4/27/00
Day 36
Plaza Motel, Pearisburg, VA
385.6 miles

As if to underscore my treatise on high-mileage Northbounders, as soon as I finished writing at Pine Swamp and lay down to sleep, 2 showed up about 1 ½ hours after dark and kept everyone awake for an hour (well, at least me) while they got settled.  5 minutes after they were bedded down, 2 more showed up!  The last time I checked my watch it was 11:30 pm.  Not late by New York City standards, but late enough when you are living in the woods.

Most Northbounders I talk to are convinced that they are just ahead of a huge pack of 2000 or so that are engulfing the trail behind them.  They may be right.  If they are, I am plunging headlong into the swarm.  I can expect everything - hotels, shelters, hitchhiking spots - to be occupied before I get there by hikers who have just as much right to be there as I do.  The crowd I was trying to avoid is about to become my world.  My only hope for peace is to abandon the convenience of the shelters, carry several pounds of extra water with me, and find tentspots in out of the way locations, hoping it won't be raining in the morning.  Perhaps in several weeks I'll have passed through the bulk of them.