Date: 2005-12-02
From: Jerry's Cabin, 4000'

To: cowboy camp, 4 miles north of Hot Springs, NC
Miles today: 22.0
Weather: clear sky

Today was my saddest day thus far on my A.T. pilgrimage. The air temperature must have been about 15 degrees when I finally crawled out of my sleeping bag at 6:45. No more than a mile and a half into the day, I heard a yelp which was folowed by a hound dog crawling out from the non-windward side of a fallen tree. It's face and ears had cuts all over, its nose was bleeding from one side, one eye was swollen completely shut and worst of all, it's ribs were protruding severely from its sides. It had two collars, one was an identification collar with the owner's name and telephone numbers and the other was a radio transmitting collar used to track the dog while hunting bears in the National Forest, entirely legal. The tracking collar was frozen around its neck with ice and snow so I removed it and attached it to my bag. The animal was hypothermic and looked so bad that I thought it may have to be euthanzied, but how? There was no way I was prepared to do that, even with my recently acquired dislike for dogs. I got out my cookie bag and started feeding it Newtons which it could only take with one side of its mouth; it devoured one after the next until the Newtons were gone and it took out the rest of my soft batch chocolate chips. He was trying to pull my wheat bread out of the back of my pack so I gave him 3 pieces, then several cuts of cheddar and a big piece of turkey before I realized I could spare no more. He washed it down with the only water I had left that wasn't frozen. He was still convulsing after I fed him so I tied my rain parka around his body which he promptly peed on (it now smells terrible). I made him start walking with me and he was reluctant to move, especially down the steep rock sections. Because he only had vision in one eye, he continued to run into sticks and low branches which he responded to with loud cries. It was terrible. I thought about what would happen if I did manage to get him down the mountain, he obviously wouldn't be hunting anytime soon. I named him Bruce Lee because he was so skinny and had to be as tough as calculus if he could survive a night like the previous, with temps in the teens and being so scrawny. The dog had been so well trained that despite its miserable state, it was still attempting to track bear and would venture off the trail down a hillside, screaming all the way as it ran into limbs and sticks. I thought he'd gone when he took off on one scent but after 10 minutes he'd returned and was following me down the mountain. I was aiming to take him 7 miles to a friend of Miss Janet's, Neon, who lived along the trail and gave support to thru-hikers as he himself has hiked the Triple Crown (A.T., P.C.T. and C.D.T.) not once, but three times! I made Bruce Lee drink more water from a spring and that really helped him in addition to getting below the elevation where the snow had fallen. I stopped for lunch and lay down in the sun. It was a 20 minute struggle to get him moving again but I eventually convinced him. The lower we got, the warmer the air and he finally thawed out to a healthy state. No more than a half mile from Neon's, Bruce Lee picks up a bear trail and takes off, ignoring my commands to return. Neon is great. He lives in a little cabin and has an extra 3 story cabin he allows thru-hikers to stay the night in. I tell him the story about the dog, that I removed the tracking collar, (apparently a big no-no) and that I failed to take the owner's number down but rememberd his name. Neon calls the owner and leaves a message. I felt terrible about the whole sitation but Neon said not to worry because he retrieves hounds all the time and was in with the hunters. Apparently the dog was so thin because they are intentionally starved during hunting season so they will track more efficiently or ravenously. After about an hour and a half with Neon, I moved on only a few miles before seeing a sign offering trail magic by way of BBQ pork sandwiches 300 yards away Dec. 2 and 3 from dawn to dusk. Hercules and Fal had thru-hiked in '99 abd were too generous. They feed me until I could do no more and told me not to mention the hound-dog incident to any one else. We had a discussion on absolute truth and the current cultural trend of relativism which was unexpected but very interesting. I finally left after a few hours, stuffed and thankful for their hospitality, around 5:15. I night hiked for another 4 hours with fresh batteries and finally ended the day at 11 pm in my sleeping bag, on the side of the A.T.