I started off the day planning to do about an 11 mile hike to Wesley Bald Shelter. I then planned to hike into The NOC the next morning, where I rented a room to take a zero on Tuesday the 26th.

I quickly got into the rhythm of the hike that morning. My feet were feeling better, my legs felt fresher than they had in several days. I was able to finally push the pain of hiking into the background for a while and think about other things. I relished the opportunity, it’s a big part of why I’m even here.

I have been experiencing some nerve pain in my right thigh. It was a pain that had only recently surfaced, not constant but intermittently, it is an old familiar pain, a pain I haven’t felt since immediately after my second brain surgery. I asked the surgeon about it at the time, his explanation was that he probably touched some spot on my brain while he was operating that caused it. He told me it would probably go away, but if it didn’t not to worry about it, he said I was lucky that was all I had. So I didn’t, and it stayed for a year or more. It slowly faded away back then, I had actually completely forgotten about it with the passing of all those years. For what ever reason, this weird nerve pain was reawakened by the constant strain of hiking. It brought memories from that experience flooding back to me, it reminded me of my beloved mother. How because she was there, I knew it was going to be alright, because she was there, I wasn’t going to die. She put her whole life on hold, for a wayward son who had been mostly absent for the past several years. She never left my bedside through that whole ordeal, she took me home and nursed me back to health during the months after it was over. I never had a choice in the matter, it’s what she said we were doing, so that’s exactly what we did. I thought of the strength of my father, how he selflessly laid everything on the line to make sure I had the best of care. I thought about how that experience had shaped a big portion of my life, as I chose a career in healthcare as a result. The miles passed by as I walked and thought.

Mostly I thoughts returned to my mother. I thought about the overwhelming loss for me her passing was. It occurred to me that after all these years, I never properly grieved that loss. Instead I sought escape, I engaged in a lot of destructive behaviors to try to escape the pain back then. I just pushed through it, I never found peace with it. I know it has affected a lot of other relationships in my life, and the ways that I dealt with them. I’m sorry for that.

I just kept walking. The miles kept passing. I truly wept for most of the way. A great thing about the trail is that all of us out here are a little “different” in our own particular ways, so nobody really seemed to notice. It started getting later in the evening, I knew I had passed a coupe shelters, I knew I had gone a pretty good distance. I watched for the white blazes that mark the trail. When I saw one I would mumble to myself, “well, at least I know I’m still going the right way anyhow.”

Eventually, I came upon two obviously local mountain people sitting by the trail near a spring, which they referred to as a “branch”. I stopped and filled my empty water bottle. They told me they had hiked 30 miles in the past three days, and were ending their hike at the NOC today. “How far are we from the NOC,” I asked? “About 1.9 miles,” one of them said. I couldn’t believe I had already covered more than fourteen miles, it’s one thing to walk fourteen miles, it’s another to walk that far carrying a forty pound pack. They offered me a couple shots of moonshine, we chased it with cold spring water from the branch. I felt the warmth of the shine filter through my belly into my legs. I stood up and put on my pack and finished the sixteen and a half miles descending into the NOC. I’m definitely not recommending that as a hiking strategy, but on that day it worked for me. As I headed down the trail, I noticed one of them had a 12 inch cast iron skillet tied to the outside of his pack. I couldn’t believe he had carried it for 30 miles. The people who live in these mountains are sturdy folks.

I found a room at the NOC and took a shower. I fell into bed and had the best sleep I’ve had since I started the trail. There’s something to be said for sleeping in a level bed that’s not in the woods

I wasn’t done with the things I pondered that day, but I felt like I made a damn good start.