Servicing tendons in the night
For all of the deliberate efforts to heal your body (stretching, supplements, etc,) the body’s constant repairs on the cellular level accomplish the healing. So much of that occurs while asleep. You metabolize lactic acid and carry it away in the bloodstream. You repair tiny tears in muscles. You repel pathogenic invaders. You maintain chemical neurological pathways. You service (is that the right word?) tendons and ligaments (please and thank you). You excrete excess chemicals to maintain balance – homeostasis as the person who converted Greek root words into English called it. You produce new red blood cells, new skin cells, new organ cells constantly. Think about it. It’s absolutely incredible.
A modern musical composition
My sleep thus far does not fall into the ‘great’ category, thus hindering said cellular repairs. It started with 3 hours of sleep squeezed in between final preparation and catching my early flight the first day. I thought a night at the hostel would be the first great night of sleep. Instead, it was this past night at a quiet shelter called Muskrat in North Carolina.
This despite the fact that the thick fog (i really need to give the fog a name) moved in during the evening. Once the tree branches were saturated, heavy fog drip fell onto the tin roof of the shelter. It somehow sounded as if 11 children hit 11 different-sized plastic bongos at random. This is perfect material for a modern music piece. Enjoyable material really. Mark Applabaum, please compose this.
Actually, I may have just completed the composition. The score simply reads: ‘hit 11 plastic bongo drums at random.’ Duration, frequency, specific sizes, etc. are left to the conductor.
Today’s trail thoughts
Olivia and I wondered at how the average odds of finishing the AT change from the trailhead at Springer Mountain to the Georgia-North Carolina border. They must go up substantially. Because if you sustained thoughts of dropping out, you ought to act on them before entering North Carolina. One, the climb out of Georgia is arduous. Two, rather than the frequent roads in Georgia, you enter truer wilderness in NC – minimal cell service, no paved roads for days. Put this together and, once you reached your next opportunity to quit in NC, you might reasonably (the sunk cost fallacy is quite reasonable, I think) conclude that your previous efforts justified continuing on.
Today’s object of North Carolina ascent revealed itself as the fog lifted. It was a towering mountain, the kind that made you think ‘yep, we are definitely going right over the top of that.’ Olivia and I chatted enough on the way up that I hardly noticed the climb. Then, for the rest of the day, the rain and wind fell, thickly at times, and for some (bad) reason, I listened to Niccolo Macchiavelli’s The Prince. Poor motivational material. The rain did, though, remind me why the forest is so dense – it receives much moisture. Which brings me back to the National Forest Service (continuing yesterday’s commentary).
Forestry fun (continued)
The government bought much of the timberland from the industrialists, creating the Chattahoochee National Forest (which the trail has been travelling through). A rare chunk of government land in the southern states. For a few decades, they (the government) allowed the forest to regrow, a secondary forest replacing the mostly destroyed primary forest in northern Georgia. Then mid-20th century, the government set to clearcutting as well. Even the remaining stands of primary forest were almost all logged.
The forest along the trail has been regrowing for 70-odd years. The tree trunks thicken and the branches branch, but the trees still seem frail compared to the few solitary un-logged majesties.
How differently we treat our natural resources now, especially government agencies. If someone were to shave the trees from an entire mountain range, no one would see it as a sign of progress but rather of loss.
Then I think of the Colorado River and of its more-than total utilization. How is this lack of margin any different than clearcutting the Georgia hills?
I learned today that the Appalachian mountains are one of the oldest landforms in the world. They were around before vertebrates, trees, and saturn’s rings. Fascinating.