Just kidding. The Bastards, Bob White, Powder River, and Teeny (Valerie), summited Springer on the morning of December 17 with a full cast of relatives and assorted loved ones. It was a lot of stuff. Mostly, though, it was awesome.
It's wonderful to be back with my family and old friends, and bittersweet to part (momentarily!) from my trail friends.
Besides a UNICEF fundraiser, this blog is my trail journal. I'll continue to update this blog through Springer, and probably Miami too. I'll describe this whole phase more thoroughly when I reach that point in the journal (it'll be more convenient to look back at it after some time, considering I'm pretty dazed and wistful at the moment).
I wrote the following post on Thanksgiving, intending to put it on this blog earlier. Here ya' go:
Salutations from Overmountain Shelter, NC! Right now, Eddy's managing the fire... It's funny how much of a spectator sport it's become... He just poured a bit of Heet and it leaped into life! To someone from the past, that'd probably seem like some cheap magic trick... T-Mellow just resorted to a plastic dustpan in place of this shelter's missing broom... Surprisingly adequate- nice!
This shelter's awesome; a converted barn with a spacious attic and an epic view of a valley and a far-off mountain range. It'll be a fine spot for the crew's Thanksgiving festivities (Eddy's got the hot dogs on lock. T-Mellow's going for the more traditional Stove Top Stuffing with turkey n' gravy).
Oh! Eddy found the broomhead and jabbed a stick in to function as the handle...
It's been a great Thanksgiving; perfect temperature, absolutely spotless skies, and easy walking over exposed prairie land- 5000+ feet high!
It's no secret that we have a lot to be grateful for. We thrive on the generosity of so many hitches, hostel-owners, and trail angels, on the whims of the weather, on circumstantial reunions with old friends, or fateful encounters with new ones, guided along what might be the world's greatest volunteer project: a tour of the Appalachian's richness of miracles.
For a couple of weeks, every day would turn out to be the "best day ever," until the next one topped it. Eventually this streak did end, but the isolated moments of awesomeness that followed kept us astonished.
If there were a recipient for my la-la cosmic gratefulness, I'd probably have talked his ear off by now...
Except I guess I haven't... I'd like to propose a toast to my freaking AMAZING parents! The awesomeness cannot be transcribed. They encouraged this trip, financed it, helped plan it- they brought me on my first camping trip, hahaha! Most importantly, they founded a household on mutual respect, friendliness, and simple affection... or love. Or whatever.
Mad, mad props, guys.
Well, I haven't written the next part of my story yet, but stay tuned! It's a pretty un-missable kind of thing, you know!
