Date: 2012-05-18
From: Iron Mountain Shelter

To: Abingdon Shelter
Miles today: 15.8

The rain ended during the night, but all morning long the sky alternated between periods of bright sunshine and grey, with threatening clouds. During my first three hours of solitary woods-walking, I stopped at the Nick Grindstaff Memorial to pay my respects for a few minutes. Nick was a hermit who lived in these woods for forty years. The plaque, set in the remains of his cabin¢s chimney by his kinfolk after he died in 1923, says it all: ¢He lived alone, suffered alone, and died alone.¢ (Way to go, Nick!)Late in the morning while the sun was making one of its intermittent appearances, I caught up with Courtney and we enjoyed an untypical portion of the Trail that meandered through open farmland and a well-populated cow pasture. She and a Thru Hiker called ¢Piedmont¢ and I had lunch together at the Double Spring Shelter and then we left separately to reconvene at the Abingdon Shelter where I will spend be my last night on the Trail as a Long Distance Section Hiker. During the afternoon the clouds lifted and a warming sun flooded the woods and dappled the Trail, making each step so much easier and more pleasurable. It¢s amazing what ¢BOB¢s¢ presence can do to raise one¢s spirits and outlook! Knowing that today was my last long hike (nearly 16 miles) I consciously focused my attention on the details of the Appalachian woods¢¦ on the vast variety of ground cover, on the shades and shapes of the barks on the trees, on the colors of the leaves and on the different ways they move in the forest breezes. During the years since my last AT junket in 2009, I had forgotten about all these individually simple elements that make up the intricately inter-related tapestry of the Eastern deciduous forest. As I walked along, I couldn¢t help but wonder (and fear) that I will again lose the memory of such important details of my AT experience once I am re-ensconced in my bifurcated life between New York City and the mountains of Colorado. I certainly hope I don¢t!When ¢Poncho,¢ ¢Moss¢ and I were enjoying our cigars around the campfire on the cold, fog-covered top of Roan Mountain a while back, one of the topics we discussed pertained to the spiritual nature of the Trail experience. My view on that topic (which I shared with them) is that for someone to ask ¢What aspects of the Trail are spiritual¢ is like asking ¢What part of the ocean is wet?¢ because in one way or another, there¢s a spiritually-related lesson behind every AT experience whether it relates to acceptance, patience, humility, surrender, courage, perseverance, love, generosity, beauty, awesomeness, etc. And once again, my final evening on the Trail would prove to be just as filled with spiritual lessons as any other (although certainly not as I had expected it to be, of course!)I had anticipated that this evening would be a quiet one, with a lot of reflective time for me to sit in my tent, alone, tucked away in a fir grove or hardwood thicket off the beaten path. I had envisioned an evening of quiet where I could contemplate the significance of this journey¢¦ the lessons learned¢¦ the life experiences gained. Instead, the evening was the antithesis! First, my tent pole snapped while I was setting up my tent so I had to stay in the shelter that was populated by four others (including a true, central casting-esque hillbilly who was missing his front teeth and talked with such a twang that, even if he could modulated the volume of his voice, he would still be difficult to understand!) The shelter was surrounded by a class of 13 college students on a weeklong ¢pilgrimage¢ with an ex-hippie professor, who were telling jokes, playing cards and laughing at the tops of their lungs at each other¢s¢ cutesy sayings and repartee. (So much for solitude and relaxed contemplation!) The ripples on the Walden Pond in my mind quickly turned into Tsunami-force waves with the late-evening arrival of a Boy Scout Troop with a drill sergeant-leader barking instructions to his ¢men¢ who couldn¢t have been over 13 years old. This was hardly the beautifully bucolic final night on the Trail I had wanted!Nevertheless, it was exactly what it was, and whether it¢s unexpected weather, terrain, people or circumstances, whatever the Trail dishes up is what you get and what you must deal with. How you deal with it is the key. At first, I was pissed off; irritated that my final night would be spent amidst a mass of ¢rookies¢ and self-indulgent interlopers instead of either by myself or with a few enlightened others like me, who already ¢got¢ what life on the AT was ¢supposed¢ to be like. But after a while, I adjusted my perspective and accepted that this is just the way my last evening on the AT was going to be. With a bit of patience on my part and a willingness to let go of my expectations in favor of this reality, I was able to change my attitude and, you know what? My final evening on the Trail really wasn¢t so bad.As I lie here in my sleeping bag the flames from the college kids¢ campfire is casting a warm, yellow glow on the inside of the shelter wall. Someone¢s strumming a banjo and another is playing a harmonica while a few others are singing or humming along. The hillbilly is sound asleep on the floor of the shelter, breathing soundlessly; while all I can hear from the Boy Scouts camped up on the knoll where I had hoped to set up my tent, echoing in the distance an occasional laugh and the tinkling sound of ageless mess gear being rinsed out for use in the morning. The whole scene is peaceful and uniquely different from other nights I¢ve experienced on the Trail or elsewhere for that matter.Everything is exactly how it¢s supposed to be on this, my last night on the Appalachian Trail as a Long Distance Section Hiker. Including me.