7/28/93 – Wed.

Well, so much for skipping one entry. It seems I’ve skipped a whole week. Julie is still with me, after several "last" nights together, several days of slackpacking, her car breaking down, and, now, finally six days of her hiking with me.

For the most part, I have been the cause of all the commotion, as I have seriously been considering getting off the trail. I simply miss Julie too much. I think I have also failed to find anyone else whose company I enjoy as much as Bearanoid’s, and I’m kind of in a vacuum of northbound thru-hikers.

I really lack the urge to write right now, but I felt I needed to make some sort of entry, which I have now done.

I mentioned slackpacking in an earlier entry , and I mentioned it again here. It seems worth defining what that is. Or, at least, how it was used in the 1993 along the AT. Slackpacking meant that you hiked the trail, but without a full backpack. It generally required some level of car-based support, so it was something that I did when Julie was out with me on occasion. I would take a water bottle, lunch, and my hiking stick and head from one road crossing to another. Carrying 5 or 6 pounds instead of 50 increased my pace and decreased the number of breaks required.

I’ve said before that I was a "purist" in that I hiked every step of the trail. I didn’t take any side trail shortcuts, and, if there were two trails into a shelter, I always went in and out on the same one so as to not skip any small sections. When it came to slackpacking, I wasn’t as pure. There were militant purists who considered slackpacking an abomination as well. Not me!

6/23/93 – Wed.

19.8 miles today and we’re staying at Jenkins Shelter with Gandalf, listening to war stories about his one year of teaching in an inner-city school in Birmingham, Alabama (taking a gun from a student, restraining a girl so she doesn’t beat up a guy, watching a fight break out following an assembly about Martin Luther King, Jr., having a girl ask, in front of the class, “Mr. Sturgeon, my throat’s a little dry. Do you have something I can suck on?” etc., etc.). He’s a pretty good guy who could talk the ear off a statue, but he does have a number of good stories.

This is Ron’s last night on the trail. We talked today about how his expectations of the trail differed from reality, and concluded nothing, but he is now talking about section hiking the whole trail over a period of time. We met a guy today who has been hiking different sections of the A.T. since 1957, and had about 15 miles to go before he would be done. Wow!

It took us just under four hours to walk the first 9 miles today, which included the one semi-major climb up Chestnut Know. When we stopped for lunch at 1:00, we had a bit under six miles to go to the Jenkins Shelter, yet we still did not get here until a little after 5:00. Reason? First, we took about 45 minutes for lunch. Second, we stopped to look at a view about 1 1/2 miles later, & met a guy who runs a B & B in Burke’s Garden, which is a small community (partly Amish), that we had been looking down at all day from varioius points along the trail. He gave us each a cold beer and told us all about the history of the town. When James Burke first found the valley in which the town is located, it is rumored that he though he had found the Garden of Eden (it is very fertile, apparently). Anyway, we talked to the innkeeper for a while, and it sounds like his B. & B. is really nice. He charges $75-90 a night, and I am kicking around the idea of taking Julie there tomorrow night if things work out (hopefully, I can just pay Mom & Dad the difference for what a normal hotel would cost). I have one of the brochures for the inn, and the whole thing looks like it would be both quaint and romantic. A lot depends on when Ron takes off & when Julie arrives, so we will see.

I am no longer all that worried about trying to catch up with Buck and Ramble-on-Rich. After 10 days with Ron, I am ready to be back on my own again for a bit. There is a tremendous difference between “hiking with” someone where you each carry of of your own equipment (e.g., Bearanoid & me), and hiking with someone where you share equipment (e.g., Dad & me, Ron & me). Although the latter is fine (and even enjoyable) in small quantities, I would not want to do it for the entire trail.

Tomorrow ought to be a fast day with few stops to smell the flowers or take pictures.

So…is that bed and breakfast still around? I was able to track down a mention of it: “In 1992, Pauletta and Joe Van Dyke opened the James Burke Inn Bed and Breakfast.”

Unfortunately, I also found a note from 1998:

“Not enough, however, to sustain the garden’s only bed and breakfast. Joe and Pauletta VanDyke had high hopes for the James Burke Inn back in 1993: a mini-resort-restaurant-health spa that would have live music and serve alcohol. Today, the inn stands empty along Route 625, with a ‘For Sale’ sign in its front yard.”

