Date: 2010-06-07
From: Pearisburg

To: Pearisburg
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Alas, I am in Pearisburg for one more night. The group I've been hiking with decided to take a day off to finish some town chores and I chose to stay with them under the condition that we get a 7:00 AM shuttle tomorrow morning. In terms of mileage this won't make much difference since I wasn't planning to do much tonight and tend to sleep late in my tent, but I did want to get back on the dirt. To a great extent I have been hiking someone else's hike lately because I enjoy the company and I'm starting to feel that I need to cut the cord. With an early start I should be able to make considerable mileage tomorrow--if I get ahead of some people I will likely still see them in and around the towns.I didn't describe much of the hike in my last post, so I'll update a bit here. When I last posted, I was trapped in the vortex of Damascus and hobbling around on a sore foot. I limped along for a couple of days and the foot gradually improved to a reliable, dull pain. The pain is still with me but I do not feel that it's an impediment to hiking. The hike from Damascus to Atkins was mostly a muddy and humid slog with the exception of a beautiful day over the Grayson Highlands and Mt. Rogers. My sore foot (it seems to hurt the most when I roll my ankle, so I may refer to this as an ankle injury at times) made me somewhat apprehensive about the rocky trail so I hiked very slowly and soaked in the sunshine and beautiful views. The ponies were cool, although not very wild. In fact they are so tame I believe you could walk right up to one and cook it without much resistance. They are also extraordinarily fat (pregnant?). I spent most of my time on that ridge sitting amongst four of them while they ate grass with fanatical devotion until simply collapsing on their sides to recover. I could relate to that. The rest of the trip to Atkins was punctuated with a couple of nights in Marion, which was easy to reach from Partnership Shelter and other road crossings.It was in Atkins that I reunited with Coopa and Big Ooh, a couple that I had hiked with from Newfound Gap to Erwin, TN. We've made several new friends on the trip up to Pearisburg, but frankly the hiking has mostly been a wet slog. The people I've been hiking with generally have a stronger wallet than the average thru-hiker, and I'm starting to feel that in some ways the ease with which we can jump on and off the trail, going to motels at night, has ironically lowered my comfort level on the trail. Either I am too accustomed to softer living, or am not sufficiently immersed in the wet and humid woods to fully acclimate. Every swimmer knows that the water is only cold when you first jump in, I feel that perhaps I am jumping in and out of the water too much. Still, it's hard to pass up a hot shower and warm, dry bed when you're standing in a hailstorm amidst lightning strikes (this only happened once, in truth it's generally just the rain, humidity, heat and general funkiness). So I don't have much to say about the trip from Atkins to Pearisburg. There were some nice views, a waterfall, some cool ridge walks and it is a section I would hike again, but the real theme for this bit is that it has been a wet and warm slog. I am optimistic that conditions will dry somewhat as I approach the Shenandoahs and my pack is light, so I have no real complaints...just a bit of the Virginia Blues.I may also be going through withdrawal from I, Claudius, the Robert Graves book I finished just shy of Pearisburg. What an excellent book! I thought of re-reading it, or at least the first section that dealt with Augustus, but I grabbed The Confessions of Nat Turner from my bounce box and am already hooked into it. This will be my last lightweight book unless I find a bookstore, as I have only Middlemarch, Anna Karenina, and Ulysses left in my bounce box. I'm not sure I can do justice to Ulysses on the trail though, I've already sent home At-Swim-Two-Birds as being too difficult a read for a trail book. Maybe I cannot read Irish literature while hiking.Also the guitar playing has been fun, and is one of the main reasons I am such a sucker for motels. I've played some with Dibs and the Disco Boys (Dibs, Bimbo, and Rock'n'roll--they do not know that I call them this and hopefully will not be offended) as well as Echo, AKA Cornelius Cobb, who I will hopefully see tomorrow. Other than noodling around pentatonic scales, which is what I mostly do when playing with another guitarist, I've been working on a Bach Allemande (BWV 1012 I think) and am pretty close to having Wildwood Flower down pat. I've also been working on some Tony Rice arrangements of bluegrass tunes such as Red Haired Boy and Wild Horses, and some campfire songs like "Homeward Bound". What I really want is to meet up with someone who can sing or play a melody instrument such as a flute, then learn quirky tunes such as "Whip it" by Devo or "Come on Eileen". One of my goals on the trail is to organize a group of people at the summit of a major ascent, all equipped with kazoos, singing and playing "Gonna Fly Now" AKA the Rocky theme song, as people finish the ascent. Eye of the Tiger would be good also.That's all I have to say at the moment. If any of this post reaches the Frat Boys et al, I am hoping to catch you guys sometime in the next month and I suspect that the time it takes me to do so will be inversely related to the amount of beer you drink. So drink up but be safe (maybe check C. into the nearest jail as a precaution)!Cheers.