are really attracted to that too. (As he was saying this, I realized with horror that my food bag contains several foil packets of tuna and a large shrink-wrapped package of pre-cooked bacon. Note to self: consider bringing some other forms of protein next time.)

The idea is, when the bear goes for the bait, the snare clamps his leg and restrains him long enough to be darted with a sedative. The drug makes him limp but still somewhat conscious. While in this compromised state, the bear gets tagged and measured. Since bears hate to be vulnerable and manhandled, the whole experience is hopefully so negative that the bear stays away from the area where all this occurs. However, if the bear does choose to keep coming back and posing a threat to hikers, the Park Service's only other option is to drug him again, and then physically relocate him to another part of the park! Picture four Park Service guys carrying a comatose bear on a stretcher, up and over miles of mountains. This really happens sometimes!

After the buildup of watching the snare being built and participating in all this bear talk, I was pretty nerved up. And all we had left to do all evening was sit around and wait for nightfall. I tried to read a book I had brought with me, but I found myself just sitting there staring at the (now flimsy-looking) chain link fence on our shelter, wondering what kind of force it could withstand. While we sat around, Bear Man passed around his night-vision goggles for us to look at. The goggles lent an eerie green cast to everything, but they really did provide amazing ability to see in the dark. It was especially cool to look up at the clear night sky and see zillions more stars than our normally feeble eyes are capable of noticing.

About dusk, two more Park Service guys showed up for the stakeout. They too would be spending the night at the shelter, to help with the bear. This was turning into quite a large-scale sting operation. All of us -- three Bear Men and six hikers -- burrowed into our sleeping bags about 9 p.m., wondering what the next few hours would bring. We heard coyotes howling as we were lying there trying to go to sleep.

I dozed until 11 p.m., when I suddenly heard Bear Man #2 frantically whispering: "DAN! DAN! DAN!" Apparently he had heard the snare activate. Dan and the other two Bear Men immediately jumped out of their sleeping bags and into their boots, and went trotting out back. All six hikers (including me) followed suit, headlamps beaming, to see a 350-pound black bear thrashing around in the snare and doing the best voice impression of Chewbacca that you've ever heard. They shot him with a dart full of sedative and he quieted down... for a moment. Then he started thrashing and yowling again. Another dart. Another brief moment of quiet. More thrashing. This cycle went on and on till they had used up seven darts -- the amount that would normally be used on a six hundred pound animal! None of the three Bear Men could figure out how the bear could stay that worked up with all that sedative in its system. They (and we) were relieved when he finally lay down and his breathing slowed a bit.

While the bear was sedated, we got to photograph him and touch him. His fur was very soft, like a dog, only longer.
Then the three Park Service guys went to work cooling him down. He had gotten so agitated during the sedation ordeal that his body temperature was quite high, and Bear Man was worried that this might result in a seizure. So we brought our water bottles and they started dumping cold water on his fur until he cooled off a bit. (For the record, the water bottle in this picture is the same one I drank out of during this trip!) Once his temperature was under control, the next task was to tag the bear's ear and take a whole bunch of measurements for the Park Service records. That's about the time I finally went to bed. It was a little past 1 a.m.

Once the sedative started wearing off and the bear came to, Bear Man and his friends basically ran him off, and he was glad to get the heck out of there. By then it was after 2:30 a.m. As far as we know, he didn't come back that night.

Derrick Knob Shelter to Double Spring Gap Shelter

2006-05-30T16:42:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 7.2 miles

A much shorter day today mileage-wise, but it stretched into a nearly 6-1/2 hour trek because of rain. It was beautiful all morning, but just as we stopped for a quick break at Silers Bald Shelter, a substantial storm blew in, so we ended up staying there for like two hours. It kind of put the brakes on a pretty well-paced day, but oh well. We were thankful that we didn't get soaked. We waited till the worst of the rain was over, then pushed on through our last two miles to Double Spring Gap while it was still sprinkling.

I had feral pigs on my mind today because of the two other hikers' boar sightings yesterday. Those animals scare me, probably even more than bears. They're reputed to be very unpredictable. We saw lots of cloven-hoof footprints in the mud today, and big patches where the pigs had rooted up dirt and leaves, looking for food. I worried about running into hogzilla every time there was a bend in the trail. A ranger told us that the pigs are a terrible nuisance because they're an invasive, non-native species with no natural predators, and they compete for food with the bears and the deer. They also eat all kinds of rare and endangered plants, including wildflowers and beech saplings. Apparently the pigs were introduced to this area accidentally when a handful of them escaped from a game preserve in Georgia several decades ago. They multiplied like rabbits and now they're all over the Smokies. The Park Service kills as many of them as they can, in an attempt at pig population control.

This morning I was running dangerously low on TP. I realized after we hit the trail that I only packed half the tissue that I intended! Crisis was averted, however, when I put on my rain parka this afternoon and found an entire package of Kleenex in the pocket. Woot! Must've left it there last weekend when we hiked the Poto.

Still no blisters, despite hiking through wet weeds and mud puddles this afternoon. My boots seem to be leaking quite prolifically, though, which does make for some discomfort. I don't think Gore-Tex boot linings are all they're cracked up to be.

We have been trying frequently to phone Jay and Pete, but still cannot get a signal. We had hoped we might get cell reception at the top of Silers Bald (here is Cindy at the top, cell phone in hand!) but it didn't work.

The shelter where we're staying tonight is one of the few in the park that still has a chain-link fence across the front. At one time, all the shelters in the park had this feature, with the intent of protecting hikers from bears at night. But the fences apparently made people feel a little too safe, because many started keeping their food bags with them overnight in the shelters instead of hanging them from the bear cables provided nearby. (Duh!) Then, in a really remarkable lapse of common sense, some began actually feeding bears through the shelter fence! All this, of course, compounded the bears' interest in hanging out at shelters. They learned to come around at dusk for their nightly feedings, and they started getting surly when hikers didn't pony up their goodies.

After a while of battling the bear problem, the Park Service decided to try removing the fences from just a couple of shelters. Hikers who visited those shelters obviously felt a stronger sense of responsibility for their own welfare, took care of their food properly as a result, and the bear problems at those shelters stopped. Now the Park Service has removed most of the fences.

I'm glad, however, that tonight's shelter still has a fence. Because when we arrived this afternoon, we were greeted by a Park Service guy named Dan, who has a gun, a snare, and night vision goggles. Dan's main job is to hunt and kill the wild pigs that live in the park. But tonight, he is Dan the Bear Man. He's here to corner and sedate a bear who has been frequenting this shelter and causing problems. It might be an eventful evening.

Four other hikers are here tonight.

Here are Cindy and I, nervously awaiting nightfall in front of our shelter, and wondering if the bear will show up.

Mollies Ridge Shelter to Derrick Knob Shelter (and my first bear sighting!)

2006-05-29T19:11:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 11. 7 miles

You know how that one woman at Standing Bear Farm called the Smoky Mountain portion of the AT "very, very rugged"? Well, she was right. It is tough. Really tough. Today was even tougher than yesterday, which I didn't expect. And not just because the distance was greater. It's that we were constantly climbing or descending, and the grade was never gentle. In fact, I learned that the second half of our hike today (from Spence Field to Derrick Knob) is closed to horses, because they can't handle the terrain. Which begs the question: if a horse can't handle it, can I handle it?

There were a lot of really huge snails on the trail in the morning. I kept worrying I was going to step on them.

The big thrill today (and a great distraction from the difficulty of the trail) was that we actually saw a bear! It was the coolest thing... we started hiking early, when the ground was still wet and the sun wasn't fully streaming through the trees, and for whatever reason we both felt a little skittish and jumpy. We actually joked about having "bear vibes" -- feeling like there was constantly something around the next tree, watching us. And then, after hiking about half an hour, I noticed some pretty unmistakable paw prints in the mud on the trail. A little later, we passed another hiker coming from the opposite direction, who told us he had actually seen a bear about half a mile earlier! So we were really scoping out the woods as we hiked, and sure enough, before long we saw the real deal. He was a little guy, probably about 150 or 200 pounds. Not a baby, but probably not an adult, which made us think: is his mother nearby? We didn't stick around to find out, or even to take pictures. He was too far away to get a good shot anyway -- probably 100 yards off, through the trees. So as he bumbled along, looking for something to eat, we cranked it up a notch and hiked briskly away, pretty pleased about catching a glimpse of him.

We summitted Rockytop, Thunderhead Mountain, and then Briars Knob, and the view from each of these peaks was pretty amazing. Even though none of these summits are called "balds," it seems to me that they could qualify. Here's a shot from near the top of Thunderhead -- doesn't it look rather bucolic? Park-like almost? Hard to believe from this picture that we had just ascended to over 5,500 feet! Other than the fact that my heart was about to leap out of my chest because of the intensity of the climb, it almost felt like we were taking in an afternoon at County Farm Park in Ann Arbor. It wouldn't have seemed at all out of place to see an elderly gentleman in a cardigan walking a miniature poodle.

In the afternoon, it seemed like we went forever without seeing any milestones, and as we came upon a sign that we thought was going to say "Derrick Knob Shelter" (which was the end of our hike for the day) we were quite chagrined to see that it said "Sugartree Gap." Translation: another 1.2 miles to go! Uphill!

We made it. We're fatigued, but done.

Same guys at the shelter tonight as last night. Two of them had an encounter with wild pigs today, so between that story and our bear sighting, there was some pretty good conversation over dinner tonight.

