Date: 2010-02-06
From: Amicalola Falls State Park

To: Hike Inn
Miles today: 0.0

In the darkness we trudged on without words. After a late start, at 3:45pm, the trail took us up Amicalola Falls and higher into Frosty Mountain as dusk drew near. And Frosty it was, thanks to an ice storm that blew in the previous night, leaving the forest glassy and white. The ices thawed, shattered down from the trees overhead, and buried the trail in 2 inches of shards. Rain had fallen below at Amicalola State Park HQ where we set off, but up here the world was gripped in ice. the foul weather slowed progress - not only did we have to march through ice but detour around splintered branches and trees fallen across the trail. So by nightfall, there I was. Trudging by flashlight along the blue-blazed "approach trail", feeling tired of walking even before the white blazes began. I expected a damp and dismal shelter that night, but we stumbled across a glowing refuge in the middle of the woods: The Hiker Inn. the situation that night was by no means an emergency, but with my Dad and Morgan it seemed like one for some reason. Morgan was having knee problems and looked on the verge of tears, branches and trees were falling all around us, my hands were numb and it was pitch black for a cloud-covered moon. Emergency or not, we saw a trail sign for The Hiker Inn and decided to pull off. I expected a cold night on the front porch or in an old shed. What I found was a lone innkeeper offering a lamp-lit dwelling warmed by woodstove. All's well that ends well.Let's go back to where it all begins, to my weeping mother by the car in front of the house. I forget sometimes, how much I mean to people. I forget that I have the power to bring great joy and great sadness, that me going actually matters to someone. So when I put my arms around my mother and she started to cry, I was filled with this incredible sense that I was home, the only place in the world where I really mean something. There I was crucial. I guess it all comes back to love, something I've never really been able to put into words. All I can do is point to my mother and father, my two best friends in the whole world, without whom I would just be a scared little boy. They've brought me here. They've made me a man. and although I didn't think any of this at the time, it was painted so perfectly as I held my weeping mother by the car.That night we drove to South Carolina and stayed at a hotel. I stayed up late that night reading Thoreau out of my sister's Lit book. He rambles alot, but I liked the marrow part: "When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood and most interminable swamp, and enter it as a sacred place, a sanctum sanctorum. Three is strength, the marrow of nature." I'm about to enter a dark season on an interminable trail, I said to myself, so the suffering is all to shine on that marrow. there is the heart of God. We ate at Cracker Barrel at 6:30 the next morning and then drove to Springer Mountain, "Southern Terminus to the Applachian Trail". I fell asleep in the backseat and awoke to the Amicalola State Park HQ, gateway to the Springer Mountain trail. I registered, weighed my pack, and hit the blue-blazed approach trail to the Springer's summit. 8.8 miles. It was 3:45pm. the trail led into ice, night fell, and we ended up in The Hikers Inn warm log-cabin lobby. We met Stanley, the innkeeper and former A.T. thru-hiker himself, who started up the wood stove and offered me advice for my own hike. I was so fortunate to be there with my father and sister, really enjoying our time together. That was the only thing on my mind that night before I began my 2,000 mile trek to Maine.