Go and follow your heart

On December 2, I wrote about an endless quest among cultures. I wrote: “I look at people who manage to be stationary, attached to one place, with envy.” I wrote: “traveling is when my heart beats fastest.” I finished hiking more than a month ago, and I’ve been silent ever since. Processing my experience, maybe. Digesting. Or more likely, just busy. I immediately stepped back into my full-fledged life here—two jobs, writing group, teaching yoga, taking yoga, land hunting. Enjoying the joys of a stationary life, of having a fully equipped kitchen and an office and heat and friends.

I’m only finding my voice now, as I prepare for another journey. In two weeks, I’m heading back up to Maine, maybe forever. Probably not for ever, ever, but you never know. I’ve found a beautiful piece of land here in Georgia, one that I first looked at more than a year ago. It’s land that has continued to wiggle around in my consciousness, reminding myself of its presence every so often. It has significant challenges, namely: an impassable road. I’ve only ever walked to the home-site, as I don’t have a vehicle that can make it up the mountain. Having a house I must walk to may be a romantic ideal, but I’m sure the eighth time I bring groceries home the charm will wear off.

Still, I’m keeping the piece as an option in my back pocket. It has gorgeous views of Lookout Mountain, feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere, but is close enough to Chattanooga to commute. If I can make it down the road. The questions is: are the challenges what make me hesitate, or is it the reality of digging down roots into one particular stretch of dirt? I’m having dreams about dirt, dark dirt roads stretching out in front of me, mud dissolving beneath me. As the reality of buying that piece began to settle in, I began to search farther afield—investigating areas close to Carolina’s outer banks, or along the outer edges of Asheville, the southeast’s hipster Brooklyn.

Am I afraid of being attached to a single place? Have I not found the right land yet? Or am I just not ready? I don’t know. In my ideal life, I’d be as close as possible to the ocean (hence the boat). North Georgia is utterly landlocked. I could buy a piece twenty minutes from Pamlico Sound for the same price. Does that mean it’s the wrong place for me, or am I merely procrastinating?

New England still draws me northward. As impossible as I find winter there, it has a hold as few places do—why else would I be writing a book about it? Waterfront land in coastal Maine goes for bargain-basement prices. Is it worth looking there, or am I motivated solely out of bullet-biting fear?

In any case, I’ve made a choice to keep my options open, at least for the next two months, with the Georgia land as my back-up plan. In the meantime, I’m traveling up to Chicago to meet my new niece, to Michigan to see my grandmother for the last time, and thence to Maine. I’m thinking of it as a mini-sabbatical, a chance to be still and make a final choice about the things I really want.

The last few weeks have been brutal, as I’ve shared my decision with my friends here. I never realize how thoroughly entrenched I am inside of a community until I decide to leave, and it’s been that way since I was a little girl. I have a pattern where I reluctantly build a connection with a community, slowly over time, and then, as soon as I’m thoroughly tied to it and happy, I tear myself away. It’s perverse masochism, like wiggling a sore tooth. I distance myself from my friends as I get ready to leave, preparing myself for departure, slowly cutting those clinging ties, in order to keep myself from feeling that excruciating pain of losing friends.

Sometimes I believe it’s an addiction. I’m addicted to the art of losing friends. It’s the thing I was taught best to do as a missionary kid. Growing up, every year I had a new set of friends. Every year I was torn away from people I loved. Now it’s just a habit.

It’s a whole set of issues that we crazy gypsies have to deal with. A lack of consistency in our past means that we crave inconsistency in our present. I can’t actually believe that it’s dysfunctional, though. That would be like denying a part of myself. Journeying is an art in its own right. Moving through space and time calls to me, again. Though I’m giving up some things, I’m gaining some things, too. The life I’ve chosen for myself comes at a high price. It’s a price I choose to pay.

Chattanooga, Tennessee

So my hike is over. We drove back to Chattanooga in the freezing rain last night, out of the wilderness of backwoods Alabama, and made it here just in time for seven inches of snow. It was planned, actually--I pushed the miles the last three days so we could make it out in time for this last front. Shadow is confused and at loose ends. Even though he's a snow dog from Maine, snow in this context is confusing, as is the sudden conflation of people and the lack of backpacks.

They say one of the biggest challenges of hiking with dogs is their adjustment after the hike is finished. He keeps whining and staring out the window in bewilderment and needs a lot of affection. They say many dogs, especially after a longer hike, become depressed. The famous seeing-eye dog, Orient, who accompanied Bill Irwin, the first blind man to hike the Appalachian Trail, became so depressed that he never recovered. He was older anyway, but he passed on soon after completing the trail, going to that great trail in the sky.

No more so than I. Not that I'm going to the great trail in the sky anytime soon, but the adjustment post-hike is just as difficult for humans as for dogs. Today was a snow day in Chattanooga, everything closed, and I used it mainly to cook and eat, favorite post-hike activities. Shadow even has a huge store of Christmas and New Year's bones in the freezer that he can gnaw on, after his meager trail rations.

Hiking changes people and dogs alike, and the recovery process is difficult. I could just step full-force back into my life here, and it's a little overwhelming. I've made some decisions, though, about goals and priorities. Mainly, I've confirmed what I already knew--I want my next major project to be land. That's my main goal for the next however many months, until I find my next anchoring point. I want a homestead of my own.

I love Donne's poem "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning," where he compares his wife to the rooted part of the compass, and himself to the other moving leg, and though he circles and moves away, he always comes back. They always meet back in the center. I need a home that can function that way, the rooted anchor that I always return to. I'm not ready to stop adventuring, and I may never be, but having something that ties me to the ground will give me the stability I need for the next stage in my life.

I'll be posting entries from the last two weeks of my hike over the next few days, and I'll try to get photographs up as soon as possible. Looking forward to rejoining civilization, at least for a little while, and hearing from and seeing all of you. Happy New Year, everyone.

Rebecca Mountain to Chattanooga, Tennessee

Campfire and moon memories of the trail

When we walked out of the woods today, into the hallowed hiker heaven of a Mexican buffet (a rarity in the all-you-can-eat universe), I had that same sense of vertigo, of the world shifting around me immediately. Like in a science-fiction movie, when the green screen drops, and our hero realizes he’s been at home the whole time. After the trail, everything changes. The calories I was trying to pump my body full of just this morning now reek of nebulous evil.

Water comes from a tap, not from the earth. Human bodies smell like perfume, and not like themselves. I spend most of the day sitting (even this evening, in the car), instead of moving from place to place on my feet, with my belongings on my back. It’ll be an adjustment.

But the trail, for now, is done. Complete. A tied-off knot.

Sherman Cliffs to Rebecca Mountain

Shadow, at my sleeping bag's foot, in the morning

18.5 miles

Wondering if tonight may be my last night in the woods, I’m sitting in front of the dying embers of a smoky fire. Partly because of Shadow’s food situation (he’s still on strict rations), we’ve been pushing our mileage, which means I’ve done in three days what would have taken us four in December. So we’re ahead of schedule, and the hunters tell us there are eight inches of snow forecast for tomorrow. A good reason to push for the deuce, the big 20-mile day tomorrow.

