Date: 2004-07-12
From: Waynesboro, VA

To: Blackrock Hut
Miles today: 4.4
Weather: light rain

Not a good birthday for me...I stashed my backpack in the woods at a road crossing about 20 miles down the trail before returning my rental car and getting a ride from Enterprise back to the trailhead. I should have remembered what had happened the last time I left the trail. The sitting in the car for 2 of the 3 days I took off made my calf muscles cramp up bad. After about 2 miles I began to feel the cramping and I limped the next 1.5 miles or so to the next road crossing. Luckily at the road a mowing crew was just finishing for the day and were kind enough to drive me up to my pack. I relaxed for a bit there then hobbled the last 0.7 miles to the shelter. I missed about 15 miles of trail but without my pack I couldn't just make camp. Once at the shelter things got wierd.I had worried about being stuck at a shelter alone with a wierdo and it finally happened. I hobbled into the shelter area and sat down at the picnic table. There was a guy in the shelter and we both said hello but that was it. At first I wasn't exactly friendly myself cause I was having a rough day, but after a few minutes of relaxing I looked over to make conversation. That is when I finally began to take in my surroundings. The guy was listening to a walkman and it was pretty loud. That isn't the wierd part, the fact that he was listening to static was wierd to me. I know this because it was loud enough for me to hear it. It was also confirmed later when he changed the tuner to an actual station then quickly changed back to static, as if he was checking to see if the world ended yet.Without trying to seem obvious, I looked over my shelter mate and saw some type of Vietnam vet hat, an American flag bandana, and an interesting outfit. Not that what he had on was bad but just more for cold weather. It was 80° & sunny and he was wearing a long sleeved shirt and a pair of shorts with a pair of carhart heavy duty jeans underneath. What also freaked me out a bit was that he continually groaned as if in pain. The other thing that caught my eye was the fact that he had a huge flashlight. I don't like to comment on people's gear because I know I didn't need to buy all th hi-tech lightweight stuff I did, but the flashlight he was carrying took D-size batteries. You know, the type you could also use to say bludgeon someone to death . Given the choice of carrying that flashlight or no light at all, I would carry no flashlight. The thing must have weighed 2 to 3 pounds.After a while he turned down the static and we had a conversation which helped ease my nerves for about a half hour. Just as it started getting dim out, Rambo got up and I think grabbed his toilet paper and left the shelter headed toward the privy. I didn't think much about it until after about 10 minutes he didn't come back (nobody spends that long in a privy, they are not that nice). This is when I heard a yell/scream then silence... I though maybe a bear was out there and he tried to scare it away so I got up and looked around and yelled very loudly "Everything OK, are you alright?" No response... I looked around a little more but it was getting more dim. I sat back down in the shelter pretty freaked out.I was about to walk out to the privy to see if he was there when he came back into the shelter (from the direction of the privy). I tried to make eye contact to ask him if he was OK but he never made eye contact and he had the static blasting again. He just crawled back into the shelter and got in his sleeping bag. I got ready for bed and layed awake until I heard what I thought was him sleeping, then I finally faded off to sleep with thoughts of my funeral...**********This entry posted on 8/2/2004**********