That’s a shame, as Joe was a nice fellow…and you’ll see in a bit that Julie and I did stay at the inn. I’m 100% sure I never paid my parents the difference between a night there and a night in a “normal” hotel. I realize two things that have not come up yet — and one sorta’ looks like it was not captured in the journal:

• I allude to the fact here and there that my parents funded the trip. As this entry shows, I was fairly frugally minded, but, even on the trail, I was aware of how lucky I was. Most of the people I met were self-funding their hikes, and they really had to watch their expenses when they hit a town. I generally stayed in hostels when they were available — many of them were “free but take donations,” while others were ridiculously cheap (but also generally took donations). If there wasn’t a hostel in the town that was convenient for a stop, I would get a hotel, and I always got a hotel when Julie met up with me. I have wondered over the years what my total outlay was (um…Mom? Do you have that?). I’ve always looked back on the experience as being a relatively inexpensive way to spend 5 months, but I have no idea what the total I spent was.
• I’ve never explained my “Gilligan” moniker. I picked that up within a week or two of my dad heading out. Most of the people I was hiking with already had trail names, and I did not. It was one of the evenings when I was in a shelter with a number of hikers who have been mentioned already — I particularly remember that Just-in-Time and Entropy were there. We fairly quickly settled on “Gilligan” due to the Tilley Hat (T3) I wore (I still have it to this day…and it is still in great shape — if you don’t know the story of Tilley Endurables, just do a Google search for “tilley endurables elephant”), combined with my propensity to whack my head on the ceilings of shelters.

I’m sure other such tidbits will occur to me as being “missed” in the journal as we go along.

6/18/93 – Fri. (Evening)

We left Damascus right at 1:00 this afternoon with full bellies thanks to the Dairy King in town. We got to Saunders Shelter at about 5:00 and it started raining around 6:30. We’d already gotten water and scared up a couple of wild turkeys by then, so we just sat in the shelter, made dinner, and listened to the rain falling on the tin roof. The shower is over now, and no one else has arrived, so it looks like a spacious evening.

My pack is at last starting to show signs of wear; as I lifted it to put it on and fit it with [th]insulite hip pads stolen from Ron’s pad, one of the vertical bracer bars slid out and hit the floor. Upon closer examination, I discovered that thte bottom piece of the bar had sheared off and dropped out sometime previously — I have no idea when. I patched the thing back up with a little duct tape, and I don’t think it is critical, but I hope I can get it more adequately repaired.

Julie’s gymnastics picture slipped out of my journal as I started to write, and I propped it up against the wall in front of me while I write. I have invented my own personal backpacker’s desk. It fits conveniently on the floor of any shelter and has the essentials: a reading/writing light (candle lantern), a notepad (journal), bookshelves (tonight, the Tao Te Ching), and the personal bit of decoration (Julie’s picture). Life on the trail is so simplified!

A quick list of people I still need to write and thank for graduation money: Gran Fran, Steve & Mary Lou, & Grandma (???).

I made a list in the shelter register of friends I had made on the trail who got off in Damascus. First, of course, was Bearanoid, whose company I have already begun to miss. I think his is (so far) the friendship I have made that is most likely to continue after the trail. Our backgrounds and current lives are totally different, which makes me think we could both benefit from and enjoy occasional contact. Next, is Justin & Entropy. I have not seen them since Hot Springs and did not see any of their entries in shelter registers from Elk Park to Damascus, which leads me to believe that Entropy’s maildrop never arrived and/or they succumbed to a major gravity surge at “Elmer’s” in Hot Springs and spent the rest of their trail time eating vegetarian meals and mowing his yard. Entropy had composed a short little poem which I meant to get written down but never did. I also never got their addresses, although i could probably go through the MIT Alumni Association and find Entropy’s brother and find Entropy from there. Will I?… Finally, Andy and Bones left the trail. They turned out to be better guys than I originally thought, but I don’t think I would have wanted to spend many more nights in shelters with them. Bones does work for an outdoor equipment store, and he gave me a card and set [sic] to call him collect if there was anything he could help me with while I was on the trail, so that was pretty nice.

And now I’ve had a though and will make a feeble attept to once again wax poetic:

A Path

Up a hill, down a hill
I follow the trail of life.
‘Tis a path trodden by many,
Though none tread the same as I.

