Date: 2017-10-12
From: Tri-Corner Knob Shelter

To: Newfound Gap, then Gatlinburg
Miles today: 15.1
Weather: scattered clouds

It would be hard to imagine a starker contrast from this morning to this evening. This morning Dot, Franky, and I woke crammed like sardines in a tin. If we rose on an elbow, we risked barking our head on the platform right above us. (If you can bark your shin, can¢t you bark your head, too?) Our bathroom was a near-open-air outhouse, our pantry was our food bags hanging twenty feet in the air on bear cables. Any luxury? Why, yes, there was a spring 20 feet from the shelter with clear, clean water coming out of a pipe.And this evening? I write this sitting in a Baskin Robbins in Gatlinburg, a chocolate chip milkshake with sprinkles at my elbow. Across the street is a garish Ripley¢s Believe It or Not, an airbrush tattoo parlor, and to get there I¢d have to brave sidewalks chock-a-block full of pedestrians akin to New York City crowds, and testy, tourist-filled cars backed up and going less than 5 mph, when they would like to be going 20 mph. I do have a full TGIFriday¢s meal in me, so I¢m not complaining, just sayin¢.But how can I be writing about any of this when the Smokies put on such a show today? So often we hugged a knife edge, the ridgetop only a foot or two wider than the trail itself. On either side the mountain top dropped off sharply. It might be scary, but only rarely could you see the precarious drops. We had views of line and lines of mountains, fog in the valleys, the ¢smoke¢ for which these mountains are named.Our goal was a trailhead 15 miles from the shelter. We had arranged for a shuttle driver to meet us at 2:00 ¢ given the terrain, the views to take in, and the hordes of people for the last five miles, meeting that goal would be a reach. I was expecting people, but not people in take-a-number hordes.In this same stretch I was hoping to find a ¢message in a bottle.¢ It had been left last May. Actually it was a message in a Ziploc baggie. It was hidden for me by one of my Scout co-leaders, from back when I was a Scoutmaster in the ¢90s. Jerry had been the Scoutmaster before me, and he is still an Assistant Scoutmaster. He and his wife had hidden the message under a stone at the base of a hollow tree, 15 feet from a trail junction sign. Unfortunately, his description of the junction¢s location was off by 3 miles, but with the sign¢s picture and with Dot and Franky¢s help, we found the sign. Now I must tell you that on the PCT multiple people hid messages for us and we found fewer than half. But here, Franky pointed, ¢There¢s the hollow tree.¢ And there was a stone in it. Barely sticking above the ground was the corner of the Ziploc bag. The bag was mud-caked. A small crowd had gathered by now. Was the note still legible? I gingerly opened the bag. It was.  http://www.trailjournals.com/j...As I began to read, 8 to 10 people gathered around. ¢We¢ve been told that if you¢ve done the PCT, the AT is a piece of cake. Was it? Hope you are doing well¢¦¢ Jerry and Barbara.¢A piece of cake,¢ that line got a big laugh.And as for my answer, well first of all, a big thank you to Jerry and Barbara for leaving out this slice of cake to spice up our day. The AT is no piece of cake, nor is it a cakewalk. My two prior trails, the PCT and CDT, did prepare me to endure those parts of the first 500 miles that were some of the most brutal stuff I¢ve ever been on that called itself a trail.In Ken Burns' classic PBS ¢Civil War¢ series he featured a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a Supreme Court Justice who served as a young soldier in that war. Holmes said, ¢In our youth, our hearts were touched by fire.¢ I have felt similarly about my AT hike.  In the ¢youth¢ of this hike I didn¢t even want to find the words to tell my sister that I was only averaging 1.5 or 1.3 miles an hour. I only finally communicated to Frodo a glimpse of how hard it was through some photos: http://www.trailjournals.com/j...  http://www.trailjournals.com/j...  http://www.trailjournals.com/j...In the youth of my hike, my heart was annealed, was touched by fire. Everything since that first 500 miles I see through that lens. Sure, the 6500-foot elevation gain two days ago was difficult, but it was an actual trail, not canted granite slabs that are wet and slippery, where I have to grab at trees for handholds. But those granite slabs and rocks, that country where I fell so often, remain stamped on my soul. That¢s why you often read of my joy hiking these last 1500 miles. A part of me remains surprised, as moment to moment the trail tread remains so civil, so sane.I hope I hold on to that appreciation forever. To feel the exhilaration of trail slip under my feet at a rate of two or two-and-a-half miles per hour. Jerry and Barbara, no it hasn¢t ben a piece of cake, but the times when I bite down on rocks are so many times overmatched by the moments near impossibly exciting ¢ Bear! Rattlesnake! A wasp bit my tongue! ¢ and overmatched by those moments impossibly sweet - getting to the shelter by 4:00 pm, holding Frodo in my arms.In the youth of my hike, my heart was touched by fire.