Fontana Dam Visitor Center to Mollies Ridge Shelter

2006-05-28T18:19:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 11 miles
It was a pretty grueling day, but we're still standing. It started with a two-hour shuttle ride with Curtis, which was exhausting in its own right. Like all shuttle drivers, Curtis is quite the character. He doesn't seem to have an "off" button. Above is a picture of him with his shuttle van.

We arrived at Fontana Dam Visitor Center about 9, where we used a real potty for the last time, topped off our water bottles, and filled out our backcountry hiking permit. By 9:30 we were off. After crossing the dam, we started tackling the monstrous climb up Shuckstack, the first obstacle. It was wicked hard. But we made it to the top, and beyond, all the way to Mollies Ridge Shelter. It took about seven and a half hours. I feel like if we can make it through this day, we can surely make it through the ones ahead -- even the thirteener on Wednesday.

Mid-morning, we came upon a mama pheasant sitting right on the trail, and when she flew off, we saw one of her babies run off in the other direction. As we passed, she chastised us pretty loudly until we were probably 200 yards down the trail.

Two deer wandered very close to our shelter tonight. They are so big that I thought they might even be some form of elk or something. They made me a little nervous. They have velvet antlers and seem to have no fear of people.

Four other hikers are at our shelter tonight. Two guys from Florida and two others from someplace sort of local (I think somewhere in Tennessee). They are all quite respectful and nice. You know, it's interesting -- the overwhelming majority of hikers are men, but even among the solo ones, I've never run into anyone creepy on the trail. It feels very safe here.

Regarding my ponderings from Saturday night:

I decided to wear my Salomon boots. Go big or go home.
I did bring my extra one-liter water bottle, and am really glad I did. I've needed it.
I left the tent behind. Living dangerously I guess.
My knee has spontaneously healed itself. I'm grateful. No knee pain at all.

On the Eve of Hiking the Smokies

2006-05-27T09:34:00.000-04:00

Well, so begins our spring trip to the Smokies. Cindy and I had an uneventful drive down here... till the end. We got within about a mile of Standing Bear Farm (the hiker hostel where we'll spend the night tonight) and couldn't figure out where to turn next. We found ourselves on the side of a mountain, driving past a few shacks that I'm pretty sure were used in the filming of Deliverance. We thought about asking for directions but honestly feared for our safety. It was starting to get dark, and I pictured us knocking on the door of one of the shacks and being threatened and chased by a crazy mountain man, rifle in one hand and jug of moonshine in the other, trailed by a mangey rabid dog. So we switched the Trailblazer into four-wheel drive and sprayed gravel all the way back down to the interstate, where we could get a cell signal and call Curtis, the proprietor of Standing Bear. He got us pointed in the right direction and we arrived around 7:30 p.m.

Standing Bear Farm is about one notch above the Deliverance houses. But at least there are some clean bunks and a privy, and a dry place to lay our heads. And Curtis, who's sort of an ageing hippy, seems safe and friendly enough. Here's a picture of the bunkhouse where we're sleeping tonight. We're going to leave Cindy's truck here for the duration of our trip. Tomorrow morning Curtis is going to shuttle us over to Fontana Dam to start our hike.

For the last week I've felt a vague sense of unease about whether I can actually do this trip. I've had frequent thoughts that I have no business taking on this kind of challenge, and that I'm nowhere near sturdy enough to pull this off! My unease graduated into full-blown trepidation this evening as we chatted with a few other hikers staying at Standing Bear. One of them, named Bill, had just finished hiking Great Smoky Mountain National Park and moaned quite a bit about how hard it had been. His thirty-pound spare tire made me wonder if this was the first exercise he's gotten in a long time. That and his dinner of creme-filled sugar wafers, Snickers, and a large bottle of Coke helped me to (at first) discount pretty much everything he had to stay. But to my horror, another hiker who had also just finished the park -- a lithe, fit, middle-aged woman named Wendy -- backed up the cookie eater 100%. She called the park "very, very rugged." Crap.

I called Jay tonight to let him know we arrived here safely. I was really upset to find out that Joe is sick with a fever and a headache -- some sort of virus. I was even more upset that I lost the call before we could finish talking. The cell signal here is terribly patchy and I really wish I could have just five more minutes on the phone with him. But I keep trying to re-connect and nothing's working.

Things I'm pondering tonight (when I'm not fretting about Joe):

Is my right knee going to make it? Like an idiot, I chose this week to double the length of my usual run. Instead of running three miles, I ran six. Twice. And my knee has been aching over it since Thursday. I am seriously worried that what happened to Monika on our last trip will happen to me.
Should I wear my Merrell hiking shoes (which are short, cute, and light)? Or my Salomon hiking boots (which are huge, heavy, and burly)? I'm thinking the boots.
Should we bring tents? Doing so adds two more pounds to my pack weight. We are confirmed to stay at hiking shelters throughout the trip, so we shouldn't need tents. But if there's an emergency that prevents us from keeping to our itinerary...
Is 64 ounces of water enough to carry at one time? Other hikers have told us that water sources between shelters are sparse (even though the AT data book indicates otherwise). Wondering if I should bring along my extra 1-liter bottle.

Mother's Day Hike

2006-05-14T17:21:00.000-04:00

Part of my Mother's Day present this year was 12 miles on the Potowatami Trail. Cindy and I hiked a few hours while Jay and Pete occupied the kids. The intent was to use this day partly as a getaway but also as a sort of final attempt at preparing for our Appalachian Trail trip, which is looming large before us. We leave in less than a week. So we both wore our packs today while we hiked, and I must admit, mine felt heavy, even at under 25 pounds. I am trying desperately to go as ultralight as possible, but to really accomplish that I'm going to have to start replacing some of my old gear -- which is impractical this time around. So I'm working with what I have, and cutting down to the bare minimum. I am even taking my external frame backpack this time which, though it looks a little retro, is almost four pounds lighter than my internal frame. We'll see how things go with that.

I'm a little nerved up about the Smokies trip. There are a lot of bears there. And the terrain is rough. I feel like a weenie. I hope I make it.

Peach Mountain on the Last Day of Winter

2006-03-20T14:00:00.000-05:00

There is no more beautiful sight than kids and dogs in the woods! We enjoyed a great little walk today in the Peach Mountain area (also known as Stinchfield Woods) with our friend Erik Larsen, two of his kiddos (Sam and Katie), and their enormous dog Spencer. Sam and Katie's mom, Christy, and brand-new baby brother James stayed back at their house, since the baby was napping and it was pretty windy and chilly.

We entered at a gate off of Stinchfield Woods Road, which was new to us (we usually park across the street from the animal clinic on North Territorial Road and walk up the clinic's driveway to the gravel pit). It was nice to explore a new entrance and a side of the woods that we don't normally see. And it was delightful to see the kids run and frolic and generally soak up that magic feeling that only comes from being away from pavement and noise and technology!

Buster was a tamer version of his usual wild self. I think he was on his best behavior since he was in the company of a dog that is more than three times his size. I've never seen him quite so demure.

What a great way to celebrate the end of winter. On my summer to-do list is to get my little monkeys out hiking at least once a week. And I mean really hiking — not just strolling down the asphalt sidewalk at Hudson Mills (though that's nice in its own way too). Maybe we'll even shoot for a different hiking destination each week... might as well dream big!

In other hiking news, plans are coming together for my next AT adventure, which is only a couple months away. I'm very excited that Cindy's coming along again this time, and we have grandiose ideas of starting and finishing Great Smoky Mountain National Park! Girl power! We are, of course, wildly excited. I've started working out in my typical maniacal fashion, concentrating especially hard on the body part that took the worst beating last time: my very mushy quadriceps. They're appalling, really. In fact, last Thursday I did a "tall box" workout (a la "The Firm") that included a lot of stepping and lunging, and it nearly crippled me. Just guess how many days it took for me to be able to walk and sit like a normal person. Not one. Not two. Not three. Yes, four. Lactic acid is a powerful thing.

Dolph Park on a Sad Day in the Fall

2005-10-23T16:32:00.000-04:00

Our friends Sue and Mark were visiting for the weekend, and Maria and Joe were crazy-excited about taking three-year-old Brendan on a "kid hike." So we packed into the station wagon — four adults, three kids, and the Dingo — and headed to the nature trails at Dolph Park.

Sue and Mark have made it a tradition to come up each fall from that otherworldly region known as The South, and their visit is usually punctuated with a lot of cooking and eating, uncontrolled laughter, and fun excursions to places like apple orchards and cider mills. This time, though, their visit was laced with sadness, as only a week prior they had lost their two-year-old niece, Emily. She died in her sleep — a tragic, unforeseen, inexplicable death. Needless to say, this event cast a sad heaviness on our weekend together.

The death of this child — though I had never even met her — caused me to look at Joe and Maria completely differently. Instead of allowing the mundane stress of the daily grind to cloud my vision, I saw my own two little beasts for what they truly are: beautiful, amazing gifts with whom I am privileged to share this life. Needless to say, this weekend I found myself yelling less and hugging more. Jay and I both drank in their silliness and playfulness. Instead of rushing Maria along the trail at Dolph Park, we watched with delight as she recorded in a notebook all the little details about our hike and the things we saw.

And we didn't care a bit that Joe's clothes and hair became infused with dirt when he lay down in the middle of the leaf-covered trail, swept his arms and legs back and forth wildly, and bellowed "I'm making a leaf angel, mama!" (Look carefully at the photo of him here and you'll see his angel.) I wish I could bottle this feeling of thankfulness, because there are just no guarantees regarding how long we get to enjoy these sweet gifts.

