“Everything Soaked Through”

AT Day 83

Miles Today: 20.68

AT Mile: 1503.1

(Limestone Spring Shelter [tent])

Yesterday was the worst day that I’ve had on trail. Little attempt was made to hide that fact. I hope that my tone wasn’t too much. But when I read it all back, it felt like it said what it needed to say–namely that yesterday was horrible and that it made me hate everything good in the world.

—

It was raining heavily when we set camp last night, and I thought the rain was going to calm down at around 9pm. I was quite wrong. At 1am it was dumping so hard that I put my headlamp on to check that my things were mostly covered by the tent and the vestibule. It rained so heavily that everything became spackled with dirt and mud from giant raindrops splashing into the earth and kicking up bits of dirt. All the edges of my white tent were black with dirt and mud this morning. Much of my gear that was close to the edges of the vestibule was covered in that same filth.

Fortunately I still slept adeqeuatly. Certainly not perfectly, but at least well, considering the circumstances.

It stopped raining at around 4am, and we were all to trail at around 7.

It was another difficult morning for all of us. Everything was wet. After yesterday, there was a lingering sense of hate.

Plinko shared with me this morning that he reached a point, laying in his tent last night, where he realized that he doesn’t have to keep doing this–that he doesn’t *have* to stay on the trail. It wasn’t the same as saying that he was going to quit, but that he was accepting the reality that there’s nothing forcing him to complete the hike.

It’s something that I’ve battled too. On this trail and all my other trails. For that matter, it’s something that we all go through to different degrees at many points in our lives. Whenever we’re entering a challenge of our own choosing. We have to face our motivations for doing it and whether they outweigh the discomfort of continuing.

Perhaps it’s easier for me in that I don’t live as if there is a choice. I hike as if discontinuing isn’t an option.

I’ve been about as close to quitting the trail this week as any other point on the AT. Not that I’ve ever thought that I was going to quit, but that I hated myself for starting this, because now I *have* to finish it… even though I really don’t.

The suffering this week has been bad though. The last several weeks in fact have been hard. I was talking to Plinko about it tonight. He reminded me that some of the people we’ve met and experiences we’ve had off trail in the last two or three weeks have been especially rewarding, but agreed that the experience of hiking the trail has been rough. I might make a bit of an exception for the trail itself through New York, but even that was pretty tough. The only reason that I bring it up as an exception is because I enjoyed the new trail grade and variations in terrain that New York offered.

I keep having to stop writing and scratch bug bites. I must have a hundred of them all over my body. The places that are covered by clothing are no exception. Although ticks seem to be less of an issue up here so far, the mosquitos, gnats, and flies have been unbelievable! I had another one lodge under my eyelid and disappear today. I’ve seen them like this in parts of Alaska, but it’s been rare. Sometimes the trail goes around a swamp or a bog or a river, and the bugs will be so bad that you can’t even stop. You can’t stop to look at maps or to read a sign on the tree or to do anything. You just have to keep going, because the moment you stop moving they swarm you and the little bit of breeze that you had from moving forward stops providing relief.

Plinko has had a pretty bad upper respiratory infection for about a week, to make his hike even harder. He’s got medication for it now, but he’s coughing and hacking all through the day and night. I really feel for him.

In addition to the mosquito bites that are all over me, my thighs have also broken out completely from folliculitis. A month ago I was under some false held hope that I was going to be able to keep that at bay out here, in this humidity and heat. What a laughable notion… It’s been as bad as it’s ever been. It’s uncomfortable and itches and makes me feel self conscious.

In so many ways, I can feel myself falling apart out here. I can feel the breaking that happens on a thru hike.

I expected that this trail would be hard, but the heat and the humidity make the Appalachian Trail a special type of hellscape that I didn’t know existed in thru hiking.

Eventually it cleared up to mostly blue skies today, although you’d almost never know it since the AT stays in the dense vegetation covered by thick canopy. It became hot, but not quite as humid as it was yesterday. I did still get temperature readings in the 90s though.

Tonight we are all three camped at this shelter, but we’re in our tents, as are the four others who are sleeping here tonight. The mosquitos are too much to be in the shelter. They’d eat you all night. It would be impossible!

Tomorrow we’re going to try to get up and to trail early. We’re going to try to get 25 miles, to bring us to the end of CT. We’ll resupply and get a hotel room if we can. But that’s looking unlikely since it’s 4th of July weekend and prices are through the roof.

Wormwood.