The pace, my own.
The stops, I pick.
The destination is mine alone

I walk alone,
Though sometimes with others.
But in the end,
I walk alone.

6/16/93 – Wed.

We walked a fairly easy 13 miles today and are staying in Iron Mtn. Shelter with an older couple from Hawaii and a friend of theirs. The couple is hiking selected sections of the A.t. from Georgia to Maine, usually northbound but at the moment southbound.

Bearanoid left a farewell entry of sorts in the Vendeventer Shelter register; it was a page long and talked about how much he has enjoyed hiking the A.T. this time (he also mentioned that he saw a naked girl posing in front of Laurel Falls for her boyfriend). He signed off, “Peace & Love – Bearanoid,” which sounds almost like a liberal, so maybe Buck and I had an effect on him after all.

Buck left me a message in the register here — said she missed me and hopes to see me soon. The feeling is mutual, as I enjoyed her company on the trail more than anyone except Bearanoid. In spite of the amicability in the shelters that I have written about, there are surprisingly few people that I can actually look forward to seeing day after day. I was more acutely aware of this after spending two nights with Shortcut, Bones, and Andy. Everyone got along fine, we joked and laughed quite a bit, but I was glad that they would be staying a shelter ahead of us tonight. The novelty of their company had worn out, which it had not done with Bearanoid or Buck. The thought does cross my mind that perhaps I am attracted to Buck, which would be bad. I don’t think I am, though. I miss her company in the same way I am sad that Bearanoid is off the trail. I also feel that if I were attracted to her, there would be some weakening of my feelings for Julie, which has certainly not occurred. This whole male/female thing really does get in the way of things. Julie had joked about me meeting “someone else” on the trail, and now I have met someone with exactly that potential. I worry that Julie will worry about this, even though I know there is nothing to worry about. Julie is undeniably, unquestionably, and totally the love of my live, and I certainly hope that never changes.

Ron has been reading my copy of the Tao Te Ching and is really getting into it. He periodically has me read passages that he thinks are particularly good or relevant. There really is some good stuff in there!

I just re-read my “article” from last night. It seems pretty rough, and it seems like I lacked a real sense of purpose while writing it. I’ll try writing a couple more and see how it goes.

Hiking with Ron and holding back to shorter mileage days, I think I have found something else that I like about hiking, mainly because I haven’t been doing it. I like to push myself physically, meaning I would rather go for the shelter at 21 miles than the one at 13. There are people out here who make high mileage their primary goal, and I think they miss out on a lot. I, on the other hand, like Bearanoid, enjoy pushing myself physically — not to the point of misery, but more to the point of tiredness, the point that makes me feel like I have really gone somewhere. I think there is a difference. Otherwise, I am one of those hikers that is missing out on a lot.

Me?! I actually like to physically exert myself on a daily basis? Hmmm. I must’ve dropped that joy some time in my 20s, as getting to the gym is a serious act of willpower these days.

6/14/93 – Mon.

A day of firsts: first day back on the trail, first day hiking with Ron, first day with new boots. And how do I feel? A bit sluggish, actually. It felt kind of odd to get back to the trail today, as though I had been gone for a year rather than five days. The trail is like a river — the hikers move steadily along, and a break from the trail by one person does not still the current. Buck is somewhere beyond Damascus now, and Bearanoid is on his way back to New Hampshire. Even though Ron is with me, I feel strangely alone; this is not the same trail I was hiking just a week ago. Troll is still behind me, but close, as are the Children of the Trail, Parrothead and Station Break, and “Bones” (Shawn). I think I could develop a relationship with Troll similar to the one I had with Bearanoid, but I have not seen him since Wesser (which seems long ago), and he must catch up with me first. I would almost rather try to catch Buck instead. I have a new bit of respect for her. After two weeks off, she could expect to know nobody when she came back, which would be an awfully lonely prospect.

We’re staying tonight at Moreland Gap Shelter after a 13.6 mile day. Bones and Kid Creole just showed up. Shortcut is also here. He is from Akron, OH, but a lot like Bushwack, I’m afraid. Actually, he was the guy who caught a ride with Bushwack from Stecoah Gap to Fontana.

