Date: 2009-04-11
From: Standing Bear Hostel

To: Roaring Fork Shelter
Miles today: 15.4
Weather: light rain

The chicken coop turned out to be pretty comfortable! And we all fit on one mattress! Truckin' and El Hombre each took a side, and I slept the opposite way in the middle. No one snored, and the mattress was a lot more comfortable than a shelter floor. Truckin' got up first and cooked some eggs for her breakfast. I just had coffee and granola. Since our socks and clothes were still wet from the day before, we threw them in the dryer, and charged our phones. I didn't get out until 10:00 am (long after Truckin'), and I left El Hombre reading in his sleeping bag in the chicken coop as he waited for his parents to arrive (to bring him home for Easter). Rattler left at the same time as me, and we spent the morning passing one another back and forth. Everytime I stopped to strip, put away my camera due to the rain, or pull it back out, he caught up me, and then I would pass him back a few minutes later. Once, I saw him across the field ('What is he doing over there?'). "Is that the trail?" he yelled over to me. "Yes!" Later, he would say, "You really are a guide. I would have continued on that road for miles..."   I got a little weepy on my walk that day (a good kind). I feel that people respect me out here and acknowledge my good qualities and strengths. It's much different than being at home, and it is all that I could have wanted from coming out here. I have been so surprised at what people have been saying about me, or to me, and I don't get the feeling that they are saying different things when I'm not around. I guess I'm so accustomed to people talking negatively about one another in the ordinary world, and after having grown up being criticized for every syllable I uttered, or every movement I made, I've just come to expect that from everyone. But for the first time in my life, I don't feel that people are thinking of me negatively. And I also feel for the first time, that I finally belong to a group of people. It's really amazing.      I started feeling hungry again less than an hour into my hike and I wished I had bought some eggs after all (everything was just so marked up at Standing Bear that I just couldn't justify spending the money). For the first time on the trail (I think), I started craving specific foods (peanut butter.. a bagel with cream cheese... pastel-colored M&Ms...!). The people around me have been constantly talking about food. I've heard that two weeks into the trail, the hunger starts and never gets satiated, and I have found this to be true (although it's not a starving kind of hunger... it's just a desire for "normal", filling, townfood).   It was supposed to be a sunny day (with a 20% chance of showers in the morning), but it rained and rained, and the fog creeped in all around us. When was the sun going to come out? Maybe by noon? Or 2 at least?... Okay, 3?...Please? I was headed for Max Patch and really wanted to arrive in the sun, but that was not to be. Instead, I found a large patch of snow (again? We thought we had left that behind in the Smokies!)- snow that was calf-deep (although only for a small section). There was no spinning around on this bald summit for me... only a slight run across it, as the wind whipped and beat on me, and the fog only allowed me to see from one post (barely) to the next. "Must get off mountain..." I had told people at Standing Bear that I would be camping on Max Patch, but I hurried down the other side and continued on to the next shelter. Poppins was coming the other way to get water. "You missed trail magic!" he taunted me.      "Oh, yeah? What did you get?" I asked.      "Peanut butter... and chicken.."      Thanks, Poppins... Why don't you go ahead and rub it in? After all peanut butter was one of the things I had been craving...!   I actually walked right past the shelter and had to go back! Truckin' was already wrapped up in her sleeping bag, as were Flamethrower, Smurfette, Spirit, and Michigan Wolverine. Spaceman wandered in later, after having enjoyed some cookies from a lady camping with a group right off of Max Patch. That's funny... When I wandered down from the mountain, freezing cold, a guy in the group told me, "I think the trail is that way"! The girls in the shelter admitted that they were ignored as well. Apparently, this lady was only fond of the male hikers!