7 May – Log Cabin Road to Flint Mountain campsite (17.3 miles)

Another day of decent weather. Came across this sign which is apparently an accommodation for larger people on the Trail I guess…

I found a Tennessee version of Dogtown’s Whale’s Jaw…

I hit the 300 mile mark today. There were many people stopping to take a break at this little stone number. I stopped with them and we all had a nice chat and a lunch break here…

I’ve been thinking about longevity…there is at least one 70-year-old out here who is hiking this Trail and I’ve no doubt after meeting him that he’ll complete in respectable fashion. Remarkable.

Western medicine is on a roll- perhaps even out over it’s skis at the moment.

(When I went to Afghanistan in 07/08, I learned that the average male life expectancy there was 47: yet, I was deploying there at age 48–and expecting to come home and live another 30 years. So—an astonishing health disparity on the globe which is no doubt related to the wealth disparity.)

The poor will die on schedule as their inferior diet, hygiene, and access to medicine will dictate.

But what does this mean for the wealthy nations that extend life?

It appears that the quality of life lags behind the actual extension of life as we can see in the disturbing frailty of very old people, and the even more disturbing cognitive loss which is increasingly attending old age in the form of various dementias. I worked very briefly recently as a hospice care volunteer and I saw how sad this situation can be.

Yet medical research marches on as we devolve to wrinkled bags of skin in wheelchairs who can’t remember who our own children are.

I hope brain research yields relief to cognitive loss and, who knows?, maybe we can also find ways to strengthen and support skin, bones and organs into deep old age…I am more hopeful about the former than the latter. If I’m right, then the case might be made for us to evolve to ‘brains in a bath’ and the 1960’s science fiction movies will have the last laugh. We are already in an interim step—that of us turning more and more robotic as parts get supported /replaced and our systems get adjusted with all manner of medicine, regulators, and supplements. But eventually, I think our tissues will die, even brain tissue, despite the best diet, hygiene and medicine and we must be approaching the upper limits now: is it 110? 120? 130? And we do want to live forever, don’t we…?

The pace of this evolution is staggering. My great-great-grandchildren will probably look and live very differently from me. They could be greatly improved humans, or manifestations of avatar, or even straight-up robots.

I’m going with robots.

6 May – Lovers Leap to Log Cabin Drive (16.4 miles)

Good long day.

Question: How long does it take to get a tiny bug out of your eye?
Answer: You can’t.

I learned something about how people talk around here. I asked somebody for a favor, and they couldn’t do it, but instead of telling me outright, they said: “Well I don’t know about all that.” They then talked around the issue, occasionally addressing my request obliquely, until I realized that the answer was a ‘No’—but instead of slapping it down on the table in front of me, the ‘No’ came down slowly in a parachute… It was a nice way to do business…

4 May – Deer Mountain to Hot Springs (3.2 miles)

Woke up at my nice secluded spot by the creek, packed, and had a nice brisk jaunt the remaining 3.2 miles to Hot Springs. Hooked up with Doodge and FastLane but no Gump! As we suspected, he’s not returning to the Trail… hmmm… wondering if his girlfriend showing up had anything to do with it?🤨.

The three of us went in on a B&B which was quite nice as you can see by the pictures.

This is a neat little town, and the first one where the Appalachian Trail runs right through it. It goes right down Main Street and out the other side continuing on…

So we stayed here for the day, got something to eat, resupplied at all the hiker-friendly stores. Not much else to say about this day except I took a short movie during a rain deluge to show you how small the town is.

30 April – Standing Bear Farm (Zero Day)

Stayed here all day to await Forest Gump, FastLane and Doodge behind me; they showed up mid-morning with my fleece shirt/thingy and since they were staying, I stayed another night.

Best way to give you an idea of Standing Bear Farm -a little bit of Hippy Hiker Heaven- is with these pictures:

1.) The place where everyone powers up!

2.) The campfire area: That’s Forest Gump on the left standing up with the orange shirt and beard / that’s Doodge center-right sitting down with the green shirt.