I hate leaving Julie. She cried some last night, and I just about did, too. If I do manage to finish this thru-hike, so help me I will never do anything where I have to be without her for so long again. Ron said today that he had been pressuring Andrea to move down to Dallas ASAP. He said he can’t help but worry that the first time they get to spend more than 72 hours together they’ll discover that they can’t stand each other; it’s a minor concern, but a concern nevertheless. I, on the other hand, have been able to spend so much time with Julie in the past year that this separation is threatening to drive me out of my skull.

The family reunion in Georgia was a blast, as expected. I really enjoy that half of the family — they seem to have discovered the secret to relaxing and unwinding. I really felt at times that no one there had a single care in the world other than milking as much enjoyment out of the reunion as possible. There is something to be said for that.

My pack felt heavy today, which may be due to the food I am carrying, but may also be due to the fact that I was not as rigorous in repacking my pack. My feet seem to be holding up well, but it looks like I’ll need to molefoam the sore spot on my left hip (my right hip is still a bit swollen but does not hurt). It is probably good that I am hiking with Ron, as he will keep me from pushing myself too hard right after the long break.

I’m back on the trail.
How long was I gone?
Forever it seems.
Is something wrong?
Different, I think,
Different.

This seems like a good time to cover the “…then what happened…?” with some of the characters to this point, who are also mentioned in this post:

• Troll — he ultimately had to leave the trail; I did not see him again, although we exchanged a piece of mail or two
• Bearanoid — for as much as we “clicked” on the trail, our post-trail exchanges got a bit odd; within a year, he had been born again and become a conspiracy theorist; he sent me a book as well as an audio tape that covered all of the ways the freemasons were plotting a New World Order; I let that relationship die rather abruptly
• Ron — I almost didn’t include the paragraph above…but he’s coming up on his 14th wedding anniversary with Andrea, so I suspect she’ll forgive him his concerns! She did move to Dallas, where they lived when they got married. They moved to Austin when Ron finished dental school, and they now live just west of Austin with their two kids
• Buck — well…we’re far from done with her in this journal, so we’ll just let her ride for a while…

6/9/93 – Wed. (Morning)

Yesterday was eventful. Bearanoid & I got up using the Bearanoid-bladder alarm, rather than the Tim-sunrise alarm, so we were on the trail by 6:30 AM. We had lost about an hour by lunch, as Mark found a stray kitten at Hughes Gap — hungry, thirsty, scared, and affectionate as could be. Mark couldn’t bear to leave it after he fed it some beef jerky, so we headed up Roan Mtn. with a cat. He was too affectionate to carry, and he would jump off if we tried to put him on a pack (regardless if he had a rope around his neck). Finally, we put most of the stuff from teh upper half of my pack into my clothes bag and tied it on my top bar, and then put A.T. (the cat) into the pack. That worked out pretty well, and we found a birder in Carver’s Gap who said she would take it and find it a home, so everything turned out pretty well.

We used the stuffed bird that Julie gave me to “call” some crows, which confused them more than we thought it would. The whole thing was pretty funny.

Julie had not checked into the hotel in Elk Park when we got to the road, and we were facing a bit of a dilemma as to what to do, but she drove up just as Bearanoid was about to walk the 0.8 miles to the pay phone, so that turned out fine, too.

And now, I am off the trail for a few days. This will be my last entry until I return to the A.T., so I may have a fairly long entry then. This journal needs to last me until Damascus, though, so the next few entries may be abbreviated.

Let me clarify and elaborate on the “off the trail for a few days” comment. There was a Love Family reunion at Callaway Gardens in Georgia, organized around a naming ceremony for the Love Dental Clinic at Fort Benning. The building was being named after my great-grandfather, Major General Walter D. Love, who was the chief of the U.S. Army Dental Corps from 1950 to 1954 — “Papa” to me.

My maternal grandmother, Gommie, saw this as a good excuse to get her father’s descendants together, and a good number of us managed to make it. Apparently, the organizers at Fort Benning were hoping to have a family member or two in attendance at the ceremony, and they were thrilled (or acted thrilled) when there were more than twenty of us!

