A tempest (Long Neck Lair Alpaca Farm to Lick Creek VA)

Yesterday, I woke beneath the window I’d propped open at the 1894 one-room Lindamood School to hear sheets of rain. I stayed until Frodo, Oz, and Rover arrived. The rain departed with us. We walked 3 miles to the interstate, pausing briefly for a freight train to pass. it was shaping up to be a beautiful day.

I cannot recall a time of such excitement to get gas station food. In all seriousness, gas stations sell just about everything you need to backpack. Ice cream, bars, pizza, premade sandwiches, drinks, candy. What about my previous demands for produce? This high-end gas station came with Mexican restaurant attached: refried beans, guacamole, and chile rellenos will serve sufficiently as a vegetable resupply. It’s a perfect backpacking resupply. Standing in the gas station with other customers, however, caused me to realize how grid I smelled after too long in the rain and 150 miles since laundry. So I walked up the road to the nearest alpaca farm.

Ken and Cindy bought a parcel of land a few years ago, turning it into an alpaca farm. They appreciated that, because the Appalachian Trail ran behind their property, the forest could never be developed. Because they are nice people, a few years later, they invited a couple of hikers to stay on their property. Word spreads fast on the trail, and more began showing up. By 2018, around 400 hikers camped in the backyard and used the kitchen and bathrooms in Cindy’s home. Not sustainable. So Ken constructed a bunkhouse, and they made hosting hikers a component of their business. They installed comfortable beds, provided food for a cold breakfast, and built a convenient space, with windows overlooking the alpaca fields. Though I liked the place, I planned to do laundry and continue on.

A tempest and a shelter

For the first time in a week, I saw a weather map. A squall of rain, in the shape of a comma (characteristic of a low ipressure system), swept eastward across the entire Atlantic coastal plain, Georgia to Maine. I also saw this same low pressure system had caused considerable damage in the states west of me. After its rain bands passed, opening the sky to sunshine, the air pressure gradient arrived. Winds began whipping at the alpaca farm as my laundry finished. The farm was situated on top of a hill, nestled within a valley that funneled the wind. The bunkhouse, lofted above a storage area, is the first structure to receive the wind’s force. Whatever the sustained winds were, what I know is the bunkhouse rocked like a ship, the hanging light fixture swaying, a pile of sheet metal below tossing and clanging violently. The trees bent over as the straight-line wind event pummeled them. When I saw these winds were forecast to continue for 18 more hours and only increase through the afternoon, the alpaca farm bunkhouse (versus the trail, with its flying branches and falling trees) seemed a great place to stay.

Actually, wind was a perfect excuse to slow down and rest for a day. During the 11 days since I left Erwin, Tennessee, I traveled an even 200 trail miles. I took 30 days to cover the 350 to Erwin. It’s a natural and good thing to speed up at this point, but a weather-induced rest was more blessing than cause for complaint. Feeling blasts of winds all day would tire me out. Instead, up in the rocking bunkhouse, I felt continuous gratitude for its shelter. Moonpants, Bacitracin, and Captain Chaos soon joined me in the bunkhouse. I’d met them at Fresh Grounds’ morning breakfast right before the Smokies. We shared a good time of making caprese stirfry, Nutella banana splits, and other ridiculous foods in large quantities. To spend all day eating instead of hiking probably helps in the long run too. When else do you get to spend a whole day eating?

Thoughts on hiking at the quarter mark

Hiking 17 to 20 miles a day consistently over rocky, rooty, and hilly terrain is super hard physically and mentally. Today I tested the placebo effect. Every steep uphill, I repeated my favorite trail lie: ” Virginia is flat.” It works. The hill seems easier.

For me, it’s easier for me to convey the silliness or adventurousness of the AT than the very real exhaustion of thru-hiking. Attaining any of the rewards – conversations, excessive eating, views, solace, getting to be outside (or inside) in wacky weather events, writing – comes after a day of exertion.

We have indeed accelerated. I say ‘we’ because there is an element of peer pressure. I’ve been in the vicinity of a fairly consistent group for the past 200 miles, and each of us experiences some pressure to stay within a day or so of each other. It’s a positive, motivating pressure rather than a burden. As we hike together, our pace has drifted upwards to nearer 3 miles an hour (especially heading into town rather than out). I think Oz and Moonpants started this first, but now we all tend to jog short downhill segments. Honestly, it feels a lot better. We have all sent quite a few things home and theoretically carry lighter packs, though extra food probably counteracts the result.

Peer pressure is not solely responsible for a faster pace and more daily mileage. After all this hiking, the human body adapts to be stronger where it needs to be, more efficient. Muscles and ligaments no longer hurt; bones are stronger. As we individually respond to the cues to throttle up from our bodies, collectively, we accelerate. The crew I am amongst now is all under 30. We feel good, cruise along, aware that at this stage, it’s still very possible to get injured but happy to have adapted. Listen to your body and continue to take care of it. Today, we passed 1/4 of the way to Mount Katahdin. I’m excited about the prospect of doing the distance covered thus far three more times.

As I did three days ago, I hiked today with Moonpants and Bacitracin. They are two ridiculous and inseperable friends from Maine who worked at the same restaurant and summer camp and lived together on old lobster boats. They’re known for their obsession with Reuben sandwiches, for packing out an array of sauces (duck sauce, thousand island, hoisin sauce, balsamic reduction – which will it be this time?) and fruit and veggie trays, for their hitchhiking adventures, frequent falling over, climbing trees, crazy stories, and a whole lot more. They are fun to be around.

Wading in

The big event today was fording Lick Creek, a large stream whose bridge washed out years ago. Because of the heavy rain two days ago, the streams were swollen, an ominous sign.

In the end, Lick Creek was waist high but not so difficult. We crossed, then started eating food, suddenly uninterested in hiking father. We started a fire and say around it until the stars emerged, hearing the gurgling of the creek.