Wildcat

Things I find amazing right now: I wake up at sunrise even if there is no sun. The way everyone who comes into this small town’s Cumberland Farms (a gas station convenience store that reminds me of another Dead song, surprise surprise,) knows the woman working the morning shift. Seems her husband had an accident recently but is on the mend. The way the Appalachian Trail community also functions like a small town that’s 18″ wide and 2,180 miles long. I just did a bunch of math and unit conversions (before my coffee took effect so maybe check my work) and the AT is actually less than half the area of Central Park by that measure. Obviously that’s misleading, but still pretty interesting. More Google searching reveals that you could walk every inch of road in Manhattan four times and still be short of the AT’s total distance, so there’s that. Manhattan is relatively flat while if you walk the entire AT you do the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest 16 times. I’ve done a little more than 75% of the trail so far, so that’s about a dozen Everests. Numbers! Are you not amazed? Next time you’re going somewhere ask how many Everests it is.

I’m amazed at how far I’ve come and what an epic journey this is. I feel like a freaking hero some days. Not a superhero per se, (though incidentally I do have the superman blue shirt and red underwear,) but more like Bruce Willis at the end of Die Hard, or I guess most of his movies come to think of it, beaten up and bloodied but stoically doing what has to be done with a sense of humor intact. I’m amazed you’re reading this with your morning coffee, or at work, or when you get home. I’m amazed my life right now is little Jack’s bedtime story. Hey buddy. Erin and Jess are reading this to him each night, so I have to be careful with the cursing.

Ok, earmuffs little man. I’m amazed I didn’t fall off the goddamn mountain today. The climb up Wildcat from Pinkham Notch was not nearly as bad as I thought, it was a lot of work but I thought it would be much worse. This gave me that nice, false sense of confidence the trail loves to prove wrong. Going down into Carter Notch sucked on the wet rocks and then the up and downs on the ridge after Carters Dome were nuts. It didn’t rain today but everything was slick and I was slipping and sliding on easy stuff, so descending on sheer faces of granite was nerve wracking. I went sliding off the trail at one point and kept my feet under me somehow. I was literally crawling today, I can’t seem to go fast, or even normal pace in the Whites. Got to Imp Campsite just in time to see the sunset, basically covering 13 miles in 11 hours. I didn’t take ibuprofen while I was in town so I think that may have been part of the trouble too. Bad day for the ankle. It was a beautiful sunset though and I stayed up talking to the caretaker and Shake and Bake for awhile after. 306.3 to go.