I know Mark and Sue were feeling the same, only more so, because for them, Emily's death obviously hit much closer to home. I know their hearts will ache over this loss for a long, long time. But in the meantime, they are loving and appreciating their own little guy (evidence below!) and doing it with gusto.

My Consolation Prize: "Poto Con Dingo"

2005-10-08T12:35:00.000-04:00

Potowatami Trail, 17.5 miles

I'm now convinced that my dog will follow me anywhere. Today Buster did the entire 17.5-mile loop of the Potowatami Trail with me, and he still had a little spunk to spare.

Since Cindy and Monika and I had arrived home two days early from the AT, I realized Thursday night that I had an entire Friday stretching before me like a blank slate. Any mom knows that this kind of thing is about as rare as a Hale-Bopp sighting, so I decided to take advantage of it. Instead of plowing through the pile of mail, or cleaning the house, or sifting through the inbox in my Yahoo account, I put the dingo in the car and we drove out to Waterloo State Recreation Area for a good long hike.

After all, you can take the girl away from the trail, but you can't take the trail away from the girl.

Since my body was already accustomed to some abuse from three days on the AT, this was the easiest Poto hike I've done yet! It took just under five and a half hours, and it was delightful.

Some of the fall colors were emerging and these red leaves really caught my eye. (I can smugly say that Jay would never have been able to get that shot—but only because his colorblindness prevents him from seeing the difference between red and green!)

I'm thankful for the time and space to get out today, because I don't think I'll have another opportunity to hike the whole Potowatami again before the snow flies.

I'm also thankful for the way it grounded me. Time in the woods is time to think and pray, and the end result is that I'm feeling better and better about our decision to stop the AT hike early. It was the right thing to do.

It is good to be home. It is good to be with my amazing husband who supports me unabashedly in this harebrained idea of hiking the whole AT before I die. And it is good to be back with my sweet, sweet kids who need me and love me and assume that hiking is just something that moms feel the need to do from time to time.

The Gospel According to James Taylor (The Drive Home to Michigan)

2005-10-06T11:44:00.000-04:00

We spent the night in Pioneer, Tennessee and drove the rest of the way home today. All day long I felt surges of emotion rising and falling, as the full impact of our change of plans began to take hold. I'm quite sure that Cindy and Monika were experiencing the same thing.

After lunch, Monika offered to drive and Cindy was sitting in the passenger seat. The two of them were going to listen to a book on tape, so I retreated to the back and appreciated the privacy to brood for a little while, listening to music on my headphones and staring out the window where only the glass could observe my tears. I cried and prayed silently, kind of surprised at myself for becoming so emotional over a simple change of plans. I mean, don't I deal with changes of plans all the time? Does any day in my life go exactly as I anticipate?

But God is good, and he listened to me patiently as I let some tears flow. And then he allowed me to take some comfort in the next two songs on my iPod's random mix:

Blessed be your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's all as it should be
Blessed be your name...

Blessed be your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be your name...

He gives and takes away...
My heart will choose to say
Blessed be your name

I know that our little ordeal can hardly be counted as "suffering" but the concept of the words was clear: God is good, all of the time, whether things are easy or hard, whether things go the way I want or whether they go a completely different direction. My heart can (and will) choose to be okay with the cards I'm dealt, because I know and trust the one who dealt them. Today and every day. Because ultimately, as difficult as it is to say it, I know that I'm not the boss of me. It was a powerful little epiphany and it brought solace.

So did the next song. I know this is a little unconventional, but I heard God's comfort in a James Taylor song. Now don't get too freaked out on me—as much as I love JT, I know he probably didn't realize that the true purpose of his song was to be the voice of God comforting a dejected backpacker. But if God can use a talking donkey to speak to Balaam, I'm quite sure he can use a singing hippie to speak to me:

...I'm not the kind to use a pencil or rule
I'm handy with love and I'm no fool
I fix broken hearts; I know that I truly can
If your broken heart should need repair
Oh darlin' I'm the man to see
I whisper sweet things; you tell all your friends
They'll come runnin' to me
Here is the main thing that I want to say
I'm busy twenty-four hours a day
Fixing broken hearts; I know that I truly can
Come, come, come, yeah, yeah, yeah...
Yeah baby, I'm your handyman...

Okay, take a moment to stop laughing so that I can point out a couple things. He is busy 24 hours a day (God, that is—not James Taylor), making himself available to me, and if I come running, he will fix whatever brokenness I've got to offer. So I'm offerin' it, here and now. (And isn't it cool to imagine God calling you darlin'? Think about it.)

Finishing Up at Fontana Dam

2005-10-05T11:16:00.000-04:00

Sleeping along the AT is a funny thing, especially in October. Even after a grueling day of hiking, my body really doesn't need or want much more than eight hours of sleep. Yet because the sunlight sort of dictates when I get into bed and when I get out, I end up horizontal for 11 or 12 hours straight anyway, lying there in my sleeping bag. Since I can't physically sleep all that time, I end up sleeping a few hours, lying awake a few hours, sleeping a few hours more, lying awake for a while again... and repeating that pattern till it's light enough outside to get up and move around without worrying about bats and wild boars and bears and the like. All those waking-but-still-lying-down hours afford an awful lot of time to think. And the thinking I did throughout last night made me wake this morning with such a mixed swirl of emotions that my stomach was turning backflips by breakfast time. I couldn't eat.

I was still getting my brain around the fact that I was actually leaving the trail. Going home early. Not finishing what I had planned. Not reaching the goal I'd set for myself when I had begun planning this trip months ago. It was such a sinking sensation that I stifled tears all morning.

Yet I was also really concerned for Monika, who I believe probably felt worse about all of this than I did. She was embarrassed, sad, disappointed in herself, concerned about the disappointment that would meet her when she got home to her family and friends. And she was still in a good deal of physical pain from her knee problem. I wish I had words to comfort her and let her know that it would be okay, that there were worse things than bowing out.

And then there was Cindy. Here the poor girl hadn't been backpacking in two years, and she had been wildly excited about sharing the AT with me. Yet she was the (wise) one yesterday who suggested that we should really all stick together; if one leaves, we all leave. I knew this was difficult for her. Difficult for all of us.

We did a pretty good job keeping our chins up and encouraging one another as we hiked to Fontana Dam and arranged for our shuttle.

When we got to the parking lot at Clingman's Dome, we made the best of it by hiking the half-mile walkway together up to the top of the observation tower. As you can see by the picture here, the view was sweet. But I couldn't quit thinking about how much sweeter it would be next time, when I reach it on foot, with poles in hand and a backpack on my back.

Brown Fork Gap Shelter to the "Fontana Hilton"

2005-10-04T10:33:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 12.7 miles

According to plan, we commenced hiking at 7:30 a.m., just as it was getting light enough to see. It felt weird to cook, eat, dress, and pack while it was still dark. Monika’s knee was still really bothering her a lot. We agreed to slow our pace even further, which took us down to about a mile and a half or less per hour. My usual pace is two and a half miles per hour, sometimes three if there aren't too many climbs. The terrain continued to be difficult today, but we were hiking through the most beautiful of surroundings. The picture above shows Cindy resting against a cool two-trunked tree that appeared to be growing right out of a rock face. It was almost like a sculpture.

We planned the day into four approximately equal chunks, and we took long, leisurely breaks in between. One of our breaks was at Cody Gap, which is where we originally planned on stopping last night if the wasp incident hadn't occurred. We saw a cute little red salamander there.

At about 6 p.m., when we were still a little over a mile from our shelter, the trail crossed through the parking lot of Fontana Marina, where there was a stock of backcountry permits for Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We needed one of these, because the trail runs through GSMNP and we’d be entering the park tomorrow. So we completed and submitted our permit paperwork, using the permit number I had received via telephone 30 days prior from GSMNP's backcountry permit office. More importantly, we discovered that Fontana Marina has a real bathroom with real potties that flush, and running water. (The downside of this patch of civilization was that the bathrooms also had mirrors. Frightening.) We treated ourselves to the facilities and then sat down on a concrete bench for a fiver before moving on.

As we rested, Monika expressed serious concerns about continuing. The mileage was too ambitious for her body, she determined, and it was wreaking some painful havoc on her knee and her leg muscles. It was a rather serious moment as we sat there together, tossing around our options. Could we alter our plans? That is, scale back our daily mileage? There was really no easy way to do that, as we were on a very structured timetable in order to reach our car at Clingman’s Dome by Friday. Also, GSMNP has only a finite number of options for backcountry camping along the AT—a handful of shelters, and a handful of campsites—all of which require advance registration. It would be difficult to switch around our registration at this late date, and we couldn’t attempt to do that until we were within good range of a cell phone tower—which wouldn’t happen till we were well into the park and back on a mountain peak. So we nixed that option.

Could we shore up Monika’s knee with a knee brace (she had brought one but hadn’t started wearing it till today) and press on, hoping for the best? That seemed dangerous, because if we got ourselves into GSMNP and then had to evacuate Monika, it would be very difficult, due to the unpredictable cell-phone signal strength and sparseness of navigable roads. We nixed that option too.

For a fleeting moment I thought, well, really our only choice is for Monika to stay somewhere in Fontana for the next three days while Cindy and I finish up the trail. Once the two of us reached Clingman’s Dome we’d come back and pick her up. But Cindy (whose nurse training and compassionate mindset make her much more level-headed in these situations than I!) observed that splitting up was maybe not the wisest or safest thing to do. Not to mention the fact that Monika would be stuck in Fontana for three days with no car, no money, and nothing to do!

