Date: 2003-05-30
From: Gravel Spring Hut

To: VA 638
Miles today: 19.7

We wake early. Cindy, Itchy Feet, Just Do It (Ben) and I head out before the rest. I am on another rocky mountaintop by 6:20 am. I don't know if this crowd is a good influence. Ha!Itchy Feet trudges right past a side trail to a rocky overlook, but I stop to walk out. I try not to pass these by if the sky is clear. The sun has not yet reached the bottom of the valleys: the fog lies like smoke in the hollows. The ground is blue, mostly forest, with a few cleared patches, pastures and farm buildings. Out on the rocks, the air is still. It is hard to turn and walk away from the vista. A holy moment, before 6:30 in the morning.Later, Itchy Feet and I have fallen in together, when I hear a stick-breaking scrabbling off to the left. I look, and another bear! It is scrambling down backward like a cat, butt first, very nimbly. It pauses in its descent, and pokes it head around the trunk to look at me. We stare at each other, two dangerous beasts, sizing each other up. It adjudges me the more fearsome, and pulls its head back, scurries the rest of the way down, then bounds away.I had alerted Itchy Foot, but he won't wear his glasses and can't see. "I heard it though," he assures me.The latest score is Bears, 2: Moose, 0.Ben is a bit ahead. On the Trail, he has circled some of the more impressive bear tracks in the mud. Some are larger than my splayed hand. I try to take a picture, but mud just doesn't photograph well.My foot continues to zing me today, and that is a little worrisome. I think about Anna/Mudbutt, who was recovering from a broken footbone. I wish I could ask her some questions, but she is getting back on the Trail with Bumpkin on June 1. Gutsy gal.Wild Flamingo, a hiker who has been in my general pack the last several days, has an ugly, swollen shin. He is taking it easy, and yesterday went to the new Terrapin Station hostel for a rest. I believe I will go there too, even if it is only a 9 mile day. I want laundry and a shower.When I get there, the door is locked so I sit and journal. A car pulls up and thru-hikers spill out with their bags of groceries. Flamingo is limping. Buddha, who I haven't seen since Trail days {see the photo collage on May 16-17; the hairy guy in red, in a trio on bottom) carries a big maildrop box.I enter, select a bunk in this clean hostel, and immediately scrounge for something to eat. Sugar deprivation! Buddha fishes through his huge box, pulls out three bags of homemade chocolate chip cookies, and offers me some."My mom made these," he said. "They are really good."I swoon. They are FANTASTIC cookies, made with real butter. I was born in Wisconsin, I KNOW. I have eaten much home bakery since Springer Mt., GA but Ma Buddha's cookies win First Prize.I collect my pocketmail. My friend David, who has hiked with Hotdog, me and my LongTrail partner Clyde, writes: "For what it's worth, it HAS been extraordinarily rainy in the eastern US this spring, so much so that Public Radio did a long program about it yesterday afternoon, calling the weather pattern a "stationary eddy" that rarely lasts this long. The National Weather Service thinks we'll start getting some sustained sunshine starting next Monday, June 2."Halleluiah!He added that they interviewed some psychiatrist discussing constant rain and the "blues." I must say that, while I have been miserable often in the rain, I never once was depressed. I DID sigh a lot, but surely gentle commentary is allowed as a coping mechanism.I'd love to kick back for the afternoon, and rest the zingy foot. But that darn "work ethic" niggles. Only nine miles... and I have to get off the Trail for a whole week in mid-July...I ask Mike the hostel owner about a shuttle forward. The sun has come out. "Okay," he says. "I'll come with you. Flamingo can drive my car home, Buddha can be the navigator."The four of us pile into Mike's car and head for the Trailhead. Mike is a former AT and PCT thru-hiker. He and I turn south, and walk back to the hostel for a quick ten miles. On the way, we spot another scarlet tanager. "Boy, you think a cardinal is a red bird until you see one of these," comments Mike.The extensive and sticky mud is a new factor today. We are in the lush, fertile lowlands, which possess all the clay and silt washed down from the rocky tops over the eons. It's a lot like walking in the hillside snow - one step forward, slide a half a step back, repeat. The clay slick makes the downhills, well, interesting too.A tall chainlink fence looms into view - the suburban breeding farm for the National Zoo in Washington, which is out of spare change at the moment. Not many animals to see. Its lush pasturage is uncut, ungrazed. My horses would founder in all that richness.It's not until we reach the road that we look up and see the orynx, or so Mike tells me. Maybe a kudu? I see an heavy, tawny-coated, antelope-like, African savannah creature with long horns. It is the only exotic I see.The last miles of the climb are uphill. The slog ends in a rock scramble, Possum's Rest. This ledge faces west. There is a view.We see the sun dropping down from this rocky top and again, a peace settles in. Sunrise AND sunset from a stony, mountain overlook. What luck. Despite the discomforts of the past two weeks - shoot, the past three months! - I can't help but feel as if I am Living Large.