TRAIL DAY 59
Tue, Apr 19, 2016 Breakfast for me the next morning was Carnation drink, an apple and tea. For Theo it was a tuna pack and a Knorr Fettuccini Pasta Side compliments of Highway who was sleeping in.
I never read or entered anything in the Journals that were at most shelters. Some were consistent readers and writers. It must have been Highway the night before who informed me that the Journal at Iron Mountain Shelter had a note by Sweet Potato: “a bear took Sojo’s food.”
Theo and I left before Highway awoke and continued over easy dips and rises, through the endless switchbacks in the south on our way toward Damascus, soon to leave Tennessee behind. The woods were more of the same until we came to TN 91 a road that ran along the edge of beautiful farmlands. Shortly before we got there, we came to a clearing not far south of the road where there was a large, bear-proof, metal, bright-orange box with 3 crosses burned out of the lid, outlined in black and closed off with black wire mesh.
Trail Magic!
I opened the box and it was filled with goodies, including many small cans of franks and beans. There was a notebook inside for messages and I told my story of the bear and how grateful I was to receive the Trail Magic from their church group. It was a saving grace for a hiker in need.
After crossing TN 91, I was in another world for a short spell.
Farmland.
The world had turned green – the woods cleared for fields of grass and distant views. I thought to write to the private landowners who allow thru-hikers and others to pass over their land on a trail uninterrupted for over 2000 miles. Theirs was a generous gift to the likes of me who had carried the desire to make this pilgrimage in some inner recesses for decades. It was here that I conceived of the idea to ask the ATC for the addresses of all private landowners so I could send my personal thanks on behalf of all hikers.
As the thought returned numerous times on the trail while crossing other private lands, I wondered if the ATC would want to protect the identity of such generous people – want to preserve their privacy – and maybe I’d not receive the information I needed to show my gratitude. I have just inquired of the ATC while working on my re-write of this passage and, indeed, privacy is appropriately respected.
Privacy. Can’t help but reflect. A big buzzword in our current culture. It used to be used to refer to intimate personal times such as those guarded by a bathroom door. It is ironic that today when our privacy is threatened at every turn, if it exists at all, “privacy” has become a matter requiring lengthy documents to project the thought that companies really “care” about you and want to ensure you of this in endless lines of legalese. It is, of course, very important that we read all of these documents in hard or web copies so we can be sure when we buy that toothbrush online or in the store, no one but no one is going to know if the bristles are hard or soft. I have done a serious study of these documents and I am satisfied that all but a few companies I simply will not patronize, have my back on this matter.
I know, right?
It used to be (I must be getting along in years) that one would leave his office at night, pull the door shut and turn a key in the lock that, for the most part, pretty much assured the owner that, in the morning when he returned, his things would be in the same place and same order he had left them in the night before. The key in his pocket gave him a pretty reliable secure feeling.
No more.
Today, the universe – well at least everyone on the planet – has full access to every document you have prepared and can discard, move or change it in accordance with whatever perversion possess him at the time. Forget the key! Just leave the door open and let everyone know you are gone for the day so they can help themselves. Not only can they change the document but they can also change the way you create the document any time they want. They can change the keystrokes you use to type it, move it, amend it or send it.
Oooooooh. . .let’s get back to the woods. LET’S!
All of this just because of how green and lovely the private land was just north of TN 91. Thank you landowner whoever you are. I do hope I shall soon learn your identity to thank you formally.
What happened as I returned to the woods north of this private land could have ended my hike if not my life.
Remember, we are walking in the woods – in nature. This is not the kind of territory where one could sue a businessman for failing to tend to defective and dangerous flooring as he entices his customers to look at shelved merchandise instead of where they are going. No this is nature. Hiker beware.
And that was another reason to go to the woods. Our success was up to us – not bending society to our wishes or limitations. Caring for the limitations of others in society is a beautiful thing – as beautiful as the trees and sunlight in our manicured world. But nature is its own world and he who enters needs to know that. Mother Nature reigns supreme in her world.
Rule Number 1: Do not argue with Mother Nature.
At the north end of the green fields was a fence to climb over to return to the woods. No sooner was I over and back to the pale brown dirt and leaves than I found myself thrown forward as if pushed from behind, torso all but parallel to the ground, backpack accelerating the action, head like the tip of a spear about to be implanted in a fallen log as if to take its life – or mine.
