Date: 2014-05-27
From: Trout Creek

To: Pig Farm Campsite
Miles today: 18.2

Bio-hacked eye lashes: hike through enough spider webs and everything that likes to fly into your eye will stick around longer. Speaking of which, there are a bunch of ants and spiders in my tent. It's hopeless to get them all out so I'm just going to hope I went get chewed up too much overnight. Funny how a few months ago I wouldn't have believed how a human would casually get used to scores of insect bites at any given moment. Between the mosquitoes and random bug bites, there's a perpetual state of itchiness that just becomes one of many uncomfortable things thru hikers just get accustomed to. Just flicked a strange looking tick off of me. This tick was all black with 2 spots parallel to each other on its back like red angel wings.The heat and sweating took a toll on me today with the lack of good water sources around in this area. Gorging yourself every chance you get can get you through the day, but you need to carry some weight if you want to stay hydrated while hiking. Maybe peed 4 times today instead of the usual 20. I joked to someone a couple weeks ago that I pee 5 times before noon only to immediately realize that I really do at least 5 times before noon when water is abundant everywhere. Being able to drink a lot of water is nice. Right now I'm thinking about the days where I didn't carry any water on my pack at all and just hiked with a SMART water bottle in hand with a Sawyer mini. All you had to do was take the filter off the top, reach out to the nearest running source of water, and get a refill of fresh water that you can gleefully sip through the squeeze filter. Unfortunately it's not always as simple as that for the girls. When you've turned yourself into a lean, mean hiking machine it feels like such a hassle to have to break your momentum for anything. Today I caught myself in the middle of another episode of completely zoning out again. Right after the first climb of the day, I stopped for a quick rest. Just sat down and ended up staring at a rock. When I came to again, I stood up and realized I had drenched the boulder I was sitting on with sweat. Yeeeaaah, booty sweat stains. If this is going to be a reoccurring state of mind resulting from hiking in the heat, I'm just going to call it alternative meditation. Got me thinking about the WTF moments people often have on the trail. I'm talking about the "what the hell am I doing out here?" moments. I have not had any of those. I think that's because trail life feels so righteous for me. My WTF moments come in the form of listening to mind blowing podcasts at night or early in the morning. There's been a few times out in these woods by myself where I'd be saying out loud, "WHHHAAAAAAT?!" as if the bears are listening with me and can understand. What is solo thru-hiking doing to my brain?Anyways, today was hard. In combination with the past few days, I'm ready for a quick stop to Daleville. It's only a days hike away from where I am now. Like many other hikers in the current bubble we're in, we're all wondering how word of mouth descriptions of the Virginia sections were so wrong. It's not flat at all! There's plenty of mean mountains that require you to burn calories as if you had a miniature slave gnome living inside you shoveling coals nonstop to keep your body fired up. That gnome is pissed for all the overtime it has to do without a vacation break. It's true that the ruggedness isn't as bad as the first sections but the ticks, heat, and LIES!!! are destroying us. Just kidding, its not that horrendously bad. Just griping. There are some relatively "flat" spots but they last for less than a mile. But let me tell you... today there was a certain section that seemed kind of treacherous. (I later learned in Daleville that Bags snapped his ankle up there.) As I was climbing up towards Dragontooth I kept hearing the kind of rumblings that suggest thunder. This is the kind of terrain which clearly indicated I was about to be working my way along an exposed ridge line and turning back is not exactly an option worth considering. Despite what my ears and the feeling in my chest that resonated with the rumbles were telling me, it didn't actually seem like I was about to get caught in a thunderstorm. Rather, it seemed like some giant dick was holding a magnified glass over me. I couldn't see storm clouds in the sky from where I was and the sun was relentlessly blazing down on me. Once I got to the section with steel rungs embedded into the rock with numerous rock climbing scrambles, the storm clouds were in full view and quickly looming over me. Then all was good. Nothing happened. The end.