Date: 2018-07-02
From: Yellow Deli Hostel

To: hostel
Miles today: 0.0

Got up early to help with the free hiker breakfast! One of the interesting things about this community is how they dress. All the men have facial hair, a small man-bun, and button down plaid shirts. All the women have long hair in a bun, long sleeve shirts, and long hippie pants. There's a sign in the women's bunk room asking visitors to please wear clothes from the communal wardrobe if volunteering in the deli. So i picked out a super sexy button down, collared shirt and some parachute type pants. Cooking the breakfast was fun. I had no idea what i was doing, but luckily Handy came down to help as well and he's a pro at this stuff so i just did whatever he said. We made eggs, biscuits with gravy, and cut watermelon. I kinda fucked the biscuits up. I forgot to mix all the liquid ingredients together before adding it to the dry ingredients... whatever, details. They were edible! Since i helped with breakfast, I got to sit at a "special" table with the other helpers and they gave us extra food, specifically a lot of extra fruit for me! Yay!I chatted a lot with Handy, he's that hiker i met several days ago that looks like the doctor from the show House. He told me that right now he's hiking all along the AT and stopping at different hostels to find a potential place to work. He's literally been living on the trail for over a year now. I find that so fascinating. The fact that living on the trail and hiking around forever is an option for life just blows my mind! What a life!I've never been so lazy in my life. I literally just sat around and ate way too much food all day. Skywalker and I went to the grocery store and got cereal stuffs! We mowed through an entire box of peanut butter chocolate Cheerios over vanilla cashew milk. And then we went and got another veggie burger downstairs. So fat it's painful. That's one thing i've noticed about town food - my stomach has shrunk and can't fit a whole meal. In the woods, we really don't eat "meals". Just a snack every 2-3 hours. So town meals make you feel like your gonna implode from the inside out lol. Food-baby game strong.Our waitress at the deli was a younger girl. Super friendly. We started talking about the AT and she ended up disclosing that she was also an AT hiker once upon a time, head southbound, but then she came to the hostel and she decided to stay!! I was stunned. These were the hikers we had heard rumors about. The ones that never left. Literally quit their hike and joined the cult! Crazy!!Besides stuffing our faces, we did the second most "civilized" American activity and went to the movies! lol Me, Skywalker, and Steady went and saw Jurassic World 2 at the theater across the street. It was super cheesy. And just made me feel more fat and lazy lol. Over the course of the day, i learned a lot about the whole "intentional community" thing. They all live and work together, but don't make a paycheck or any money. All the money that's made from their deli and farm is put into one communal pot. Everyone shares everything, so you never need to buy much. If you need something that the community itself can't make, you make a case for your expenditure and return all receipts to a bookkeeper. All the kids are homeschooled and you only marry within the community. All single women and single men stay in gender divided bunk rooms. And only married couples have their own room. So you're essentially never alone, like ever. They grow their own food, make their own clothes, furniture, instruments, etc. They have "prayer & song" twice a day. I didn't ask a whole lot about the religious side of things, but it's basically rooted in Christianity except the Bible is taken 100% literally among other extreme ideas. It was all incredibly fascinating, and i can kinda see how it would appeal to lost and lonely hikers who come wandering through here. But like all good things, you need to know when to walk away. So that's what we're doing tomorrow morning. Getting the hell out of here! lol Taking a day off has been great, but just doesn't feel right. Tomorrow it's back to the woods!