Date: 2005-03-25
From: Standing Indian Mountain, NC

To: Betty Creek Gap, NC
Miles today: 9.8
Weather: clear sky

So this question has been bugging me-- how does Jess always know her exact mileage? Does she have an odometer in her shoes? It puzzles me. Day 12: In which Jess gets compared to someone's grandma, sleeps in, declines to eat a Chia pet, is photographed for blackmail, manages to reference an Indigo Girls song I don't know, and generally feels at one with the trail:A lovely, lovely day. Sunny and warm and gentle terrain. My knees are tired and stiff but not too bad-- they're definitely the first body part to let me know when I've hiked enough for the day, but they're no worse and might even be getting better. Says Weatherman: "You're like my granny-- you ask her how she's doing, and she'll say, 'I ain't kickin' so high as I used to, but I'm still kickin'.'" And so I am-- and will be tomorrow, too-- up and over the notorious Albert Mountain, and more than likely a push on into Franklin, since there will be some nasty weather tomorrow night, or so we hear.Scholar got an early start again this morning-- Cuppa Joe says he's going to tie a bungee cord to her to keep her from taking off. Girl can move. I was the last one up, as usual (but perspective! I am still on the trail by 8 AM!), and have decided that my difficulty, apart from liking sleep, lies in the fact that I do not carry a watch or an alarm clock on the trail, and depend on the noises of others around me to wake me up-- but the three of them are so d--n quiet in the mornings I keep snoozing merrily away.We took, again, many rests-- we would joke: Are you ready to push on another mile? Maybe another mile and a half? Weatherman was a ways behind us at first, having gone a short ways back up the trail to look for a missing pair of longjohns: "I lost my britches!" Sad for him to have walked the extra, since, as it turned out, Bassline has picked them up and given them to Serenity to give back to Weatherman, who was appropriately excited to get them back: "Dang man, them things are expensive! Hey, you want some coconut Chia mix? It's real good for you-- all the essential oils from the coconut, plus the seeds from the Chia pet-- you know, Ch-ch-ch-Chia? They're real good for you, too." Serenity took a handful. She was perturbed anyway, having consumed, she said, a weeks' worth of gorp in two days.We caught up to Scholar and had lunch, along with Serenity, GypsyLuLu, and Touk, at Carter Gap. It was so beautiful out-- I fell asleep in the sun, book on belly, arm splayed over eyes. Cuppa Joe took a picture and said he'd use it as blackmail material; I said it was no good since my arm obscured most of my face. Foiled again. "Shall we push on another mile?" asked Scholar. "If you're ready?" "I guess so," I said. "Hey, naps take a lot out of you. So does all that chewing."But as we walked, I was struck again by the beauty of the day, and of the land. The trees are bare enough still that you can see through the forests and over the peaks and ridges; the occasional grove of mountain laurel splashes green into the landscape, hinting at the dense tunnels of foliage to come. That Indigo Girls line about the mountain laurel blooming runs through my head on repeat. We arrived at Betty Creek Gap early and set up camp. I lay in the sunshine with my knees slung over a log, and thought: "Nowhere but here."Bedtime stories of the evening touched upon, cumulatively: a lost tooth and its relation to a contest involving cow dung, one extremely large banana spider, and a minnow-stealing stork.Best exchange of the day:Scholar, talking about her horse, Lady, who maintains haughty composure "when Wilson spits at her."Weatherman: "Is that your brother?"Scholar: "Wilson is the family llama."Weatherman: "Dang man. Sorry."