3.) The laundry: hand-scrubbing on a washboard! But they do have a drier. I did shorts, one shirt and socks only. . .

4.) The guy in the middle walking away in the blue shirt is FastLane. . . to his left, up those stone stairs is the resupply hut.

5.) Cool stone bridge over a river where they sell beer (very popular), and cook the grill meals for a reasonable price and opposite is the shower place which is quite unique– and good.

6.) The unremarkable plot of land where we had to pitch our tents if we didn’t book a bunk-room slot or private room, or the treehouse. My tent is there somewhere . . .

The other two pictures are of various buildings.

So, the day was beautiful weather-wise and I just relaxed, had good food, and carefully resupplied.

How ’bout that?

29 April – Cosby Knob Campsite to Standing Bear Farm/Shelter/Campsite/Complex (10.7 miles)

Nice easy day hiking these 10.7 to get to the well-known and anticipated Standing Bear Farm…

Health holding up very well…it’s great to feel strong again.

Set up my tent to await some follow-on folks I’ve been traveling with, had a great pork-chop dinner! that they served here, and talked with other hikers a good piece of the night around a fire.

Quite a mix of ages, gender, backgrounds and nationalities… all viewpoints are mostly Trail-friendly joking and discussing Trail Thru-Hiking stuff… occasional discussions evolve around social issues and discussions are respectful and intelligent …

We’re all starting to get the feeling that most of the people from this point forward are probably serious about trying to complete this thing…

28 April – Icewater Spring to Cosby Knob Campsite. (20.3 miles)

Put up some big numbers today!

This is what early morning breakfast disarray looks like:

We then (traveling with Doodge and Forest Gump) came to Charlie’s Bunion, a well known lookout and fun precipice. Here’s a short movie, and a picture of me on top (where I’m practicing my Mt. Katahdin pose. Perhaps a bit premature.)

We talked about falling. We traded stories about parts of the trail that had steep drop-offs. I read a book last year called ‘Death In [the] Grand Canyon’. (Thanks for the perfect Christmas present Memory!). In it, they’ve documented that most of the sudden falls from great heights occurred while a person was rising from a sitting to a standing position: a fact I’ve since reminded a few people of when I saw them sitting precariously! And I guess it makes sense: we are hard-wired to get up carelessly from the kitchen table, from sitting on the grass in the backyard.

What has changed in these Grand Canyon death scenarios is that the consequences of a fluke stumble have gone from minimal to maximal the second one sits down on a precipice. It reminds me of the time I was working a cod-fishing trip on George’s Bank; a guy was reeling in a 40+ lb. codfish and had him on the surface and almost to the boat where I was waiting with a 14’ gaff. All was happiness, amazement and celebration. Suddenly, a huge long dark shape rose up underneath the fish; everybody went cold as a 180 degree arc of razor sharp teeth appeared behind the fish, slid up it, and closed cleanly and soundlessly at the shoulders of the 40 lb. cod! The guy reeled in the head, red blood spurting from the hatchet-clean slice, and the fish’s eyes were darting wildly about. Quite a sight in the sunlight!

Death lurks just below.

27 April – Mt Collins Campsite to Icewater Spring Campsite (8.4 miles)

Well, I believe I have the answer to an age-old question:

Yes. Yes, in fact a bear does s#%t in the woods. And sometimes right on the Trail. Right after this,I got passed by a guy and he’d seen it too. Then he says as he’s pulling away…”You know there’s 1900 bears in this park, right?” OK. How ‘bout not telling me everything. Man, it was fresh, too.

Shortly after this, I hit Trail Magic! I was the first one there-another great spread-and I had some cold Powerade, hamburger, chips and some fruit…this was another one run by a church group: Baptist this time. Warm generous people as always.

Interestingly, there were a couple of places where Wild Hog fences were protecting apparently rare and environmentally sensitive Beech groves.