Julie picked me up from the A.T. and we drove to Callaway Gardens. We had dinner that night, which was the first time she met many members of my mother’s extended family. As tends to be the case, she was a hit. But, at dinner, she was simply “Tim’s girlfriend.” The next morning was the naming ceremony, and the organizers had name tags made up that indicated everyone’s relationship to Papa. Julie was the only non-family member in attendance…which presented Gommie with a little bit of a dilemma as to what to tell the organizers to put on her name tag. She…um…came up with a solution. While my name tag said something like “Great-Grandson,” Julie’s said, “Tim Wilson’s fiancé.” We were not engaged at the time. Several of my mother’s cousins told Julie and me, “We didn’t realize you were engaged!” “Um. We’re not.” Everyone got a pretty good laugh out of that. When confronted with her literary license, Gommie didn’t miss a beat: “Well…she will be soon enough!”

As it turned out, by the time I arrived in Callaway Gardens, I had decided that I wanted to propose to Julie when I finished the trail. My mother did some leg work when it came to setting me up with a jeweler in Beaumont, some old jewelry that could be used for gold, and, I think, even took the sketch I had made of an engagement ring back to the jeweler. While Julie’s “fiancé” status did not become official for another four months, Gommie’s conviction was warranted!

6/7/93 – Mon.

Today was long, and tomorrow will probably be longer, but at the end of tomorrow is Julie, and I can think of no more effective way to spur me on.

We started off today hiking together, and we got into a highly political discussion, which got fairly heated. I surprised myself and had some really good argument in favor of affirmative action. Buck was backing me up, so Bearanoid was outnumbered. We concluded that we were a good example of what happens in American society: the two sides argue forever and neither side is swayed in the least. Bearanoid says that after a few years in the real world, we will see thing his way. Time will tell.

Later in the day we got into a big discussion about illicit drugs, of which Bearanoid has done many (not really since he was in the army, though). That was pretty enlightening.

Bearanoid and I seem to have developed kind of a big brother attitude towards Kelly (Buck). We cannot help but admire her willpower and stamina, but we also worry about her — her feet look like shit, but she keeps plodding on. The whole gender roles “thing” has suddenly brought itself to the A.T. How much concern can I show without being sexist? How can I be impressed that a young, attractive female has the guts to come out here and hike alone without implying that long-distance hiking is a man’s pasttime? These thoughts are almost constantly with us. We did not hang back and walk with Buck after lunch because it would have bothered her, yet we were more than ready to head back up the trail from the shelter with flashlights in hand should darkness begin to fall. I do wish I knew Buck’s thoughts on the whole thing (she writes in her journal more than I do), but I do not really know her well enough to go into it, and she is pretty laid-back about the whole situation. I can’t help thinking that if I were in her shoes I would resent some of Mark’s and my behavior, but she does not seem to at all. At the same time, she certainly does not expect us to cut her any slack. Also, she is not trying to just fit in as “one of the guys.” Like I wrote last night, she has remained very feminine when it comes to hygiene and appearance. She even takes a long time to pack up in the morning! I guess she may just remain a mystery. I cannot help but think that many guys out here are going to (or have) flirt with her and “hit on” her, and wonder if that is one reason she is hiking with Bearanoid and me — she knows there will be no romantic intentions. I keep having When Harry Met Sally run though my head and wonder how the points in that movie apply here. Maybe I’ll get more insights farther down the trail, but right now I am fairly confused.

By the way, we are staying at Clyde Smith Shelter tonight.

Another consensus we came to today, was that people would like the world to be an ideal place, and most people agree on what “ideal” is. However, it is not, and political disagreements occur when people disagree on which side of “ideal” the chips should fall. Maybe I’ll elaborate some other time.

6/6/93 – Sun.

Ah! A relaxing day — almost a rest day. The sky was cloudless all day, we took several hours off in Erwin to go to a Pizza Hut (no beer served — we were there during “Sunday Hours”), walked a mile and a half up the trail and stoped to dunk our clothes and (some of) our bodies (Buck) in a stream, and still got to Curley Maple Gap Shelter by 4:30. Total A.T. miles for the day: 9.9.

It seems that now would be a good time to make a list of some of the misspellings we have seen on signs thus far:

• Mountain Mama’s bathroom: “Sence your mother’s no here…”
• Govt. sign at Fontana Hilton: “Appalachian Trail…from Georgia to Main“
• Railroad track crossing: “…trains occassionally stop…”
• A 5-line entry by day-hikers in the Curley Maple register had the following words: “stoping,” “shure,” “suspost” (supposed), “thankful”

We’ve spent some time speculating on the literacy of the average backwoods Georgian/North Carolinian and have surmised that it is not very high.

