Date: 2014-03-22
From: Fontana

To: The Smokies
Miles today: 70.1

Emotion is not sidelined on this trek. If anything you feel things more deeply here simply because there is nothing else to do. You wake up. You walk. You stop. You walk some more. Then you go to bed. It becomes routine. But walking takes up so very little mental capacity. It leaves you open to examine things you've sidelined or forgotten or avoided. Surprisingly there is no avoiding here. You are suspended in the present with your past and future spread across your vision like an IMAX movie. A few other hikers have commented on this phenomenon, admitting to sudden onslaughts of tears or laughter in the middle of the trail. It comes up suddenly and there is nothing else to do but give into it. These past few days have brought this into full perspective for me. Mom met me at the NOC on the 20th and our zero day together was heavenly. I ate the best burger known to man. Seriously. That burger still haunts my dreams. We lazed about, popped my blisters, read some trash literature and slept. It was great. We got up early on Saturday morning and began the 6.8 mile hump out of NOC to the next shelter. I am not joking when I say "steep incline." I probably picked the worst place on the trail for her to begin hiking with me. She developed blisters almost immediately and we had to stop about a mile in to begin the soon-to-be-repeated process of taping up her blisters. We pushed on for the rest of the day and part of next, but by about 10 am on Sunday she was done. And sadly, so was I. Despite my own foot problems I was ready to move and she was ready to slow down. Instead of ending our hike on Wednesday at Fontana she jumped off on Sunday at Stecoah Gap where we spent one last evening together enjoying the comfortable hospitality of Donna at her Cabin in the Woods. On Monday we said a very brief goodbye as she dropped me back off at the Gap. I stoically turned and started up the stairs to the trail without a backward glance. And I stoically trudged up about a mile or so before finally succumbing to a sudden blistering urge to cry. There was no stopping it. I don't do it much. I don't do it very prettily either. And this was no exception. The dam broke and I plopped myself onto a rotting log and blubbed my heart out. I openly admit this: I wanted my mommy. It took about an hour and a call to my very bewildered and insanely patient brother for me to calm down. Poor guy. I called him right before he headed into a meeting for work. When I finally stopped I felt refreshed and ready. I ended up going over 15 miles to Fontana Dam alone yesterday. My best and worst day yet. My legs felt like led when I woke up this morning. Incidentally, the first pair of hikers I ran into on the trail asked me who had hit me. I cried so hard that it made me look like I had two black eyes and my face remained bright red for hours. A little embarrassing. I'm taking another zero day to ensure that my blisters are truly on the way to recovery and also to avoid the weather that is dumping on the Smokies right now. As I sit in the lodge snow is falling very prettily outside the window and my view of the Shuckstack Tower on one of the peeks is obscured by gusts of fog. The temperatures are supposed to drop down to 10 with a windchill in the single digits at the top. So tonight I will curl up with my Inspector Lynley novel and a cup of hot chocolate and be exceedingly thankful for warmth, a bed underneath me and, most importantly, a really wonderful family supporting every step of the way. P.S. I have gone 83 miles so far. I hadn't been updating my daily miles, so the distance thing has been wrong. I'll try to keep that thing more accurate. I have gotten some complaints via email and text message. I'll hit my hundred mile mark while in the Smokies. I will not be updating this again until I'm on the other side of them. I will not have Internet access for probably a week.