Date: 2014-05-17
From: Tentsite @ Mile 514.6

To: Relax Inn, Atkins
Miles today: 28.1

I completed my first marathon today! I¢m guessing I did the first 26.2 miles in about 11 hours - not exactly qualifying for the Boston marathon, but pretty good going up and down mountains with a backpack. I also had a pretty cool inspirational moment that I¢ll describe in ¢Head Tunes¢ below.With ¢Trail Days¢ going on in Damascus, I haven¢t seen many thru hikers on the trail the past couple of days. Today, I didn¢t see anyone until just as I started descending into Atkins when I met a local guy hiking back from the truck stop in Atkins to a road I had crossed earlier - don¢t know if he was going home or what. Just before I got to Atkins, I met another young man fishing in a creek just off the AT. That was it for the day until I got to the motel. I did get some trail magic left by some local church folks who had set up a nice spot to rest a bit. Trail Magic!The ¢town¢ of Atkins is basically a small truck stop gas station with a food mart, a small restaurant and an old motel just off I-81. The Relax Inn is in need of some serious touch up, but the room was clean and it had a nice hot shower! In the room next to me were thru hikers Scout and Chinook, who had just hitched a ride back from Trail Days. They had tented on the trail just before Atkins last night, then came in early this morning and got a ride down to Damascus just for the day. We went over to the restaurant together for some dinner and had a good time chatting. They were buddies in high school and one of them had just graduated from college in December while the other had been working after trying college for a year or two. I told them I¢d expected the thru hikers to be mostly old retired folks like me and young folks just out of college, but most were in between and he was the first recent college grad I had met. Head Tunes: About midday today I started thinking about what additional Head Tunes I¢ve had since my last update in Trail Journals. These three came to mind: Catch a Falling Star - Perry Como The Great Adventure - Steven Curtis Chapman In Wonder - Newsboys Catch a Falling Star popped into my brain on a rainy day (¢¢¦save it for a rainy day¢), The Great Adventure kinda speaks for itself with respect to the adventure I¢m on, and In Wonder popped in when I was enjoying the world around me while hiking. I certainly can¢t say that Perry Como¢s songs have been a significant inspiration for me in my life, but songs by Steven Curtis Chapman and the Newsboys have been (as well as songs by other contemporary artists and some older hymns). So I decided to think of what song or songs have been the most inspirational to me over the years so I could purposely add it/them to my head tunes repertoire. The song that immediately came to mind was When God Ran by Benny Hester.About 30 years ago I had somewhat of a personal spiritual reawakening. Very shortly after that I first heard the song When God Ran on the radio while driving my car. It¢s taken from the parable in Luke 15 often referred to as the Prodigal Son. Although the parable is also about the older son as well as the father and the younger son, this song focuses on the love of the father - the father who, although the all mighty, powerful, omnipotent God of the universe, still runs to welcome one of his lost children home. When I first heard the song back then, and even when I think about it now, tears well up in my eyes.Of course, Linda knows the song¢s specialness to me, and being the artist in the family, purchased a print of Rembrandt¢s painting of The Return of the Prodigal Son. We have it hanging in our house and I really like it. However, it is not the picture my mind generates when I think of the father in the parable. We each make different mental pictures when we read/hear a story, depending on who we are at the time and how it speaks to us individually. I think Rembrandt does a good job capturing the love and forgiveness of the father, the repentance of the younger son and the resentfulness of the older son. However, his painting doesn¢t reflect to me the joy of the father that I perceive when I hear the story.My mind paints a very different picture. I see the humbled, repentant son walking up a path through a grassy field going up a hill to the father¢s home at the top of the hill - very similar to the paths I¢ve recently hiked on the balds in these mountains. And while the son is still a ways down the hill, I see the father running full speed down the path with his robe flying around him, his long hair and beard flying in the wind and a smiling, almost laughing, face beaming with incredible joy. Until today, my picture ended with the father grabbing the son in his arms and hugging him tightly while rejoicing mightily.Today, I wasn¢t sure the song would be a good hiking-up-the-mountain song since it starts slowly. But I tried it. And it worked great. And after 30 years the picture in my mind continued just a little further. Now, the father not only grabs the son in a big hug but he picks him (me) up off the ground and starts to spin around and around with the son¢s feet flying out in the air in big circles around the father - just like a father might do with his young son or daughter. And the joy in both their hearts is unmeasurable.Must have been quite a sight today. A smelly, scruffy old man hiking furiously up the trail with a big joyous smile on his face and tears running down his cheeks. Good thing the other hikers were at Trail Days!:-) BTW, 30 years ago I hadn¢t gone off to wild living and feeding pigs like the son in the story. ... I had simply moved down the lane a bit. ... It¢s good to be home.