AT 103: Trail Maintenance people. I’ve met several Trail maintenance people recently. These guys do yeoman’s work, voluntarily, for the AT Conservancy. They make steps, widen the path and clear fallen trees, and spend a lot of time building little structures to divert water off the Trail during rainfall. Pete, here, is energetic and spent over 1,000 hours last year on maintaining the Trail—that is phenomenal! Of course I thanked all these guys.

So, I’ve been thinking about the meaning of life today. Light fare. I’m thinking of it as it relates to food, shelter, and (I’m going to nix clothing because hair sufficed for a great while—clothing seems like an evolution rather than an original necessity) water.

The release of our energies from the acquisition of these three as evolution permits allows for life to have meaning beyond survival—and that’s the meaning for life we must be talking about.

First, let’s see how we got here:

Water: easy. Lakes, rivers, streams and rain deliver enough water across enough areas of the globe to support life handily, notwithstanding distribution issues.

Shelter: shelter has been originally available by construction with plants, mud, stone and largely trees- who knows what else?

Food: the evolution of abundant food was a little more hard-won. Hunter-gathering for a long time, then we figured out how to grow enough food locally to sustain families and have a surplus, and then the agricultural revolution took progress from an arithmetic to a geometric progression. The world flourished by the trade of necessities, and eventually luxuries and services as most people were able to disengage from directly producing the bare necessities: food, shelter and water.

Secondly, thus disengaged, we must realize that if humans have free time, afloat upon abundance, it must be to do something with it. Doing versus not doing is the obvious choice; to not do anything is anathema to the dynamics of life that we feel in our hearts and see on this busy little planet every second of every day. It’s what living things are about: doing. So, if we should do something with our time, then what is it that we should do: good things or bad things? The great majority of people fortunately recoil at the thought that it would be a purpose or a legitimate pastime for anyone to do bad things. Since we’re not going to do nothing, and we’re not going to do bad things, we must be called to do good things. And for whom/what? Probably for everything; for the environment, for animals, and for each other of course. I have seen this (doing for others) at work on the Trail. I gave my silk ‘baselayer’undershirt away to a guy who had a severe rash on his skin and nothing to put against the friction his backpack was putting on his skin through his sweat- soaked cotton T-shirt. Additionally, I’ve been given food on Trail when I’ve underplanned. That’s how it goes; if we all do good for others, others will be doing good for us.

Well that’s my take on the meaning of life! Today. Anyways! 🤓

26 April – Clingman’s Dome to Mt. Collins Shelter (2.3 miles)

Woke up and walked downtown early for breakfast at a place called The Breakfast Camp. This is a super authentic looking monument to the old mountain-man logging-camp moonshine-hustling history of this place: Gatlinburg. The menu was inside of a mountain-man newspaper which contained historical articles of famous people and events of the era. And, breakfast was really top-notch and inexpensive. These pictures will give you an idea:

Yet, the place is also super hyped up on campy touristy stuff to the max!

Only in America. But, seriously, I really would want to go back and do all the fun stuff there- it’s a unique little town.

Saw this hound dog hanging out a car window… how perfect for deep woods Tennessee.

So… got a shuttle back to Clingman Dome. As we approached the top for me to resume my hike (along with 7 other hikers), the weather changed quite a bit.

I jumped into a bathroom, with others, at the visitor center to rapidly up-gun my clothing to the extent possible. I came out into a Jack London survival story complete with all the fixin’s except the sled dogs. I had to lean into the (accurately predicted) 50 mph winds. Holy moly cow- late April in the South?!

Fortunately, after plunging into the woods, the trees cut a lot of the wind and I just got pounded with cold rain and hail for a couple of hours.

I think the frogs and locusts are on hold for now.

Took a short day and stayed at Mt. Collins Shelter- where I am now writing this. Lots of people here, myself included, absorbed completely in the business of staying warm and dry- wet stuff hanging everywhere. Very crowded shelter due to the weather.

Halfway through The Smokies!