It was getting late (around 6:30 p.m.) so we decided that one sure thing was that we must reach the shelter at Fontana ASAP, so we decided to each pray hard for the next mile or so and then reassess at the shelter.

At around 7 p.m., we finally collapsed at what hikers have dubbed the "Fontana Hilton"—a shelter that is, by all standards, the most deluxe overnight spot along the whole southern half of the AT. Here it is:

It's sturdy, roomy, clean, and has everything you'd ever want in hiker amenities: a cement picnic table (which means you can use a backpacking stove right on top of it without worrying about starting a forest fire), a beautiful view of Fontana Lake (the picture below was taken from the back entrance to the shelter), trash cans with critter-resistant lids, and—best of all—there is a real bathroom about an eighth of a mile down a paved walkway. About half a mile away is Fontana Dam and Visitor's Center, which offers cold drinks and (gasp) ice cream. Yes, the Fontana Hilton is spoken of with great honor and acclaim by just about any AT hiker you'll ever run into. And we had the place all to ourselves.

As we got our dinner out, with some sadness we agreed together that the smartest thing to do was to end our hike early. In the morning we could use the phone at the Fontana Dam Visitor's Center to call our shuttle guy and see if he could get us back up to Clingman's Dome to our car.

As we were discussing this and Cindy was preparing to light her stove, it squirted a thin stream of white gas out of the gas line that connects the fuel tank to the burner. She gave a little shriek as my eyes widened. We both own Whisperlites and neither of us have ever been comfortable with them. The idea of highly flammable, pressurized gas and a quirky, problematic gas-feed system has never set well with us. And now hers was leaking. We both knew that a gas leak made the little contraption infinitely more dangerous than normal. We decided not to use it that night and feasted on tuna (you know, for a change), grateful that the stove had at least held out this long, and thankful that we wouldn't be pushing it to its limits by continuing on through GSMNP.

We went to bed with heavy hearts, knowing that in the morning we'd be leaving the trail.

Hiking time: 11.5 hours, including breaks

Sassafrass Gap Shelter to Brown Fork Gap Shelter

2005-10-03T10:03:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 9.9 miles

There was a whole lot of snoring going on in that shelter last night. Mercy.

Today was another really hard day, but I do believe I'm getting my trail legs. It seems to take about 24 hours before my body realizes “oh, we’re going through this bit of torture again” and starts to buck up. I still haven’t used any of my cold medicine, but Cindy (behind whom I hiked for most of the day) can attest that I’ve been snorting and sniffling and spitting prolifically all day long. Lovely.

We started out around 8:30 a.m. and about 45 minutes later we summited Cheoah Bald, where we were treated to a beautiful 360-degree view of some amazing mountains. The clouds were actually below us, which was quite a phenomenon. They resembled ocean waves, swirling and wrapping around the peaks of the mountains around us. We spent a few minutes there watching the the clouds rise and burn off under the sunny, clear skies. Here are Monika and Cindy enjoying the view:
We lunched at Stecoah Gap but by the time we got there it was around 2:30; we had waited far too long to refuel and we were all pretty exhausted. And we still had two big climbs ahead of us before things leveled out a bit. Monika in particular was struggling; her knee was bothering her and she was just very fatigued. Tuna and lots of water helped, and we slowed our pace considerably after lunch and took far more breaks. We put Monika out front, which also helped a lot, so that we could do a better job staying together. Cindy was in the middle, and I took my rightful place at the back where I could behave myself and not trot out ahead of everyone. I learned that I really prefer it this way, as I no longer have to wonder if I’m going the right speed for everyone else. I do worry that I crowd Cindy a bit, but I’m working on that.

We had intended to press on another 2.8 miles today, all the way to a campsite at Cody Gap, but we ended up stopping early because we were terrorized by a swarm of very agitated yellowjackets. The nest was right in the middle of the trail. Monika hit it first, then Cindy, and they both got stung several times, right through their clothing. I felt really bad for them, but I will confess to being very thankful that I was the caboose of our train and thereby avoided any stings. I also learned that I can, when necessary, break into a full sprint while wearing a 30-pound backpack. Cindy flung her trekking poles when she realized the yellowjackets were attacking, and unfortunately only one of them was retrievable—the other landed right on the swarming nest so we had to leave it behind.

Unfortunately, the four men who tented by our shelter last night came upon the yellowjacket nest an hour or two behind us and some of them got stung too. They are staying near our shelter again tonight and despite the stings are a pretty jovial bunch. One of them brought a 16-oz bag of individually wrapped Godiva chocolates to the shelter after dinner and gave us some. (What would possess you to bring a pound of chocolate on a backpacking trip, I don't know! But no complaints here—I gladly accepted two pieces.) We were surprised to learn that one of the four men suffered from heat stress and overexertion this afternoon and threw up all over the trail. This is his first backpacking trip, poor guy.

My feet so far are doing great. I’m glad I’m wearing my Salomon boots. Though they aren’t nearly as cute and perky-looking as my little low-rise Merrell trail shoes (even in the wild, a girl does think about these things, you know), they are providing a lot of support and protection against this very unforgiving terrain. I’ve also been liberally using Body Glide on my toes and heels twice a day, which I think is really helping. The only foot problem so far has been toothpaste-inflicted—I dropped my miniature tube of Crest on the knuckle of one of my big toes this evening and even now, hours later, it is still just killing me.

Tomorrow we are doing 9.9 miles plus the 2.8 that we didn’t finish today, which will top us out at 12.7 miles. A long day, especially if we are to believe the profile on our topo map. It will be challenging. We’ve decided to get up at 6 a.m. and shoot for hiking out of here by 7:30.

Lessons learned today: Watch for yellowjacket nests. Carry Benadryl and sting medicine. We were lucky that Cindy had both. It pays to bring along a nurse!

Quote of the day, from Monika: "As I was hiking today, I wondered: am I adding years to my lifespan by doing this, or taking years away?"

Hiking time: 6 hours, 40 minutes (8:20 with breaks)

Nantahala Outdoor Center (in Wesser) to Sassafrass Gap Shelter

2005-10-02T09:38:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 6.9 miles

My third section of the AT has officially begun! Wooot! After yesterday's long drive (which culminated in a hellish traffic jam in the not-so-lovely burgs of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg), Cindy, Monika, and I spent the night at a hotel and got up bright and early this morning to leave the civilized world behind for six days. We parked my car at Clingman’s Dome at 8:30 a.m. and got shuttled to NOC at Wesser. We were all pretty charged up and couldn’t wait to get within sight of the white blazes!

After hiking all day, all I can say is, there must have been some kind of miscalculation on the map. What felt like 20 miles was actually a mere 6.9. But it was all—and I do mean all—uphill. And steep. They don't seem to believe in switchbacks here. I am astonished that it took us over four and a half hiking hours to go under seven miles.

Remind me again why I do this? I’ve concluded that backpacking is like childbirth: once you reach the end, you feel so triumphant and giddy that you tend to forget the pain involved in getting there.

Day 1 of any hiking trip almost always feels like a kick in the shorts, but the hiking today cannot be described in any other way than brutal. Funny, because yesterday as we were driving into Gatlinburg and I caught site of “my” Smokies, I was feeling all cozy inside, like it was some kind of homecoming. I actually sensed a bit of kinship with these mountains, after all we’ve been through together. Well, if yesterday was like coming home, today was like getting slapped by your grandma and spat upon by your cousins. It didn’t help that (once again) I’m trying to beat a nasty head cold, which developed in full form just two days before we left Michigan. I brought cold medicine with me but am hoping to avoid using it. It makes me feel so loopy. And loopiness doesn't go well with overexertion.

I am so impressed with Monika and Cindy, who hung tough through every mile today. (Though I do believe I heard the word "sucks," along with some disgruntled murmuring, from behind me as we were fighting our way up the side of Swim Bald.) Here's a shot of Monika resting as we took a break from our ascent.

Hiking with others is definitely a different experience than hiking solo. For one thing, I spend a lot less time thinking about quitting. Or worrying about dying. Instead, I spend way too much time fretting about my pace. Am I going too fast? Too slow? Gasping and grunting too loudly as I struggle up the steep incline? On the plus side though, the companionship is nice, especially because these two both love the trees and the trail as much as I do. And hiking with friends means you always have a lookout person to guard the trail while you pee in the woods. You never know when a gaggle of Boy Scouts will come trudging around the bend.

Speaking of pace, and hiking with others—I knew from the get-go that this would be an issue for me, and I am putting a good deal of effort into slowing down instead of constantly charging ahead. It is difficult, because I am usually a push-through-as-efficiently-as-your-legs-will-carry-you kind of hiker. I actually think I tire more easily when I go slowly, because it takes longer. But I don’t want to make this trip all about me, so I’m trying hard to match the pace of the others. I don’t know if I’m doing a very good job of it.

I am beat and it’s not quite seven o’clock. I need to go to bed. A young couple named Sarah and Price are sharing our shelter (which is pictured below with Monika sitting at the "bar"), plus another guy who arrived later, and a group of four men are tenting nearby. Hopefully the mice around the shelter will leave us alone. And since there’s no bear cable here, hopefully the bears will follow suit.