It still makes me sad, thinking that this campfire may be the last. I don’t know if I’ve done an adequate job of capturing the beauty of this trail, how it’s been a small but lovely part of the American landscape, wilderness but not rugged, with creeks wandering through, low wetlands or ridges with pastureland falling away on either side. We walked a ridge all day today, with a brisk north wind heralding bad weather and keeping my fleece on. But it was a lovely last day of hiking—kicking through leaves, poking at head-sized chunks of snow-white quartz, looking for caves in the boulders that jut out of the tops of mountains.

I love that the Pinhoti Trail is the tip of such a long chain of ancient, ancient mountains. Here, at the end of the chain, you can feel their weight settling into the ground. Just the angle of the rock tells its age—horizontal lines of marbled quartz, now nearly vertical, sunk by the ages. I love that at this point we have now truly finished the Appalachian Mountains, that after these miles they dwindle down into nothing in the swamps and flatland of the Florida panhandle. It makes the Appalachian Trail feel truly complete.

It does not, however, in any way sate my desire for a hiker’s life. I keep thinking of other trails that hover on the horizon—the 1000-mile Florida Trail, the 300-mile Benton MacKaye Trail, the 900-mile Bibbulman Track in Australia, the American Discovery Trail, the continent’s longest trail, that stretches from coast to coast, more than 5000 miles. No matter how much pain I feel, how much my shoulders tingle, I want more. I don’t want it to be over.

I want to have adventures and write about them. I want to do that forever.

Clairmont Spring to Sherman Cliffs

Shadow and his Puppy Chow from heaven

16.0 miles

A shaman met us on the road today. Well, a crazy Californian living in a van with “LOVE” painted on the side who claimed to commune with the spirit of Sacajawea and to have knowledge of his past lives. And to be a shaman flautist. He claimed that my nose indicated I came from the Cheyenne tribe. He called me a “wise woman.” I’ll take that compliment, no matter who it comes from.

It’s the second odd experience in as many days. I’ve been really worrying about Shadow’s food. The campground store at the state park had nothing but ramen noodles and Snickers bars for our resupply, and even less supplies for him. We packed out seven cans of Vienna sausages to supplement his dog food, but they’re not really doing the trick. His high-protein dog food is running really low. He seems to understand our conundrum. He whines less for his food, accepting what he’s given, and putting his head on his paws while we eat. It’s still awful. It’s one thing for me to go hungry when I know there are Chinese buffets waiting at the next road crossing. It’s something else when you’re a dog and you don’t understand why there’s no food.

But yesterday, walking along the trail, we found a full bag of puppy chow, two pounds of it, exactly what he needs to get through the next five days. Dog food, untouched, still in its original packaging, just lying by the side of the trail. Exactly what I needed, when I needed it.

How bizarre is that? My first thought was: it’s not possible. My second thought was that it was one of those inexplicable unasked-for miracles, a sign that someone in the universe has a sense of humor. And is kind. Call it synchronicity or Christ Jesus, call it what you will. I just have a hard time believing that anything so coincidental is actually coincidence.

Heaven Camp to Clairmont Spring

Tired trail dog

13.4 miles

Before I left on this trip, I showed some friends at my job a map of the trail, told them my plan. “Better you than me,” was their attitude. Today was one of those days I know what they mean. Half the day was spent walking through a “rock garden,” with each step unsure beneath my feet, jagged stones throwing me off balance, wrenching my ankles, my knees, my shoulders.

The concept of adventure has been something that’s haunted my thoughts this entire trail. What makes this an adventure, and not just a walk in the woods? I’ve risked frostbite and hypothermia and coyote attacks, but does danger alone make for an adventure? Is adventure merely a conscious choice to expose oneself to physical discomfort, to pain?

What’s an adventure to one is not to all. One of the things I love to do is built small adventures into my everyday life. Visiting a restaurant I’ve never been to before. Going to the park all by myself. Driving home from work on roads I’ve never explored. So are those adventures? Solely the thrill of the new?

I’d like to call myself an adventurer, but it’s a title--like poet, like yogi, like prophet—that’s difficult to bestow on myself. Whatever the discomfort, though, the life of an adventurer is the one I want. Adventure makes me see the world through new eyes. I feel like new scales are dropping from mine with every step I take outside the status quo. Even when I’m gasping in pain, I can breathe fully here. Van Gogh said: “Our only job is to breathe as hard as ever we can breath.” Keats said: “I want to clamber among the clouds and exist.” Eliot said: “In the mountains, there, you feel free.”

I don’t know what it is that makes an adventurer adventurous. But whatever it is that makes me feel this feeling at the end of the day—beaten, broken-down, exhausted, and happy—it’s what I want.

Cheaha State Park to Heaven Camp

Cheaha State Park placard

8.2 miles

I’m sitting cross-legged, in front of a birthday bonfire. Shadow is a curly dog next to me. K is cracking dead oak into logs for the fire. We built an oven to cook my birthday dinner, a packed-out frozen burrito from the campground store.

The burrito was absolutely delicious—crispy and brown on the outside, gooey and dumpling-like inside, with oozing cheese and bean sauce. It’s amazing how being outside makes gas-station food fantastic.

It’s always funny to me how much of a contrast there is between time in town and out here. This morning I woke up in a climate-controlled room, in clean sheets, with plumbing and running water and a television. The minute I stepped out into the woods, I’m alone, just me, with the food and clothing I carry on my back. The change is instantaneous.

Blue Mountain Shelter to Cheaha State Park

Another Pinhoti Trail stream

1.9 miles

When I woke up this morning, I thought I may end up here—in yet another motel room. That’s four for a 350-mile trail, and I hope it’s the last. As much as I love the anonymous hotel room, and this one’s especially nice, at a state park with a gorgeous view of Alabama’s highest point and stacked rock everywhere, I feel like I’m splurging a little bit, too much for a short trail. Then again, I always felt that way on the Appalachian Trail, too.

I must admit, too, that a day in a flooded-out tarp does make one want a hot shower, a cheeseburger, and some clean sheets. So we had an easy two-mile hike to the state park, where we got a room.

Friendship Camp to Blue Mountain Shelter

Stone floor to a tarp (that's the green tarp wall to the right)

9.6 miles

Sleeping on a bed of rocks last night hurt my hip a bit, I think. But it was far better than sleeping in an inch of standing water, which was the alternative. Yesterday, after my pen ran out of ink, we were huddled in the shelter of the tarp, I was reading, Shadow keeping my feet warm. The rain was pounding down.

Then Shadow stands up, absolutely dripping in water. K, my hiking companion, says: “You better check your tortillas.” I do, and we pull back the sleeping pads, and there’s about an inch of groundwater, just below the ground cloth.

My choice at that point was: hike on with everything I own wet, or devise a solution. We ended up pushing the flat rocks from around the campsite under the walls of the tarp, sweeping away the water, and devising an impromptu stone foundation. It wasn’t that uncomfortable. A lot more comfortable than sleeping downhill, for instance. Or in an inch of water. I felt like Jacob, sleeping on a stone pillow, although I did not dream of angels.

We even built a fire with wet wood, and today almost everything I carried was dry. At least, until I decided to ford a stream with my shoes on. Impatience always makes stupid decisions. Today’s hike was a lot less eventful. Pleasant miles, interesting flute-like fungi, and vibrant green moss. Moss may be my favorite plant. It’s always so green, and it’s involved in very interesting reproduction right now. Every bed of it is topped by miniscule and mysterious growths.

Tonight I sleep in a shelter, with no rain to concern me. Nothing to worry about except ghosts and mice. Oh, and a worry about a return to my home-bound life.

