Date: 2008-04-14
From: Campsite past VA606 crossing

To: Pearisburg, VA (1620')
Miles today: 23.7
Weather: light rain

I woke up and was out around 8:30 and my tent was wet. It was cold so packing up a cold wet tent numbed the fingers up nicely. I had long sleeves on for the first time in a while and it started to snow. It wasn't snowing hard for most of the day. I cruised for a while and ate lunch at Doc's Knob Shelter and it snowed harder at that point. There was a ridge that I was on for a while and at around 2:30 I came across a black cow. It was standing in the woods on top of the ridge in the snow. I took a picture of it and made some noise to try and get it to move and then it just started walking in circles. It looked sick and it was limping a bit and just continued to walk in circles. At this point I grew concerned for it and tried to hurry the several miles into Pearisburg to tell someone. This is where a dillema occured. I have never considered being a vegetarian as a legitimate life choice but if I was so concerned for this cows life why do I have no problem eating beef. The cow definitely was lost and belonged to some farmer who is the farmer ever got it back would just end up killing it later. So it would die either at the slaughterhouse or on the mountain and what I did really had no effect. I considered a lot of things like how much money I've paid for beef over the years and contributed to the killing of cows like that one. I also though that if this cow was stupid enough to get lost in the woods that maybe it was meant to die by natural selection and again nothing I do should interfere or would matter. There was a lot that I considered on my way down to Pearisburg. When I got to the Rendezvous Motel it had just begun raining. The lady there, Brenda, was very nice and when I told her about the cow she said she had been hearing about it from hikers for a couple of weeks. That would explain why it looked so sick. She called the sheriff and I talked to him and told him where it was and he seemed to have an idea of whose it was. That settled that and I wasn't worried anymore. Brenda gave me a ride to find a room somewhere else because all of hers were taken. I also got all 5 of the packages I had sent. After trying another motel we arrived at the Holiday motor lodge and I recognized Strides walking into a room. He said it would be cool if I wanted to crash on their floor which I had no problem with. I thanked Brenda (it was very nice of her to drive me around town to look for a place) and headed up to the room which Strides was sharing with Spruce whose name I had seen in shelter registers but I had never met up to this point. I hung out in the room and went through my mail. Stevo had sent me a bunch of candy bars (snickers, milky way, and Hershey's dark chocolate) as well as special cookies that had peanut butter cups or caramel in them with AT symbols in icing on top. Very impressive package, almoust as though he's done this before. The rest of my stuff I had sent to myself and Esra and my dad sent me some stuff. I also got my new steripen which will hopefully allow me to carry less water. We ate at Hardees and I met Squire and Southside there and we went to Dairy Queen for dessert. I went back to the room and drank some beers Spruce had bought as well as watched the Wizards last regular season game. It was on comcast sports net which is the broadcast I get at home so it felt very familiar. It kind of sucks I'm not going to be able to watch the Caps and Wizards in the playoffs but it is a small price to pay. I talked to home, Esra, and Richard who told me he couldn't register me for classes because I need to reapply to Tech. I don't think its a big deal, just one form or something but we'll see tomorrow.