Hiking time: 4 hours, 40 minutes (6:15 with breaks)

Sackrider Hill: T Minus Two Weeks

2005-09-17T17:22:00.000-04:00

Waterloo-Pinckney Hiking Trail, 11.0 miles
Hiking Time: 2 hours, 55 minutes

Jay and I had a lovely stretch of Saturday in which the kids were gleefully occupied at their cousins' house, so we took the hound out for an 11-mile hike on the Waterloo-Pinckney hiking trail. Silly us; as much as we love hiking and backpacking, we had never done this beautiful trail that's practically in our own back yard! Well, I take that back; we have done bits of it, because there are portions that follow the Potawatomi Trail in Pinckney State Recreation Area, which we've covered several times. But the part we did today was new territory for us.

We began at the official start of the trail (by the boat launch at Big Portage Lake) and made our way southeast, to the crest of Sackrider Hill. I had goaded Jay into bringing his camera and he got some beautiful artistic shots. I love his photos! The one of the yellow leaves was enough to inspire me to run home and dig out our fall wreath and pumpkin-pie-scented candles.

And check out this cool viney tree we saw!

Of course we also took a couple obligatory pictures of Buster, who proved to be a pretty good little hiking buddy. We didn't really know what to expect out of him, since this was his first long hike. I had concerns that we might end up carrying his gangly thirty-pound self for the last few miles, but he was more than peppy. He did, however, fall into a deep snoring sleep in the back seat of the Altima as soon as we finished.

Here's a good shot of him. As our friend Sue says, that dingo, he's a real looker.

We stopped for a little lunch at the top of Sack-rider Hill (which is, by the way, 1128 feet above sea level). It's the highest point in the area and it boasts a spot on the list of "Michigan's Highest Named Summits." It's aptly named because it really is just a hill. In fact I thought it was kind of cute that it even made any kind of special list. The shot below of Jay and Buster was taken at the top, just before we started to head back. (No need to point out that the photographer of that shot -- me -- has much less of an artistic bent than the photographer of the other shots.)

Anyway, there are some pretty good inclines along the way to the crest and it was a decent pull to the top. Stack about six Sackrider Hills together and you'll get the elevation of Clingmans Dome!

Speaking of, my next AT section is so close I can taste it! Just two weeks from today, I'll be en route to the trail. I am happy to have two pals coming along this time: my friend Monika and my friend-turned-sister-in-law Cindy. No telling what manner of adventures I'll have to report once we get home!

Wine Spring Bald to Nantahala Outdoor Center

2005-05-26T22:53:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 19.1 miles

Man, I thought this day would never end. Who knew I would clock out at over nineteen miles!?? Shock and awe all the way around.

I woke up early (about 6:40) and made it my first priority to peer warily out of the tent to see if my food bag was still intact. There it was, hanging in the tree, undisturbed. I was so proud of myself for having made it through my first night alone. No bears, no wild pigs, and no bobcats. At least none that woke me up.

So I packed up and off I went as the sun was rising. I summitted Wayah Bald about 7:45 a.m., and man, what a view! It was my favorite part of the day. There is this really cool old stone lookout up there, and the added bonus of both a trash bin and a real bathroom (not a privy) nearby! Yeah baby!

The rest of the day is pretty much a dizzy blur of peaks and gaps, peaks and gaps. Oh and did I mention more peaks and gaps? I had decided early this morning to just go as far as I could go today, vaguely planning to stop at either Wesser Bald Shelter or Rufus Morgan Shelter. I gave my feet a good long rest every five miles or so. I discovered that if you take your boots and socks off and let everything dry out for ten or fifteen minutes, you sort of trick your feet into thinking it's a new day when you put your boots back on.

I stopped for a long lunch break at Tellico Gap and met a very polished-looking couple from -- whaddayah know -- Michigan! They drove up, parked their SUV in the gravel near the trailhead, and told me they wanted to do a one- or two-hour hike and was this a good place to do it? I think I was a little over-eager for the human contact (I hadn't seen a soul in nearly 24 hours), and the fact that they were from Michigan, well, it practically meant we were kin -- so I chirpily launched into a very long and detailed explanation of all the balds and mountains they could get to from there. Of course I also pulled out my giant AT map with great flourish and pointed out every nuance. They were quite chagrined to find that, from the place we were standing, every trail led uphill. That's kind of how it is when you're in a gap, people. They thanked me politely and as I went on my way toward Wesser Bald, I heard their SUV start back up and off they went, I guess in search of a flat trail. Bet they looked for a long time.

Wesser Bald was really cool, and my last big peak before beginning the six-mile descent toward US19. There was a rickety old lookout tower at the top that I almost chickened out of climbing, but I thought, silly girl, how can you hike all this way, make it to the top of a mountain, and then bypass the chance to climb just 200 more steps to the top of that tower? So I shakily ascended this flimsy wood-and-metal structure, feeling the thing wobble and lean with each step. At the top, I snapped one hurried picture (which didn't turn out so well because I was shaking from fright and couldn't steady the camera), and then slithered my way back down the steps, praying all the while that the thing wouldn't collapse with me on it.

I could've stopped at Wesser Bald Shelter, which was just downhill from the tower, but instead I took a brief break there and then kept moving. It was only about 2:45, and in the back of my mind I kept thinking that if I could just make it to Rufus Morgan Shelter, it would be my highest mileage day ever. (Thus far my record had been 17.5 miles.) Onward!

I loved the rest of the day. There were some amazing rocky downhill scrambles, some short but intense climbs, and lots of really great views of the Smokies. And I knew all too well that every step I took was bringing me closer to a shower and hot food. As I hiked, I solidified my plan to spend my final night on the trail at Rufus Morgan, and then swagger with bravado into NOC to relish a huge bacon-and-egg breakfast in the morning. A few times I thought I even smelled the bacon leading me down the trail.

It was 5:15 when I reached Rufus Morgan and I collapsed for about half an hour, not caring (at first) that the shelter was probably the worst one I'd seen to date. Then, as I started unpacking and getting my gear situated, I noticed not only the dilapidated condition of the shelter, but also the fact that once again, I had chosen to pass the night in a place where there was no bear cable. Ah well, no matter, I thought; I'll just find a suitable tree -- after all, I'm practically an expert now at bear-bagging my food. But a quick analysis of nearby trees turned up no decent branches that I could possibly use. Had there been other hikers there to share the shelter with me, I would've been okay with just hanging my food on the mouse lines in the shelter overhang (like I had done that first night at Muskrat Creek Shelter). But I was alone. Totally and utterly. And it was unrealistic to think that any other hikers would show up this late. Should I stay? Go? I was only about a mile from NOC, so I could pretty easily finish out the hike in half an hour. But moving on meant finishing the trail a day early, and having nowhere to go once I reached my car! And I sure as heck didn't want to start driving back north in my current state of near exhaustion.

So I prayed that God would show me what to do. As I sat there contemplating my options, my eyes focused on a fire ring near the shelter and to my horror I noticed it was full of the remnants of some previous hiker's dinner! Noodles, pretzels, apple cores, something that resembled beef stew... all just sitting there, an open invitation to all wild animals to come and hang out for the night. That clinched it for me -- no way could I get a decent night's sleep knowing that there was a veritable bear/pig/bobcat buffet six feet from my head. So I packed everything up, muttered a halfhearted apology to my feet, and continued on toward NOC. Halfway there, in the middle of the trail was an enormous deposit of bear scat. It made me glad I hadn't stayed at the shelter.

So I finished the trail on a somewhat anticlimactic note. By the time I got to NOC it was 7:30 p.m. and the office, store, and restaurant there were closed. Hardly a soul to be seen. So, no chance of bunking in their hiker hostel or smugly swapping trail stories with other hikers while putting on subtle self-congratulatory airs. There really was no one there to appreciate what I had just accomplished, except me. Just as well. Because that's who I did all this for anyway.

I got in my car and drove about 15 minutes back to Bryson City and found myself at the Ridgeway Motel -- a throwback from the 1950's whose proprietor looked like he had just walked off the set of the Andy Griffith Show. It was perfect. I called my honey, washed my filthy clothes and my filthy self, and slept like a baby.

Oh, and I still managed to score that bacon-and-egg breakfast at a diner the next morning. So far, 134.1 miles of the trail down, 2,035.9 to go.

Hiking time: 9 hours, 10 minutes (12:10 with breaks)

2005-05-26T22:01:00.000-04:00

Stone lookout at the top of Wayah Bald

2005-05-26T22:00:00.000-04:00

View from the tippy top of the lookout tower on Wesser Bald. Way out in the distance you can barely make out the Nantahala River.

Rock Gap Shelter to Campsite on Wine Spring Bald

2005-05-25T19:57:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 12 miles

Slept in a bit since I was in no hurry to get started today. I planned a low-mileage day -- only 7.5 miles -- but adjusted that plan later in the day. There was a beautiful full moon out this morning about 6 a.m. when I woke up. I went back to sleep till about 8. I could get used to this. My initial plan was to hike to the Siler Bald Shelter today and spend the night there.

Okay, before I go on, the word "bald" needs some discussion. Yank that I am, I had only ever heard the word "bald" used to describe people, not mountains. Turns out, a bald is basically a mountain with no trees on top -- just a broad grassy expanse. There's a lot of debate about what created these open spaces. Theories include fire, drought, insects, harsh weather extremes... some people even think that white settlers cleared these mountaintops as places for grazing their animals. (That theory seems a little odd to me... why would you march your herd 5,000+ feet up a mountain to graze?)

