Date: 2003-09-01
From: Mount Lafayette

To: Garfield Ridge Campsite
Miles today: 3.9
Weather: overcast clouds

There is a fine line between plowing on through ones own personal fears, and plowing into a dangerous area beyond your capabilities. I have spent the last three days swerving back and forth over that line, and I am really tied up in knots over it.Eight hours of hiking...3.9 miles hiked. These Whites are eating me for breakfast and spitting me out! The mileage doesn't concern me from a pride prospective. It is the sheer difficulty that produces such mileage. I knew that this would be hard, but I really had no idea. I blithely told my friends and family that if I came up on somthing that seemed unsafe, I would turn around, go to a road, and hitch north a few miles. Boy..can you say "naive"?That is totally unrealistic! You hike over four hellish miles, come to a... lets just say... less than fun section of the trail. It is not just that you don't want to repeat the hellish four miles....areas that are just miserable going down, become downright dangerous if you were to go back up them. Can you see why I have been tied up in knots?!I have spent all day crying as I hiked along. I always said that there is nothing I cannot do, I just have to do it slower than other people. But I think I was wrong. There are some things that this body cannot physically do. Period. You can imagine that I don't like this idea at all.What is all the fuss about, you ask? Well, the easy parts of the day involve mile long climbs that gain over a thousand feet in altitude and just go straight up huge rocks. Oh, and then you come down the exact same thing. Imagine a step that is knee-high to mid-thigh high...now step up on it for hours, first using your left leg, then your right.I am not kidding! And I am not kidding about that being the easy part. Interspersed in all this are walls of rock....big walls..that somehow require me and my pack to get up them. Bumpkin and Jerry wait for me at the worst ones, so it has gotten to the point that when I see them up ahead on the trail, my gut knots up.I am strugling with what to do. I could stay and continue to gut it out, or I could jump down to a part of the trail that I still need to do and that won't be so dangerous. When all is said and done, will I look back and think that I am a coward for wimping out? Or will I push forward when I really am not capable of what I am trying to do? My gut tells me that I have spent two days pushing my luck and that I should use some common sense. I could really use some advice from ya'll, so please let me know what you think! In any case, by the time you get this, I will be safe at a pay phone, so please do not let this worry you!Bumpkin says that different people have voiced concern to her about my ability to make it through this stretch of trail. This doesn't bother me in the slightest... On the contrary, it makes me feel like there is validity to my fear. These are people I respect and that know my limits. I just want to make sure that I don't back off of something unless I really need to.Just so you know that the day wasn't a total nightmare...after we climbed a particularly ugly rock face,(one which I did quite nicely, might I add, once Jerry and Bumpkin took my pack up it!), we all sat down to lunch. It wasn't long before Texas Jack came along and joined us. TJ is a retired fire fighter from Dallas, and he is a hoot! He has a huge external frame pack and when Bumpkin asked him playfully if he had anything good in there, he immediately grinned and pulled out a gatorade bottle of blackberry brandy. After passing it around, he pulled out his harmonica and serenaded us for a while. It was a nice moment...Our hike today ended at one of the AMC Campsites. These are run by a caretaker, and cost 8.00 a person. Due to the fragility of the land, there are big wooden tent platforms to set up on. Having a tent that requires staking down, I cut up my bear bag rope and proceeded to erect my tent using the eyelets along the side of the platform. Bumpkin, Jerry and I are tenting next to Texas Jack, and we all settled in to camp chores. I was able to talk some of my fears throuh with Bumpkin, and like always, she was amazing. I am sorry to say that I have been taking some of my fears and frustration out on her. This is a side of my personality that I would happily throw off a mountain.Luckily for me, she is gracious and forgiving, so instead of throwing ME off of the mountain, she hugged me and said that everything is going to be alright. As miserable as I am, I still have the werewithal to count my blessings! Hopefully, tomorrow will be easier. Love, Anna aka Mud Butt