Date: 2005-04-06
From: Mollie's Ridge Shelter, Great Smoky Mountains Park

To: Derrick's Knob Shelter, GSMNP
Miles today: 11.7
Weather: overcast clouds

Alright, this is the last entry in my possession. I'm sure Jess will send me another volume or two soon, so never fear. In the meantime, you will have to content yourselves with staring at a big map of the east coast and picturing Jess schlepping along.Day 24, in which Jess wouldn't know an apple tree if it introduced itself and made some cider, continues in her oral rendition of Bartlett's All Too Familiar Quotations by Dead Gay Writers, reminds me that Shakespeare wrote the original "eaten by a bear" joke, gives a huge shout-out to my other half, laments her lack of knowledge about Top 40 bluegrass, and shows promise of someday saying, "You want to go to Maine? In my day, we had to walk uphill 2000 miles through the snow to get to Maine!"   It's so beautiful up here, sunny and windy and the woods full of me anemone and turning green. I couldn't remember it all if I tried. There is too much to hold. I'd resigned myself to a week of cold and wet misery, but luck has held so far-- the views are extraordinary, all the mountains their characteristic smoky blue color. Passing through Russell Bald and Spence Field the wind nearly knocked me sideways. They're so surprising, these small balds and fields all the way up here, looking for all the world like abandoned orchards, or prairies, and dotted with gnarled and moss-covered trees. I'd say they looked like apple trees, even-- and maybe they do-- but alas, I suck at tree ID. Today's dorky quotation moment was a Shakespearean one:   Halloo your name to the reverberate hills, and the hills shall cry out: Olivia! "First Whitman, now Shakespeare," said Linux. "What's next?" "Now hang on," I said. "--you're the one carrying Leaves of Grass and Winter's Tale with you." "Exit Linux, pursued by a bear," he said.(I have decided that Linux, (who has resigned himself to a trailname shared with an open source operating system after having successfully dodged the trailnames Bill Gates and Compuserve) reminds me-- apart from the whole Texan-backpacking-boy thing-- of no one so much as Tammy. it must be the whole half-Italian, off-center humor, indie-rock-type-with-own-radio-show thing. That, and a fondness for the Magnetic Fields. Also a desire to achieve middle-school band proficiency in all instruments.)Anyway, the walk was lovely, though there was more uphill than I'd thought possible, after all the elevation gains of the day before. Also the mileages in the guidebook and on the park signs never quite seem to agree-- thus every mile hiked feels a little longer than normal. My stamina's still a little under par.In the afternoon we climbed over Rocky Top, for which the old bluegrass standard is named (a song I did not in fact myself know, representing a hole in my musical education, but I made CJ and Linux sing it and have been humming "Had me a girl up on Rocky Top/Rocky Top Tennessee/Wild as a pig and sweet as soda pop/Rocky Top Tennessee" ever since.)The last part of the walk seemed to drag on forever-- "Just up this next hill," CJ kept saying, and I'd say, "The shelter's called Derrick Knob-- this hill doesn't look very knobby to me." After one final vicious climb, we arrived. The same crowd from the night before were there; we crammed into the shelter, just beneath a tin roof and with little headroom. My platypus dripped through the floorboards onto Sowega's head (sorry Sowega) and the wind howled all through the night. I didn't sleep well.