Week 1

Ahoy readers! I am writing to you from Marion ,VA. It's been a wet and wild ride so far, and I am thrilled to finally share some of it with you guys. Since leaving Sunday morning from Damascus, it has rained pretty much nonstop. I am surprised and proud of myself for surviving the down pour and completing almost 60M of trail to boot. I never thought I couldn't survive the trail during all my planning and prepping days, but thinking you can do something and knowing you can do something are two very different things. Today I know I got the grit to withstand the wet and hike on. 

Friday- Tuesday 

Every day I have been out here in the rain, a little unsureness has slipped away and has been replaced with resilience. The first day on the trail, I got detoured off of it after about 3M because of a bridge being washed out by the rain. I ended up on the Virginia Creeper Trail, and at about 4M into this unknown trail, I was getting rained on so hard that I had to sep up camp with no hiker friends in sight. I imagined my first night on the trail a lot differently, but needless to say, I survived my very wet, very dark, and very lonely first sleep in the woods. The weekend prior to this not so amazing first night in the woods was awesome though. Trail Days, the annual AT hikers fest, was a blast! Wes and I ate great food, heard all kinds of good music, and did nothing but enjoy each other's company. Damascus was an adorable little mountain town, and although he and I did the sort of "old timers" experience of Trail Days, I'd say we enjoyed it just as much as all of the LSD dropping, shirtless, shoeless hippies around us did. 

We did plan on visiting the back-ass alley of Tent City one night, to check out what sounded like a 100-hippie-drum-circle surrounding a huge bonfire used for the sacrificial burning of live animals and virgins, but we never satisfied our curiosities. Wes was neither here nor there about the idea, and I figured I had already been one of those shirtless, shoeless sirens in a past life, and I wasn't interested in reliving the experience. Instead we went to the local Damascus brewery, listened to bluegrass, played corn-hole, and walked the town. Yes all was wonderful about Trail Days, except for the parting of ways with the hubby on Sunday morning. It was a tough start to a tough first day on the trail, but since the tears, sweat, and rain of that first day, I have climbed over a dozen mountains, seen countless breathtaking views, and have never been more satisfied and content with myself about where I am...right here, right now. My body hurts all over, and the blisters on my feet are narley, but I am smiling ear to ear with complete satisfaction on how much I have learned and how much I have accomplished in just shy of three days.

As I sit here and reflect on how my journey thus far has bearings on my recovery, I find myself thinking about how the past 72 hours reminded me of those first three days of sobriety. Those days were also a dark and stormy cataclysm of sensory overload, gut-wrenching unsureness, and physical and emotional anguish. However, every day I got through, I got stronger. I got better, and little by little, the unsureness inside me slipped away, and was replaced with resilience. 

Wednesday-Friday Wet, grimey, slippery, greasy, cold, windy, sopping..... The trail has turned into a murky, dingy septic pool of swampy doom, and I have had to trudge through it the past five days straight. Since Sunday, I have seen the sun twice, both times for about and hour or so, then it's been back to eating, drinking, sleeping, and hiking in nothing but rain.

Little rain, hard rain, fat rain, pellet rain. Rain has come down in sheets, in spurts, in big gobs, and in light drizzles. At one point, I think I was high enough on the side of a cliff that I was actually submerged in the rain cloud before it even has a chance to fall to the ground. The Grayson Highlands were nothing but grey. I hiked through them without seeing a single stunning view or meeting any miniature ponies. I did, however, get uncomfortably close to a wild long horn by accident. Due to all the fog and precipitation clouding my view, I ended up within almost five feet of the enormous beast. My heart stopped. The panic and surreal feeling of being alone with those massive horns that close to my face was a moment I will never forget. I slowly backed up to the rock quarry I had just climbed over and started walking far left. I circled around back to the trail and made a swift, almost running, exit from that portion of the highlands. While long horns are not aggressive by nature, you are of course not suppose to impede on their territory, or they might charge at you. Luckily, this guy gave me a pass, and I left the Grayson Highlands with only a fall or two in the mud. The next morning, I woke up in my tent to about a half inch of water all around my sleeping pad. The rain had come down all night and flooded the entire camp area. I was beyond soaked to the bone. At this point, I was drenched right down to my soul. But I got up! I peeled on my wet socks and muddy water-filled shoes and hiked on. 

So what has the trail turned into with all this water? Imagine a stream full of pebbles and rocks, and about three inches of muddy water. That is what "the trail" has been the past three days. I now have an idea of what WWII soldiers, suffering from trench foot, must have felt like during those long days on the battlefield. No grass, no gravel, no root-filled and packed-dirt pathways for me. I have only been hiking a steam of muck. I have even taken a few falls into the muck. Yesterday morning, it was a quarter of a mile into my start, and I went down on my left side, pack and all, straight into the sludge. The only thing that saved me Thursday was a hikers feed that a local Baptist church was hosting. I heard about it around 2:30 that day from a local man passing out trail magic (free supplies & food). He said the church was shuttling hikers from Dickies Gap until 5pm that evening. I almost started crying as he told me that I was still 8M from that point on the trail. I kept the tears back though, shoved a hotdog in my mouth, and y'all.... I RAN, with 32lbs. on my back down the sludge-ridden trail, and made that last shuttle to the church.

The church provided a life-changing (free) hot shower and a smorgasbord of food that I can't even begin to describe. I thanked the Lord baby Jesus for Back-country Baptists that evening. With a full belly, and my first shower in almost a week, I slept soundly on chapel hill with all the rest of the smelly sinners.  

14M and a shuttle bus ride later, I made it to Marion, VA to dry out for an evening. As I check out of my hotel and finish writing this entry, I am looking forward to hitting the trail today. The sun is shinning and according to the weather forecast, it will only be shinning today. Rain and thunderstorms seem to be the case until Tuesday of next week. I have come to figure out that hiking, like my sobriety, can only be taking one day at a time. (Sometimes just one minute at a time). So I am not going to worry about the wet or rain to come, or daunt on the weather that I just endured. Just for today, I will enjoy the sun and remember what a gift it is to be alive, sober, and hiking here on this beautiful Earth today. Happy Friday!