By the way, the “we” referred to earlier in this entry are Bearanoid, Buck, and I. Buck was sort of looking for someone to hike with through a couple of the “bad” sections of the trail that are coming up, so she’s probably going to stick with Bearanoid through Damascus. It has been nice and interesting to have a female hiking alone along the trail — Buck is the first that I’ve seen, and she has proven that the trail can be successfully hiked “Mom’s” way. She takes a birdbath every day, shaves her legs regularly, and periodically even washes her hair, which is a bit longer than Julie’s and which she didn’t cut before starting the trail (unlike Entropy, who gave herself a buzz and is letting her leg-hair grow). She is attractive and clean, which makes Bearanoid and me feel even more scruffy than we already did. In the Whisperlite/Peak I war, she sides with me, as she carries a Whisperlite. She also carries an awfully heavy pack, but Bearanoid has already begun his weight-reducing magic, and they are going to go through her pack in Elk Park like we went through mine in Hot Springs. She’s also carrying a North Face Tadpole tend,, and he’s just about convinced her that it should be sent home, and, after that, I think other stuff will easily follow.

What the hell, I’ll go ahead and do a little bio on Buck. She’s from North Carolina, she’s been working kind of an array of jobs for teh last two years, first in Tennessee (boyfriend was there) and then in Florida. She’s never hiked before (hasn’t camped since elementary school) and is searching for some sort of direction in life out here. She says she wants a job that pays well and offers a lot of freedom (not sure what “freedom” is in her mind, though, I think). She played soccer, volleyball, and basketball and blew out one of her knees, so she has a couple of scars, albeit smaller than Julie’s. She has gone skydiving once, but probably won’t ever again. She’s doing a bit of a religious exploration out here, too — raised a Methodist. She is fairly liberal, voted for Perot, and does not believe in living together before marriage. She has added a fresh perspective to our discussions, and the next couple of days might spark some new insights into life.

We also have a guy named Jack for company tonight. He’s kind of a scary looking guy — long bear, scrawny, long hair, late 30′s — but he is pretty harmless. We unofficially dubbed him “The Mushroom Man” way back at Cold Springs Shelter (he periodically cooks  some “Hen of the Woods” mushroom with his meal) and have run into him a couple of times since. We think he might have Turret (sp?) Syndrome, and he tends to just start talking and not stop, which gets a bit irritating. Bearanoid has observed that the key is to tun him out and just throw out an occasional “Um-hmm,” which he has mastered. I’ve heard him once before go on for some length about the theory of relativity  and how it pertains to hiking the A.T., and tonight he has covered the topics of: defining good fiction, movies, and how guitar/drum solos are important/misused in contemporary rock music — all of this done while he tried to fix his Walkman. Anyway, suffice it to say that Jack is not easy to describe. This is Buck’s first exposure to Jack, but she says we had done him justice in our description. Oh, yeah, he has hiked most of the trail multiple times in past summers — his parents send his maildrops.

Oh, if only Julie were here! Today was just that one step away from being perfect, once again. It looks like we’ll make Elk Park by Tuesday evening, and it’s a good thing we had an easy day today, because I easily could have pushed myself too hard in an effort to get there ASAP. [sappy Julie thoughts...]

I’m not sure what was wrong with “thankful” in the misspellings list. I’m thinking that the register actually said “thankfull”…and I then wrote it in my journal incorrectly…or correctly, as the case may be.

6/5/93 – Sat.

i forgot to jot down this tidbit, acquired in a hardware store back in Hot Springs: “What’s the difference between a Yankee and a Damn Yankee? A Yankee is someone who comes to the South, visits, and then goes back to the North. A Damn Yankee is someone who comes to the South and stays.” That makes Bearanoid just a plain Yankee.

We covered 18.4 miles today and are alone (it looks like for the night) at No Business Knob Shelter. We have come just under 60 miles in three days and are feeling the effect — a kind of sluggishness. Consequenty, tomorrow we are probably only going to cover about ten miles, taking a break in Erwin, TN, for pizza and to stock up on food to get us to Elk Park (mainly candy bars/snacks). Then it’s two twenty-milers to hot showers and Julie!

