Date: 2010-02-18
From: Carter Gap Shelter

To: Sapphire Inn (Franklin, NC)
Miles today: 15.9
Weather: clear sky

I left Kevin again that morning. That's how it'll probably always be: me leaving early and him catching up at the shelter at the end of the day. Because I'm with him morning and night, I cherish the days where it's just me and the trail. It's funny I use the words "me and the trail" when I sort of mean "me and God". Because that's kinda what he's like. Like a trail. The first several hours were painful. My feet burned and ached from numbness, and I groaned aloud. "My toes," I kept saying. "My toes hurt." Frostbite was a possibility, I thought, but I felt no tingling. Just numbness. I debated stopping and firing up my stove to thaw them out, but it was just too cold to stop. "And if I do get frostbite," I thought, "it's okay because I'm young." Still I was worried. I kept walking.I took a side trail around Mount Albert, the official "emergency weather route". The moment I spotted an observation tower on it's summit I veered back onto the trail. An observation tower would be worth the difficulty. As expected, the rocky ascent was extremely precarious in the 2-foot snow drifts (I quickly learned that they offer "emergency weather" routes for a good reason). The tower was old and tired-looking and surrounded by dense rhododendron thicket. The wind blew. I climbed up to look out over the valley, spreading out for perhaps 50 miles. On the horizon hunched the Smokies, blue and ominous. A snowstorm obscured its peaks. I felt like Frodo, staring out to the black peaks of Mordor where my road would inevitably lead. Except this Mordor was blue and icy.At about 2:00 I felt my toes for the first time that day, thanks to a gradual downhill that allowed me to pick up speed and get blood down to my feet. I gulped from a stream. I walked on. Time blurred and suddenly it was 4:00. I waited at the shelter for Kevin. Soon Kevin arrived, and we decided to move on to Franklin, 3.7 miles down the trail. After 5 days and 4 nights in the cold, we needed a night off. My feet were sore and stressed and I suspected some hairline fractures, but I kept on 'til we reached the highway. After 20 minutes of thumbing, a white pick-up pulled over. He was a skinny, tatooed young guy with a NC accent and Marlboro Red in his mouth.He, his brother, his father, and even his grandfather--yeah, his grandfather!--all enlisted in the Marines within the last decade. He's been shot twice and blasted by an IED. The IED was a ticket home, where he got a job managing three Hardee's in the area. The "interview" for the job was a West Virginia football game, where he got hammered and had flashbacks from the fireworks. "I freaked out," he said. After a pause, "And I got the job the next day." For a while, he took post-tramautic stress disorder ("PSTD", he called it), but it killed his personality. "I'll take the flashbacks," he said. He also said he'd die before his son grew up as poor as he did, eating PB&J for dinner. That made me happy to hear.He dropped us at the Sapphire Inn where we got a 10% discount for being A.T. thru-hikers. We had fajitas at a Mexican place across the street and lounged in the room until around midnight. I took off my boots for a shower before dinner and found a browned and swelled pinky toe. It burned under water. Frostbite! I laughed and decided not to tell my parents when I called. I journaled later that night. Kevin watched TV. I wished I had the room to myself.