Date: 2014-08-27
From: Mt Galehead peak

To: Ripley Falls
Miles today: 14.2
Weather: clear sky

It was a good night. Stars were excellent and not a single person was up on Mt Galehead as I expected. But for 2 hours I thought there was a mouse in my food bag. The trees at this elevation are hardly 8 feet tall which makes bear hanging virtually futile. So I slept with my food by my head. By 2am I was slapping and feeling around in reaction to an incessant crinkly noise coming from within. I turned on my headlamp and pawed at the thing like a dog pausing and looking at it as if it was an inanimate stuffed animal to see if it was going to move. The plastic wrapper crinkling wouldn't stop even though I could find no evidence of a scavenging intruder inside. There were no tears or holes to be found so I resorted to dumping the whole thing inside out. I had the realization that if something got inside, it would have crawled in while I was making dinner last evening - HOW LONG HAS THIS THING BEEN IN THERE!?I'm honestly not sure what I would have done if a family of mice just tumbled out into my lap inside of my enclosed tent. But there were no intruders inside, everything was fine. I was deeply perplexed. So I shoved everything back inside and stared at my inanimate food bag that continued to make crinkly noises. Eventually I just had to conclude the temperature drop was just reducing air pressure inside the sealed bag making the liner compress against the contents. To make up for this midnight ordeal I slept in longer in the morning. The prospect of getting leftover hiker food at the Galehead hut made the idea more enticing. When I got to the hut just after 9am there was just oatmeal so I had some of that and made 2nd breakfast outside.Today's hiking went by well but I passed by several huge groups of hikers. Luckily I'm going through the Whites on weekdays so for the most part I get to hike alone. Ended up going off trail again to find another secluded spot to camp at. Ripley Falls became the obvious choice. Forgot about the majority of things that went through my mind as usual but one thought did stick. It's a thought that I get often on the trail - I wish I did more. I wish I better utilized my time growing up. A lot of random flash memories emerge when you're out in the woods. I typically don't think about my childhood because I see that as a waste of time. There's not a whole lot of good memories there anyway and it's not like I can take many life lessons from that era. That got me thinking. What if I played an instrument? Practiced some kind of martial art? Learned a language then? All I did was go to public school and didn't get encouraged to do anything else. I only remember being discouraged from pursuing stuff that actually interested me. I definitely wished I did more in high school as well but that was another strange time. I had moved from New Jersey to San Diego when I was 14. Anything I had going that could count as a hobby was shut down with that cross country relocation. Going to college didn't help because I had a deep understanding of how much I disliked school by then.This is for sure though: I can never regret thru hiking. This is awesome.