Anyway, it's kind of a surreal feeling to emerge from the tree canopy onto a broad, grassy mountaintop where you can see for miles. And that's what happened to me... I reached the top of Siler Bald (and the beginning of the shelter side trail) at about 1:30 p.m. Being so early in the day, it just didn't feel right to stop. Plus the side trail to the shelter was .6 miles long, and I thought I'd be better off investing my mileage in a forward direction rather than off to the side... so I pressed on, admittedly a little nervously, because that decision meant I was bypassing my only chance to sleep in a shelter tonight. I'd have to find my own stopping point and get out the ol' tent.

I ended up rounding out the day at 12 miles, and stopped at a little clearing near the top of a bald called Wine Spring. Doesn't that sound like a place you'd want to stop after hiking 12 miles? It is really beautiful here. My tent is up, a bear rope has been tied into a nearby tree for my food (and it sure as heck better work), my feet are up, and all is well. There are lots of birds around. I've been hearing a woodpecker pretty much nonstop since I got here. Hope he goes to bed when I do.

My cold is still plaguing me. Today, at Pete's suggestion, I perfected the very unladylike "farmer nose-blowing technique" -- that is, blowing my nose without the aid of a Kleenex. Sure makes a girl feel primitive. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and I'd rather save my dwindling Kleenex supply for use in the privy.

I was delighted to find that my phone works up here (I'm pretty high up -- about 5,400 feet) and once I got situated I dialed into my voicemail and got to hear messages from both Jay and Janet. That was a treat -- I miss my homies!

So it looks like tonight I'm all alone, in my postage-stamp-sized tent. I've set the thing up so that I can peek out the screen and get a good look at my bear bag. If my food's gonna go down, I at least want the thrill of watching it happen.

Hiking time: 5 hours (6:20 with breaks)

2005-05-25T19:00:00.000-04:00

My little campsite near the top of Wine Spring Bald

2005-05-25T18:49:00.000-04:00

That little bundle hanging way up there under the tree limb is my food. Go ahead and admit how impressed you are that I got it up that high....

Carter Gap Shelter to Rock Gap Shelter

2005-05-24T21:41:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 12.1 miles

Today's biggest accomplishment was summitting Albert Mountain, which kicked my tail. It was quite a scramble -- lots of hand-over-hand climbing, but what a rush when I finally got to the top! It was sunny, 70, and clear. Or as clear as it gets around here anyway... even on a clear day the Smoky Mountains still look, well... smoky. But could I ask for more? I think not!

As a bonus, my phone worked on the top of Albert so I was able to call Michigan and Maryland. Unfortunately, Jay wasn't home, so I had to leave a message. I really miss him. I did talk to Pete, though, and found out his test went well today -- yay! I really prayed for that. I wish I would've remembered to tell him how much I'm liking my trekking poles.

After conquering Albert I felt like I could pretty much do anything, I was so happy. But rather than speed-race all the way to the shelter, I took a long, leisurely lunch break at Long Branch Creek. My feet appreciated it. Speaking of the dogs, I used some stuff on my feet this morning called Body Glide. (Ed, the thru-hiker from the other night, gave me some to try.) It's an anti-friction product used by surfers, bicyclists, and anyone else who has problems with chafing or blisters. It looks like a miniature container of deodorant. Anyway, it worked great... no blisters all day long. I'll have to pick up some of that stuff.

The Rock Gap Shelter has a bear cable (the first I've seen in NC), but the shelter itself is kind of old and creepy. And I don't like the fact that it's so close to a road. They say that the best way to avoid crime on the trail is to stay far away from roads... so I was getting a little wigged out when it looked like I would have to stay here all night alone. I was really glad to see Randall, another hiker from last night, show up around 4:30. I never mind company at night. I haven't had to stay anywhere alone at night yet; I'm wondering if that will happen this trip...

Found out from Randall that Ed the thru-hiker saw a bobcat on his way out of Carter Gap this morning. Bears, then wild pigs, now bobcats. Is God mercifully making these beasts invisible to me so that I don't go charging terrified down the mountain and call Fred The Shuttle Man to take me back to my car? Or am I just so way off in my own thoughts that I'm oblivious to everything around me? Another case in point: at the top of Albert today two different people asked me, "Did you see that dead bear on the side of the trail as you came up to the summit?" Nope. Missed that. It blows my mind that I could be THAT inattentive! I guess I was so fixated on getting to the top of the mountain without causing heart stoppage that I couldn't see beyond the step or two in front of me. Makes me wonder what else I'm missing.

God is teaching me about small steps today... that even a slow, pitiful, tiny step is still a step toward the goal, and it's not always so important how fast I get there.

Highlights of the day: Summitting Albert Mountain, passing the hundred-mile mark on the AT.
Hiking time: 5 hours (7:15 with breaks)

2005-05-24T21:39:00.000-04:00

Me on the top of Albert Mountain

2005-05-24T21:38:00.000-04:00

The view from Albert

Muskrat Creek Shelter to Carter Gap Shelter

2005-05-23T21:37:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 12.5 miles

Another hard day, but I'm feeling a lot better than yesterday. It helps to get an early start. It threatened rain this morning, but nothing ever came of it, so I'm really thankful for that. I'm still really congested, though, and I'm worried I'm going to exhaust my Kleenex supply. I really didn't bring enough for potty needs and nose-blowing...

Today was my longest mileage day of this trip. I summitted Standing Indian Mountain at about 11:45 -- it's the highest point I'll reach all week. I actually enjoyed the long, slow burn up the mountain.

I liked my poles even more today -- I think they're really helping me avoid fatigue in my knees.

Tonight's shelter, like last night's, has no bear cable. I wonder if that will be the norm in North Carolina? It bothers me a bit, but again, it's not so scary as long as I'm not alone. Tonight three other solo hikers showed up, so I'll let them fend off any bears.

I took a cold pill after dinner. I had hoped to avoid doing that, but the congestion was really getting to me. It's nice to be able to breathe through my nose for a little while.

Wayne, one of the other hikers, went out for a brief walk after dinner and came back white as a sheet. Apparently he was bumbling along, minding his own business, when he was approached by a small herd of wild pigs. Excuse me? Like the hakuna matata variety? No one told me there were wild pigs out here. Now I have to think about bears and pigs? Luckily they veered off the trail and left Wayne alone... I hope they do the same for me if I happen upon them.

Ed is a thru-hiker at tonight's shelter who reminds me of what Jay will be like in 25 years or so. He is a sweet, happy, joyful man, mid-sixties, who absolutely loves to take pictures. He tells me he takes about seven pictures for every mile that he hikes. He says he only travels about a mile and a half an hour because he's always stopping and fiddling with his camera. This made me understand why his wife didn't hike with him -- she would've killed him by now.

Tomorrow after I'm done hiking I get to change my clothes -- yay me! I'm sure I stink to high heaven.

Hiking time: 5 hours, 18 minutes (6:50 with breaks)

2005-05-23T21:31:00.000-04:00

Wildflowers along the trail between Muskrat Creek and Carter Gap

Dicks Creek Gap to Muskrat Creek Shelter

2005-05-22T20:16:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 11.6 miles

What ever possessed me to think that this trip would be easy!? Oh my word, I thought I was in shape. Note to self: running five kilometers, three or four times a week, does not adequately prepare oneself for the trails in Georgia and North Carolina. Conclusion: the best thing to prepare your body for hiking the AT is... well... hiking the AT. Next time I will have to remember to give myself a day or so to get my trail legs.

It didn't help that I am on day three of a nasty cold. I am hoping this congestion goes away quickly. With all this snorting and sniffling, I'm worried I might be mistaken for Mary Ellen, that pitiful character in Bill Bryson's book, A Walk In the Woods.

I got a bit of a late start (10:15 a.m. or so) because I first had to park my car at Nantahala Outdoor Center and have Fred The Shuttle Man drive me to Dicks Creek Gap. I noticed right away that Fred held me in higher regard this time than last, when I was just a newbie. I think that my hiking 75+ miles in six days last October proved to him that I wasn't such a cupcake after all. (He might've thought differently, however, if he had seen how I clawed my way up Court House Bald, gasping for oxygen, mere hours after he dropped me off...)

Today was my first crack at using my new Leki trekking poles (thank you Pete and Cindy!), and I must say, being a quadruped took some getting used to. For the first hour or two I wanted to fling the dang things into the woods -- I just couldn't get any kind of smooth movement going, and it felt like they were really slowing me down. Once I quit trying so hard though, my legs and arms just fell into their own rhythm, sort of like cross-country skiing. By the end of the day I kind of came around -- now I think they're actually pretty useful.

The sand and rock here seem to be really quartz-y. When I stopped for a break today I happened to be studying the ground (translation: hunching over, leaning heavily on my Lekis, wondering if my lungs were going to explode right out of my chest) and I noticed that it almost looked like someone had spilled a bottle of glitter on the ground. Kind of pretty.

I misread my map and stumbled upon Muskrat Creek Shelter about a quarter mile earlier than I expected. First time in my hiking history that I've actually been ahead of where I thought I was... anyway, I just about danced a jig when I caught sight of the shelter. I suppose that would've rather alarmed Peter, a mild-mannered gentleman who had already staked out his side of the shelter and was beginning to cook his dinner. He turned out to be good company for the evening... he is fiftyish and recently retired from his position of VP at North Sails. Must remember to tell Dad about him. We chatted about Annapolis and sailing for a little bit, exchanged some stories about bats and hiking, and then I collapsed in a heap and slept all night.

