Date: 2010-08-09
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Miles today: 0.0

Well, I am officially off the trail for this year.I have been feeling better physically for about two weeks. Whatever that illness was, it really knocked the stuffing out of me. Both the test for Lyme and the test for Ehrlichiosis came back negative.I was very tempted to hop onto Loon's Geezer hike and do the northern section. My original goal this year was to do from Kinsman's Notch up to Maine, which I haven't done yet. On Friday I was getting in touch with how disappointed I was that I had to stop. I had actually decided to call Loon, then I couldn't get myself to pull the trigger and make the call. So I had Lula do a pendulum on it and rethought about what I should do.The pendulum reading came back on Saturday morning that it was a weak choice for me, which was the conclusion that I was coming to myself. My husband and I are in the process of fixing up our house in Greenfield to sell it next summer, and we are moving into the upstairs of a house that we own in Colrain after the tenant is out (should be the end of August) and after we get the apartment cleaned out and painted. So there's a lot going on. I also need to get back to work. So I feel like I should stay here for now.I am still tempted to try to do it again in one season. I learned a lot this year. I had several days where I was up to 20 miles a day - a personal best for me, and one that I didn't know I could reach at five foot 2 and 54 years old. One of the last days that I was in the Shenandoah's I was having a slow day, with lots of emotional upheaval and and I was taking lots of breaks. I thought I had gone about 15 miles which was good for a slow day. When I read the milage after Steve put it in the journal it was 17-plus miles!I'll be a grandmother for the first time later in the fall, so who knows if another 7-month hike is in the cards.I was just reading the first few entries of the journal and I think I will go back and edit them. Mary's transcriptions of my admittedly hard-to-read handwriting are pretty funny. Some of the entries are missing. So maybe I'll go back and clean it up. I don't know if anybody ever reads old journals but it will be fun for me anyway.Some things in the journal don't make any sense. Like I don't ever think I got written down that the reason my hammock wasn't working in the cold weather at the beginning of the hike is that I didn't end up taking the top to my sleeping bag that is good down to minus eleven degrees. It turned out it wouldn't fit in my pack.Well, actually, that is not true. I did get it in my pack - which was then completely full, with no room for anything else. A compression sack might have solved the problem, but I didn't realize the bag wouldn't fit in the pack until the night before I left. Silly me, I thought I knew what I was doing because I had done it before. Didn't even try to pack the pack until the night before.So I was out there with my hammock and my 25-degree bag. Live and learn. I'm laughing at myself here.Thank you to everyone who helped me on my hike. Good luck to everyone still out there. I'm envious. And I wish you all the best. I know you are all having the journey that you are meant to be having. As am I.Love to all.