Date: 2006-05-11
From: Campsite After Barley Gap Shelter

To: Sarver Hollow Shelter
Miles today: 15.9
Weather: light rain

Quite a day. Pitched tent for the night in a cold wet fog. Woke this morning to a cold wet fog. The hike was cold and wet, but it was a good cold, wet hike. Another day of hiking alone, but a good day of hiking alone. I might fret a bit about being on my own most of the time lately, but I also enjoy the peace of having the trail to myself. I think back ti the sparkling icy day in the Smokies, before Gatlinburg, and Standing Bear Farm. It seems like an age, but the solitude of the trail still holds amazement like that day. I feel like it's mine. Yes, I often want to share it, but there's a lot of miles left. These are mine to enjoy as well, these are mine to do with as I please. I don't always hold that thought or feeling but days like this are reminders. I own my hike and in a way I own the trail.I set up camp last night in rushed frustration. This morning I'm not really sure why. The spot is beautiful even in the fog, grassy with lots of straight silver tree tree trunks. Everything was wet and the ground was soft. There is a rich smell to a foggy spring forest.I hiked a hundred yards down the trail and spotted two tents like mushrooms grown overnight. This was the campsite I was headed for last night. I missed it just barely but was just as happy I'd been alone in the trees.I stopped at War Spur Shelter to sign the register just as Enigizer Buny was speeding out. She shouted a greeting even though I was a few feet away. Fireman Bob was with her and she told me Evelyn had quit trail after just a few miles. I said I'd seen her as she was backing off the ridge. I told her that Free Fall was leaving trail because of injury and was not happy about it. He had told Energizer Bunny he wasn't enjoying his hike anyway. He was lying. Fireman Bob is also leaving in a few days. He's going home for an unplanned surgery. Again, the trail giveth and the trail taketh away.My big surprise was finding Parkay at War Spur. Hadn't seen him in a while, not since the morning at Chestnut Knob after his 30 mile day. It was great to see him again and catch up. He'd zeroed at the shelter the day before. His haphazard style of big days and small days makes me laugh, but he's so into his hike.After catching up I headed out again. The clouds broke to a beautiful day on the trail. The climbs and descents were gentle with more strolls through green meadows and more stiles to climb. The last stile was set beside the Keffer Oak a beautiful 300 year old oak tree with long sturdy branches and tall round symmetry. A big thousand foot climb to a ridge followed.The top of the ridge was almost mysterious. Views down to the valley were interspersed by huge piles of sharp flat rocks. Some were taller than me. Trees sprouted from others, testament to their age. They weren't foundations even though some of them had been carefully pieced together into round columns. My imagination said they might be grave sites or Civil War battlements. If that old, I wondered if they'd been built by slave labor.Mystery continued as I found the appraoch trail to the shelter it led down and down of the ridge on switchback after switchback. The shelter itself was new and well designed, but so far off the trail. I went to fill bottles at the water source, a cistern constructed for a farm surrounded by a crumbling house and out buildings. I counted 4 chimneys on the remains of the main house. The trail passed a small cabin, leaning but still standing, logs linked together on the four corners, two rooms inside. Again my imagination spoke of slave quarters. I have no real knowledge of what I was seeing, but I had to create a story.When I thought I'd be there alone for the night Parkay showed up followed by Centipede who I'd met only briefly two days before. Turned out she'd been in one of the tents I'd seen this morning. She's a cardiac care nurse from Manchester, NH. She said the doctors she work with all call her Angel of Death because she chooses to wear black scrubs to hide bloodstains incurred on the job, not a trail name she wanted to bring out here.To add to the spooky mood we all felt, Parkay and I talked about another house we'd seen on the trail. It was empty with no window pains, two stories and white clapboards. The style and setting of the place reminded both of us immediately of Blair Witch Project. Previous hikers seeing the same resemblance had covered the doorways and staircase with black hand prints. He and I had both gone down to take closer looks. He'd even eaten lunch inside. Centipede had been too spooked by it and kept going quickly up the trail.Tonight cold wind blew up from the valley straight into the open face of the shelter. Coincidentally the shelter is at mile 666. I drew a picture in the register of the egg from the movie poster for Alien. I wrote, In Sarver Hollow Shelter noone can hear you scream.