New Year’s Day

First picture of the New Year

0 miles

We’re trapped in the tarp again, on New Year’s this time. We’re bored. Ender’s Game is the book that succeeded Pilgrim at Tinker Creek—some easy reading science fiction to take the place of hardcore natural realism—but I don’t know if we should finish it today, because then we’ll be all done and that will make me sad and we won’t have a book left to read. I’m thinking over my resolutions and wondering if I should have shared them because then they won’t come true.

I’m also wondering if anyone is reading or commenting on my blog, on the things that I’m writing and the ideas I’m exploring. I’ve been writing them differently than I did on the Appalachian Trail, exploring my larger goals and larger concepts, rather than focusing on the day-to-day minutia of how many miles I’ve hiked or how much pain I’m in. It makes my hiking journal less interesting to some, I’m sure, especially those looking for specific details about the Pinhoti Trail so they can hike it in the future. But more interesting to others, I hope, more interesting to those unconcerned with mileage but interested in the feeling of long-distance hiking.

My right shoulder is in pain, and I do find myself thinking about little details like how we carried too much food out of town or when we’re going to finish if we don’t stop doing more than a zero day at a time. I feel like it’s more valuable to find something interesting to focus on and write about it than it is to obsess on the little details. Especially by the end of the AT all I could think and write about was how many miles I was doing a day. Today I’m frustrated by not hiking, by being a day further behind, but I want to think about other things, like books and music and art.

There was an eighty-percent chance of thunderstorms today. I should have known. Maybe it’ll still clear and enable us to hike, but I doubt it. It feels like an all-day rain.

Rio Grande to Friendship Camp

Armadillo peeks out in the warm weather

17.7 miles

It just turned midnight, and the wind picked up around my campfire, swirling the smoke up around and into my eyes. It’s an audible wind, the kind I didn’t like to hear whistling through my rigging, slapping the halyards against the mast. The weather’s changing. Thunderstorms were forecast for the night, and the temperature is high, more than 40 degrees.

Praise God for Alabama, where I can be out at midnight on New Year’s Eve in only a fleece. All day I hiked in just my shirt, only the second time on the trip. I can’t think of any place I’d rather be than here. New Year’s is a time to be outside, to feel the air on my skin. I have a couple of resolutions.

1. Make a big choice about my future, and not be afraid of how anyone else will perceive it. I resolve to make my choices this year based on my own ambition and calling, and not on anyone else’s perceptions of niceness. The only way to live is boldly. This year I will live bold.

2. To pay attention to the Holy Spirit. My church is doing a book study group on a book entitled Natural Spirituality, and that combined with my recent reading of Cameron and Jung has made me a lot more comfortable with this person of the Trinity, the part of God that so many ex-Baptists shrink a little at talking about. I believe the Spirit of God lives inside of me. This year I will listen to that quiet voice.

3. Lastly, to do some trail maintenance. Karen, a newly promoted forest ranger, gave us a ride both ways from town in Heflin, and we had a good talk about the rigors of managing a trail. I can come out, at least one day this year, and clear blowdowns, paint blazes. The trail has given me so much. The least I can do is begin to pay back that debt.

Heflin, Alabama, to Rio Grande

Trail ford

4.2 miles

A woman driving a Jaguar with personalized plates came up to us yesterday and gave us money. I had just been to the grocery store, and was walking back along the side of the four-lane highway with Shadow on his lead, three bags of groceries for the trail in each hand. She pulled over and pressed a folded-up bill into one hand. She was crying. She said: “God told me to give you this money.”

It was after dark, and she had left the lights of her Jaguar on. She kept saying, “I don’t know why, but he told me.”

This kind of thing has happened before, even on this trail. People want to donate to our cause, whatever our cause is, or people believe in what we’re doing, or they wish they had done it themselves before retiring, or they just want to buy dinner for a hiker. Always my first impulse is: no.

But Serena, the woman who gave us the money, said: God told me to do it. Who am I to say no to God? It was almost as if it was important for her to give than for us to receive. Maybe she thought we were homeless meth-heads, and we blew her preconceptions, when the only abnormal thing we were doing was walking along the highway when everyone else was driving.

She said, “Are you camping out tonight?” I told her we had a hotel room down the road. I said we were hiking on the Pinhoti Trail. I wonder if she’d have felt better or worse about giving me money if I had pulled out my card that said: Freelance Writer and Communication Consultant.

Which is why it didn’t matter who I was or what I was doing walking down that highway after dark, again an adventurer in an alien land. What matters is that she heard the call of God and listened. She pulled over her $80,000 car. she wept at what she was doing. Maybe so I could write about it, and tell her story.

I’m now sitting in my Golite tarp, a fire burning down. Dinner’s in the pot—leftover Mexican carried out in ziplocs, mixed with trail rice. I hiked four miles out of Heflin today, up a mountaintop in hearing of the interstate. On to the next town, the next mountain.

Lower Shoal Shelter to Heflin, Alabama

Forest service road along the trail

8.0 miles

I’m sitting back in a cheap hotel room that smells of stale smoke, with a shower behind me and Alabama Mexican food in my belly, but still hungry. The trail hunger has become the raging beast it was on the Appalachian Trail, and every step this morning I was thinking about town food—buffets with turkey and dressing and sweet potatoes. I’ve been dreaming every night about steak dinners.

So town is when I am allowed to make up for the caloric deficit I’ve been running while hiking. Maybe the most fun part of hiking. These town binges of food and movies and heat make me appreciate normal life, and also appreciate life in the wild. Just having toes I can feel after three days of walking in the snow feels like a luxury.

Maybe that’s why adventurers wander off, just so they can appreciate their cushy lives at home more. I can’t imagine how it’d feel to eat that first real meal after traversing the Antarctic. I’ve been thinking a lot about adventurers lately—mainly how to become a real one. National Geographic sponsors emerging explorers every year—how do I become one of those? A little 350-mile jaunt through Alabama and Georgia doesn’t seem grand enough, despite risking frostbite and hypothermia.

The hotel has internet access, at least, so I’ll be able to post some blog posts. Even in a town of 1000, internet access feels like civilization. More and more I’m realizing how happy this kind of life makes me, and wondering how I can choose it long-term. All of my friends I talk to in town comment on it. It’s like I’m coming truly alive again, traveling.

Chipmunk Canyon to Lower Shoal Shelter

Colleagues on the trail

16.4 miles

Today we hiked sixteen miles in snow, all day. By the end of the day I could feel the crinkly part of my feet rubbing against my shoes, where the water had worn ridges into my skin. The hike was beatiful, the light casting dark shadows on the snow. I never expected to be hiking through snow drifts in Alabama.

We met some fishermen who said it’s the first white Christmas Alabama’s had since 1880. So maybe Santa did bring us an extraordinary present after all. The fishermen also said it’s going to be sixty degrees in the next few days. One can only hope.

Tonight it’s supposed to get down to sixteen, according to the friendly mathemetician we’re sharing the shelter with tonight. He’s the first overnight backpacker I’ve encountered since I left Chattanooga. Someone else who enjoys being outdoors in the cold. A hard fate for someone who claims Alabama as home.

I also walked past a church built in the 1800s today, with graves marked in weathered snow-covered stone. They still stage sacred heart singing there every Sunday. What that is, I don’t know. So. Another day walking in the cold. Sixteen miles. My longest day so far.

