Date: 2005-05-12
From: home

To: Damascus
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: broken clouds

Well, this is the day I've been waiting for ever since that fateful day - April 7 - when I realized my knee was too badly damaged to continue my hike. I must say that I have somewhat different emotions from the day, exactly two months ago (March 12) that I left here to go to Springer Mountain. On that day there was great excitement and anticipation, and not a little nervousness about what I might encounter and how I would do. But I was incredibly optimistic about making it all the way to Katahdin, and couldn't wait to get started.Today, while the excitement of getting back on the trail is there, it is tempered somewhat by my knowledge of what it will be like - so much of the uncertainty is gone. And I know now how hard some of those mountains will be, especially through the Smokeys, just based on all the journal entries I have read. I also have to confess that I am less blindly optimistic that I will be able to hike without interruption (other than for family events) all the way through, although that is still my hope and my plan. Realism derived from experience you might say! The main question is how well my knee will hold up, and only time will tell that, but I also have to wonder how long it will take me to get my hiker legs back fully and thus how soon I may be able to get my milage up to the kind of distances I need in order to complete my hike this year. The issue of daily milage will be a double-edged sword, of course. To preserve and protect my knee, especially early on, I will need to take it slow and easy. But to get to Katahdin, at some point I'm going to have to up my average, and that is going to take some high double-digit days. The question is: how soon will I actually be able to do that? In terms of what I may do differently this time: I will not hesitate to take zero days in town if my knee tells me it needs a day of rest. I am also looking forward to taking full advantage of the neat hostels that I've been hearing about from my M company colleagues - Miss Janet's in particular. And I am looking forward to making some new hiker friends, which I know will happen, but as Scholar said in her journal before she left for Springer this year, she was still nervous about whether the sense of community would be the same for her this year as it was during her attempt last year. Now I know what she meant!I am, of course, thrilled at the prospect of seeing all my hiker friends at Trail Days, but I know that I will be sad when we part company on Sunday to go our separate ways back to the trail. I know I should just count my blessings that I'll be seeing them again, and let it go at that!So, at 10:55 this morning, my greyhound bus is due to pull out of the terminal at Dulles Airport for points south, and I will be on it. I have no idea how I will get from the last stop (Marion, Va.) to Damacus, and I'll be getting into Marion after 7:30 so I won't have much daylight left, but it is a measure of my new-found self-confidence, not to mention my new-found "flexibility" in approaching life, that I'm just not worried about that. I have all I need to survive in my back-pack, so it's just a matter of where I will happen to be when it's time to sleep tonight. Hopefully it will be in the campgrounds in Damascus, but it will be somewhere -- and I will be fine, thank you very much. This morning when I woke up the skies were overcast and looking like rain. It's the storm system that was moving through the mid-west yesterday. So there is a possibility that my hitch-hike from Marion to Damascus may occur not just after dark but in the pouring rain. Now ask me if I care! Hey, that's what it's like out on the trail, so why should my stop in Damascus for Trail Days be any different. Given the temperatures, it unlikely to be snow (though I still have my winter clothes in my pack, so even that would not be a problem), and the worst that can happen is that I get wet. But things dry out, and the important thing is that I will FINALLY be heading back to the trail.Not a moment too soon, I suspect. My dear wife has been most patient and tolerant of me, but we all have our limits and I'm sure I have exceeded hers on occasion. Still, I know she'll miss me. It's been great being home. But the trail calls, and mountains are waiting for me. I must go now.....Stay tuned!Longhaul