There was no bear cable at this shelter, so we hung our food from a little mouse-proof (but definitely not bear-proof) suspension thingy in the overhang of the shelter. As the old joke goes, I figured I was safe from any bear that came along, as long as I could outrun Peter.

Saw lots of wildflowers today, one beautiful butterfly, and a pretty doe that wandered close to the shelter at dusk.

Highlight of the day: Finishing the Georgia section of the AT.
Hiking time: 5 hours, 2 minutes (7 hours with breaks)

2005-05-22T15:10:00.000-04:00

Hard to make it out, but the sign here says "NC/GA" -- it's the state line where I put the Georgia section of the trail behind me.

2005-05-22T15:08:00.000-04:00

Butterfly along the trail to Muskrat Creek Shelter

So, it's Trail-Launch Eve again...

2005-05-21T19:43:00.000-04:00

....and I'm sitting here at a greasy diner in a little burg called Bryson City, NC, after driving all day. Tomorrow I start the next section of my Appalachian Trail hike.

I decided to take a different route south this time, so I could avoid the snarl of Pigeon Forge traffic and the tourists in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. So, I approached the trail from the west, on US129, which appeared (on my map, anyway) to be a lesser-traveled, straighter shot toward the trail. Smart, huh? I thought so too, till I got ten minutes down that road (which, for the record, is every bit as twisty and treacherous as the Blue Ridge Parkway in GSMNP) and suddenly found myself in the midst of a great horde of ageing, long-haired, leather-clad motorcyclists.

My mind flashed back to a sign I had seen in front of a church a few miles earlier: "Bikers Welcome." At the time, I had thought, "Hmmm, interesting ministry niche..." Now it all made sense. I soon learned from the banners strung about at the roadside parking areas that they were having a weekend-long rally called "Waken the Dragon." Sounds like an event where I'd fit right in, don't you think?

So, for about 28 torturous miles, I white-knuckled it around more hairpin curves than I care to remember, at a maximum speed of 25 mph, with at least 30 bikers fore and 30 aft. No exaggeration. I wanted desperately to pull over and let them pass, but all the pull-off spots were teeming with -- you guessed it -- more bikers, having the Hell's Angels version of a tailgate party. There were hundreds of them, sitting in lawn chairs, barbecuing, swilling Cokes.

So I just kept driving. Conspicously. In the middle of several dozen bikers. Oh yeah, you blend.

I exhaled violently in relief when the pack of Hogs in front of me spotted and claimed an empty pull-off area. But to my horror, the pack behind me stayed right on my tail. Good grief, now I was leading this parade! Judging from the backfiring and motor-belching sounds their cycles were making, I guess I was driving a bit too slow for their taste. Suspicion confirmed when suddenly they engulfed my little Altima, passing me with a deafening roar that left the air smelling a little like the afterburn of a cap gun.

When they were out of sight and my ears stopped ringing, I considered that maybe the Pigeon Forge tourists wouldn't have been so bad to deal with after all.

2005-05-01T07:48:00.000-04:00

Photos by Jay, from our day on the Potowatami

Trail as Therapy

2005-05-01T06:45:00.000-04:00

Cindy had the kids overnight and all day Saturday, so early in the week we decided we'd spend Saturday on the Potowatami. We ditched that plan Friday night because of rain in the forecast, but in the morning we woke up to only clouds (no rain), so we reverted to plan A, throwing some water bottles and snacks in the backpack and heading out to the trailhead at Silver Lake. We did the whole 17.5-mile loop in about six hours (5:10 not including breaks), and the first drops of rain fell just as we were climbing (crawling) back into the car at about 2:15. We were spent but happy.

The Poto was delightful as always, but what really hit me this time around is how therapeutic it was to spend the whole day hiking alongside my honey. Life is hard (no secret there) and our moments alone are few and far between. When we do get away for an evening here or there, it always seems so abbreviated. And so expensive! Dinner + sitter + movie can easily top a hundred bucks. Then we both feel this unspoken pressure to make that time "worth it" and meaningful. The problem is compounded if things don't go according to plan -- like on Friday night when we thought we'd see a movie together, and blindly walked into probably the lamest film we've ever encountered. (Apologies to those of you who somehow enjoyed The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).

So Saturday morning we spent six uninterrupted hours together, surrounded by trees and flowers, talking when we felt like it, but comfortable being silent too. It is the best way of reconnecting that I know.

2005-04-10T16:24:00.000-04:00

Maria after her baptism

2005-04-10T16:23:00.000-04:00

Maria being baptized by Pastor Chuck Jacob

2005-04-10T16:22:00.000-04:00

Maria, getting ready to go in to Knox Church for her baptism

What a momentous day...

2005-04-10T16:11:00.000-04:00

Even though it doesn’t count as an “outdoor” adventure, I am including the recap here because it is certainly an adventure in its own right. Not my own adventure, but Maria’s. Today she was baptized.

This has been a long time coming. She wanted to do it over a year ago, but we coaxed her into holding off a while. We wanted to make sure she understood what it was that she was doing. When she first starting asking about baptism, we did some talking and some reading with her, and found that there is a huge gap in the Christian book market – we were hard pressed to find a decent kids’ book that explains baptism really well. As God would have it, Knox offers a really great kids’ class by Jennifer Donovan on the sacraments, so she enrolled in that and we thought we’d just wait and see where things went afterward. That was last spring. Well, silly mum wrote down the date of the class wrong, so we missed the class (which is, unfortunately, only offered once a year).

Fast-forward to spring 2005. She is still really anxious about getting baptized, so we (re)enroll her in the sacraments class at Knox. This time we actually make it to the class, which is so well done that I think Jennifer ought to offer it for adults! We both came out of there having learned some things, and she was definitely still chomping at the bit, so away we went. After meeting with one of our elders, a wonderful man named Hershel Janes, she was, by everyone’s estimation, ready.

During her meeting with Hershel, she received a little booklet where she could record some of her thoughts about Jesus and her baptism. Here are a few snippets of what she wrote. The bold type is what was in the book, and the italics are what she wrote.

I love Jesus because: "he dide for me and others, and he is perfect, and never sinned."
I want to serve Jesus because: "he is the powerfullest person in Heven and Earth."
I want to celebrate because: "he is the Lord and my ferm foundashon.
I belong with God’s people because: I love him so much."

True, some of this is parroting what she has heard us or others say… but I know my kid, and I know that, as much as an eight-year-old is able, she understands salvation and has chosen to give her life to Christ. And this will be the most significant adventure of her life.

2005-04-09T19:35:00.000-04:00

Picknicking at Dolph Nature Preserve

2005-04-09T19:34:00.000-04:00

The kids and I at Dolph Nature Preserve

We're really breaking the kids in...

2005-04-09T19:26:00.000-04:00

...with some hiking this spring! Spent a few hours at Dolph Nature Preserve this afternoon, exploring the trails and picnicking. Now that Joe's old enough to run down a trail at breakneck speed, I see no end to the amount of exploring we could do! We had a great day -- amazing blue sky, sixtyish temp, and subtle signs of spring all around. I am fasting today, and it was a good opportunity to take in God's creation and thank him for it.

Prep for the AT is going well. I've been working out regularly, usually walking or running but sometimes slipping in a resistance workout just to mix it up. My legs will appreciate that when I'm clawing and gasping my way up Copper Ridge Bald (elevation 5,150).

This week I planned my food for the trip and packed most of it. Still have a few things to add just before I leave for Georgia: fresh-roasted pecans, cheese sticks, and a really shocking amount of peanut butter.

2005-03-29T09:09:00.000-05:00

On the nature trail at Kensington

We hiked a little at Kensington...

2005-03-29T09:01:00.000-05:00

...with the kids today. It was the first day this year that the temperature approached 50 degrees, and it was muddy, messy, and beautiful! Maria especially was eating it up ... my heart leaps when I see her strutting down a trail, all confident and bossy-like. She was in the lead most of the time. I must get her out this summer for a backpacking weekend.

Speaking of Maria, I went into her classroom last week to talk about the Appalachian Trail. They are finishing up a unit called "Seeing the USA" and the AT seemed to fit right in. I let them try all of my equipment, made them some backpacker food, taught them a little about maps, and stuff like that.

Two months from today....

2005-03-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

....I will be starting the next section of "Appalachiapalooza," or my Appalachian Trail odyssey. Ever looked up the definition of odyssey? "An extended wandering or journey." That about sums it up. With an emphasis on "extended."

Note to self: start working out, in a punishing fashion, to prepare for many hours of upward climbing.

2004-11-06T16:56:00.000-05:00

On the Poto: Cindy, Janet, me, Pete, Nathan.

Another Day on the Poto

2004-11-06T16:49:00.000-05:00

Potowatami Trail, 17.5 miles

Did the same route as on 25 September, this time with Janet, Cindy, Jay, Pete, and Nathan. It was a perfect hiking day -- clear and sunny, mid-fifties. Was really proud of Nathan -- it's a very long way for a 13-year-old! He and Pete took a shortcut near the end that shaved off about three miles, but still -- Nate was definitely the hero of the day. Janet made him a Boston cooler when we got home, and I made him a huge pot of rice!

Since traveling in a group slows you down, it took us 5:48 (net hike time) to complete the trail. It was starting to get dark by the time we finished. Maybe Jay and I will do this hike again in the winter or spring. I wouldn't mind making this an annual thing...

