Date: 2019-05-20
From: Damascus Old Mill

To: Random Campsite 
Miles today: 6.9

I want to start today¢s blog entry by responding to a comment a reader left. I appreciate all those who read my journal and follow along, and I appreciate the comments and advice I¢ve been given. I may not respond to all the comments (mostly because I¢m bad with technology and don¢t know how to on this site, but also because I just don¢t have time), but I still am thankful for them. This blog takes a long time for me to keep up, and I could just write it for myself, but I want to share my experiences with everyone. I am responding to this comment because it made me angry. My experiences are my own, and my feelings and emotions in my journal are also my own. I¢m hiking my own hike and living and experiencing it all on my own. I do like being alone with myself and don¢t need to ¢learn¢ how to do that. I¢ve hiked 487 miles as I write this and that is pretty damn impressive. I have had connections and drama along the way, but I am still out here walking every day, by myself, supporting myself with my hard-earned money and battling different challenges. You are all entitled to your own opinion, but my hike is not a ¢soap opera¢. If you think my hike is a soap opera, you do not have to read my blog or leave comments here. Just because I want connections does not mean I can¢t be alone. I came out here alone. I spent the first month alone. This trail is incredibly difficult both physically and mentally and so many people have quit. I¢m still here. I¢m an emotional person. This is my space to process everything I¢m going through. It is my space to share MY HIKE. I did not come out here needing a trail family, a boyfriend, a best friend. I came out here on my own to fulfill my dream. I spent time preparing and buying all my gear and flew down to Amicalola, ON MY OWN. I found friends and we clicked and I decided to hike with them. The drama that resulted was part of my journey. It¢s part of the learning and growing that I¢m doing. It was not all drama, and if you¢d care to read back through my journals, you¢ll see the happy and fun times I had with these two. Sometimes it was non-stop laughs up a challenging mountain, other times it was Deb¢s fifteenth pack shakedown, other times it was giggling on our sleep pads that we made into a couch, other times it was crying and holding each other through sickness and difficult days. I had good and bad times with them, but have no regrets about hiking with them. They greatly improved my life here on trail. I¢m sitting here on my own at the moment, having done all my camp chores without problem: bear bag line is up, water is filtered, tent is up and sleeping bag is airing out, clothes line is up for my sweaty clothes, food bag and stove and extra water are here for dinner, and I am sitting on my sit pad against a tree in the sun, writing this. I did all of that ON MY OWN. I am proud of myself for what I¢ve accomplished and I¢ll take the ¢soap opera¢ drama over 2000 depressing miles of loneliness, monotony, and pain. I¢m an extrovert and I enjoy people and crave social interaction. Yes I like space to myself, but not for 2000 miles. To each their own. Hike your own damn hike. End to the rant. I¢m writing this a day later, but yesterday I left Damascus. The vortex sucked me in for four zeros, but today it was time to leave. I actually didn¢t want to. I still wanted another zero. My zeros are never relaxing enough. I still spent so much of yesterday blogging and organizing that I didn¢t just veg out and do nothing. I woke up today with still more to do. I needed to send a box home and I didn¢t get to it on Saturday with all the other things I was doing, so I sent it today. I also got so much free gear and such that I wasn¢t ready to send it all back on Saturday anyway. First I headed down to breakfast in the hotel. I love continental breakfast, but this wasn¢t that great. I had a muffin and orange juice and cereal. I went back up to my room and organized all the stuff I had. It felt overwhelming, but I knew some of it was going home. I took a shower and shaved my legs and I¢m just putting that here because boy that felt good. I haven¢t shaved since I started the trip. I was scaring myself a bit and turning into one of those Wellesley girls that doesn¢t shave because of the patriarchy. I respect their decision, but hair is hot and annoying and I personally prefer to shave. Shave your own shave?I was frankly surprised how quickly I threw hygiene out the window on the AT, but I have actually been so happy with my body and that¢s such progress for me. I¢ve hated my body for the longest