- Miles 534.3-541.8 (6.8 mi)
- Total ascent: 1916′; descent 1946′
Tonight will be our first night staying in a trail shelter, to which we arrived early and in which the sole other hiker here didn’t seem interested in staying.
Not wanting to end at 3 p.m., I’d wanted to press on. Rachel argued that if we did, we’d pass a Mexican restaurant just steps from the trail before it opened. And, we get to choose a short day in this resupply cycle.
So, naturally, we stayed.
We also turned in early because our feet hurt. We’ve learned to backload our miles, especially when carrying multiple liters of water. We didn’t realize it at the time, but we’d hopped off the trail just before a dry stretch of 8 miles.
We did a lot of sweating today and not much talking. We may have spoken less than usual not because we were upset with one another, but because we just spent a day in town. The babble of town, and particularly road noises, is more grating to our ears after being mostly apart from it.
Hikers often talk about the challenge of aligning paces and breaks with a partner. Just as challenging, I think, is aligning “alone” time. Everyone out here, and certainly Rachel and I, likes sometimes to get lost, whether in their thoughts or the experience of the forest.
A hiker Rachel and I met today named Strider — one of two hikers we met today — claimed loneliness is the No. 1 reason people end a thru-hike. Strider wanted to talk, admittedly more than we did, and so we did over dinner and his washing his jelly-stickied items off in the stream.
Strider also claimed, and I do suspect it’s true, that couples are more likely to finish than singles. I think the reasons behind that may be more practical than social, but I am very glad my partner is in this with me. I do understand, if I haven’t said before, why so many singles join “tramilies.”
I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning because we won’t need to dry our tent or our gear. We’ll be going largely downhill to Atkins, the township through which the AT next passes and which has the Mexican joint.
Our plan is to put in 11 more miles after a Mexican lunch, taking us to a tent site 7 miles south of the next shelter.
We do plan to continue tenting by default, but it’s hard to deny the appeal of the shelter. With any luck, we’d have our second Covid vaccine in a week and a half, making it less risky to share spaces with others.
With more luck, the pandemic will be an ugly memory by the time we finish the trail. What a way to get back to “normal” that would be.
