Date: 2003-04-14
From: Indian Grave Gap

To: Iron Mountain
Miles today: 10.9
Weather: few clouds

At last! I get to walk the section I had planned to walk four days earlier. I am backfilling between Erwin and Kincorra. The Trail today goes over Unaka Mountain.I had section-hiked all of Georgia, NC and TN before my thru-hike, except the Smokies and today's small piece. I looked forward to seeing it.An adventure needs fuel! I cook up scrambled eggs, sausage and a yogurt fruit salad. Ahhhh, roughing it on the AT! Kincorra becomes home.People are still asking, four days later: "Where were you during the big snow?" Like, "where were you when JFK died?" Bob comes into the hostel to take out the first shuttle crew."Bob," says Weeds. "What does Kincorra mean?""It means "kinship of the heart."An apt name for this cozy hostel.Bob says there have been reports of blowdowns on the section I am going to walk. He asks me to take an accurate assessment of where these are, so he can send in a crew with the appropriate tools. Sure, why not? Bob has a gift for inspiring service in people; his enthusiasm for the Trail is so infectious you just want to lend a hand. He maintains 130 miles of Trail under the auspices of Tennessee Eastman Hiking Club. His "turf" extends from Spivey Gap to Damascus, VA.Like I said, his trail ethic was infectious. I found myself stopping and stooping to pull the limbs over to the side, instead of just stepping over them. After all, this was my section.Within the first hour I was atop Beauty Spot, which IS a beauty spot - a rolling bald, longer than it is wide, orchardy-looking trees to the sides. Sunny with views below. Her backside was carpeted with the tiny pink-striped spring beauties.After Beauty Spot but before Unaka, I left the beetle-bitten pine woods and entered an absolutely lovely, downward-sloping pasture, a wide strip of rolling fescue dotted with a few broad specimen trees. The overall feeling was one of space and utter freedom. I wasn't five steps into this small, long bald when I began to get the strangest feeling - an internal frisson. Chill bumps sprang up on my arms unbidden. What was going on here? Tears were coming into my eyes. I felt profoundly moved, yet I knew not by what.And then it hit me, so hard I stopped slam in my tracks, jaw dropped open.Let me preface this by saying I am your ordinary, sober, pragmatic citizen who lives a very sober, ordinary life (the AT excepted).For years I have had a recurring dream. In it, I am always running up grassy, rolling hills, ringed by mountains. There is never another human in this dream. In it, I am unfettered, weightless, feet practically flying up the hill. It is this place. I have dreamed this place. Yet before today, I never set "eyes" on it.I also have a second recurring dream. In it, some nameless dread is chasing me uphill; my legs are leaden and useless, unresponsive, lungs searing and heart near-to-bursting. It's impossible to make time, despite this sense of urgency. It's a lot like my daily experiences on the AT. Ha!The sensations of the first dream are in direct contrast to the second. These are my poles: the ideal and the real.That first dream is one of release. The next day after having it, I always carried with me the sensations of running uphill, joyous, weightless. The overall feeling it leaves is always... one of space and freedom.I sit for awhile. So - does this mean I was dreaming of the AT, an actual spot on the map, years before "I" conceived the idea in January of 2001?Another interesting notion to chew on: that "I" recognized - the chill bumps, etc. - the place before my mind realized what was going on. So who was that who "knew" and produced the body reaction before my mind realized what was going on?I don't know what to make of it. I had no deep insights or near-death experience. It was just a pretty spot, no drama. Nothing happened at all.Except maybe that I "came home," as John Denver put it, "to a place I'd never been before."The whole of life is more mysterious, is adding up to more than the sum of the parts. There are inexplicable bits, aspects that don't "compute." That I suspected, but can now say with certainty.I believe I won't write anymore today. I've written enough for my more practical friends to rag me for years.