Legs involuntarily scrambled forward to the rescue none too soon.
I stood near the log and looked back: “What the [bleep] was that?”
I went back to investigate and took pictures of the area and the culprit. It may have been here, if not before, that I decided I would have a separate category for some of my pictures: HAZARDS. This one would most definitely be included. Small, camouflaged, unyielding, directly in the trail, inevitable. By the sheen, it was easy to tell that I was not the first to have encountered this pernicious item.
While I took my pictures or perhaps as I was recovering from my near disaster, Theo ran for cover, the best he could find, from the sun. Only once during my many falls on the trail, most, if not all, in the north, do I recall Theo coming up to me with an “Ooooh-are-you-OK?” look. Most of the time it seemed as if he could care less. “Aaaaah, he’s all screwed up for now – not going anywhere soon – time to rest.” Or maybe it was, “Ooooh, not again! Don’t we have to get somewhere soon?”
But his loyalty and turning back to check on me made up for any don’t-bother-me-with-your-falls tendencies. Come to think of it, was it an “Are-you-OK?” check or an “Is-he-gunna-be-able-to-open-my-feed-bag?” check?
No matter. We were together and we planned to stay that way from Georgia to Maine.
Moving along the trail we began to see more and more little wildflowers. Tiny little things that packed a lot of delicate beauty.
I don’t think I mentioned that I’d had a left inguinal hernia repair as a 5-or-6-year-old. It had begun to weaken a year or so before the trail. In the south on the AT, I had a chronic case of post-nasal drip and my lungs would fill as I slept at night. I would then cough all day. The hernia became an issue and I would put a stick down the front of my pants to hold it in. I went through about 3 or 4 sticks on the trail because I’d leave them behind. I was without one this day and decided to use my cell phone backup battery to hold things in place and it seemed to be putting just the right amount of pressure in just the right place – until I stopped for a standing call of nature.
It wasn’t until I was well past this point that I realized my battery had fallen down my pant leg along the trail. It was too far to go back so I carried on.
In time I came to the Double Springs Shelter where I stopped for the shade and lunch. I met “Speedy John Combs” there. I don’t remember much about him but I do recall that he was a mover.
I have no notes about a couple whom I met there. The guy was some ways beyond the shelter at the tent they had set up the night before. She was at the shelter and looked a little the worse for wear. She said they were going to be walking to Texas together but she didn’t seem all that keen on the idea. It may have been more his idea than hers. When he showed up, it was apparent that they were having an argument neither sought to keep secret. When things quieted down, they sat together peacefully a little uphill from the shelter on the approach side.
Another hiker came along before long and I asked him if by any chance he’d seen a charger battery on the trail. He asked me what color it was and I said black. He pulled it out of a pouch and gave it to me saying, “I wasn’t going to give it to just anybody without some proof it was theirs.” I thanked him profusely wondering why the question itself wasn’t proof enough. Would someone who hadn’t lost a battery ask if another had found one?
His name was “Doc” and I was most grateful. This battery would charge my phone 3 times and was ample to keep me juiced up between recharging it in town which took 10 or more hours.
PB had given me this battery when he got a higher capacity Anker charger which he needed because he regularly listened to his play list on his phone. He gave it to me some time after the Mount Cammerer Tower where he helped me with a call to Medtek. It was a Godsend. My thin, light-weight charger didn’t do the trick. Even putting the phone on flight mode didn’t save the battery long enough to be my camera and an occasional telephone. It was heavy but worth it. If you’re planning a long-distance hike, take heed.
I also met “Humon” here. He was what I came to think of as an elegant hiker. He was tall, soft-spoken, wore a safari hat with cloth hanging down over his neck as if he were in the beating hot sun all day. His trekking poles were long to suit his stature and had strange mitts fixed to the handles for the cold. He walked with a long, deliberate stride, shoulders and arms barely moving.
He almost seemed to float above the ground with an air of impenetrability as if, should we face a downpour, his head would rise above the clouds where the sunshine would filter down his body in a shimmer evaporating any moisture clinging to his noble form below.
In his quiet, perhaps higher-class way, he told me his trail name was “Humon” which he said meant Earth-Man-Woman are one. “Hum” for humus for earth and, I guess “mon” for man and woman with a Jamaican accent.