Jones Branch to Chipmunk Canyon

Drying socks over the fire

8.4 miles

When we arrived at the eight-mile mark today, Shadow ran away. It’s something he does sometimes. The first couple of times it happened on the trail, I panicked—shouting, whistling, chasing through the shrubbery trying to find him. I’ve since learned that he always comes back.

He generally runs after deer, when he sees them. It’s got to the point where, when he does it, every other day, I take off my pack, get out a snack and drink some water and take a break. Unfortunately, I can’t do that when there’s three inches of snow on the trail, fresh snow is falling, and it’s twenty degrees out. My shoes and socks were wet through today, and standing still for any length of time risks hypothermia in those conditions.

So I kept walking. Calling for him of course, but knowing I was moving farther and farther away from where he last knew where I was. It’s an awful feeling, but a dog isn’t worth losing extremities over. Or so I told myself. Finally, I came to a big creek crossing, and that’s when the panic really set in.

Shadow’s a wolf-dog, and I knew, taking him hiking, that there’s always a risk he’ll hear the call of the wild and not come back. In fact, I want him to hike with me and stay with me because he wants to, because he loves being with me more than the coyote and the deer. But there’s always that risk, and today I thought I had finally lost him for good.

I could go any farther, once I crossed that creek. I camped right there on its banks, gathered wood for a fire, and waited. Sure enough, he came trotting along the trail, just as I was giving up hope. So I have him with me for one more day. But tomorrow, who knows?

Jones Branch

Snow on Christmas. This is in the morning. A lot more fell.

0 miles

When I decided to spend Christmas on the trail, I knew not to expect a turkey dinner or a pecan pie. I checked my stockings—my hiking socks stuffed in my sleeping bag to dry—but Santa Claus did not find his way into my tarp last night. Maybe because my tarp doesn’t have a chimney.

What I didn’t expect, having crossed into Alabama, was a white Christmas. Three inches of snow fallen on the trap since I woke up, and it’s still falling. I think they call it a blizzard down here. I didn’t expect for Christmas Day to be that most extraordinary of luxuries, the trail zero.

I wasn’t home for Christmas, unless my little green teepee counts as home, unless I carry home in my heart. I didn’t have any gifts, except for the snow falling, and my dog wrapped in an orange ribbon to keep hunters away. My gifts were under a tree, though, the over-burdened pine my teepee hangs from.

Ramen noodles with onion and mashed potatoes is a poor substitute for turkey and stuffing. But I’ll take it. Of any day to take a trail zero, this is it. A little vacation from hiking today cuts into my daily mileage and into my food stores, but oh well. It was worth it for a day of reading and burning candles and watching for patterns in the snow on the silnylon walls.

Oakey Mountain Shelter to Jones Branch

View from the shelter

12.5 miles

Walking on the trail today, I thought about walking. Not much else to think about. I thought about how I have walked at least 3000 miles in my life. I’m not even sure that’s a lot. I’ve spent several years of my life doing little but walking, but how does that compare to those African women who have to walk three miles a day just to get to a water source?

Compared to what a lot of people have walked, most Americans for instance, 3000 miles is a lot. Walking 3000 miles makes me something of an expert. It makes me a walker. But what is it about walking? Why is it so important?

I like to think of my own walking adventure as a pilgrimage—hence my subhead—just like Annie Dillard does. My walking is a pilgrimage because I’m seeking after something as I walk. I’m following in the tradition of great walkers of the past. But what am I seeking? Is the answer the walking itself? Is the adage true—the journey is the destination?

Being a walker means I have bad knees. Because I carry my belongings on my back, I have bad shoulders, too. But I continue to walk. Searching after something, not always knowing what, like all the pilgrims who have gone before. On this not-all-that Christmas-y Christmas Eve, maybe I’m one of those magi who still wander unknown paths, following a strange star.

Davis Mountain Shelter to Oakey Mountain Shelter

Fire and moon

11.8 miles

Shadow is beginning to be gimpy around camp. I’m worried I’m pushing him too hard, even though he isn’t really the reason my mileage hasn’t picked up. I’m trying to ease him into the hiking life. He seems to love it, but at the end of the day he’s as tired as both of us. All of it’s coming back to me—mainly the feeling of always wanting to have gone further, wanting more, more miles, even while my body wants to stop.

The last few miles coming into camp are always miserable. Always. That’s the thing about thru-hiking. It’s not enjoyable in the way that a day hike is, or even an overnight backpacking trip or a weekend can be. Because there’s always a push for more miles in a shorter time, an earlier time to wake up, a later time to get into camp. I’m always pushing myself for more to give to the trail.

So what is the point of those last however-many miles coming into camp? The ones where my head’s down, and Shadow’s head’s down, and his tail is down too, and we’re both just trying doggedly to get here, wherever there is? I don’t see anything in those miles. There’s nothing beautiful, or revelatory, or even noteworthy in them.

Adage goes: the journey is the destination. Maybe so. I know that Thich Naht Hanh discusses walking meditation, and I can understand that concept. There’s a fluidity of mind that come from walking, where the experience of walking itself becomes my focus, where I become mindful of my body’s motion and little else. My consciousness can just drift as my feet move through the leaves. I wish I had read more Thich Naht Hanh before I left, so I’d have a better idea as to how to use a walking meditation to focus my consciousness, rather than thinking about how tired or how much pain I’m in.

Spring Creek Shelter to Davis Mountain Shelter

Crossing the state line

8.9 miles

I’m having a hard time journaling now that I know I probably won’t be able to post these entries until I’m back in Chattanooga. It was depressing seeing all of these comments from friends in Cave Spring, knowing that all of you’d love to hear what’s going on, but running out of computer time to post. I have to let it go. It’s like on the boat. It’s worth writing, even if I don’t know when anyone will read my entries.

Tonight the moon rose low and orange behind the shelter. It looked like a harvest moon, even though I don’t know what a harvest moon is. Last night was both the full moon and the winter solstice, an occurrence that happens I don’t know how rarely. I watched the moon, chased by clouds, all night, staying up well past midnight by the fire.

Even tonight I’m writing more by moon light than by my dying headlamp. We’re in shelter country now. The Alabama trail association, evidently trying to live up to its Appalachian Trail counterparts, has built gorgeous three-sided lean-tos about every nine miles on their section of trail. They all seem brand new, and even nicer than the ones on the AT.

So far the trail has been well-blazed in Alabama, too, and far prettier. I don’t know how crossing an arbitrary state line can make that kind of difference, but evidently it does. It just goes to show how much a team of organized volunteers can accomplish. Not that they can make a trail more beautiful, but they can certainly make an effort to route it through more beautiful areas.

Lock and Dam Park to Spring Creek Shelter (via Cave Spring, Georgia)

21.2 miles (1.9 miles hiking and 19.3 miles hitching/yellow-blazing)

I had vast plans of getting into town today and posting my last ten days worth of posts, but unfortunately I am running out of time in my library internet session. Maybe next time. I am writing, and walking, and loving every step and every word. My publication will just be delayed shortly. Internet access is far more scarce in backwoods Georgia than I had expected.

But. I am alive. I miss everyone, and Merry Christmas.

