Greetings from sunny Fontana Dam, North Carolina! We crossed into North Carolina about four days ago and have been met with spring-like conditions: sun, blue skies, and budding flowers. We are currently staying the night at this weird, kitschy resort town..actually I don't think "town" is the right word...perhaps "complex" best describes the cluster of touristy stores and hotels whose sole purpose is to bleed dollars from rich Carolinians who visit to escape the summer heat.North Carolina, on the whole, has been a pleasurable place to walk through. The past week has been a rugged and challenging stretch of trail, a roller coaster ride taking us up mountain peaks as high as 5,300 feet (higher than anything in Maine) and then testing our knees by descending rapidly to what seems like sea level. Most days, we finish exhausted, sore, and we are barely able to cook our Lipton rice dishes before falling into a hiking-induced coma. As a result, Fontana is a welcome respite for two trail-weary souls.
Though the trail has been hard, Dad and I agree that North Carolina puts Georgia to shame. The mountains are more impressive and offer better views along the way. The past few days, we have summited several peaks called "balds," so named because they are devoid of any sort of growth save grass and puckerbrush. Siler's Bald, the first Bald we came to on the trail, offered us a spectacular view of the Georgia and North Carolina mountains. It was truly stunning. We found out later that there are several legends as to where the Balds came from. One lady told us that the Cheerokee believe that at one point in their past, a great bird called the thunderbird was terrorizing their villages and stealing young children. The Cherokee cleared the tops of the peaks to keep watch for the birds and warn of any incoming attacks.
We have been fortunate these past few days to run into a number of "Trail Angels." They are hiking enthusiasts who stand at trail heads with food and drinks for Thru hikers. One day we had just finished our fifteen mile trek from Muskrat shelter to Betty Creek campsite to find a former thru hiker ready with a cooler full of ice-cold beer and Pepsi...I tell ya, Busch Light never tasted so good in my life. Two days later we were hiking up Wayah Bald, where the trail parallels an auto road and from out of nowhere a peppy woman with a thick southern drawl came bounding up to us with coffee and Krispy Kreme doughnuts and sent us on our way with a prayer. Not two miles later, we summited Wayah Bald and found, wouldn't you know it, a hiker appreciation barbeque put on by a backpacking club from Anderson, South Carolina (If any of you are reading, thanks again!). We were greeted like heroes and offered hamburgers, Chili dogs, ice cold soda and some good company. Although we had fifteen miles to put in that day, we lingered for two hours eating and talking with those nice folks. We are beginning to love the south.
Evenings on the trail are perhaps my favorite time of day, when Thru hikers huddle together at the picnic table willing their stoves to cook their Ramen noodles or Lipton rice faster. You can tell a lot about hikers by the way they cook their dinner. The people who have super efficient alcohol stoves and eat only Ramen noodles for dinner are usually the impatient type who just want to get their dinner over and done with so they can go to bed.
Others are more thoughtful about what they prepare, not content with the daily monotony of noodles and pop tarts. They hike a bit slower, carry a bigger pack, but they relish every step and appreciate their meals at the end of the day.
Still others (albeit a slim minority) don't even bother to cook at all, subsisting primarily on big hunks of beef jerky alongside spoonfuls of Jiffy peanut butter. Well, these folks are just plain odd in my book, some of the many loonies you meet along the way.
In any case, after the stoves are put away, hikers linger for a while before bed, recounting the day's events and retelling horror stories about blisters, bad weather and brutal climbs. The funny thing is that the trail draws such a diverse crowd from all walks of life that most of the time the people you end up spending the night with in a shelter are people you would have no business with out in the real world. It can make for some awkward silences and weird situations. I, however, have discovered three topics that can always be counted on to get you through those awkward moments with that crazy dude with the snaggle tooth who has hiked the trail seven or ten times.
1. Equipment: "So, why'd you choose the __insert type of equipment and brand here__" is an excellent way to start any conversation. Everyone out here is a techno geek looking for ways to trim a few pounds off their pack, and all are willing to go on for hours about every single piece of equipment they brought, anything from their tent to their toilet paper.
[As a side note, people bring some crazy stuff to hike with. At one point along the trail we overtook a scout troop from Alabama on a six day, twenty mile hike. As we passed, one scout was out in the woods using, as we later found out, a port-a-potty, specially designed for pooping in the woods. I guess that is a skill not covered in the scout handbook!]
2. Food: We eat a lot, and we are starving most of the time, so this is somewhat of a no-brainer. What is weird, though, is that all of our conversations at some point come back to food. We could be talking about something completely unrelated to food such as fiscal policy in Soviet Russia, and someone will always interrupt with a story about a hamburger they ate in Hiawasee. I think that this is only going to get worse.
3. Pain: Just as motorcycle bikers compare scars received from bar fights, AT hikers verbally joust every evening over the size of their blisters and muscle aches and pains. One guy we hiked with would always pull out the trump card: He had a blister that he could see the bone of his foot through. It would generally stop a conversation cold.
Occasionally, as night falls on our campsite, we are able to watch the sun set from our sleeping bags, as it casts the mountainous horizon in a halo of purples, pinks and blues while ushering in the kind of perfect silence only known to those who make their lives in the mountains. Each night, as we drift off to sleep, and the memory of the day's journey fades from our muscles, we are left with a deep sense of accomplishment...160 down, 2015 to go. Katahdin is calling us, and we are slowly making our way home.