Theo and I set out northward before he did but he soon caught up and passed us. I saw a bright yellow item at his left side and called out to him to ask what it was. He turned, faced me in a statuesque pose and told me but perhaps I was so taken with the man to remember what he said. We would cross paths with Humon a few more times and learn that he had changed his name en route to something else of equal merit.
Aaaaah, as I have been reviewing pictures for the day, I saw a picture of some female stuff left on the trail and wondered just what it was but now, as I have been mining the memories of the day, it pops back in mind to the point that I could almost take you to the spot. I believe the trail curved around to the left slightly before these items appeared. Every so often, you would find stuff abandoned on the trail – even a real nice tent left flooded in the rain.
We passed a hiker down to his last scrape of peanut butter and then came to a low stone wall on the east side of the trail – I think the first and only stone wall that AWOL noted – followed by the disused McQueens Knob Shelter. We then came to a modest climb up to the Abington Gap Shelter, a logical place to camp for the night. It was 5:45 p.m. and perhaps we’d stay. Regardless, I needed water. A piped spring was 0.2 miles behind the shelter steeply downhill. You wished you could have gotten it before climbing up to the shelter. Up – then back down – then back up.
But – Theo loved the hill. He had learned to get double-action back scratching on hills. On a hill he got not only the side to side action from his vigorous twists and rolls but also head-to-tail action with no effort at all as gravity did its thing. No fool this dog! Several days on, he would almost go off a bank in pursuit of spinal comfort.
Back up top, I chatted a bit with Doc whom I’d seen on the way to the shelter. He had decided to stay. I thought I’d move on. I flung my pack up and over my right shoulder slipping my right arm through the strap as I did so then worked my left arm in its strap, buckled up waist then chest straps and headed out. I remember so clearly a guy and gal sitting in a small island off to the left of the trail just as I was leaving the clearing around the shelter having their supper. I bid farewell to them and headed back into the woods. Soon it would be dusk.
I hiked 4 more miles and was getting ready to call it quits. I found a little site for camping off the trail to the right, just shy of a 20-mile day. The body deserves its due. We camped.
I set up the tent on a level place next to a tree, had supper against a log and then, since I’d been burned once in Tennessee, I decided to hang – even though the area was isolated and didn’t seem particularly bear-infested. Watauga Lake, on the other hand, was a public area where people carelessly left food around. The bears smelled it, got used to it, expected it and most definitely demanded it. They learned all the tricks to get what they wanted as I found out.
This wasn’t Watauga Lake – but, OK, I’ll hang anyway. Better safe than sorry, right?
So, just a little spooked – just a little – I got the rope I’d used at the lake, uncoiled it and began the sometimes complicated process of hanging. It wasn’t going to be the PCT method and I would hang Theo’s bag as well.
My pictures aren’t helping me – but I remember pulling my bear bag high off the ground and letting it simply hang straight down far from any tree trunks and then taking the long end of the rope and pulling it around one or two other trees and tying the end off the ground in a tree at some distance from the bag. Now, a bear could surely find the end of the rope and bite through it if he was so minded but it was far from the food and maybe – just maybe – a bear wouldn’t make the connection – wouldn’t follow the line from bag to tie. And, let me spare you the suspense – there were no incidents this night.
Except one.
It was dark as I was hanging Theo’s bag and I was using my headlamp. His bag was on the ground. I had flung the rope over a tree limb and fixed the end to the bag. Just as I began pulling on the rope to lift it, a giant – and I mean giant – skunk with large, bright stripes down each side came scurrying toward my feet out of nowhere!
While my hands were holding the line, my heart leapt within me. Where did he come from? I was sure to get sprayed or bitten or both. I never thought to run. Besides that would only cause a chase or maybe aggravate a spray that might not otherwise happen.
There was a moment – an instant of near panic – until. . .
I moved my head with the lamp attached and the two bright stripes totally disappeared. Where the skunk had been there was now nothing but complete darkness. That vicious, frightening, monster skunk – was Theo’s bag – lined on each side with reflectorized material that I had completely forgotten and can’t even identify in daytime pictures.
Instant fright – instant relief. Oh, you silly man!
But I’d be spooked again many weeks later.
It was a good night for sleep.
Day #59 Iron Mountain Shelter > Unnamed Gap > 19.9 miles