Rome, Georgia, to Lock and Dam Park

Food for the resupply

8.1 miles on trail (plus 4.1? miles of off-trail road-walking, for 12.2 miles for the day)

Shadow (and I) had to experience twelve miles of asphalt walking today, and now he's gimping around camp, nursing his right shoulder. Walking on concrete is not fun. Things I saw along the road today: a hypodermic needle. An empty bottle of Sudafed (I didn't even know it came in bottles). A discarded pregnancy test. Bleached-out Fire sauce packets. An empty Three Olives vodka bottle. Styrofoam. More broken beer bottles than I can count.

In some ways, I'm glad I got to experience a true, real-world Georgia road walk, down to the eighteen-wheelers buzzing past. I've been avoiding the road-walk sections of the trail, hitching rides with friends and strangers, but at least now I can say I did one full day on the road. I know what I'm missing. And I have no qualms, whatsoever, about skipping these sections.

It's still an interesting way to see the world, an interesting way to understand our country, seeing it from the perspective of the things we throw out our car windows. It was worth doing once. But I'm not sure it'd be worth doing a second time. There are people who do whole long-distance road walks, cross-country road walks, thousands of miles along highway, and I just couldn't. I guess I learned that about myself today--that I need to be in wilderness for this kind of adventure to feel worthwhile.

My mom is coming to visit tomorrow, as an early Christmas gift and as a way for her to experience the trail. She's going to jump us ahead the next fifteen miles of road walk, so I don't have to do the next two days on asphalt. The people who do these trails as purists, who walk every mile of concrete, I may never understand.

Cabin Creek to Rome, Georgia

Rocky Georgia trail

3.3 miles

We got rides from three little old church ladies today. What they're thinking, picking up two weather-beaten strangers and a giant black wolf-dog, I have no idea. Except maybe they're thinking that it's almost Christmas and it's cold and they believe in the kindness of strangers. All of them were Baptists, too. The trail may force me to revise my opinion of Baptists.

Hitchhiking is one of those odd perils of trail life, one of those habits that everyday people think has gone the way of the dinosaur, but that trail people have to deal with all of the time. George Mueller, the Christian missionary who ran orphanages in industrial-age England, is a personal hero of mine, and one of the things I love about him is how he refused to ask for money. He fed his orphans with donations, but he didn't ask for any of them. He just waited for the money to show up in envelopes under his front door.

I always want my hitching to be the same way, a completely unasked-for blessing. I want to dawdle around on street corners with a backpack and wait for someone to offer a ride, and wait for grace. That's what happened today, at least with our last ride--the widow of a disabled veteran who wanted to tell me all about her dog and her husband. That ride was a gift, and so was meeting her. Getting rides from strangers is one of the best things about backpacking. Every time, it affirms my belief in my fellow human beings.

I also stopped and had fantastic fried chicken and biscuits from a roadside diner attached to the Citgo, the Citgo that had achieved almost legendary proportions in my mind, as the future site of food and warmth and everything good about civilization. I never would have found a diner like that, let alone eaten at one, except for the trail. It's another of the things I love best about hiking--the way seeing the country from the ground up allows me to experience things I would never have the chance to otherwise. Today it was fried chicken the way it was invented to be, lightly breaded and crispy, with huge biscuits, yellow butter baked right into the crust, and stewed turnip greens, the first vegetable I've seen in ten days. Food has rarely tasted so good.

Taliaferro to Cabin Creeks

Backpack still life

10.6 miles

I'm sitting in my tarp, wrapped in my sleeping bag. It's getting cold again. I had one glorious night last night of above-freezing temperatures, and a beautiful sunny day today, but tonight it is clear and getting colder. Still, the moonlight reflects off the leaves scattered in front of my teepee, and in my layers of down, I am content.

Today the trail reached a rails-to-trails section, a converted railroad bed turned into a bike path. Which is lovely, if you happen to be a neighbor, but not so great for the thru-hiker. The hiking was flat but muddy, paralleling a highway the whole day, sometimes between two different roads, with only a scrim of trees on either side. If I had been a hobo, I would follow the same route, walking down the railroad tracks. I even found an abandoned depot, where hobo me would have spent the night.

At least six packs of unleashed dogs attacked us, or tried to, sent almost into a fervor at the sight of Shadow walking calmly past. They were aggressive, but not enough to challenge an 80-pound wolf-dog. One, an old red pit bull with only three legs, looked as if she would have made the attempt except for a number of defeats in the ring. Now she had drooping dugs hung almost to the ground. She must be good breeding stock. Lesson learned: Georgia has no leash law. Not that there's anything to be done about that.

I wonder if hobos had to fight off packs of hungry dogs. I wonder what the line is between hiker and hobo, even now. I wonder what these people think about us, with our backpacks, nonchalantly strolling past their backyards. Maybe one of them will leave a pie on a windowsill.

Forest Service Road 205A to Taliaferro Creek

"Come here," I tell Shadow. He comes.

8.4 miles

Today I woke to rain drumming on the fabric of my tarp. The last sound any hiker wants to hear. And I needed to pee. So I lay still in my cozy bag for as long as I had strength, and then made a mad dash for the far side of an oak. It turns out it wasn't rain after all, but just leftover water being blown from the branches of trees. It wasn't as bad as I thought.

So I hiked anyway, even though one of the cardinal rules of hiking is: Hike in the rain, but never start hiking in the rain. And I was so glad I did. The morning was clammy and cold, but by afternoon, coming down a ridge into fifty-degree weather, the sun started filtering through the trees and the whole world turned gold. Maybe it's because I'm reading Annie Dillard, but I keep finding beauty in unexpected places. Today I was shocked at the forest floor of yellow and orange oak leaves. I looked up and the branches were bare, but below my feet were all the colors of the fall forest.

Being warm doesn't hurt, either. Despite the looming beauty every day, I keep asking myself why I am doing this journey. Why does anyone adventure at all? This morning in my sleeping bag, I remembered Ernest Shackleton and all of those other Antarctic explorers. What drove them into that misery and suffering? At least when I get out of my bag in the morning, I'm not afraid I'm going to die. But he got out of his tent every day, even knowing that he was more likely to die walking than die in his shelter. But if he didn't keep walking, he'd die too.

Many of those adventurers ate their dogs. They actually killed them, and ate them. In their defense, it was only after many of their men had died, but still. I look at Shadow, and I think--he's my colleague, my companion on this adventure. How could anyone do that, ever? But they did, and it was their choice to put themselves into that horrific scenario.

For what? For glory? On an endless quest to find themselves? That's what this trip feels like to me, sometimes. At least the Appalachian Trail has a bit of mystique, some fame that hangs about it. The Pinhoti Trail and its turkey tracks had never been heard of by anyone. Despite the fact that my hike may be the FIRST-EVER southbound winter thru-hike of the trail, I will gain no recognition for it. All of my motivation has to come solely from inside myself.

Narrows Picnic Ground to Forest Service Road 205A

View from the trail

10.4 miles (plus 1.5? miles off-trail, lost)

No fire tonight, which makes an astonishing difference in my mood. Instead I am curled up in my down sleeping bag and every ounce of clothing I am carrying, at probably six o'clock in the evening. The tarp is covered in ice. It rained all afternoon, and the rain has been freezing on the exterior walls.

It didn't actually rain, though. It snowed, most of the time, and as we walked into camp it warmed just enough so the snow melted and turned to rain, but stayed cold enough that the water froze as soon as it hit a surface. A surface like a rain jacket. So my rain jacket has a literal shell of sharp icy nuggets. And I'm sequestered for the night.

