Date: 2011-04-12
From: Sassafras Gap Shelter

To: Fontana Village Resort
Miles today: 20.6

(In which I survive the storm, walk in the rain and lose my purist status)And how it did storm! During the night the wind picks up and soon the shelter is being assaulted on all sides by gale force gusts. I am on the upper bunk of the shelter with the Texas guys, best protected from the wind, but even up there the shelter fills with air currents and sleeping bags flap in the breeze. Then the rain comes, pounding the roof and drumming the walls. The wind in the shelter carries a fine mist, and then the thunder and lightening starts. The racket is breathtaking, and I give fervent thanks to whatever engineers designed and built this shelter to withstand these storms without falling over or leaking. I think about all of the hikers out in their tents, and I wish them luck. I wonder how the Cajuns, who planned to sleep outside halfway up the hill, are faring. At the very least they will have a story to tell.* * *In the morning I get my first encounter with the noisy early riser phenomenon. Long before sunrise or the rest of the shelter has stirred, the shelter echoes with noises of gathering, packing and repacking gear and boots clomping back and forth across the wooden floor. StompyMcStompsalot (not her real trail name... yet) continues this for half an hour or so until the rest of us finally wake, well before sunrise, at which time she sits serenely eating her breakfast. Still, for shelter from the storm I would gladly put up with a troupe of riverdancing elephants.* * *At least two good things have come so far from my knee trouble and the pace it has dictated. The first is that I have been reunited, albeit briefly, with many of the hikers I met on my first few days on the trail. Every day I am passed by several hikers I haven't see for more than a week, and they each have stories to tell and news of other hikers who have dropped out or taken breaks off trail. I similarly get to meet those who have started later than I have, some of whom have followed me in the trail registers for days before we finally meet.The second good thing is that, while not completely curing me from the compulsion to keep moving, it has at least made it easier for me to stop and enjoy the breaks. My own reference frame has adjusted such that I no longer feel unbearably slow on my single digit mileage days. I hope that I can maintain some of this freedom from the need for big miles even after my knee heals to the point where they become common again.* * *It is raining steadily and though I dally about the shelter as long as I can, I eventually face the inevitable and venture out for my first day hiking in the rain. I am immediately freezing, my bare hands most of all, and though I generate body heat as I start hiking, I also begin to lose more as my socks and pants soak through. Soon I am on exposed ridges and the near freezing wind and rain make it difficult to walk straight and impossible to stand still while retaining any trace of warmth. My hands grow ice cold and I dare not stop for the hills, a snack or anything else.Hiking in the rain -- the cold rain, at least -- is a novel if not exactly pleasurable experience. When it is dry, hiking is almost entirely a physically enjoyable experience. Sometimes it is hot and sometimes you get tired, but these are both fairly well remedied by rest, and so you rarely have to endure much more discomfort than you choose on any particular day (though in fact there is something satisfying about pushing yourself enough to make it something of a challenge). The rain, in comparison, with the stinging, penetrating cold, is inescapable. There is no option but to push on through it, and the reprieves of shelter or a break in the rain can be hours away. There are some people who thrive under these adverse conditions, who only feel fully alive when circumstances force them into strenuous action with no viable alternative. I understand this outlook enough to think that I might be able to become such a person, but the people who react that way tend to be the people who perpetually put themselves in the situations where they need to, and I do not quite have the appetite for endless adventure of that sort, at least just yet.Having finally experienced the rain firsthand, I am reluctantly forced to reassess the splendor of Albert Mountain to a somewhat more modest two and a half days of rain.When I reach the first shelter I know that if I stop I will not go on and will continue to be cold for the rest of the day, huddled in my sleeping bag. So I press on and keep moving through every hill and valley. At lunchtime I retrieve a Snickers and granola bar from my pack's side pocket while I move, and manage to chew, breath and swallow as I hike uphill, though the three sometimes overlap.When I reach the second shelter it has finally stopped raining and I have not stopped moving in the past 15 miles. I rest, finally, standing upright with my pack still on. I am dazed and wet, and a poor conversationalist I am sure to the pair of hikers huddled in what is by far the smallest shelter I have seen. But I see the sign that says 5.5 miles to Fontana, where there are restaurants with hot food and hotel rooms with warm beds, and the part of me that has pushed on all day and is still in charge decides to go for it. I hike as if in a trance, and the miles seem to be distorted as if by a fisheye projection, exaggeratedly slow and drawn out in the present, but quickly receding into insignificance as they pass.When I have only a few miles until Fontana, I miss my first white blaze. I am navigating a tricky rocky section with a fallen tree, and it occurs to me while I scramble over boulders that the actual AT might be just above me. The false boulder path quickly rejoins the AT after 50 or 60 feet, and when I look back I can see the actual trail, straight and boring, having been hidden by the fallen tree. There is a single white blaze on this missed portion of trail, and I stand there looking at it.In a few seconds I could walk back and complete this section, but something makes me hesitate. I am tired and eager to continue down to Fontana, but this is not the reluctance I feel, I decide. If I rewalked that section of the trail to pass the white blaze, it would be solely so that I could tell people I had, to the best of my knowledge, walked past each white blaze on the AT. But no part of me feels as if I have missed anything, having walked a longer way around over more interesting ground, and to rewalk that section would be to obscure my actual reasons for hiking. As soon as I turn my back on the missed white blaze I feel a sense of relief, as if I had just been presented with a test and found the one answer that was true to myself, rather than something someone else might want to hear. More than ever before I feel as if I have embraced the principle of hiking my own hike.I make it into Fontana Village as the sun sets, having walked along the road for a mile off the trail, and quickly go through the motions of buying food, booking a room, eating and showering. Tomorrow the Smokies await, and I lie on my oversized hotel bed, dreaming of the trail.