Date: 2004-05-18
From: Wapiti Shelter

To: Pearisburg, VA
Miles today: 17.2
Weather: light rain

As always, I left at dawn and walked speedily, hoping to make the miles to Pearisburg. I wasn¢t in a particularly good mood and I couldn¢t help muttering against the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club, which had failed to take any measures to prevent the trail from being first a stream and then a cascade as I ascended the 800 feet to the ridge. Once on the ridge, I took a moment at an overlook to take in the view. The lower mountains were drowned in fog, but the sun was up and the world took on a fantastic aspect. I was soon ridge walking along abandoned logging roads toward Sugar Run Mountain. Sugar Run Mountain gave way to Pearis Mountain, another long summit with some overlooks. At one point beyond a power line the trail went straight up to join another power line at its summit. The sky was threatening when I reached this summit and the pack cover went on. At another point, a five-foot black snake slithered off the trail.There were interesting rocks toward the end of the Pearis Mountain ridge. Soon the trail was in its descent mode. The descent was steep and muddy and I fell coming down some log steps. It seemed to go on forever, and as I got lower and lower, memories of the Maryland summertime jungle I grew up in came back to me, oppressively. There was too much mud, too much undergrowth, too many flies, and the thunderstorms and the promise of hotter days to come made my end today a relief. I was alone and happy to be leaving the trail. Weeks earlier, in another bad mood, Palm Tree had told me that, when you feel down on the trail, you should eat something. But unlike that phase, when the problem was too little food, now I had too much food of the wrong type ¢ Oreos and those cheese crackers with peanut butter, and Snickers bars, which I had never eaten earlier in the hike. This was what I could get at the IGA in Bland, but it wasn¢t the best nutrition. But perhaps the real problem was that today, the last day, was no scramble up Katahdin. It was a whimpering end, and I knew the things that oppressed me were not so much things I could not stand as challenges I would not be allowed to face. The Pepsi from the styrofoam cooler, that some trail angel had left along the trail, was of a piece with the shower, the laundering, and the meals I was about to enjoy before my parents arrived the next day to pick me up. It was all about leaving the hiker world, which, as I write this a week later, has begun to come into my dreams. Once out of the woods I immediately encountered ¢Bramble,¢ a bare-chested hiker trying to find his way back to the trail. I was looking for the post office area and he directed me up the long hill. I went to the Plaza Hotel because, upon my arrival at Pearisburg, I was no longer a hiker, and I wanted to put some distance between me and the hikers congregated at the Holiday Motor Lodge next door. At the Plaza Hotel, the hiker register lying conspicuously on the counter revealed that damn few hikers stay there, compared to the Holiday Motor Lodge. However, my room had a good television, so I could watch Law and Order three shows in a row while drinking beer and eating chips.