Day 5

It was a gorgeous summery day in the mountains. The tallest peak of the Appalachian Trail lay before as we set out. We ascended Clingman's Dome early, leaving the shelter via its muddy, rutted access trail at 5:30 am and slopped our way up to the summit of 6500 ft. by 8:00. A snow storm last week has left many of the trails rushing with snow melt or thick with mud. The trails here in the Smokies are built so steeply and over such a rocky, jagged terrain, that at many points they have been simply washed away. The Smokies are annually the most visited national park in the country, so overuse plays a part in their degradation as well.

From the Dome, which we had to ourselves to peer out from over the vast, foggy mountain valleys on all sides, we forged on westward over a gentle terrain. The trail took us through forests of Beech, Maple, Birch, and gnarly haunting Oak for much of the afternoon. The floor of the ridgeline, underneath the still bare canopy of the trees, was colorful and inviting with browns and oranges still sitting from last fall, new verdant grasses, and a fresh sprinkling of tiny pink and white wildflowers.

Our day was long -- 19 miles -- and we made sure to take care of ourselves along the way. Eliza is still struggling with a nagging pain in her knees which flares up on just about every downhill stretch, so we take lots of short breaks to put our feet up, sit down, drink water, or eat something. Today, we cooked three times, all the while on the trail. Many people will cook at the shelters at night, but we prefer to eat on the go in a pretty spot. It is bad practice, we figure, to eat where you sleep in the wilderness, as the scents of cooking and eating will attract hungry predators and vermin.
Our third meal was a pre-packaged pasta mix, something by Knorr, I think, which we mixed with water ahead of time to soak (Eliza carries a Tupperware container as a food dish). To our amazement, it ended up completely cooking itself. We hadn't thought that this would work so well without adding heat, but it did. We were excited about the possibilities it opened up for fuel-less cooking on future hikes, particularly on the imminent PCT thru-hike, which we are slated to start on in less than two weeks now. We watched the sun dwindle atop Rockytop and felt very alive.

The PCT has been on our minds throughout this trip. We know we'll have to push long days and burn up miles out there, so we've been trying to do that here. As of now we've covered a little under 100 miles in 5 days. We are right on schedule, despite some uncertainty coming in due to the possibility of inclement weather and Eliza's trick knee. All in all the trip has been encouraging and exciting. We didn't discover that we hated backpacking. We weren't utterly destroyed by the mileage we had undertaken to hike each day. We have finally realized exactly what it is that we will be doing for the next six months and thankfully, it seems we actually like it. Fancy that. The whole unknown thing is losing it's mystique and the dark corners left fuzzy and un-illuminated by all the reading and buying, and the constant research we've done are finally coming into focus. We're ready.

Here and now we're still a day away from being done, so we're taking care to keep enjoying ourselves and the company we're making.

Today, for the first time, I introduced myself using my trail name. "Call me 'Wolf', I said," feeling just a little bit goofy. My self-consciousness immediately vanished, however, when the guy smiled warmly and responded, unfazed, "cool, I'm 'Groovy'."

Groovy and his partner Donna, it turns out, are also heading out to hike the PCT at the end of the month. They were actually the first people we've met at all who are going to be out West with us, so we were more than happy to sit and chat about the upcoming trip, how plans were going, etc. Whens and wheres and what nots were exchanged and Eliza and I had one more aspect of our own thru-hike to discuss over the course of the day . . . all these people, their hilarious names, this bizarre and monstrous quest . . . are we them too?

"Wolf", as I mentioned, will my trail name. It is standard thru-hiker practice to leave behind every facet of one's "regular" life, and become someone else entirely on the trail. For example, Dr. Schissel might walk the trail as "Rockstar." Perhaps mine will even end up as "The Wolf," in a subtle nod to Jeff Bridges and the Cohen brothers.' aloof, pacifist protagonist. For me, the wolf is an affirmation of my personal identity as a person living with Lupus. SLE (systemic lupus erythematosus) is a chronic, systemic auto-immune disorder. The name Lupus is derived from the Latin name for the Grey Wolf, lupus canis. This mysterious disease and the nocturnal, woodland carnivore were originally associated with one another when early pathologists likened the frequent skin rashes and subsequent scar tissues which are common on patients' faces to the marks of a wolf's bite. In my life, Lupus has held itself relatively at bay since my initial childhood diagnosis. As an adult I've decided to actively pursue a healthy and intentional lifestyle as a means to live in harmony with this potentially debillitating condition.

To this day the wolf is an elusive and much misunderstood creature in our culture, just as Lupus remains a medical mystery -- often misdiagnosed, widely misconstrued and mistreated.

***

The hiker culture on the Appalachian Trail is a bizarre and many-faced thing. The first thing that struck me a few days ago, particularly when we slept our first night in the shelter with the party all-night atmosphere, was how much more was going on here than just hiking. It's a lot like being on phish tour, it seems, to be out on the AT. Most of the guys out here probably used to spend every summer on tour. It's a way to keep moving and have no destination, to soul search and smoke pot with lots of strangers every day. It doesn't sound all that bad, really. It's just not really what I expected the thru-hiker scene to be about. I figure most of the younger folks out here (by younger, I mean people in their twenties) probably finance a summer of hiking and stopping into towns to party every so often similarly to the way I've financed my up-coming thru-hike: by working odd jobs, saving a few thousand bucks, and then just packing all of their stuff away back at their parents' house for however long the money lasts. That is certainly not to say that this is the only kind of hiker out here -- this is far from true -- but there is definitely a very pronounced and sizeable crowd representing this approach to the thru-hike.

all for now . . .