Date: 2012-04-11
From: Icewater Spring Shelter

To: Tri-Corner Knob Shelter
Miles today: 12.6
Weather: scattered clouds

April 11, 12.6 miThe night before had been well below freezing, and with windchill who knows how cold it actually was. My tent was still staked to the grass but at some point in the night my rainfly had blown half off. It flapped in the wind, holding on by only two of the four hooks, and my upper mesh dome capping the tent exposed me to the ruthless wind. Despite the rainfly issue, I hadn't woken up or been disturbed at all from inside my sleeping bag. I had my earplugs in. Oh yeah, Thin Timber had given me those stakes also. He probably ripped off my fly, the crazy.Once I got out of my bag I immediately felt the urgency of my situation. I had to move quickly in order not to seize up with cold. Very soon my hands didn't have the dexterity to take down my own tent. I couldn't bend my fingers or straighten them out flat at all. To my horror, they hung useless from my arms, inert, like long claws. Finally impatient with my being in the wind, I fumbled with my outer wind jacket shell until my hands were covered behind the cuffs. Somehow I maneuvered the poles of my tent out of the locks at each corner. Palming everything clumsily with my now balled fists jammed inside my jacket, I took the tent down. ¢Brrrrhuhuhhrrr!¢ I let out a trebbling cry as I threw the (thankfully plastic) poles down, folded up. ¢Bruh.uh.uh.rrre.rrrheh!¢ Stoccato nonsense as I kneeled, still without the use of my hands, swift winds blowing, folding up my tent into thirds. I rolled it up fast, stuffing the loose tent hurredly into my pack, and dashed out of the wind into the shelter to blow feeling back into my hands. It was still freezing inside the near vacated shelter so I decided to move on. I really would have had some serious problems if I hadn't made those arm warmers.I left without refilling my water bladder at the spring because I couldn't bear the thought of any water splashing onto my hands when I'd kneel down to fill up my two liters. The thought of sitting still for however long the water would take to trickle in actually frightened me. I literally ran away from the shelter down the trail, hopping from rock to rock, islands above the sheath layer of ice which had frozen between them. The Marlboro blacks sure didn't help my pace, and in that altitude I'm surprised I was able to hike at all, much less thirteen miles before eight o'clock that evening. I guess it was sheerly because of the cold. It motivated me to keep moving, first over large, flatrock stones piled up everywhere on the trail. Then slowly uphill, still a stoney path underfoot, but canopied in by a tunnel of fresh-smelling pines. They were so thick together that it was dark in there. I could smell the sap. Everything about that day was crip and cool. Mostly, the going was uphill on the same ridge of the same mountain, all day. To the uninitiated this may sound like the worst sort of punishment. But to me it just meant that there were mountains that big within walking distance of my home ¢ and I was on them right then. When the sun finally rose above the ranges to my right I lingered on a ledge of strangely-colored flatstones which had chipped off from the grand backing of chisling crumble behind me. Wonderful colors. Vivid orange bleached by the sun to a chalky mattee. I kicked and eroded away the slates at my feet and just underneath the wet rocks were a deep red. I looked out upon the scene of successive mountains in the early morning calm. The wind was to my back behind that huge, hollow alcove I mentioned. The sun rose steadily over the land of my pilgrimage, the land of my choosing. I made tracks getting to Tri-Corner Knob shelter because I didn't detour the .5 (and back) for the water at Pecks Corner (five miles back). I'd been chain smoking since I sensed a general downward trend in elevation. Before, I'd tentatively smoke only a half, they were so strong. But they weren't menthols, i.e. the ¢strong¢ quality was just bad. Black lung is what you get in two packs of Marlboro Blacks or 20 years of coal mining. So I popped my head around the thick plastic flap to the shelter very thirsty and wheezing like a barbarian. Stepping inside was just like time travel. To begin with, the plastic curtain reminded me of the 70's or maybe just a car wash, but I can't pick just one decade to sum up the situation I found behind the curtain. There was a young man with a wide-brimmed hat and a middle aged couple, Zora and Handyman, who I'd met the day before. This shelter, as with all the shelters in the Smokies, was made completely of stone with a wide bed of wooden plank topped with another upper tier of wooden space. A dusty, dirt floor served as the walkway to the built-in fireplace, which was by the door but also had its own ventilated shaft going up through the roof. A large, glass skylight was above. I staked my place out on the top row near the young man. I wanted to talk with him but he seemed reticent and rather snobby to judge by his body language. Or perhaps he just appeared that way with his refined air, finely cut beard, and very nice accent. ¢Where are you from, anyway?¢ I asked. ¢Atlanta.¢Well, damn! I could listen to you talk all day. At first he was only curt with his answers but eventually we were speaking freely. His name was Hitchcock. I laughingly described to him the plot line of the old movie The Birds, but he'd gotten his trail name from his own last name and he'd never known the film. He offered me some kale, a lightweight seaweed he'd thought to carry with him dry in two Nalgene bottles. It was wonderfully crisp and delicious because I like greens and I hadn't had any vegetables at all in nearly a month. I thought it was an ingenious way to stay healthy while hiking. I asked him what else he'd brought, and he spread his store out in front of me on his mat. I was surprised by the heavy fruits like apples. Then I remembered my bananas. I guess we were both willing to carry that kind of weight. It was so lovely to talk with him after a long day of hiking, and really he was very strikingly handsome. Tall, slight, and graceful. No sudden movements about him, and such ease. As if nothing were too big of a deal. Auburn hair, so neat. Later in the evening we both tended to the fire. I gathered wood from outside and he set it up. We sat there late into the night, building the fire up in silence. Sometimes he'd get down on his chest near the floor and blow into the embers. That would spark the fire up again for a good twenty minutes. We didn't talk much then but just enjoyed the warmth. At one point I went outside the shelter with the intention of smoking a cigarette but a young girl offered me some buffalo chicken Mountain House dinner. I definitely went with that second option. She and her mother had tortillas to wrap the meal in, and they just hadn't been able to finish the packet. As I ate, and praised them both amply for their kindness, the mother, who wore a very strange, tassled hat, explained to me that she'd been wanting to co camping for years but that there was never time, no, never any time at all ¢ and then Katie's classmates were too afraid to stay in the woods for more than one night. She offered me some rum and I sipped it straight out of a plastic bottle, savoring the taste as it went down warm. I asked Katie about the camera she had around her neck. ¢It's for a school project. We're taking pictures that show human emotion.¢¢Oh! The pictures will be fun to look over when you get them developed. Do you take any of the mountains, still lifes?¢¢No, just people.¢¢But you'll remember the wilderness, no doubt.¢ She looked down at her camera, then back at me.¢You're a thru-hiker?¢ Curious, interested.¢Yes.¢¢Can I take pictures of you?¢¢Yes.¢She got a great one of Hitchcock and I sitting back by the fireplace. He was reaching in towards the fire to tend to it, filling it in expertly with thin twigs, and I had my head turned over my shoulder to look at her, a beatific, calm face with a weary smile and thick-lidded eyes.