Camping dry again tonight, too, with no water source nearby, although this time I'm prepared. Each of us (Shadow included) is carrying a full three liters of water. There is a thirteen-mile dry spell over the next stretch of trail--no springs or creeks of any kind crossing our path--an dd then the next major landmark is a Citgo gas station, where I will buy food for the next week of hiking.

Plus, I got lost again this morning, wasting yet another good hiking hour of daylight, doodling around on another gravel road to nowhere, trying to find a blaze. That's the third time so far. Whoever designed the trail put about 100 blazes where they are least useful to anyone hiking (immediately before an intersection, for example, as opposed to after), and none where they are needed most (at a gravel road that splits in three directions, for instance). Can you tell the bloom is off the rose?

I know, from experience, that these cold, damp nights are exactly what long-distance hiking is all about. Perseverance, or consistency, or bullheadedness, or self-torture, or something. Why am I doing this journey again? I still can't quite answer that question. I'm doing it because I want to, because I choose to, but why exactly do I want numb fingers and a frozen abode? For the adventure of it, I suppose. But adventure is never as sexy in the actual living of it.

West Arumchee Creek to Narrows Picnic Ground

Bark of a hemlock

7.2 miles

I brought two books with me into the wilderness. One is Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and the other is Vivian Gornick's The Situation and the Story. I read Annie Dillard's chapter on parasites last night, and today came on a huge stand of hemlock trees, dying from the woolly adelgid. I had been seeing them dead across the trail all along, huge pine carcasses cast in my path, but today I finally figured out what they were and why they were all dead.

After that, I felt like I was walking through a graveyard. Mammoth pines, hundreds of years of growth, dead all around me. and nothing I could do about it. One pine, so big I would have a hard time putting my arms around it, was newly fallen, the flesh of its inner trunk pink and fresh and wet. It looked like a little breeze had come over the crest of the mountain and knocked it over. Just a push, and a 100-year-old tree was down.

But death is love's companion, always there. Eros and thanatos, those two ancient twins.

I don't really know why I'm out here. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision with a modicum of planning. I needed to be outside again, knew that my stationary life was causing me to stagnate, knew that I needed to be on the move. It's the last month of my 32nd year. Jesus was 33 when he was crucified. It's a significant year, the 33rd of one's life. I need to take a step back, and think about my future.

Maybe part of that need was a need to witness some death. Even the deaths of hemlocks ona Georgia mountain ridge. The next time I pass through, they all will almost certainly be gone. And this self I'm carrying through, she too will be gone.

Keown Falls to West Armuchee Creek

Frost flowers

10.0 miles

I'm sitting across a fire, the coals bloody red and warm. The logs crackle. The flesh on the left side of my body feels scalded, the right feels as if there's a cold wet towel laid against my skin. Even though I have three layers on.

It's forecast to be fifteen degrees tonight, and again, I'm guessing that it's actually much lower than that. No way to know. Today the frost bloomed up from the ground, encasing just one kind of grassy weed with these delicate blossoms of ice. Reverse blossoms. The snow rose growing from the dirt, carrying the stem aloft.

The threads of the ice were like miniscule ribbons. Like pulls of salt-water taffy. When I first saw one, I thought it was litter, some cheap bride's cast-off corsage. Then I looked closer and they were everywhere. Fields of bridal detritus. We tasted the frost, and the fronds of crystal were so light, so little, that they melted right away. They tasted delicious, like whatever delicate chemicals chlorophyll extrudes.

Later in the day, when I had to strip off my shoes and socks and roll up my long underwear over my knees to wade across two foot-and-a-half deep streams--not so fun or so beautiful. Wading and long underwear are not two things that generally go together, for good reason. Walking, and fast, is the only sure way to warm numb toes. Why would anyone convince me to walk through two rivers on the coldest day of the year?

Love. True love. It's the only possible reason. Wasn't Leopold Bloom always saying something like that?

Snake Creek Gap to Keown Falls

Sunset on the trail

6.6 miles on trail (plus 8? miles of lost walking for a total of about 15)

Today was another horrible day of being lost. One intersection at a gravel road I came to a full five times, the fifth time in a car, hitching back the way I had come two of the previous four times, because even on the fifth time in a car, I couldn't figure out which direction to go. It is more frustrating than I have words to recount. No matter how many times I tell myself: it's okay! Relax! You're just out here for a good time, for an adventure! it is not okay. Every step that is not on the actual trail itself, not for some larger purpose, however arbitrary, is miserable.

I'd say I walked at least fifteen miles today, maybe more, and on the food I'd planned for seven. Daylight is going really fast, and it's just getting faster--the solstice is just around the corner. I don't feel like I'm making any real progress towards my destination, especially when I'm spending more time wandering around lost than I am on the trail. As much as I know it doesn't matter (except in terms of the timeframe I'd planned for my trip), it still stings.

At least I finally made it back to the actual trail to camp. Shadow hitched us a ride, by stopping in the middle of a dirt road and not getting out of the way until a driver stopped and complimented him on what a pretty dog he is. The driver and his companions--three good-hearted Southern hillbillies, driving around forest-service roads with a case of Keystone Light--knew exactly where we needed to go and were willing to take us there. Praise be the Lord and American brewing establishments.

The crazy thing was that they had a thermometer in the car. (A thermometer is another of those things an ultra-lighter deigns not to carry.) So we've been guessing at temperatures out here, and going by the forecast. But his gauge read 21 degrees! And it was cold today, but not nearly as cold as I've seen it. Not water freezing while my back is turned cold. Which means I'd guess that I've already seen single digits out here. Just as meaningless as walking eight miles off trail? Perhaps. But it feels like it means a hell of a lot more.

Hurricane Mountain to Snake Creek Gap

Fingers of frost reaching up from the ground

9.3 miles

Water continues to be my major challenge out here. I had thought water would be the least of my worries, going so far as to only bring a liter of carrying capacity and throwing in an extra Dasani bottle at the last minute, just in case. After the first night of camping without water, I realized that a single liter was far too little. I picked up another liter bottle in Chatsworth. (A big Gatorade bottle--water bottles are so cheap, and they come with a free drink inside!)

Two liters is the most I ever carried at a time, on any trail. Including backpacking across the Mojave Desert on the Pacific Crest Trail. But here, it feels barely enough. It's the third night tonight I've camped without water out of a total of five nights on the rail. Half of the water sources listed in my guide aren't running. And there aren't that many to begin with.

The reason I was able to hike so light on the PCT is because of cameling--another of those jargony trail terms that means I could sit still at the water source and drink two liters at a time. When I finally arrived at the only water source today, I drank almost a liter and a half. It takes time to build up belly capacity for water. Unfortunately, it's the one thing I can't convince the dog to do.

He drank a lot of water this morning, but not nearly as much as he needed to in order to make it through another waterless night. As much as I tried to convince him, he couldn't grasp the concept of the next twelve miles being waterless. He drank as much as he needed at exactly that moment and no more. He's carrying his own water now, at least some of it, but it's impossible for him to carry enough of it to be happy. He'd drink two liters without blinking the minute we'd come into camp, if I had it available.

I'm realizing why humans and dogs are such good partners. Dogs take the short view, humans the long. The short view is useful for things like, oh, knowing if there are coyotes circling your camp. The long view is useful for when you have to plan water sources. I see it all the time with him. Even with his food, or running away from the trail. He sees exactly what's in front of him, and no more. It's how I try to see the world when I do yoga. But it's not that helpful when there's any need for a plan.

