Excuses

Hey folks,
For anyone and everone who has been either diligently or casually checking this blog for updates on the famed Patty Weber's Appalachian Trail journey, and has been confused as to why there hasn't been a post in over a month, I offer my sincere apologies. Yes, she got on the trail safely. No, she did not swallow her pride and accept Pooslinger as her rightful trail name (yep, HER trail name), but instead goes by Tumbleweed. If you ask me, it's a loss in the '07 AT trail name book. Yes, she is still hiking; now a solo adventurist after being abandoned by her partner (that would be me) in Damascus, VA at the close of the Trail Days celebration. No, she has not yet killed any bears with either her bare hands or the very large knife that hangs at her waist (except when she's in town, when she stows it somewhere slightly less threatening). And yes, she will be posting here sometime soon.

See, the thing about having a blog, or trail journal, or other such method of reporting progress to the outside world while on the trail is this: it seems so brilliant and simple. We'll have stories, we'll write them down in our journals, and we'll share them. Let me tell you: step 2 is the hitch. I'm sure that for many hikers, journaling is a daily part of trail life. Wake up early and write as you watch the sun rise; clean up after dinner and write before the sun goes down. Write in your tent or the shelter du jour, by the light of your ever handy head lamp. Take a few minutes during a lunch break to jot down some notes. It would seem, to the casual observer, that a hiker has numerous opportunities each day for this type of chronicle work. Yet here we are-- Memorial weekend-- and this is the first post since the trip's beginning (April 30th, by the way). For now, I'll chalk it up to the following excuses:

1) Tumbleweed sleeps late. I (Backtrack, by the way) woke with the sun almost every day we were on the trail (with the exceptions of days that were drizzly or gray-- no sun to wake up with-- and days spent in hostels or hotels). I stretched and retrieved our food bags from wherever they'd hung the night before. I filtered water, and boiled it for coffee. I made coffee. Sometime around the time the coffee was ready (though a few times it was notably later), Tumbleweed would emerge from the tent. We would eat breakfast and pack-- a process that often consumed a couple of hours (I'm still not sure how)-- and then hit the trail. My excuse for not writing in the mornings: I was making coffee and (on the rare occasion that there was time to kill) reading. Patty's excuse: she was asleep.

2) We often hiked until it was nearly dusk. Owing to the fact that the hours between 8 and 10 am had a twilight zone-esque way of just not existing out on the trail (7:55 doing breakfast dishes. 8am start packing. 10:20am leave camp. What?! We only had one pack apiece. I'm convinced there is a time warp out on the AT that steals what could be the most productive morning hiking hours.), we normally broke for a long(ish) lunch break around 2pm: the middle of our day's mileage. So we'd get into camp and race to set up camp, get water, eat, wash, and hang our food in rapidly dwindling twilight. I think when I was on the trail there were 2 nights we got into camp early enough to actually hang out, and since both of those nights were marked by camp fires, it was more social time than sit-in-a-corner-and-journal time.

3) Hiking makes you tired. This may seem like a point that doesn't really need explanation, but I'm going to do it anyway. On the trail, dark = tent time. And tent time = sleep time. After walking 12 miles with 35 to 40 pounds on our backs, neither of us was normally up for extensive nightime activities. I read a few times, and sometimes we'd get out the cameras and go through our pictures. (Note on pictures: I'll try to post some in the near future, so keep checking.)Other than that, there was really no energy left to expend, and writing coherent thought-- especially in an entertaining style-- does take energy.

4) I lost my pen. Ok, not really. But suffice it to say there were things to do and people to meet, and anything that was jotted down in our journals remained there while we were in town, because laundry and cheeseburgers just took priority over posting on the blog.

But here I am, back in Colorado, while my hiking buddy remains somewhere in the Virginia "wilderness." (One of the things I found most interesting on the AT is that you rarely go a day without crossing a road, and you can easily hit towns twice a week: at least in Georgia and North Carolina.) We jumped ahead over Tennessee and the Smokies, in favor of partying it up, hiker style (your guess on what that means is as good as mine) at the Trail Days in Damascus. (Yes, there was a parade that involved an extensive water fight. Yes, there was a large bonfire, and dancing around it. Yes, we effectively cut 298 miles out of the trip by making this jump: mileage which may or may not be made up after Patty summits Katahdin.)

I have to go now, but I promise there's more to come soon. ("There better be," you're thinking, "because all you did was make excuses for being away. We still don't now how Patty's doing, or who she's meeting, or whether her one pair of pants is holding up. This is the worst update ever!" All valid points, but now that I've got this post out of my system, I can fill you all in on some of what actually did happen/ is happening on the trail.)

In closing, Patty called yesterday (Saturday) and left a message saying that she's doing well, and has been hiking with some fun new people. She's still having fun, and had no complaints or mishaps to speak of (at least not any she felt like explaining in detail on my voicemail). Remember that if you want to leave her a message, just comment on the blog and she'll get to read it eventually. Until next time, keep her in your thoughts, and be a little jealous of what she's doing right now, because I can tell you first hand: life on the trail is good.