Date: 2008-12-23
To: Hiking and Itching
Miles today: 0.0

As the New Year approaches, I find myself thinking more about trip planning. Last time I checked, we had more than a year to go before takeoff, but now only six months remain. So instead of daydreaming about eating large quantities of peanut butter and dark chocolate on mountain vistas (truly a good daydream), I¢ve begun to think about how I have to go to Costco, pick up all that food, and repackage it into a million little Ziplocs. With my last difficult semester at Emory finally out of the way (hurrah!), I finally have time to begin some hardcore food buying, guidebook reading, and banana dehydrating. Thankfully, we¢ve acquired 95% of our gear already. It¢s only the boots that still need attention. This was made painfully clear to me a few days ago when I death-marched out of the Georgia woods with huge red welts on the bottoms of my poor feet.        To celebrate the successful completion of yet another semester and test our winter gear last week, Josh and I decided to climb a few more mountains. I¢m not sure who else thinks it¢s a good idea to sleep in the mountains in December¢¦ we were actually lucky it didn¢t get below freezing at night (or not, since we don¢t know whether our gear will hold up to its minimum temperature ratings). We hiked the Coosa Backcountry trail in Vogel State Park, plus the Bear Hair trail because Josh¢s navigation skills are less than perfect. It rained the entire time but that was okay. The real problems were my boots and hives, which had obviously decided to have a wild party this weekend at my expense. By the first night I was itchy and the Benadryl wasn¢t totally helping. Combined with the rain and dark beginning at 5:30 pm, my night was absolutely restless. I¢m sure I slept some¢you have to sleep some between 6pm and 7am, right? My thoughts went something like this: ¢my feet hurt, my legs itch, I hear an animal, is it a bear? No it¢s clucking, bears don¢t cluck¢¦ I think. Must be a bird, my back itches, Josh is snoring, my toes are cold. I wonder what time it is, how many hours till daylight? I really itch, when can I take Benadryl again?¢¦ that animal sounds closer. I think my throat is swelling shut. Oh no, I don¢t have the Epipen, why oh why didn¢t I bring the Epipen? Okay, can I still breathe? I¢m still breathing, something keeps clucking, Josh keeps snoring. What time is it?¢ Repeat ad nauseam .In retrospect it was a good time. We ended up pulling out early because of my wretched hives, though we did finish the Coosa and Bear Hair trails- just didn't have time to do another hike we wanted to sqeeze in a short drive away. When my skin and feet recovered I looked back on it with a smile. Every hike gives us just that much more experience for the big one. In this case it was how to keep everything relatively dry when it¢s been raining for 48 hours, and how to keep calm when you find yourself seriously swelling up in the middle of the woods (without an Epipen to boot). For some reason, I remember our food as being really good¢ the trail mix I made was especially delicious this hike and the morning oatmeal, cashew, apple granola mess I cooked was warm and comforting. Next time, though, I¢m definitely bringing the Epipen just in case.-Anya