Dug Gap to Hurricane Mountain

Setting out in the snow

6.5 miles (plus 24 miles hitched/yellow-blazed)

One of the movies I watched in town was "Roadhouse," one of those 80s classics with Patrick Swayze in a mullet. It seemed to be making a comeback, like all the rest of that 80s crap. Even Kelly Lynch, in the movie, wears those fantastic faux tortoiseshell glasses that all the Brooklyn hipsters are sporting these days. The coolest thing in the movie is how Dalton, our titular hero, shows up in town and in three scenes has a job, a car, and an apartment over a ranch, just like that. Actually, the coolest thing in the movie is Sam Elliott, but he's the coolest thing in any movie he's in, "Big Lebowski" included. Just like Gregory Peck.

I digress. So coming through Chatsworth, on a little Family-Dollar town in the middle-of-nowhere Georgia, made me think about how easy it'd be to do it just like Dalton. There's a 1980 Chevy Nova down the street, the next lot over. A flea market on the other side of our cheap motel. A "mature lady" who posted a room to let sign at the bulletin board of the grocery store. All I'd need is a job at a roadhouse.

I guess it's one of the major reasons why I love these kinds of trips. I love imagining the kind of life I could lead in any one of these little towns. Maybe it's one of those things I love because all of Americana is still so exotic to me. I'm sure kids who grow up here can't wait to get out and move to the big cities of Chattanooga and Atlanta. But for me, these small towns have the same exotic allure that most Americans feel for the rural villages of France, or Thailand.

Small town movies remind me of that. Especially ones where a stranger comes to town and changes everything. I always want to be that mysterious stranger, who moves into old lady Vann's place and teaches yoga at the community center and writes novels.

I am the traveler. That is why I'm in these towns. I'm the stranger that brings in the story. And the traveler moves on through.

Chatsworth, Georgia

0 miles

Only three days out and already I'm taking a zero day (trail code for no miles hiked). I must be getting soft. Or three days spent in sub-twenty degree weather require a full day of defrosting. The real reason I decided to take a day off is because a friend is driving through town tomorrow and can give me a ride across the next forty miles of asphalt that is the trail.

I decided before departing that if I could avoid walking on concrete, I would. The Pinhoti Trail is allegedly complete, but this stretch of Georgia is connected by a significant section of road-walking, which is a peril of lesser-hiked trails. Last night we flagged down a ride from some Baptists going to Bible study on Wednesday night, and they gave us a ride into town. I joked with them about how they live along one of America's National Scenic Trails! They should see hikers all the time! Of course, they don't. I think we were the first people with backpacks they had ever seen, despite the famous Pinhoti turkey-track logo posted not 100 yards from the church's door.

Anyway, it's good to be warm again. We had a little snafu yesterday when we found a blaze posted in the wrong direction, and took at least a seven-mile detour down into a ravine. I have no idea how far out of our way we walked. But it was the prettiest non-section of the trail so far, taking us across two rock-strewn almost-frozen rivers, past a waterfall with huge scattered house-sized boulders, and down into a deep gorge and back out again. It's still no fun hiking in the wrong direction. Spirits were low for a while.

But after a four-mile night hike, in the still twenty-degree weather, fortified by a Snickers bar and church folk, things are looking up again. I'm looking forward to heading into the lower mountains, the ones farther away from the lower Appalachians. These four days were just to fortify our nerves to the cold--tomorrow starts the real continuing adventure. Which, I hope, will be warmer.

It's so weird to be in a climate-controlled room after learning to be okay with consistent below-freezing temperatures. Different parts of my body keep remembering to be cold, as if they're waking up. My skin is having weird reactions. It's crazy how the human body can adjust to almost anything, given time. And now my body is adjusting to having delicious pizza in my belly. That, I can adjust to any day.

Tatum Lead to Ramshurst, GA

9.7 trail miles (15 total miles?)

Double Top to Tatum Lead

11.5 miles

The third day is the day when the rubber hits the road, so to speak. Now I realize: this is what it's like. Ice frozen in my water bottles all day, almost no running water in springs to drink from, numb fingers and toes every minute. What everyone says about this being the season--is wrong.

I camped dry (without a water source nearby) last night and only found one running stream today, running right through some people's front lawn. We were sitting there, eating breakfast, when some cars drove by--one pick-up truck passed three times. Probably thinking: what are these Yankee idiots doing out in 20-degree weather?

I am hiking with a partner this time, so those kinds of things feel less threatening, but we are still in Deliverance country. None of the sections of trail have been completely without a road walk portion, and though they haven't been bad, at least not as bad as I expected, it's still not fun to walk around with a backpack in front of someone's house. It makes me feel like some kind of criminal drifter. Which just goes to show how far outside of societal norms I have wandered.

The trail is much more like the southern Appalachians than I expected, both in climate and in scenery. The cold is awful, but it's so much more of an adventure to be doing this hike in winter. So much more ambitious and dangerous and exciting. At least, that's how I feel right now, beside a fire and with mac and cheese in my belly. Tomorrow morning, when I'm waking up again to frozen shoes, I may not be so happy.

Gennett Poplar to Double Top

The massive Gennett Poplar

7.6 miles

It's supposed to be even colder tonight--the lower teens. Last night snow was falling on my sleeves--tonight a water bottle froze while my back was turned. I'm getting into a zone, though. I had forgotten all the tried and true tricks about preventing hypothermia. 1. Change immediately out of any and all clothes you were wearing upon hiking once you get into camp. 2. Dry base layer!

I'm hiking with far more clothes than I had on the Appalachian Trail, and I don't know if that's because I've gone soft or if it's really that much colder out here. I think it's because it's that much colder. Tonight's forecast was for eighteen degrees, in Chattanooga, and there's a lot more elevation out here. I thought the highest point was less than 2000 feet, but in reality it's 3700 feet, and I crossed over that mountain eysterday.

The truth remains: it is cold. Tonight I will sleep with my down jacket on inside of my fifteen-degree sleeping bag, and I will probably not be warm. It is supposed to be the best time to hike in this region of the country, because hikers don't need to worry about water, but water is still scarce. The thing is, it's not so cold that I really need to worry about dying either.

It's so worth it to realize that although it's not easy to live out here, exposed to the elements, it is possible. It makes me so happy, knowing that I'm capable of living this way. Every day that passes, I remember the things I'm capable of. I knew I was, but it's good to be reminded physically every once in a while.

Forest Service Road 64 to Gennett Poplar

Pinhoti Trail
6.3 miles

I'm sitting in front of a fire, the last embers slowly burnign down. On the trail again, a different trail, but still the trail. I'm going out for the whole daggum thing, all 340 miles of it, theoretically.

It's about 22 degrees out tonight, and I am not a winter person. Shadow the dog is with me, but he doesn't like the fire, so he and his warmth stay far away. He was in his element today, racing back and froth along the trail, even with a pack that's a quarter of his body weight. A lot heavier than mine, percentage-wise.

Every time I come out into the wilderness, I realize that this life is what I always want. I always want to be this connected to the earth. Just being connected to the weather again, even bad, snowy weather, fills me with joy. Because I realize I'm capable of handling it. In my down jacket and rain gear, I'm just as comfortable as I would be at home on the couch. More comfortable. Because I'm fully living, deliberately living. Because I can watch the snow melt on my coat and it doesn't bother me.

