Date: 2011-07-24
From: Big Branch Shelter

To: Clarenden Shelter
Miles today: 16.9
Weather: clear sky

(In which I do not eat at the Whistlestop Restaurant)The sleeping pad works wonderfully, and I am delighted that I can now sleep comfortably on so many more potential tent sites. Stealthing through the Shenandoahs I often wished for a hammock, which would offer even more flexibility, but those come with their own tadeoffs, and I like being able to sit up and write in my tent.In the morning Art Gypsy shows me the impressive long exposure shots she took of the brook at 5am for the morning light. She says that she plans on creating a coffee table book of her photographs, "the type that will make people wish that they could hike the AT." She also plans on writing a paperback book about the thru-hike, which will tell a very different story of what it's *actually* like.I take a break at the first shelter and chat with the caretaker, Anna. Anna has hiked the Long Trail but never the AT. Most of the ridgerunners and caretakers on the AT are hired directly by the ATC, for whom having completed a thru-hike seems to be an unofficial requirement, so it is a new experience to be up in GMC territory where all of the caretakers seem to have hiked the LT but not the AT. I ask Anna if she thinks she might ever hike the AT, but she shakes her head no. Having worked on a local farm in Vermont on her off days from caretaking, she doesn't think that she could reconcile the healthy and sustainable local and fresh food practices she's come to care about with the almost necessarily junk-food based diet of thru-hiking. I think about Trilobite, who has been spending her summer working on a farm since getting off the trail, and wonder how her views on trail food will have changed if she decides to start a thru-hike again another year.Anna also says that she doesn't think she would enjoy being surrounded for so long by the competitive, big-mileage types of AT hikers that she's seen so many of. "I know that everyone has their own reasons for hiking and should hike their own hike, but always being around fast, competitive hikers really diminishes my personal trail experience." I know that those who hike for the personal challenge often have strained (but usually very fleeting) relations with those who hike for other reasons (nature, personal change and the social aspect), but I feel bad hearing that these same conflicts also actively prevent people from hiking who might otherwise enjoy it.After a late start and long break chatting with Anna, I pick up the speed to be sure to make it to the Whistlestop Restaurant in plenty of time before the 7pm closing listed in the book. I find a rhythm and make good time, catching up to Plan B and Freight Train just before the road crossing to the restaurant. Freight Train has been looking forward to the Whistlestop all day as well, but before we get to the road we see Doc Boom, who has recently returned from an unsuccessful restaurant trip. The book's hours for the restaurant are apparently out of date, and the Whistlestop in fact closed a couple of hours earlier at 3pm for their new Sunday schedule. There is, he says, a gas station with ice cream a mile down the road. A gas station is a fair step down from a diner, and though it likely would have been a treat if we hadn't been expecting it, it's a mediocre consolation prize.We walk down there anyway, some town food being better than none, and I buy a Friendlies peanut butter sundae in a cup, a bottle of Gatorade and a homemade molasses cookie. We sit outside in the shade eating our ice cream, and soon enough our disappointment with the Whistlestop is forgotten and it is another lovely afternoon on the AT. When we've had enough food and rest we start walking back to the trail, and this time a woman stops and offers us a ride, whisking us up the road and back to the trail in mere seconds.At the shelter I chat with Trashcan, whom I met for the first time yesterday but didn't have time to talk to. Trashcan, I am surprised to learn, started from Springer on May 7th, more than a month after me, and made it to Upper Goose Pond in Massachusetts before deciding to slow down and take it easy. He says that it's a lot physically easier hiking 20s instead of 30s every day, but that he doesn't feel like he missed anything special from the social aspect while he was passing everybody. "The first 400 people were almost all jerks anyway who got all upset if you were hiking more miles than them." Recalling Anna's perspective, it's interesting to now hear from the other side. Though I wasn't going quite as fast as Trashcan (he reached the midway point a few days faster than I did), I didn't have nearly as many of the negative encounters, so I suspect that it's not just a matter of how fast you go, but also the way you interact with other people.