Date: 2003-05-29
From: Pass Mt. Hut

To: Gravel Spring Hut
Miles today: 13.1
Weather: overcast clouds

A mouse ran across my HEAD last night.Luckily I had my toboggan cap on. When I felt the little tuggings on my cranium, pure instinct took over. I sat bolt upright and flung the little bugger into the nether parts of the shelter. God knows who it landed on. Thereafter, for the rest of the night, I imagined little feet crawling on me. It was not a restful eve.Well, I've just been emphatically informed that this is the wettest spring on record. I don't know about that, I only heard this second-hand. But I can tell you, it has been wet. From the drought of last year to the drown of this one. If one more past thru-hiker tells me smugly they would far prefer a wet year to a dry one, I think I will smack them with a Leki pole.It started out sunny this morning. The deer were thick. We all walked with a bounce in our step - seven mere miles down the road was food!Maybe ten hungry thru-hikers milled about the Elkwallow Store and Grill, waiting for the doors to open at 9 am. They finally did, and the locusts descended. I paid through the nose for a very good but small bacon cheeseburger and one of those famous blackberry milkshakes, the Shenandoah signature beverage.The sky started spitting on us as we sat to eat our feasts. Blast this rain! We sit anyway, and finish. What is a little more wet?The bulk of the crowd moves off quickly, but I stay and use the phone, journal, do pocketmail, write postcards. The second shift of hikers, the late risers, move in.Rev comes running back about an hour after he'd left. "Has anyone seen my wallet," he asked, agitated. "If not, my hike ends here."I knew the feeling. We all helped him look, and he tore his pack down again. It's amazing how things can get lost in a backpack. But it's not there, and it's not in the store. Finally, he asks the man cutting grass, who allows that a tourist had found a wallet in the men's room. It is Rev's. We all celebrate by eating again.I finally get moving again. After two big days, I am feeling lethargic. Today will be a bit shorter.At the higher elevations - those above 3000 feet - spring is just barely coming to the mountain. We are walking backward in time. Azaleas are just starting to bloom, the mountain laurel are still tight, pink balls. The oak leaves are tiny up here, either reddish or that striking, lit-from-within yellow-green. Can't fool an oak... did they know it was going to be cold?Several rocky tops resemble a mountain park, with no mid-level shrubbery. Only grass and ferns below, baby-leaved trees above. Walking backward in time... the "spring" here in northern Virginia resembles that around Chestnut Knob, of early May. We are truly, as AT pioneer Earl Schaffer put it, "walking with spring."Others, such as wild flowers like the now-abundant wild geranium, seem farther along. Their lavender blossoms brush my legs as I walk, they are so thick in some places. Set against the crayon-green grass, they always make me smile.My mother gave me my love for the birds and wild plants. On evening walks after supper, she would show me dog tooth violets, or shush me to hear an owl hooting. While she likely would not have approved of my journey - too dangerous, in her maternal eyes - I know she would "get" many aspects of what draws me down the Trail.I am feeling good today, thinking about pushing the extra nine miles to the hostel, when it starts... raining... again...Sigh.I call it an early day and head down to the shelter. There, a surprise! Cindy and Ben and Itchy Feet are there. Rev and a sectioning couple - Happy Pappy and Dutch Tulip - are too. Notes and his dad come in later.When the rain stops later on, Ben builds a fire from drier wood gathered earlier. The crowd gathers round; the fire is good.Later, when I visit the privy, another two seater, a bunny catches my eye and I watch it awhile. It doesn't matter if a critter is common, breeds like, well, rabbits, and - like deer - you can see it at home. A wild creature, moving freely in its own environment, always catches the eye and fascinates. The thrushes sing wildly as they settle down for the night. A stillness sets in. Mom would have understood this part.A deep peace settles in on me, and I long for drier days when I can camp out alone again. I am as social as they come, but some things are best experienced in silence.I sit by the fire a long time before being the last one to bed.