time and I have felt completely myself out here. Hair or no hair, I¢ve really felt so good about myself. People have been so accepting out here too. We¢re all a week out from our last shower, we¢re all smelly, dirty, messy, hairy, etc. I just started to accept it. It was a hard adjustment. When I was at home I liked to straighten my hair and dress up. I¢ve been doing that for years. My hair is ridiculously curly when I let it be itself, but I was so self-conscious I never wanted to. Now on the trail I let my hair go wild and I¢ve just accepted it. I may still straighten it when I¢m home because I genuinely like to change up my look and do that, but I¢m happy that I can love my look natural too. I shaved frequently at home and have adjusted to not doing that. The trail is the first place I have not felt any judgment for my looks and it¢s honestly pretty damn refreshing. I hope I can adjust back after it¢s over. Anyway, I shaved and my legs were so smooth and it was amazing. It took so long because the hair was so long, but it was worth it. I finished packing up everything and asked if I could leave it downstairs while I mailed my package. They said I could leave it in the conference room, and there was another hiker¢s bag there, so I felt safe putting it there. I went to the post office, which was right next door. I mailed two boxes worth of stuff home. Presents mom! You¢re welcome for my smelly boots! Haha. I had some leftover alcohol, so I dropped that off at the Broken Fiddle because they had a hiker box. I hope someone enjoys it all. I went into the Outfitter to consider my pack situation. They had no Gregory packs, but after discussing it with them, we all agreed that if I couldn¢t get the weight down inside the pack, it made no difference to get a smaller pack, because the smaller pack wouldn¢t handle the weight inside. I am still working on the whole pack process, but my Gregory Deva has a lot of perks and holds my weight, so even though it can be a poop sometimes and the straps loosen and it¢s a heavy pack on its own, it¢s worked well for me so far. I remember getting this pack and walking around REI for four hours while I shopped for other things and it just felt like home. I actually hugged the pack when the REI employee handed it to me. It felt right. I¢m stuffing it to the gills and it¢s handling that. I may have to switch someday on this journey, but for now it¢s okay. I am getting some other things from REI, but holding onto the pack. I bought this one shirt from the Outfitter that I spotted the other day, and it says ¢two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one with the white blazes, and that has made all the difference.¢ The original is one of my favorite poems, and I loved this play on it. Unfortunately I couldn¢t send it home since I already sent the boxes, but I¢d hold onto it until I needed to send something else home. I went to Dollar General for sunscreen for my dumb lobster self and batteries for my headlamp. My headlamp made it this far and is just now starting to dim, so that¢s pretty impressive to me. I walked back to the hotel to organize my food bag and pack, and called my mom to discuss plans for REI stuff at home and her next visit in Harper¢s Ferry. It took me a while to organize and I was not looking forward to leaving. I didn¢t get a lot of sleep last night and wanted to run back up to the hotel room and sleep all day forever. But I got going and headed out. It was all uphill of course heading back on trail. There was another option on the Creeper Trail, which is actually quite beautiful and runs along the water; it would¢ve been an awesome bike ride. But I¢m a bit of a purist and the Creeper Trail is 17 miles that isn¢t on the AT. To each their own, but I didn¢t want to do that. It¢s also easier to go on that trail because it¢s all flat, and the AT is all uphill, so I¢d again be skipping the hard stuff if I did that. I stuck with my decision and went on the AT. I knew I wasn¢t going far and it was pretty late, so I hiked a few miles out to a campsite by the water. There were 20 or so tents there. I had debated some other little stealth camp spots, but this was perfect. Today I downloaded Guthook. Someone told me there was a Trail Days discount and I just went for it. I had enjoyed it when Prometheus would look up where we were and 25-mile had it too, so I started to get used to knowing my exact location all the time. Because it was cheaper, I went for it. And today was my first day using it! I have mixed feelings so far. I don¢t like how the elevation looks more drastic than it is for some climbs, or doesn¢t look bad at all for others. I