Date: 2018-03-30
From: Cashiers, NC

To: Cashiers, NC
Miles today: 0.0

The trail is as much about the people you meet as the miles you travel. Since I¢m taking a couple of days off from the trail, I thought I¢d re-visit some of my trail acquaintances.Richard John was the first trail acquaintance. He¢s the guy who hiked the Welsh coast. While I enjoyed meeting him, we soon lost contact because of the difference in our hiking pace. I¢m sure I¢ll run across him again if we both stay on the trail. People once thought lost keep reappearing as you move along this narrow pathway.Snort and Splash are two such trail mates. It was almost a week between my first encounter with them and my next. Snorts is a vivacious, intelligent and fun young woman. Eighteen years old, she was accepted to several Ivy League colleges through some program available in her home state of Wis-cahnn-sin. (Her exaggeration of her own accent.)  The acceptances didn¢t come with scholarship offers despite good grades, so she decided to take an Appalachian journey instead. Splash I know less of since he¢s a guy and we tend to talk less. He must be in his early twenties, having served in the Marine Corps. Splash is from Pennsylvania.  Big Luscious is the guy I mentioned who is hiking the trail with a prosthetic leg. As far as I know, he¢s still on the trail, though he had to take off to get some better gear after a freezing experience during the snow. BL project managed a 280 city tour by a pro-life organization and is a get ¢er done kind of guy. He¢s using some of his 400,000 Holiday Inn rewards points gained from the tour to fill his need to get off the trail occasionally.I met General as we entered Unicoi Gap. First name Sherman and from Atlanta, his trail name pretty much chose itself. General and I shared a hotel room for two nights. He¢s an experienced hiker and has hiked several sections of the AT. On the weekends, he can be found hiking up and down Stone Mountain near Atlanta. It¢s obvious that he loves his daughters, whom he home schools, and his wife. His hope is for his hike to lead him to become a better dad and husband. We had some pretty free-wheeling discussions, from his disbelief that I¢ve never seen a Star Wars, Star Trek or DC Comic movie yet am reasonably intelligent to an open-ended discussion on race relations. General is a former Apple employee and apparently acquired some of their stock at an opportune time, allowing him to quit his job and move east with his wife when an opportunity for her arose.¢Miss¢ DeeDee was on a several hundred mile clear her mind ride when she turned back to give General and me a hitch into Hiawassee. She confessed that one of the reasons it took her a little time to turn back was that she needed to stow away her three pistols, lest we be disturbed. :)I told you about Bear Claw and Batman giving General and me a hitch back to Unicoi after our snow day. Sitting in the back seat with River and (I think) Sai was a real education. Both kids are real bright with great vocabularies. River is going to be an astronaut. Sai says her parents want her to be a pilot, but she really doesn¢t want to be. She wants ¢to be a horse feeder.¢ Me: ¢You know that if you¢re a horse feeder you have to clean up the horse poop, too, right?¢ Her: ¢Uh-uh!¢ Me: ¢Yes, you do. That¢s how it works.¢ Her: ¢I want to be a pilot then.¢¢Miss¢ Grace was my shuttle to and from my second trip to Hiawassee. Former law enforcement, she retired to this area from Florida. She augments her retirement by giving shuttle rides in March and April, working security at an RV park May through November and painting (as in an artist) December through February. Her dog Murphy (an Irish name because of his red hair) keeps her company.When I returned to the trail from my second Hiawassee visit, Switchback ¢03 was offering hamburger and hot dog trail magic. A past thru-hiker, he does this each year as his contribution to our efforts.Kent will be the last of the day. I met Kent on the section of the trail where I crossed the Georgia state line. Kent is a real encourager and was more excited for me than I was feeling myself in that moment. He let me know that I was only three miles from the most photographed site on the trail. As you-can-do-anything sort of encouragement, he revealed that he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig¢s disease. At age twenty-five. Now 53, he has lived a full life as business owner, dad and occasional hiker. He¢s still going strong.I wanted to give you a little more of the backstory on some of the many individuals that give the trail its character.  I hope it was of interest.