Date: 2009-04-29
From: Spence Field Shelter

To: Double Spring Gap
Miles today: 13.5
Weather: broken clouds

I feel like I'm in a fairy tale right now. I'm staying in a beautiful stone shelter nestled amid pine trees. But right around the shelter is a little more open; the forest is really well-spread and the ground is a sea of flowers. The ridge runner says the white ones are spring _______, the yellow are a certain kind of lilies.The skies have been gray all day, but it hasn't rained yet. I figure I'm due for some rain--it hasn't for quite a while now.There are several deer which are known as "The Double Spring Posse." They hang out by the bear cables and the ptivy and are pretty friendly. I couldn't really get a good picture earlier, and now I'm just feeling lazy.The hike today was mostly uphill again, but it wasn't too straining. The temperature is once again comfortable due to cloud cover. I almost went for the twenty mile day, but wasn't willing to test the clouds' friendliness or my legs' durability--feet really--so I finished up my hike by 3:00 even with some breaks and dawdling about.The last half-mile before this shelter, when the carpet of flowers first began, I thought it actually had started to rain. Luckily, my ears were deceiving me; I simply heard hundreds of crickets jumping on the flowers and dead leaves as I walked by them. It was even weirder if I stopped moving--the sounds would stop, too; it was like they were following me instead of running away.The shelter tonight is the same crowd as last night, plus the ridge runner. That means Jason, Transitions, Nano, the sister and brother-in-law of Nano (section hikers), Andrew and _______ (also section hikers), and Kentucky Blue.Jason and I got to talk about religion and such for a bit today, it was cool to find someone else out here who is genunie about things of that respect. There are a lot out here who are apathetic or searching for something for something, though.Transitions is a latertwenty-something who just graduated from college/got laid off from a long-term job he's had since he was 16 [he'd moved up in the ranks a little bit since then, though]. He's been hiking about the same dailiy distance that I have, absent the near-0's anyway. He's a cool, easy-going guy.Nano reminds me a lot of Ian Servaas (Lauren Cote's bf), both in mannerism and appearance.Kentucky Blue is the ridge runner (from Kentucky...). She's 27 and fairly petite. She thru-hiked in '07 and plans to do the PCT next summer. She finished this in 4 1/2 months and seems to be a pretty hardy girl. She said her base weight is 12 lbs! I'm rather jealous. Oh, well.Early in the day, or actually more like noon or one, Jason and I reached Derrick's Knob Shelter where we found a very shaken-up Blue Bird. She's a very large woman who has been thru-hiking since March 24. She fell earlier today after hiking <1/4 mile and got pretty well scraped up. She had two cuts on her forehead and her shoulder/elbow were sore and swollen. She'd fallen on her left side. When I got there she seemed to be in shock--shivering and slightly disoriented--but Jason and I talked to her for a long while. When we left, Transitions had just arrived and the two guys (Andrew and ?) from Northeastern Med. School weren't far behind. Ketchup and Tenderfoot (a.k.a. Pussyfoot) had gone on to find the ridge runner already. Shortly after I arrived at the shelter, Kentucky was on the two-way radio about the situation. Jason and I arrived fairly soon after Ketchup had stopped in. That was most of today's excitement I suppose.Now it's raining/bedtime.