Date: 2014-06-19
To: View Entry
Miles today: 290.0
Weather: broken clouds

As I said previously, following my second stay at the big red barn (Overmountain Shelter), I had three first experiences; on three consecutive nights, to boot. Well, disclaimer: it could be said that I experienced the same thing for the first three times, on three consecutive nights, but that is open to interpretation. The fact of the matter is, that I spent my first three nights alone since leaving Springer Mountain, in three different settings. Until this point, each night had been spent with a group of other hikers, usually around a shelter or at some other designated camping area. If I learned one thing on my night at Beauty Spot Gap (besides how generous people can be towards hikers), it was that some spots are too beautiful to pass by with a mere glance or even a long pause for admiration. Some spots are so breathtaking that they demand to be experienced in a different way, letting the mind absorb every aspect of the scene like a sponge, not quickly imprinted upon like a snapshot to be stored away with hundreds of others. Spending a night in these settings is a great way to induce this kind of absorption. Something about stopping for a night and making your food, setting up shelter, and doing the rest of your daily chores in an area, allows one to feel much more like a part of the surroundings, as opposed to a mere passerby. There is also the added bonus of being able to experience a place during sunset, moonlight, and sunrise that lends to the feeling of familiarity with the area. As I walked along a half-mile stretch of trail that followed a clearing in one of the many hollows between wooded hillsides common in this part of the trail (northeastern Tennessee), with the sun getting low in the trees ahead of me, I was struck by this realization. Even though I was only a mile or so from the shelter I was aiming for, I simply could not justify going any further. The Elk River flowed by to my right, and on my left was a meadow, flush with wildflowers, then a little marshy area before the trees rose up again. While the scene was as visually gratifying as any I've witnessed on the trail, the sound of the place stands out in my memory the most. As I crossed the meadow towards the marsh, looking for a tree to hang my foodbag in, the sounds of the frogs and crickets grew to an uproar. At a certain distance, their songs harmonized in such a way that they seemed to reach a resonant frequency that made my whole body vibrate. As I tried to continue towards the tall trees on the hill, my head began to feel like it would explode, like a wine glass in the cartoons when an opera singer hits a high note. I ended up retreating and hanging my food in one of the small crab apple trees in the meadow, figuring, with the river on one side and a solid wall of sound on the other, that any bear who made it to the meadow deserved an easy meal. From my hammock, strung between two trees that leaned out over the river, the sounds from the marsh were much more tolerable, and combined with the sound of the river flowing swiftly under me, it sounded like one of those clock-radios that plays sounds of nature to help you get to sleep. After watching another magnificent sunset, I drifted off to sleep under a brilliantly star-laden night sky.The next night I hiked into Hampton, TN. There had been a couple of hostels a few miles before town, including the very popular Kincora Hostel run by Bob Peoples, a trail icon. I decided to push on into town to enjoy some real food and stay at a hostel there. By the time I got to the road leading into town it was raining and dark. When I got to the town itself, almost every building was dark, many boarded up. I had no idea where to find the hostel, and was beginning to regret not staying at Kincora. Finally, I found a place with lights on, some kind of pawn shop-computer repair-diner-lounge hybrid by the looks of it, and asked the kid mopping the floors where I could find the hostel. As it turned out, the owner of this versatile business lived right next door and the Hiker's Haven Hostel was the shed in his back yard. As the owner took me around back to show me the amenities, he popped a vitamin supplement, something with gypsum and sawdust I think he said. He explained that it was for his liver and that he couldn't drink much anymore, as he washed it down with a fresh beer. After I set my gear down in the shed, he gave me a ride to get some McDonalds and then sat around while I ate it in the shed, chatting nonstop and downing several more beers. We shared a couple beers and laughs, but once he started repeating stories for the third time, I called "hiker midnight" and excused myself to get ready for bed. After he retired back to the house, I was, for the second night in a row, on my own. The following morning I enjoyed a great breakfast at a local diner. As I left to start walking back to the trail, a truck pulled over to offer me a ride. Two of my hiking buddies, Smokey the Beard and Smurf, were already in the back of the truck. They had apparently seen me and asked the driver to stop and pick me up. On the way back to the trail, I told them about the interesting though pleasant stay at Hiker's Haven the night before, and they told me about their stay at the aforementioned Kincora Hostel. As it turned out, I had made the right decision in passing by the popular destination. They had arrived the previous night to find that the hostel was in the midst of a Norovirus outbreak, otherwise known as a hiker's worst nightmare. Norovirus is highly contagious, and once infected a hiker can expect multiple days of the body expelling everything it can from both the entryway and the exit. If caught while in town, it is a miserable experience, but if caught in the woods it can be downright dangerous, leading to extreme dehydration. By the time Smokey and Smurf had arrived, several hikers had already been quarantined. During the night others had started to get sick, so around midnight (the real one, not hiker midnight), they decided to hightail it back to the woods before they became the next victims. On the trail, word spreads almost as fast as Noro, and by the time I hiked out of Hampton, the outbreak was in every shelter logbook and the subject of every hiker's conversation. As a result, most hikers were avoiding shelters, where crowding and food sharing make the transmission of Norovirus much more likely. The shelters were so unpopular, in fact, that for the first time on the trail, I found one completely deserted at the end of the day. And so, for the third consecutive night, I slept in complete privacy.