Date: 2006-06-08
From: David Lesser Memorial Shelter

To: Ed Gorvey Shelter
Miles today: 15.8
Weather: overcast clouds

I woke up in Virgina and I'm going to sleep in Maryland with a spit of West Virginia in between. I took the last picture on my camera today there have been so many milestones in 24 hours. Finishing 575 miles of Virginia, reaching the 1000 mile mark, arriving in Harper's Ferry, entering our 6th state.I've been on trail for 100 days now. So many places, people and events are frozen and vivid in memory yet now seem so long ago. I remember my first night in Hawk Mountain Shelter. Apple Pie, Cedar Moe and Scout and her sister were there. I remember hiking my first weeks with the crew of Ajax, Jazzy Pants, Milk Dud, Monk, Road Runner, Train and Bush Whacker. I remember crossing Fontana Dam into the Smokies and being on my own for the first time. I remember the fear of being left alone in the Smokies in 3 feet of snow unable to walk because of shin splints. I remember Standing Bear Farm, my birthday in Hot Springs, Easter at Miss Janet's. I remember the beautiful places I've been, Tennessee from the ridge before Clingman's Dome, ice and snow on the trees before New Found Gap, God's Thumbprint, Little Hump and Hump Mountains, Grayson Highlands, McAfee Knob. Half of the hike is behind me. I've left the South that I'd always thought of as a foreign land. I'm looking at these states with fondness and respect. I have a changed concept of the country in general. I'm richer for it.I'm excited for what's to come I'm also dog tired. I've walked a long way and I'm not even halfway home. Earlier in the trip I missed nothing at all except Andrew. That still holds true, but more and more I think about the comfortable routines of our daily life, the little things that define us. Eating dinner on the couch and watching Buffy or Veronica Mars, grocery shopping, the farmers' market, reading in bed, silly bones of contention, walking Bosco around Portland. I'm glad every day that I'm out here. I know I'll return home and much will be new, but home feels further away now than it did in Georgia in March. At the time I said the hike was not a vacation but I was not aware then of the truth of that statement. I reveled in the newness of everything. Now the hike is daily routine. I think I pretended to understand what I was doing in the beginning. I know that I don't really understand now. I walk long distances every day. I'm sore and I ache. I'm surround by people who do the same thing and I'm not really sure why we do it. We love it, those of us who have not given up. We feel tied together by something and the ties grow stronger. We form a tight community when we're together. We're oddballs doing an odd thing. But when we're alone with the trail, or at least when I'm alone, we work and struggle and sweat and we don't talk about that part of it much when we're together. I the longest conversation I've had about the true experiences someone said this is hard. I replied that yes, it's really hard. There was honest depth and candor to his admission. We'll talk about how hard a day or a mountain was, but we really never talk about how hard the whole experience is. We progress deeper into the heart of the trail. I know I'm progressing, getting stronger and more determined. I'm letting myself get deeper into a thing than I ever have before. And no, I don't understand what I'm doing, but I've never wanted anything so badly.It's not a vacation, it's not a nature walk, it's not exactly an adventure, not this far into it. It becomes you life rather than being a diversion from your life. In fact, it's really the other way around.