4/24: Laurel Creek to Boots Off Hostel

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• Miles 422.0-428.5 (6.5 mi.)
• Total ascent: 2467′; descent 2474′

We had more of a hike and more rain than we’d hoped for this morning, but we made it to Boots Off around 11 a.m., just an hour later than we’d planned before tacking on yesterday’s final three miles. 

Pond Mountain, the centerpiece of today’s hike, wasn’t a rocky peak. Only young maples with highlighter-green leaves and some stalwart pines saw us summit. We sped down from it as quickly as we dared on wet leaves, hoping to be at Boots Off by the time the storm proper arrived. 

Our rush turned out to be unwarranted. The weather never worsened beyond a light rain, and virtually nothing in our packs got wet. 

We found Boots Off to be nice, as far as hiker hostels to, in an artsy-on-a-budget sort of way. Edison bulbs hung from plywood ceilings, and a mural of showering Jesus stared back from the corrugated metal wall of the outdoor shower. 

Our tiny cabin was, indeed, tiny, at maybe 60 square feet; what saved it from feeling cramped was its use of vertical space, with hooks and shelves surrounding the headspace and top bunk. 

Boots Off, we discovered, is essentially essentially a complex of tiny buildings on a large residential plot, with a fire ring and picnic deck at the center. 

We met the owner of Boots Off, Jim, more than 300 miles ago while he was cooking breakfast for hikers (the best marketing to hikers imaginable, we marveled) on a dirt road in Georgia. Everything about Jim was big: his voice, his stature, his lifted Suburban, and most importantly, his omelettes. 

A little ironically, Boots Off doesn’t serve food. But it does have microwaves and even a full oven in the common area, where it encourages hikers to eat frozen foods bought from the general store. It also has free coffee and a coffee maker in each cabin, which are important to us. 

Just before writing this, we shuttled into town in Boots Off’s remarkably well-maintained mid-80s Dodge van. We had just 15 minutes or so in the grocery store, which we scoured for hiker food as if we were playing Supermarket Sweep. Afterward, the shuttle took us to an adjacent Subway and McDonalds. 

For much of the hike in, we’d been talking about a spice-tastic Thai restaurant on Highway 19. Rachel and I were disappointed to learn it wasn’t walkable; we settled for a 1,000 calorie-plus Chicken Bacon Ranch Footlong, the only sandwich I can remember ordering the handful of times my family ate Subway. 

Boots Off will be our last resupply and stay under a roof in Tennessee, barring any unforeseen setbacks. Four days ahead is Damascus, just three miles across the Tennessee-Virginia border. In Damascus, we plan to take a full day off, which we haven’t in a little over two weeks.

One of the few things this journey has in common with working life is the speed at which the days slip by. Making miles does, at times, feel like a job.

I want to treat routine as a tool, not a crutch, and to hold as tightly as I can to these days. The best eulogy I could write for this experience, come Katahdin, is that I lived each day to its fullest.