Date: 2018-08-28
From: Redington Campsite

To: Mile 1992.8
Miles today: 14.3
Weather: overcast clouds

Before we went to bed I had asked Cole if he had put his sox in the vestibule. They aren¢t allowed in the tent because they stink too much and they usually end up outside. He said yes.During the night I awoke to a light rain. Cole was crawling into the tent. ¢ I left my sox out there,¢ he said.¢What about the boots?¢¢They¢re here.¢¢In the vestibule?¢¢Ya.¢I closed my eyes and went back to sleep. In the morning, the trees were shaking the remnants of the rain down onto our tent. I sat up and looked out into the vestibule. One. Two. There were two boots out there, not four. I rubbed my eyes, moved closer to the vestibule and looked again. Still only two.¢Oh Cole!¢ I cried. ¢My boots aren¢t here!¢It was completely my own fault. I¢m the one who had left them outside. I couldn¢t pass the blame by expecting a half asleep teen to check on them for me. Wet feet means sore feet. You must get so tired of reading about my feet. I know I get tired of writing about them, but my days are dictated by my feet, right foot particularly. How far, fast and long we hike every day is often determined by my foot. My mood, my attitude, my level of patience and how I respond to people are often determined by how much my foot hurts. It shouldn¢t. When I saw that my boots were not under the vestibule my reaction was big and dramatic. I was instantly miserable and almost to tears. Cole scrambled out of bed and went to check on the boots.¢Mom, guess what! Your hat was over your boots!¢Sure enough, last night I had tossed my hat onto my boots, perfectly covering the openings at the top. The outside of the boots were wet, but the hat had kept the insides dry.Thank you Lord for little miracles like dry boots!!Once we got hiking we were also thankful that we had not tried to tackle Saddleback Jr the previous day. It was steep and tricky. At the top, the only view was of the clouds. Lone Mountain, Spaulding Mountain and Sugarloaf Mountain didn¢t offer up anything better.At Popular Ridge Lean-to there was a picture of ¢Inchworm¢. The hiker who had gone off trail a few years ago and never found her way back. Her body was recovered a couple of years later. She had died of starvation. We talked about that for a long time as we continued down the trail. Cole likes to venture a long way off the trail if he has to dig a cat hole and it always makes me nervous that he won¢t find his way back. He just keeps telling me, ¢I¢ve got a good sense of direction mom!¢One other thing sticks out in my mind from today. At one point during the day, Cole stopped and called me to come back to where he was at on the trail. ¢Can you take a picture of these?¢ he asked. He was looking at flowers. ¢ I think they might be pitcher plants, but I am not sure.¢We homeschool our boys. A couple of years ago we were working through a science curriculum that focused on botany. Cole had learned about pitcher plants then. I was impressed that he had noticed the flowers and happy he had remembered something from a lesson learned long ago. Mostly I was pleased to see that he wasn¢t just putting in miles. He was actually paying attention to his surroundings and taking in the trail.