Date: 2016-06-28
From: VA 311 / Casa Corbin 

To: Daleville / Howard Johnson's
Miles today: 19.8

Spent the night again at Tanya and Mike's, who fed me olives and cheese and crackers and chicken and salad and peanut butter pie and chickory coffee.....that and rest no doubt led to the ridiculous energy boost I got today.I was nervous about taking a friend in for a day hike on the AT. I've never done it before and it's hard to know ahead of time which hikes will be brutal and rocky. None of the terrain around here is flat. I didn't want to kill Tanya or make her hate me. :-) We did a lot of research on the McAfee ascent, which most people rated a 7 out of 10 in terms of difficulty, or "moderately difficult." But what does that mean, really?Tanya borrowed some poles from Outdoors Guru Anya (shoutout!), I taped up my Achilles with Tanya's padded surgical tape (that stuff is GOLD!), and off we went to drive back to the trail.We started on the fire road and were barely into the hike when it began raining. And then I looked off to the right, and yes, you guessed it, bear.I started hollering to get him to move back, but he didn't budge. I asked Tanya to pull my whistle and pepper spray from my pack. I whistled and whistled, and he made eye contact, but continued to rummage through a tree stump he was working on. He wasn't a full-sized bear, but bigger than a cub -- what I'd call a toddler bear. (The ridge runner we met later called it a yearling, but Tanya said she likes "toddler bear" better). He was not moving. So we carefully proceeded.Seriously, Tanya had been on the trail with me less than an hour...and already? What is going on this year?Anyway, all my fretting was for naught. The sprinkles stopped, the trail was really manageable,and Tanya didn't hate me for taking her into the woods. :-) It's hard to describe how meaningful it is to share this experience with someone else. We talked and hiked and I just felt bathed in love and friendship. When you hike, it makes your emotions so much more accessible. Everything comes to the surface. It's hard to explain. Anyway, we got up to McAfee and the day was gorgeous and the views were stunning and it couldn't have been more perfect. We took our pics at the most-photographed spot on the AT and split a Snickers, pure-hiker-style.And then Friendly Nate appeared, so Tanya got to meet one of the other hikers.It was hard to say goodbye when it was over. Thank you so much Tanya!After McAfee, I noticed something different. I felt different. Like a horse feeling its oats, when you just let it have the reins and see it take off. My legs...I could feel the miles in them. I'd had such a rough day before, all dirty and sweaty and Frankenstein walking because I couldn't flex my Achilles without it scraping painfully. But with my ankles wrapped, my body cleaned and fed, my heart full...I looked at the map and knew I could do another dozen miles.Now, I probably shouldn't have with such a late start...I knew I'd be reaching Daleville close to sunset. But whatever.Off I went! I met Friendly Nate again at Tinker Cliffs. We were talking about the berries on the trail and he said he purposefully left blackberries for the folks hiking behind him. But then he saw blueberries up there - and blueberries....that's different."No one's around. I will fight you," he said as we both attacked the bushes.I had two reactions to this:1) This guy's hilarious.2) Bring it ON!My love for wild blueberries is well established. :-)Friendly Nate was getting a room in Daleville and offered to split with me. He's way faster, so I agreed and told him I'd meet him there. As predicted, I was still hiking in when the sun went down and the trail filled with fireflies. I'm not a fan of hiking in the dark, even with my head lamp, so I jogged the last mile or so.19.8 miles and I'm not crippled. The Hiker Legs have arrived.