Of course, what I always forget about in my normal life is the pain. If hiking is a metaphor for life, and life is pain, then hiking is even more concentrated pain. It's the part I forget about as soon as I'm home, warm and cozy on the couch. The pain is just beginning--a twinge in the knee or back, a second toe beginning to whimper. I forget about the pain, and the monotony. Every step, every mile, every mountain is more or less the same. After the excitement of the first couple of miles, even the cold and the pain begin to settle into a routine.

Whatever you wish to keep

Originally uploaded by jc_strick

Yoga in Chattanooga

Boat kids are a lot like missionary kids. All of us are crazy gypsies for the rest of our lives. Some academics even came up with a name for us: third-culture kids. Because the culture we create is in between the two that we grew up conscious of. That’s one of the things we grow up with a continual awareness of: culture.

Most children, especially those growing up in the United States, aren’t even aware that such a thing exists. As far as they’re concerned there’s only one. Theirs. They are fish growing up not aware of the ocean. How can they be, when they’ve never seen anything else? But we missionary kids are aware, from the moment we cross that invisible boundary between the worlds, that culture is all there is.

Maybe that’s what keeps us endlessly questing among cultures. I look at people who manage to be stationary, attached to one place, with envy. Such an odd thing, to know stories about the grandparents of the people you run into at the grocery store. Such an odd thing, to meet someone and realize you went to kindergarten with her. So strange, to never be a stranger.

I see cultures, and I want to taste them. I want to experience them, and then move on to another one. The Germans have the best word for this feeling, as usual. Wanderlust. I can’t stay in one place, because I lust after new places, after new experiences, after new journeys. Wanderlust haunts me like a spectre.

So I’m planning another trip. I had intended to do a long hike this year, and I’m realizing that the year is drawing to an end. I’ve taken time off of both my jobs, and I’m heading south, to the Alabama Pinhoti Trail. This blog was designed as a travel blog, after all. Something I’ve fallen away from in the last two years of staying still. But traveling is when my heart beats fastest.

Race for the prize

Need I say more? I have been silent for November, but no longer. I have vast posts coming your way, dear reader. I hope.

Release me

Austin Hollow Road

I am at the Austin Hollow acreage, sitting in the sun beneath a huge oak with bees buzzing around me and my shoes off. Land. My land. I want it to be my land.

Even though there is a tobacco field across the street and a neighboring farmhouse, I could be the only person on earth right now, and that’s the way I like it. I want this land, and they are asking exactly $7500 more than I have available. I have made an offer, but we are at an impasse, exactly $2500 apart from each other, and the offer that I have made would still force me to go into debt.

My good friend Sonia thinks I should put a Donate Now button on my blog to help me meet that gap, as if all of you don’t have better things to do with your money, like give it to orphans in Afghanistan, or flood victims in Pakistan, or children dying of cholera in Haiti. No. All of you should give money to me, crazy girl who wants to build an earth-ship in back-country Tennessee, and who will probably spend your hard-earned money on yerba mate and yoga workshops anyway. I don’t know what to do.

I think I’m just going to wait and see if Jesus feels like being nice. Jesus, or fate, or the universe, or whoever is in control. My brother calls me a determinist, which, in many ways, I am. I believe I’m following a path already chosen for me. So I can have faith that whatever is meant to happen will happen, eventually. (With courtesies to Alan Ball.)

The thing with fate, though, is that it doesn’t relieve anyone of the burden of free will. I want this land to be mine, but that doesn’t mean that I’m allowed to have this land. I was actually given a straight-up, hardcore sign the last time I was here. Sharing it with you is something that I wanted to do, but even now it feels too personal.

That I was given a sign begs the question—if I am intended to have this land, then I can’t mess it up. Somehow, I’ll get it. Somehow it’ll come to be mine. Somehow.

I wish I could believe that. I’m a determinist except for when it actually means that someone could be looking out for me. Then it feels too good to be true. Too much like wish-fulfillment. Which is what all of the atheists and humanists out there are no doubt thinking. Then I have to make it mine, wrest it from the hands of its owners by the power of my almighty will.

And if I don’t? Ah, well. We’re all just rats in a cage. I alternate between giddy hopefulness and desolate hopelessness. I have to find a way to have faith, if not in Christ, then in myself. But how?

Clearly, I am questing. But I do love the sun on my back, and even the flies suckling the sweat from my arms.

His ghost is lying thirsty

In case anyone wants to make the best-ever Bahamian mix CD, in order to celebrate the end of summer, here are my choices:

1. Rake ‘n Scrape Mama – The Lassie Doh Boys


2. Only in Exuma – Dry Bread

3. Junkanoo Rock – Ira Storr

4. Tonight Is the Night (You Make Me a Woman) - Betty Wright


5. Fat Gals - Sir Kai

6. I Ain't Asking Fa Much - Ancient Man


7. Cry Baby - Eddie Minnis

8. Neighbour! Neighbour! - Colyn McDonald

9. Gal If I Had You - Eugene "Geno D" Davis

10. Mosquito Bite - Eugene "Geno D" Davis


11. Onion - Wilfred Mullings

12. Shame and Scandal in the Family - Shawn Elliott


13. Call da Fire Engine - Ancient Man


It took me forever to put this post together, but it was so fun to relive all those days chopping up onions in the galley and listening to Radio Bahamas. Some of the links get you to live streaming songs, and some to places you can buy albums. And you all should buy albums.

I have to admit, also, that Ancient Man has got to be at the top of the list. I can't believe there are videos of Crooked Island's Homecoming on YouTube! Click on the links, too, because they'll take you to the studio versions of his songs, with much better sound quality. But much worse dancing.

Gotta find me a janitor to sweep me off my feet

Wildflower on another piece of land I will almost certainly not buy

The planet is turning away from the sun, slowly, even though it was still 100 degrees out this week. The humidity has lessened. I don’t feel a desperate need to carry my window fan from room to room. At night, I actually have to turn my fan off, which means it’s too cold.

I went to the park last Thursday, to get a dose of sunlight before Labor Day. My least favorite holiday. Labor day means summer is over. No more wearing white. No more Vitamin D. No more beaded sweat on my upper lip. If I don’t have my sun, thing start to fall apart.

This Chattanooga summer has been the hottest on record, and for me it’s not hot enough. Or it’s exactly hot enough—I just don’t want it to get any cooler, ever. I’m beginning to believe a move to Mexico might be advisable. Mexico, or Thailand.

The park was deserted. I had expected hordes. It was a beautiful, sunny day, only two days before the holiday weekend. I forget about things like school. Yet another example of treating myself as well as I would a child. What would I want to do instead of school, if I was in school all day? I’d want to be there, in the sun, gazing out at the river, hearing the calls of boaters across the water.

Only a month more of warmth, and I haven’t budgeted nearly enough time for basking in the sun this summer. I’ve spent the last several (non-blogging) weeks grabbing at any spare moment to drive around to more pieces of land. I am determined to buy a place before winter. Determined. That doesn’t mean, however, that a piece will reveal itself to me.

I continue to experience the challenge of deciding between mountain and valley. I don’t want to end up making the wrong decision. Soil can be enriched, yes, but every time I drive to look at another barren, rocky five acres, covered in bugs and scrub pines—I drive past acres and acres of fertile, verdant bottomland. I think, as I drive: this is what I want.