Date: 2004-05-19
From: Jerry Cabin Shelter

To: Mind over Matter?
Miles today: 17.8

I woke up to gloomy grey skies, but at least it was not raining out. The choice I faced was whether to wear my soaked pair of socks, my damp pair of socks, or my dry pair of socks. I opted for the dry ones.After breaking camp, I ascended a slope for about 1/2 mile then abruptly stopped. I realized that I had left my umbrella behind. I placed my backpack on a huge, fallen tree trunk and jogged back down the slope. I was leery about leaving a pack unattended in bear country. I retrieved the wounded umbrella and hiked back up to the backpack which was untouched.Back in Georgia, I had enjoyed the simple beauty of the narrow strips of grass flanking the trail. This morning, I was railing against the grasses adjoining the trail. The shafts of grass were tall; they were wet from yesterday's rains, and they were leaning over the trail. By the time I had retrieved the errant umbrella, my feet, shoes, and formerly dry socks were soaked from brushing against the grass. I was angry at myself for having chosen to wear my only dry pair of socks. As a result, I was without a back up pair of dry socks.The wet socks aggravated my pair of blisters. It was almost impossible to keep moleskin adhered to them.I spent much of the morning in a lousy mood attributable to my soaked feet and damp clothing. (I did have one set dry clothes for sleeping, but would never use them on the trail unless I faced an emergency like hypothermia). In an effort to improve my attitude, I recalled something I had read in a book about backpacking. The author had written that feet are designed to get wet, and that hikers should not get bent out of shape when the condition occurs. I also recalled stories about the trench foot experienced by the soldiers in the trenches of World War I.Trench foot! Trench foot! The word echoed in my head as I plodded along the trail. Eventually, I became fed up with my negativism and did my best to ignore the wet feet with a mental exercise of mind over matter. I did, however, attempt to dry one pair of socks by clipping them to the outside of the backpack where they would be exposed to the air. I held the other pair in my hands.At a high elevation, I came upon a small granite memorial to a deceased thru hiker. The words on the memorial stated that the ashes of the hiker had been scattered at the spot. As I stood beside the memorial, a fast moving fog was funneling through up a gap in the trees. The effect was eerie and beautiful. The hiker had chosen a good spot.Late in the morning, the sun came out. I was thrilled. During a lunch break in a pasture, I positioned my backpack in an upright position on the ground near an "AT" sign post. I took a discarded post and laid it over the backpack and the post. I placed on this beam all of my wet clothing and shoes and let the sun work its magic. While eating a burrito wrap, I walked over to the clothes drying on the beam. I absentmindedly removed from the beam what appeared to be a piece of the burrito which had fallen. I placed it part way into my mouth and against my tongue. Yuk! It was not a piece of the burrito. It was a damp, used strip of moleskin which had peeled off of my blister. It had probably been stuck against a wet sock. I immediately removed it from my mouth. As it turns out, there is a resemblance in color and texture between a piece of burrito wrap and a strip of wet moleskin (a truly meaningless factoid).Since leaving Hot Springs, I have rarely mentioned other hikers in my journal entries. There are several hikers I have been friendly with who are passing through this five day stretch of the trail. The ones I see the most include Whoa, Moxie, Samurai, JP, Knuckles, and Inchworm. Their ages range from the early twenties to middle age. Some new faces are Sarah and Brittany, a pair of friends in their early twenties who started the hike together. There is Apostle in his twenties, and Wild Thing who is 63. Ahead of me have been Stick, Bluebird, Silkie, Magnet, and Screaming Steven. Their ages range from the twenties to middle age. Although much of my hiking happens alone, I socialize in the evening with whoever is at a particular shelter, even though I rarely sleep in a shelter. In the evenings I might be sore, tired, and sometimes wet, but I always try to maintain a cheerful disposition when hanging out with other hikers. I can vent my frustrations into this journal.Late in the day, I caught up with Stick, Bluebird, and Silkie at a road crossing. They had also been hammered by the rain storm on the previous day. Stick and Silkie wanted to hitch rides to Erwin, Tennessee to rest up and dry out. I urged them to reconsider their plan and hike four additional miles to a campsite where several other hikers, myself included, were planning to spend the night. They resumed hiking with me, but we never reached the campsite. It started to rain and all of us scrambled to set up our individual shelters.With the rain and onset of darkness, I did not cook a hot meal. Instead, I chowed down a couple of oatmeal squares and hit the hammock (which has a rain tarp and mosquito netting). As I lay in the hammock, my stomach growled in protest.