Date: 2016-04-22
From: Bald Mountain Shelter

To: No Business Knob Shelter
Miles today: 10.6
Weather: broken clouds

My blister was still bothering me, and I discovered that I had not one, but two blisters on my heel. After I punctured and drained the second blister, I began to feel better. Having a blister caused me to favor my other leg, and now the thigh on my favored leg is very sore. Tomorrow will be a low mileage day, followed by a zero day (no hiking), so hopefully my blister problem will soon be gone. My incredible luck of hiking on the AT with no rain days came to an end today. (Most AT hikers will tell you that if they have to choose between being rained on or snowed on, they would rather be snowed on, because snow will not soak you to the skin, like rain will. As of today, I agree.) In an earlier post, I said that one of my worst fears was having to use the bathroom in the woods during a driving rainstorm, due to what a great volume of rainwater will very quickly do to toilet paper. Today I got a dress rehersal (I won't use the expression "dry run") for that event. It was raining steadily when I got an urgent message from "Mother Nature." To most of you, a roll of toilet paper is probably nothing special. To me, each sheet of toilet paper is a sacred document, which must be kept dry, AT ALL COSTS. As such, these "sacred documents" are housed in a ziplock plastic bag, along with my digging trowel and a small container of hand sanitizer. However, during a rainstorm, the toilet paper must come out of the plastic bag for a brief period of time in order to be used. That is problem number one. The literature on using the woods properly as a bathroom says that a persom needs to use his/her trowel to dig a hole 6-8 inches deep to use to dispose of both waste and toilet paper. On paper (no pun intended) this sounds like a good strategy. In reality, it is a little bit different. When you begin to dig the hole, you very quickly discover that the forest floor is a vast, inerlocking system of rocks and roots, and you begin to wish that you had a stick of dynamite, rather than a measly trowel. That is problem number two. However, desperation wins out, and none too soon, you have blasted a hole into the forest floor. Now the real challenge begins. Are you skilled enough and fast enough to unroll and use the toilet paper before the driving rain turns it into a soggy, useless pile of sludge?? Mother Nature felt sorry for me, and the rain was only moderate, so I passed the test with flying colors. This episode taught me two lessons: 1) Reality is usually less grim than one's fears. 2) In an emergency, a person is usually faster/more efficient than he/she thought. The next morning, I was at a shelter, when Nature again called. In a previous post, I said I considered a shelter with a privy to be decadent luxury. Regrettably, the park service has decided they are pampering hikers too much, so for the next 140 miles, shelters will not have privies. However, the park service folks have at least a little mercy, so in loo (sorry, I couldn't resist the pun) of a privy, they have given each shelter a full sized shovel. My deffinition of decadent luxury has once again been knocked down a notch. My new deffinition of decadent luxury is a shovel and a lack of rain. So, armed with a full sized shovel, I headed out to seek revenge against the rocks/roots that had challenged my puny trowel the day before. I jumped very aggressively on the shovel. It moved only a few inches into the forest floor. The rocks/roots were not giving up without a fight. However, my full sized shovel was no match for the rocks/ rtoots, and in a few seconds time, I had dug a hole deep enough to bring a smile to the face of even the strictest forest ranger. I LOVE shovels!