Date: 2021-07-07
From: The Priest

To: Wintergreen View
Miles today: 22.0
Weather: scattered clouds

I meet a lot of people on my hike. I don¢t usually mention most of them, since I usually only see them once, and it¢d take a really long time to write about everyone I meet. Today, I¢m going to write about most of the people I met, just to give a sampling of the people I encounter on the trail. Got up and started the looong descent down Priest Mountain. It was so humid out that I was covered in sweat by 8 a.m., going downhill. Yuck. After about two hours, reached the Tye River, crossed it on a suspension bridge, and started going uphill. This time was a 3000 foot climb, during the most humid day yet. About three hours and half a mile of elevation gain later, ran into a guy near the top. He warned me about a guy at the next shelter who was mooching off of people, and then, seemingly without noting the irony, tried to bum a cigarette off of me. Just as I reached the top and started walking along a ridge, I started hearing thunder. The sky didn¢t look particularly ominous, and the thunder was fairly distant and infrequent, so I wasn¢t worried. It drizzled for the next hour or so as I walked along the ridge, which felt quite nice. It started raining more steadily as I got to the Maupin Field Shelter. Nicely timed. I could eat lunch in the shelter while I waited for the rain to stop. In the shelter was Rocky, who was section hiking from central Virginia to Massachusetts. She was from Juneau, Alaska, and had lived in Barrow, above the Arctic Circle, before that. It was neat to hear about life that far north. We sat in the shelter, watching the rain turn into a heavy downpour. A stream formed in front of the shelter, and the thunder came back with a vengeance. Lightning was striking so close that the accompanying thunder was virtually simultaneous. The thunder was so loud it made the floor of the shelter vibrate. This was one of the worst storms I¢ve ever experienced while outdoors. Out of the rain came Matador and Postcard, fellow northbound thru-hikers. Matador I¢ve seen off and on for the past two weeks. They were totally soaked. Then another guy came walking to the shelter. Unlike the others, he didn¢t have rain gear or a pack, and didn¢t seem to be in a hurry to get out of the storm. When he got into the shelter, he started asking if anyone had a lighter. Most of us said no (of course I had a lighter, but I¢d noticed him fiddling with a box of smokes, and I didn¢t want to be stuck in a shelter with that awful smell), but someone gave him a lighter, which was wet from the storm and wouldn¢t light. The guy sat in the back of the shelter for nearly an hour flicking the lighter before it finally started working. I guess when you want a smoke, you want a smoke. Then two section hikers showed up and squeezed into the shelter. One of them told us that this storm was the edge of tropical storm Elsa. Now there were seven of us in a shelter that sleeps six, watching the rain, and occasionally seeing lightning so close we could see which tree it struck. Finally, around five, the thunder stopped, the rain dissipated, and the sun started to peek out. Everyone else was planning to spend the night at the shelter, but I had 22 miles until Waynesboro, and wanted to have a short day tomorrow, so I left the shelter and headed north. About three hours later, after stopping at a picnic ground with a bathroom (flush toilets!), I got to a view with an open area with room for several tents. There already were two thru hikers, a young man who¢s name I didn¢t get, and Mosey, an older female hiker. She was named Mosey because of her relaxed pace. By this point I was to tired to cook dinner, so I ate some snacks, put up my tent, and went to bed. Dried apricots are terrible. Not so terrible that I won¢t eat them (I need all the calories I can get), but terrible enough that I¢ll make sure their not in any trail mix I get for now on.Happiness is not getting struck by lightning.