Well, Buck has now shown up…at eight o’clock! That gal’s got a lot of get-up-and-go! She says it really bothers her to not get as far as she had planned in a day, but she has no qualms about going six miles farther than she had planned. For all of my diligent H₂O filtering, I felt a bit foolish today when I discovered mildew growing in the threads of the lids of my water bottle. I had thought that the fish smell I kep getting when I drank was from my hands due to the sardines I had for lunch — wrong! I cleaned them off really well and dumped the water into my waterbag so i could let them air overnight (I also washed my hands really well in case it was the sardines).

Still no sunset. Buck hasn’t seen one either, so apparently it is not an uncommon experience (not seeing one, that is). I’m sure I will catch one eventually.

I need to get a postcard written to a guy about boots, so this is it for the evening.

(Next morning — killing time)

I don’t think I mentioend that my watch stopped working two nights ago at 8:30 PM, which meant I hiked all day yesterday with no definite way of telling time. Strider argued (last week some time) that a watch should not be carried on the trail — do as the Indians and eat when hungry, sleep when tired, and gauge time by shadow length. Ideally, maybe, but practicall, no. Many days are cloudy, and I prefer to eat at certain times, so I don’t get hungry. I can estimate how far I have travelled by the time that I have been hiking. Especially in the afternoon, time/distance perception gets warped, and a watch serves as a reliable constant by which to gauge activity.

A little bit more background on Buck, which I don’t seem to have written down, but which I remember very clearly. It’s appropriate here because, if you’ve been following the last couple of entries, you might be thinking, “Uh…Tim…were you and Bearanoid oblivious to the fact that Buck might have had a little bit of a chip on her shoulder and wanted to prove that she wouldn’t be outhiked by a couple of guys, especially when one of them (Bearanoid) was a former Army Ranger?” In fact, I think this was a little bit of what was going on. Buck was actually hiking the trail because she had been living and working in Florida, and her boyfriend at the time decided he was going to hike the A.T. As he started talking about it, she got interested and, even though she had never backpacked before in her life, announced that she would do it with him. The boyfriend sounds like a bit of a jerk, in that he pretty much scoffed at the idea. But, he agreed that she could come with him (and a couple of his friends, I think). Well, she got sick a few weeks into the hike — really sick, as in some sort of stomache bug — and had to take a couple of weeks off. Her boyfriend apparently was not particularly sympathetic, and did not even give the idea of waiting for her to be better so that they could continue to hike together. That was pretty much the end of the relationship.

Bearanoid and I met up with Buck on her first night back on the trail. At the time, I don’t think it occurred to either Bearanoid or me that Buck was trying to prove something. And, even in hindsight, anything she was trying to prove she was trying to prove to herself. She was a pretty neat person, and I’ve always somewhat regretted that we lost touch over the years. The dogs exchanged holiday greeting cards with her parents for years (Buck and her parents actually came to our wedding), but they seem to have moved in the past few years, so even that no longer happens.

6/4/93 – Fri.

A crowded shelter this evenign at Hogback Ridge. Parrothead, Station Break, The Traileaters, Buck, Bearanoid, and I are here. Bearanoid and I got here at about 5:00, and teh last three hours were pretty mean. We’d kind of planned on the last six miles of the 21.3 mile day being tough, so it was a physical shock more than a mental one.

Buck was still in her sleeping bag this morning when we left, and we really didn’t think she’d make it here, but she rolled in around 7:00.

It turns out that Bearanoid and i seem to be on the early-rising side of the hikers out here. We get up around 6:15 and hit the trail between 7:00 and 7:30. We like to be off the trail between 4:00 and 6:00, whereas other people seem to not mind hiking later. I like to have plenty of daylight to cook, get water, etc., as does Bearanoid. I do kind of wonder if we would remain as compatible if we were thru-hiking instead of stopping in Damascus. We actually hike together a log — our paces are really compatible, and we tend to converse a decent amount.

We have an ongoing debate about who is carrying the better backpacking stove — me with my MSR Whisperlite or Bearanoid with his Peak I. There really probably isn’t a right answer, but we try to make our point with as many cheap shots as possible. We always quiz the people who we stay with at night as to what they’re carrying and draw them into the argume as well. It’s all good-natured and on-going.

Once again I am struck by the congeniality in the shelter. Everyone is relaxed, and conversations work there way quickly to common ground. Laughter is common, and even the quietist people speak up perodically. I have little else to say, really, even though I have plenty of time, so I will end my entry for the evening.