Dolph Park on a Sad Day in the Fall

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"

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)

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

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"

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

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

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)