Trapped in Paradise

Hey. I'm in Gatlinburg, Tennessee now. I haven't had good luck with finding working computers over the past week. I'm hiking the portion of the trail that runs through the Grand Smoky Mountain National Park. Yesterday I climbed Clingman's dome, which is the highest mountain on the AT. I got rolling at eight in the morning, summited at noon, and ended up at the road crossing in Newfound Gap at around six. Then I hitched a ride into town and now I'm at a motel with hot water and a soda machine. Yee-haw! The guy that I hitched with was named Jim. He lives in Gatlinburg and makes fiber art like bracelets and hatbands. On the way down the mountain we saw a huge crowd of people standing by the side of the road taking pictures of something. When I looked over there was a little old black bear eating something about thirty feet off the road. We passed similar scenes two more times after that. Three bears in fifteen minutes! I haven't even seen any while actually hiking or camping. Jim guessed that the crowds around the bears were probably tourists throwing food. The Smokies are the most visited national park in the country. Things sure are crazy in the south.

On the way down from Clingman's Dome the hip strap on my pack broke. Without that strap my shoulders hold all the weight of my forty pound pack and I can't go very far without having back pain. I called the pack maker and they're sending me a loaner until they repair mine. The loaner won't get here for three days though and I'm stuck in Gatlinburg until then. Three days of hamburgers and 'Law and Order' marathons. What a bummer. All the hikers I've talked to think that I'll go crazy from boredom but I think I'll be just fine.

It's been a while since I posted. I hiked for three days from Franklin until the trail crossed through the Nantahala Outdoor Center, which is a river rafting/outfitter outdoors place. A bunch of us stayed in the hostel and left in the morning. It was three more days of hiking to get to the Fontana Dam, which is the tallest dam in the eastern United States. There's a small resort area called the Fontana Village there. Me and LB split a room and took a zero there. Then I was back on the trail for four days til Gatlinburg. Altogether thats about a hundred miles. I hit the two hundred mile mark coming off of Clingman's Dome. Someone had written '200' across the trail in snow. When I got to town I found out that it was LB that wrote it. I've spent most of my time on the trail with LB and a fella named Country Gold at this point. LB is a thirty year old guy with a thick red beard and a big laugh. Country gold is a forty-seven year old guy with a southern accent and a constant hankering for cigarettes and coffee. I've appreciated having them as hiking buddies. They'll be moving on to Hot Springs tomorrow and I'll be left here to make new friends.

Even though we took a day off at Fontana I felt pretty rough hiking out of there. At the end of some days my feet hurt so bad that I can't move. I just sit in the shelter and wait for the pain to lessen to a point where I can cook dinner. My energy level has been dropping at a pretty constant rate. I can't eat enough to make up for even half the calories I use every day and sometimes it feels like my body is just about to give up and collapse. This all sounds melodramatic as I write it but it's fairly accurate. I think that being trapped in Gatlinburg is a blessing in disguise. I definitely don't want to give up yet but I think I need a long break to pull myself together physically. I'm starting to live the trail life with some feeling of normality. That is to say, hiking all day and sleeping on the ground at night doesn't feel like a big strange adventure anymore. I meet new people every day but I've known a good number of these folks long enough to be totally comfortable around them. It's still always an adventure but I roll through the days with much more confidence than I did at the beginning. I've managed to stay alive and independent through two-hundred miles of walking over mountains and I feel pretty good about that. Less that two-thousand miles to Maine!

And I've seen seven snakes!