May 9th, 2009
It’s been a long haul from Pearisburg to Daleville. Six days. Doesn’t sound like much, but you try going for an hour run every day and not bathe for six days and let me know how it goes.
It’s been raining too. Everyday. Rain is tricky for a couple reasons. You get dirtier because you sweat more in rain gear. You also stay wet because the sun never comes out to dry your wet clothes, so you go through your clean clothes much faster. The trail gets muddy so you legs get real filthy. But most of that is manageable. The worst part is when you get into camp and realize you have to stay in the shelter because you’ll just get more wet if you stay on your tent. In shelters there is always some asshole who snores, which means I don’t sleep. So besides being extra filthy I’m also sleep deprived. This fearsome duo easily destroys my willpower to continue hiking. It also has other side effects like me no longer having any compassion or remorse for destroying all insects in my path, or jabbing other snoring hikers in the ribs with trekking poles. I even caught myself thinking the other day that mountain top mining might not be such a bad thing because then I wouldn’t have to climb over all the mofos.
All that said this has been one of the most gorgeous sections of the trail. Four days ago I had to do 21 miles since I was running out of food, and I came down through some cow pastures with old barns and power lines and blooming dogwoods and it was just like walking through a model rail road. Sadly, god could be standing 200 yards off the trail, but if the bastard wasn’t holding a cheeseburger and a hose I would waste the time to go see it.