Date: 2003-11-02
From: happy hill shelter

To: happy hill shelter
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: light rain

there is a southbounder. another southbounder. a southbounder that isn't me. it is true. i met him today. his name is verb. val (the girl that works for the atc) and i were up long before the kids from dartmouth college. we sat on some benches in front of the shelter and ate breakfast and talked for quite a while. my ankle seems to still be dictating my hiking schedule. it is to the point now where it is just becoming more annoying than anything else. i was telling val this and how i didn't know if i was going to be able to hike the miles that would get me to my next food drop by the end of the week. she was very helpful in coming up with alternate plans for me. she was able to tell me how many miles i could hike to where and how i could hitch to this point or that point depending upon what my ankle was doing. the kids from dartmouth finally decided to get up after more than twelve hours of sleep. those crazy college kids. i don't see how they do it. as my four shelter companions were packing up to leave it started raining. a light rain at first, but soon becoming quite steady. the kind of rain that is going to stick around all day. a cold rain. the kind of rain that is no fun to hike in. i had made up my mind to not do the twenty miles as originally planned, but to do eight miles to the next shelter. as i was about to start packing up, i see someone walking down the trail towards the shelter. there was something about him that immediately said that this guy was out for the long haul. he definitely didn't have that weekend warrior look about him. he steps up onto the porch and the first thing i ask him is how far he's headed. his reply was the one that i half expected, half hoped, half wasn't at all surprised to hear. georgia. that's funny because i'm also heading to georgia. this soaking wet, southbound thru-hiker introduced himself as verb. ah, yes. it wasn't long ago that i was five days behind verb. i remember seeing his name in one of the shelter registers. val and the dartmouth kids said good-bye and set out into the rain. it didn't take long at all for verb and i decide that we weren't going anywhere in this kind of weather. there is nothing fun about hiking in a cold rain. verb went about setting up his stuff in the shelter and i returned to the warmth of my sleeping bag. we spent the rest of the day trading stories and enjoying the conversation as the rain made an almost musical pattern on the tin roof. i wished i had a deck of cards with me. or, at least, my pass the pigs game. i found out that verb is from florida and the first time he ever saw snow was three years ago at the roaring fork shelter near max patch in north carolina. he actually started his hike on september 15, but had to return to florida ten days later to take care of some business. he ended up being down there for almost three weeks before finally being able to return to the trail. he said that he took the bus back and forth from florida every time and the stories he told me about the bus rides really made me glad that i was lucky enough to have two great friends take me to maine. i had originally thought that i might have to end up taking the bus, but really didn't want to. you must be crazy if you think i'm going to in the bus station in new york city from 1:00 to 4:00 in the morning for a layover. the day seemed to pass so much more quickly with someone else around. we traded stories about hiking through maine and getting blasted by the snow storms. verb got stranded in andover for five days while he waited for some new gear to arrive that he was replacing. he was able to do a dead-on impersonation of sandra - the woman that runs the andover guesthouse. he ended up skipping the whites in new hampshire as well. he did them a couple of years ago and didn't really feel safe trying to traverse them this time of year. it is going to be interesting hiking with someone. not that we will actually hike together during the day, but we'll be at the shelters together at night. i don't know how long verb and i will be running on the same schedule, but for now it is kind of nice having him around. different, but nice.