Tray Mountain Shelter to Dicks Creek Gap

2004-10-15T16:43:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 10.6 miles

Last day of this section hike -- bittersweet. Started out very early in bitter cold and wind. I am so happy it did not rain -- I think I would've died of hypothermia! Had to conquer a few moderate ups and downs, then huge, hard peak called Kelly Knob. Whoa. It was a big challenge. It was such a blessing to finally arrive at Dicks Creek Gap and see my car! I feel so proud of myself for completing such an aggressive, challenging hike.

Things I learned on this hike:

If there's a possibility the temperature will be in the fifties or lower, bring gloves, earband, and long underwear. I can't believe how cold I felt. I thought this was the south.
Bring a tea light for each night you plan to sleep in a shelter -- it seems to keep away mice and adds very little weight to your pack. Carl and Mike did this and it was nice to have constant light without worrying about flashlight battery life.
If possible, dunk your feet in a cold stream at the end of the day to ease fatigue and tame blisters. For all the jawing Louie did, this was one helpful tidbit that made it worth listening to him for three days.
Don't bring natural peanut butter or almond butter in plastic bags. The oil penetrates the bags and gets everything all oily. Eeew.

2004-10-14T16:43:00.000-04:00

For a brief moment, the rain cleared and I snapped this picture from the trail.

Low Gap Shelter to Tray Mountain Shelter

2004-10-14T16:37:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 14.9 miles

Oh my word, what a hard day. Started in the rain and aggravated my blisters all day with wet socks and wet shoes. Even worse, it was a three-mountain day: Blue Mountain, Rocky Mountain, and (finally!) Tray Mountain. This day definitely felt like passing through the fire. I was so proud of myself for finishing.

By the time I got to the shelter the rain had stopped -- I was so thankful. Keith showed up later that afternoon. I was glad of this, because everyone else -- Louie, Carl, and Mike -- was done with their hike and had stopped at Unicoi Gap. It would've been spooky staying at the Tray Mountain shelter alone. It got very cold and really, really windy at night. I wore my gloves, earband, long underwear, pants, shirt, fleece, and raincoat to bed -- in my twenty-degree sleeping bag! -- and I was still cold. It rained much of the night and I worried about how I could stay warm and dry the next day.

Blood Mountain Shelter to Low Gap Shelter

2004-10-13T13:18:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 13.0 miles

Today I got up and started early because I was anxious to get to Neels Gap, two and a half miles down the mountain. There, I picked up mail from Jay and the kids, Janet, Eva, and a few others -- it made me cry and I miss everyone terribly. I don't know where my head was when I thought I could backpack alone for an entire month, let alone the week that I am undertaking right now.

It drizzled all day and started getting cold. I was the first at the shelter so I took Louie's advice and dunked my feet in the small creek running past the shelter. It helped tame a couple small blisters forming on the sides of each big toe. As I was standing in the creek in my undies (!) two thru-hikers arrived -- how embarrassing! Once I put myself back together, they introduced themselves as "Coyote" and "Ishmael." I hope those are their trail names and not their real names.

Keith and Louie showed up soon after, then Carl and Mike. So seven of us squeezed into the shelter! Once again, evening excitement: a small finch (which we at first thought was another bat) started flying at Louie's headlamp! Then there was a second one -- very bizarre! They both flopped around in the shelter, landing in turn on each of us, before Louie flung them underneath the shelter.

It rained hard from about midnight on.

2004-10-12T13:17:00.000-04:00

A very foggy view of Blood Mountain, from Justus Creek. Dang that thing looks big, even from this far away.

Gooch Mountain Shelter to Blood Mountain Shelter

2004-10-12T13:12:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 13.6 miles

Another hard day -- 13.6 miles. In the rain. It rained hard last night but let up a little by about 8 a.m., so that's when I left. Made it here by about 3:30. It's a pretty stone building, built in the thirties by the Civilian Conservation Corps. I hear it's terribly mice-infested -- guess we'll see tonight.

It was very foggy all day today due to the rain, so there's no view at all from this peak. Kind of disappointing, but I'm just glad I made it to the top. Saw a cute little turtle on the trail this morning.

Update from later in the evening: No mice in the shelter, but a bat flew in just as everyone was going to bed! Louie ("Black Cloud") was there; also Keith and two really funny guys from Jacksonville, FL named Carl and Mike. The bat generated quite a bit of excitement till it flew back out the window. Also: no bear cables in this shelter area; not sure why. So we all hung our food from the beams inside the shelter, which seemed questionable to me but since I'm such a bad food-hanger I didn't protest. No animals bothered the food, so I guess this was okay.

Stover Creek Shelter to Gooch Mountain Shelter

2004-10-11T13:07:00.000-04:00

Appalachian Trail, 12.2 miles

What a day! It kicked my tail. Lots of ascents and descents that never seemed to end. I am so thankful to be at the shelter. Keith ended up here too, about half an hour ahead of me, along with a very quiet young couple and a sort of loud blow-hard type guy who calls himself "Black Cloud" (!). (This business of trail names is so bizarre to me!) He is a piece of work; I'll leave it at that.

There is some sort of military base near the trail and today as I was sitting by a creek, taking a break, I watched five astonishingly loud Blackhawk helicopters fly directly overhead, very low. That was about all the wildlife (!) I saw today.

Though it continues to be overcast, I was thankful again for no rain today.

The Gooch Mountain Shelter is new and nice -- it has a loft and nice picnic table and large overhanging roof. This shelter (and the Stove Creek shelter I stayed in last night) has a cable system nearby which you can use to hang your food out of reach of bears. I'm guessing all the shelters have this, at least the ones in Georgia. I hope so, anway.

2004-10-11T13:06:00.000-04:00

Here's me at the top of Springer, still looking relatively clean and perky. I was pretty pleased with myself for having made it to the top in short order. At this point I only had about three miles before I got to my first stopping point (Stover Creek Shelter).

2004-10-11T13:04:00.000-04:00

After a strenuous hike to the top of Springer Mountain, you're rewarded with this plaque, which marks the official beginning of the AT. It's hard to read it from my crummy picture, but the small writing says "A footpath for those who seek fellowship with the wilderness." How cool is that!?

2004-10-11T13:02:00.000-04:00

This is what the approach trail looks like at the very beginning. It seems like an evil trick, but you actually start here and then have to hike 8.5 miles just to get to the beginning of the Appalachian Trail! Note the third line on the sign: Mt. Katahdin is 2,108.5 miles away.

Starting at the Beginning

2004-10-11T12:47:00.000-04:00

The launch of my Appalachian Trail adventure! Amicalola Falls visitor center to Stover Creek Shelter. 11.3 miles

Left the car at Dicks Creek Gap and I-76, and got shuttled to the beginning of the approach trail. It was tough at times -- steep inclines that take you to the top of Springer Mountain. I'm staying in an AT shelter for the first time, with another solo hiker named Keith, who seems nice enough. I feel really good -- no hip pain at all, and no blisters. I'm eating less than I thought. There were lots of other people on the approach trail today -- I bet I passed like 25 people! But Keith is the only one I've seen since starting the "official" part of the AT.

I don't feel too spooked at all about being alone (surprisingly!) except there was this one stretch of the trail that was dark and tunnel-like because of all the overgrowth. Reminded me of something out of The Magician's Nephew or something. There I felt a little funny, but the landscape changed quickly and I was fine. I must admit, though, that I'm kind of glad this Keith guy is here. He showed up at the shelter about an hour after I did.

Yay for me! First day of my section hike done! Total miles = 11.3, in about six hours including breaks.

Poto, Solo!

2004-09-25T17:15:00.000-04:00

Potowatami Trail (all of it!); 17.5 miles

Hiked the whole Potowatami Trail, solo! On the DNR map, started at "1" and went counterclockwise around. Took a wrong turn near "9," but was thankful for it because I saw a beautiful doe starting at me through the trees. Saw little wildlife otherwise, unless you count three tiny kittens playing trailside just north of Hiland Lake. Also saw three hunters -- two were standing right on the trail together; the other was about a mile further up and spooked me a little as he was crouched in the woods, holding his gun and looking at me (!). At that moment, my little orange bandanna, which I had worn on my head to be noticeable in case I encountered hunters, seemed woefully inadequate.

I took only one short break and finished the trail in a little over five hours. My hips were sore afterward and into the next day -- that's never happened to me during a hike! Getting old I guess. Then again, this is (I think) the highest mileage day I've ever had. I was happy to see a bench at point "9" (west end of the shortcut) where I ate my lunch. That was about halfway.

I felt empowered and happy about doing this hike alone, especially becasue my AT launch is just two weeks away. I was distrubed, though, to find out that the day after I hiked, a woman (who was also alone) was robbed on the trail. Yikes.

Update re: the woman who was robbed. I was misinformed; she wasn't robbed on the trail; she was running on the trail and came back to the parking lot to find out that her car had been broken into. Still. You want to be able to trust people in a place like this.

Ten-mile loop on the Potowatami Trail

2004-09-12T16:58:00.000-04:00

Pinckney State Recreation Area. Ten miles in about two and a half hours.

The weather was amazing for this beautiful morning hike. Jay and I started at "1" on the Potowatami Trail, headed to "2" and then "9." (All these numbers are on the DNR map they give you at the park office.) From there, we took the Crooked Lake Trail past "8" and over to "3." Took the Silver Lake Trail to "4" and then got back onto the Poto, to "6," then to "5," then "7," then back to "1." Excluding one break for snacks and water, this hike took us about two and a half hours. Most of it was quite flat.

2004-08-20T16:53:00.000-04:00

At the Blue Ridge Summer Overlook, Catoctin Mountain National Park