Day 11 – Assessing and Reassessing

0 miles

Mountain Home B&B

Turns out that last night’s soup-a-thon was pretty much a repeat of the night before, except it started and ended an hour earlier. The Cabbin was at capacity, and everyone was in the kitchen except me on my bed, and Street Clothes in the other double bed on the first floor. He and a young woman called Bac (pronounced “bass” and short for “bacitracin”) had come in late. It was a high energy group of happy hikers! Eventually folks drifted to bed while I dozed; I gradually became aware that it was dark and quiet, before drifting away again.

I was first up and out this morning for breakfast, after which I packed up to move to the main house, since the Cabbin was already fully booked for this evening. I ended up with a private room in the main house that I am sharing with Street Clothes since he decided to zero today.

After packing I hung with Blink and Bac while he packed away his resupply and reheated the leftover soup for second breakfast, and she sat staring at her pack with a glum look on her face. It had begun raining overnight, and she obviously wasn’t look forward to hiking in the wet and cold. Also, she is dealing with some sort of hip issue that was bothering her even without a pack on.

Blink convinced her to have a cup of ginger and lemon tea before leaving, and then the soup was ready, so she had some of that. By that point High Viz and 109 had come down from packing upstairs, and Street Clothes had come back from the house, so we had everyone eating soup together for a short time before we went our separate ways.

Finally Bac put her pack on and went out into the weather. Soon afterwards, I wished those remaining “happy trails”, then grabbed my stuff and went up to the house.

Lisa seemed happy to have me up at the house, and suggested if I wanted to sit in the parlor and play the ukulele, she’d be pleased. My private room wouldn’t be ready to put my stuff in until later.

High Viz came in shortly after that. His wife was driving up from the Atlanta airport to pick him up around 1pm.

A good portion of the day was taken up by my considering my options moving forward. I’ve decided to get back on trail in the morning. In two days I can be at the Skyland Resort, at a place with access to transportation should it become clear that I need to get off trail.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, in order to go into SNP, one fills in a backcountry permit. I told Scott that the kiosk had been out of blank permits. He was going to be near the park headquarters, so he said he’d pick me up one. The permit is free for AT hikers passing the kiosk, but costs $10 online or elsewhere. I’d have been satisfied with the note I put in a couple days ago, but Scott was pretty adamant I follow the policy. He needs to play by the rules and policies because he works closely with the park staff, especially in times of emergency, like when the hurricane blew through a while ago. He helped coordinate getting hikers out of the park when it was closed down.

With the permit, one is expected to fill in the location of each night’s camp. So I sat with the AT app (once called Guthook, now called Far Out) on my phone and the pocket map of the park to work out at least an attempt at predicting my location over the next 10 days. My intention is to be more loose in my actions than that suggests.

Around dinner time Lisa sat down to talk about my breakfast plans, then we slid easily into a conversation about faith. It turns out that she and I are the same age, and have other similarities of background. I’ll miss hanging around here, but it’s time to move on.

This trip seems to be very much about meetings and partings. And how to sit within the ever-changing moment. Today I hit an edge as a new group of hikers checked in; I really didn’t want to go through the introductions and stuff that goes with it. It’s time to keep my own company for awhile.