Date: 2005-05-02
From: Grassy campsites, (NC/TN?)

To: More campsites, TN!
Miles today: 19.0

They call this stretch of trail the Tennessee turnpike, because it¢s flatter and more easily traversed than any of the rest of the state has been, and I¢ve found the name a more-or-less accurate one. I walked nineteen miles today but feel as though I¢ve traveled only two-thirds as far. Free and Serenity left first in the morning and Linux and I hiked out together, crossing lots of long fields and farmland, and about three miles into the morning, the Nick Grindstaff Monument. The Nick Grindstaff Monument is a tall stone memorial marker, off on the left side of the trail, which is blank on the front; then, when you walk around to the back, you¢re greeted with the following inscription: ¢Uncle Nick Grindstaff: Lived alone, suffered alone, died alone. Dec. 25 1851 ¢ July 23 1923.¢ Which is such a preternaturally weird thing to see inscribed on any monument, let alone on a solitary slab of granite up on Iron Mountain in Tennessee, that I could not help laughing.It started to rain later and Linux went ahead. Half an hour later I reached the Double Springs Shelter, stopped for lunch, and found Serenity and Free there. They¢d gotten themselves in a tizzy earlier telling each other urban (rural?) legends about alleged local psycho hiker-killers, which culminated in an unfortunate incident in which they bolted as fast as they could up the trail from what of course turned out to be more hikers; not twenty minutes later Linux had come up behind them silently, intending to surprise them by joining in the conversation when they hadn¢t had any idea he was there. Only what actually happened was he said something like, Hello, and Serenity whipped around and screamed at the top of her lungs, which made Free scream at the top of her lungs, which scared Linux so much he apologized and beat a hasty retreat, or rather advance ¢ taking off up the trail so as to get away. ¢Man,¢ I said, ¢the things that can happen in a half an hour.¢Ate lunch and walked in the afternoon with Free and Serenity; the rain cleared up but it was still windy and overcast. So much rain we have had in the past couple of weeks. It¢s getting old. A couple of miles before Abingdon Gap Shelter we passed this weird tiny runty dwarf shelter, not in any of the guidebooks. It was built the same way as a regular shelter, and with the same proportions, but the whole thing was barely as tall as I am, and it¢d barely sleep two people. Linux had written, ¢What the fuck is this place?¢ in the shelter register, which was not, judging from the nearby register entries, an uncommon response. I wrote something like, ¢If the chances of sustained sunshine were as likely as the chances of encountering a midget shelter, I¢d be soaking up the rays right now. Oh, well. Chalk one up to probability.¢ Linux was at Abingdon Gap when we got there and he wanted to know if we¢d seen the midget shelter. I said of course, and then he asked what I wrote in the register, and when I told him he said, I feel like we wrote the same thing. Stopped and ate dinner at the shelter¢ beans and veggies and nutritional yeast in tortillas, spiced up with wild onions, followed by a few bites of Serenity¢s pasta, which she wasn¢t able to finish. The hikers Free and Serenity had bolted from earlier in the day were at the shelter and they asked what on earth had happened that morning, anyway; listening to Free and Serenity haltingly explain that they had thought the hikers might have been deranged psycho hiker-killers, I laughed so hard I snorted Serenity¢s pasta. The terrain all day had been so forgiving I didn¢t feel at all as though I¢d gone eighteen miles; the four of us decided to keep hiking another couple of miles or so, in order to cut down the morning¢s hike into Damascus. So we kept on going, and collectively ascertained that my powers of observation are sometimes really, really shoddy ¢ twice I walked past campsites without noticing them till one of the other girls pointed them out. Linux and I appear to have a particular problem paying attention while walking and talking; a few days ago the two of us, busy yakking, were the only ones not to have noticed an alleged toilet bowl sitting in the middle of an open field; that morning we had apparently walked straight over a stream without noticing it ¢ and this while waiting to get to the next water source. Must work on this multitasking thing.We came upon a flat spot a little before sunset and decided to stop. ¢I¢m getting a crazy idea,¢ said Serenity; ¢I¢m getting a crazy idea of not setting up my tent so I can leave quicker in the morning.¢ ¢It¢s supposed to be so cold tonight,¢ we said; ¢in the twenties.¢ ¢So we¢ll pile up close,¢ she said. And so the four of us watched the sun set and fell asleep in a large indiscriminate tangle.