Day 2 - 4/5/09 (Sunday)
and right into it…
- after a short hike up to the top of springer mtn, the official start of the trail, i met roger. a kindly old man who is one of the official registers for thru-hikers. he sits at the top of the mountain greeting hikers and bidding them good luck on their way. he also has apparently built up some sort of immunity to black flies. swarming. literally everywhere. we are all now covered in little red dots from the early hatching of black flies on the top of that mountain. roger, on the other hand, i think had no idea that they were even there. it could be that he has leathery old man skin that can’t feel the bites, or he’s just the man. also, on top of springer i met my first hiking partner. he’s in his teens and has apparently been dealing drugs for several years now. after a few minutes of small talk i got the run down on how i could in fact create my very own drug operation. information i’m sure to find useful, oh…i can’t even imagine when.
- “i thought the first month would be hell but i guess i sold hell short…i’d imagined some 3rd rate hell,” where there is not actually any real pain or difficulty. apparently i was right about the hell, and wrong about the contents. ”james (one of the now 3 guys i have been hiking with) said it best, ‘your pack WILL be heavy (no matter how “lightweight” you think your gear is), and you feet WILL be sore (and apparently may immediately grow very large blisters).” Why did no one explain this thoroughly before hand? hmm?
(side note: the next story is the first of several stories that i could not even begin to make up…and really don’t even need any of my embellishing. i’ll point them out along the way)
- tonight, as blue eyes, whom i keep mistakenly calling bright eyes, and i were hanging our bear bags across the trail from camp, we heard a gentle rumble. it turns out that this was not any distant thunder, nor prelude to the coming rain, but the dull thud of hundreds of boots plodding down the trail at us. we turned to find a line of camouflaged, and very raw looking, army gentlemen on the trail heading in our direction. now, your initial reaction to roughly a hundred men with 65 pound packs, rifles, fake rocket launchers, medics, and terribly uncomfortable looking boots on a jog at you is to move as quickly as possible. we were caught on the not camp side of the trail for at least 10 minutes as the regiment filed by, and eventually as the eccentricity of the scene wore off and i began to recognize the youthfulness of this cast i became inquisitive. what were the rules here? many of the soldiers seemed overly interested in the boots of the person they followed as they passed by, so i decided upon a test to see if they were in fact supposed to remain silent, or if they were in fact allowed to speak to us civilians. for the next five minutes i greeted each passing soldier with a hello or good evening in search of a response. a few of the older looking men returned the gesture, some nodded, others continued to seek out the mysteries of the ground at their feet, but a few provided much more amusement. we could hear one fellow from a short distance away muttering loudly to himself, well more correctly to god, and it did not seem as if he had nice things to say about his current predicament as they were currently in no shortage of miles from any outlet from the trail. my favorite merely passed and after a quick glance offered in a hurried whisper, “take me with you…please!”
- “as we hiked today (james, jared, BE, jared 2.0, and two others who we passed but didn’t meet) we moved back and forth with each other, hiking by others taking breaks, taking breaks (ourselves) and being passed again. It was like a game of chess, each of us advancing in turn up the mountain with full intent of demanding surrender at the top.”
