Quick Notes from Damascus: Now Enterting the Home Stretch

Four hundred and sixty miles remaining.

It really feels like the home stretch now. The landscape, the people, and the food have all turned decidedly southern (as opposed to the quasi-southerness of northern Virginia) and now it really does feel like I'm walking home. Examples: more churches than functioning business, and biscuits and gravy at the gas station for breakfast this morning. Yeah man.  

The Greyson Highlands were as beautiful as advertised, although a bit shorter than I was expecting. I saw a few wild ponies, mostly from a distance. Other people got a lot closer to them, and Cold Beer even got to pet a few of them!

The Highlands were very...Rohan-esque. 

There were a LOT of people in the park and on the A.T. over the weekend, probably more than I've seen since the White Mountains in New Hampshire. I answered the usual through hiker questions again and again..."where are you coming from? Maine? WOW. Where are you headed? Georgia! Holy Smokes!"

I must admit that the questions are far more pleasurable to answer now that this great adventure is almost done and the miles hang about me like a cloud. Now I see less doubt and more respect (or the "you're crazy" look, which doubles as respect) in peoples eyes. It's a good feeling.

Damascus has been a good stop. Here I bid a sad fair thee well to my trusty Chacos. Those sandals were the most comfortable, effective, efficient, and sturdy shoes I've ever worn; an elegant and simple solution to problems that have bothered hikers since the beginning of hiking. (Invented by Sir Wallace H. MacHiker in 1433, when he accidentally climbed a mountain in the Scottish Highlands while searching for a lost sheep)

I have over a thousand miles on the Chacos now, and I could easily finish the trail without them falling apart. By contrast, my Merril trail shoes dissolved into scraps of rubber and expensive gore-tex in two hundred and fifty. The weather simply will not permit it, however. My feet are just too cold in the mornings. So I bought some shoes at the outfitter here and have my fingers firmly crossed, hoping they will last till Springer.

As far as spring and summer hiking goes, I'll never wear anything but Chacos again.

It will be nice on my feet to have a change of pace though. The drying and cracking problems on my heals and in between my toes never truly went away, even with many different moisturizing strategies, and the pain has been severe and hobbling at times. Here's hoping I don't trade in cracked heels for a new crop of blisters. I'm actually pretty worried about it. I would hate to repeat the blisters and foot pain of my first two hundred trail miles during the LAST few hundred.

I've made a few other changes to my gear lately, mostly in the form of warmer clothes that I got on sale in Daleville. I also bought two new tips for my trecking poles. The old ones were worn down into plastic nubbins after eight hundred miles or so.

What else to say? I'm tired. Really, really tired. We've all come to the conclusion that we just need more than one day of rest at a time to get back up to full health. Basically I'm really good at walking in a straight line up and down mountains, but any kind of movement that requires agility, speed over three miles an hour, or flexibility is extremely difficult.I can climb four thousand feet in three hours with thirty pounds on my back but it takes me ten minutes to get up from a sofa and hobble in to the bathroom of a hostel. My feet only seem to bear my weight when wearing shoes. I only walk quickly with a pack on my back.

Conversations have started to turn to "after the trail", which is odd. This is the first time everybody is talking about what we are going to do when we get back, as opposed to what we used to do before we left.

Odd.

Tomorrow I cross in to Tennessee. 

Out of library time. Gotta go.

Next post will be from Tennessee, or possibly North Carolina.

Happy Trails!

Pawn