almost miss having the elevation in AWOL, as Guthook is hard for me to gauge and I am more nit-picky. I¢ve found that I rely almost too much on it now to tell me location and elevation. It¢s probably because it¢s new and exciting. I also don¢t like that it shows a million campsites on there, but most are stealth campsites. It was my first day back out and I wanted to find people, so I kept looking forward to the campsites I was seeing in Guthook, but most of them were tiny spots on the side of the trail and no one was there. Overall I liked playing around with the app today. I like knowing my location, but I don¢t want to get too carried away with checking constantly. I used the app to find a campsite that had 20+ tent pads, so I figured people must be there. It was 6 miles out of town, but after four zeros and a heavy pack, I was pretty done when I reached there. I passed plenty of stealth camp spots and debated spending my first night alone on the trail, but I pushed on. There was a shelter not too far from the campsite, so I could¢ve pushed on if I was that desperate for people. Omg Little Debbie wants connections and social interaction, what?! It was very late in the day when I started, but I arrived with time to get set up in daylight. The Creeper Trail was right next to the campsite and there was a nice bridge over the water. Apparently you could go to a little beach nearby on the Creeper Trail and swim. I didn¢t find it after exploring a bit. I set up my tent next to a guy named Data. He had the same hat as Prometheus and it made me sad. I had extra food hanging from my bag today because I bought Doritos in town, so I put all my food and my stove by the fire and put the rest of my stuff in my tent. I was very thirsty and got water and drank a whole liter right after filtering it. I had to go get more after. The flow wasn¢t great even though there was a lot of water, so this girl helped me channel it from a rock into my bag. Her name was Monster Mash and I¢ve seen her before; I think at Boots Off. I went to hang my bear line next. Honestly I was very proud of the job I did! I found a great tree leaning over some rocks by the water. There was a hole in the rocks and it made me think of the Swiss Family Robinson and I was picturing a bear trying to grab my bag and falling into the hole in the rocks. I successfully threw my rock bag over and left the line up to go eat my food. I sat with Data, Monster Mash, and a few other folks I¢m forgetting the names of. One of them had a clear plastic ukulele, which was probably the lightest instrument I¢ve ever seen, and he was just strumming along by the fire. It was nice to chat with them all and it was a good way to spend my first night back on trail. I didn¢t do heavy mileage today, but at least I left Damascus and got back on trail! I was a little stressed because I had no service at the campsite, and my friend Rachel is coming by tomorrow with her boyfriend. They¢re road-tripping home from Kansas. She¢s out there for grad school and has her car with her, but she wants her car in CT for the summer. They planned an awesome road trip and were able to fit in a stop for me!! I originally planned on meeting them at Whitetop Mountain, but I knew I couldn¢t make that mileage early in the day and I didn¢t go very far today, so I was anxious about where to meet them. Guthook was pretty helpful actually and it showed me a road I could stop at that was not too far from Damascus by car, and we could go in for lunch. I was looking forward to getting service tomorrow so I could make sure that plan worked. I was pleased with the amount of food I ate tonight. I think I¢m finally getting that hiker hunger! I wouldn¢t say I dive into my food bag like some other folks I¢ve met, but I¢m finishing my Mountain Houses now and snacking as well. I hope the food will help me get stronger as I hike. My bag was heavy, as it always is leaving town, and it was extra heavy because I hadn¢t had my mountain houses or oatmeal for several days in Damascus and then had a whole new box of both. I knew I had enough dinners and breakfasts to last me a week. I hung my bag and was doing well. I had to step back far to pull the line, but I was successful. Data came to check on me and that was very sweet of him. It was one of the first times I refused help. I was so proud of my bear bag hang! I stood in the hole in the rocks and reached up and it was high above me. I felt really good. I¢m alone again now, but being able to succeed at something I¢ve struggled with for so long made me so happy. I headed to bed and slept well, with the sound of the water in the background. Little Debbie