4/2/00
Day 11
Hightop Hut Shelter
120 miles

By rights, I should be warm, dry, clean, and laying on a motel bed in Elkton after a seriously greasy restaurant meal.  But "Trail Magic" conspired against me, and here I am, back in the woods.  I hiked out to Swift Run Gap with the two guys who stayed at the shelter last night.  Their pace was a bit faster than my own, and as a result we arrived at the Gap (9 miles) by noon.  I stuck my thumb out and got a ride in 5 minutes.  That took me to the Food Lion.  After shopping, I began walking back East along Route 33 in a light drizzle of rain.  I had my thumb out whenever I'd hear cars coming up behind me, but I'd already decided that if I reached the motels before I got picked up, I was going to stay the night.  When who should pull over but Henry Edwards, one of the authors of the ATC's "Thru-Hikers Companion" guidebook.  Of course he gave me a lift all the way back to the trailhead.   So I had no choice but to suck it up, be a man, and hike another 3 miles (climbing 1100 feet) to the Hightop shelter.  The rain stopped for a while, but by the time I got to the top, the trees were shrouded in fog.  The mist keeps blowing in under the shelter roof, getting things wet that rain couldn't reach.  So, no hot shower for Greggy.  4 more days of stinky clothes and deplorable personal hygiene.

The next shelter South of here is only 8 miles away, so it should be a pretty easy day - even if it's still raining tomorrow.  In case it doesn't show, I actually do spend portions of each day quite glad that I'm out here.  But the lure of a little civilization in Waynesboro is very strong now, and I look forward to a little break there before I hit the Trail in earnest again

Walking along sometimes I'm not thinking of anything more complicated then where to step among the rocks for the next few feet.  Sometimes I'm keeping a running inventory of my various aches and pains of the moment.  Sometimes I realize that I have a simple, repetitive tune running through my head that is synchronized with the plodding of my feet and my labored breathing.  Sometimes this tune sounds suspiciously like the theme they play when the contestants are considering their questions for Final Jeopardy.  A couple of times I have found a song playing in my head that would normally be abhorent to me.  Once it was the Carpenters "Close to You."  Another time it was "Dreams of Laura."  When you think about how many brain cells it must take to record the words, the melody, the tonal quality of the vocalist and the instruments, it really bothers me that things like that are lurking in my brain while most of the time I have to concentrate really hard to remember my phone number.

Well, surprisingly on this rainy night, 3 people just showed up.  They're all veterans of the AT.  One of them, from South Africa, is completing a section she had to abandon in a prior year due to bad weather.

Sometimes I have a running dialogue going in my head.  Sometimes it is thoughts that are directed to you, or maybe just to myself, but often when I sit down to write the words are gone.