Thursday, June 4 7:51 pm 23.8 mi
AT 428.4 Boots Off → AT 452.2 Double Spring Shelter (sleeping in shelter)
Weather: Hot and humid until 3 mi away from shelter, at which [point] it started thundering and raining
Trail Conditions: Beautiful walk across Watauga Dam, lots of ridgewalking and fairly easy trail, but with very few water sources. Walk across the cow pastures would have been great picture/video material, but it was thundering and raining so I rushed that section pretty good
My Condition: Heels felt good today – much less painful stepping. My left ankle was bothersome today – almost felt like a sprain. Quite painful at times, but still manageable. Hopefully a zero in Damascus will have it feeling like new!
Hikers Met: Pops
Got a later start than I hoped – wanted to be on trail by 6, maybe 6:30 at the latest, coming from a night in a bed at a hostel where I had my bag completely packed and ready to go. Was on the trail by 7:30. Unfortunately, might have been able to enjoy the pastures and cows and rolling fields more had I hit the trail earlier. But things happen for a reason I guess – saw lots of wildlife today. 2 snakes (1 black rat snake, medium sized, and one small garter snake), 1 turtle atop a mountaintop (lots of respect to him – must have been a long, hard climb especially without much water to speak of), and 2 deer. In the pasture, I saw 2 cows and 2 calves, one clearly very young. Maybe there were more, but I was dodging raindrops and trying to avoid becoming a lightning rod. Crossed paths with Turtle, a thru hiker who stayed at Boots Off last night. Quirky business owner specializing in military ammunition packaging materials. Met section hiker Pops at shelter, a 69 year old father of an AT thru hiker.
Post Trail Analysis
Although I have no evidence at all to back up this claim, I like to imagine that turtles are in the midst of their own thru hikes. Like us, they carry everything they need right there on their back. Although they aren’t especially fast or graceful, they certainly aren’t sedentary - I frequently spot them on trails, both here on the AT and back at home, and not particularly close to water sources either. An animal built like that you might expect to live right by a lake, a marsh, or some other water source where they’d have ready access to both water and food with little need to wander far, yet here I was today up on a ridge miles and miles from the nearest drop of water and I spot a turtle. I imagine that they, too, find peace and joy in the wandering. Incredibly pretty walk across the dam early in the day, high up on the ridge without a whole lot of opportunities for water for most of the afternoon, and some beautiful farmland to cross to finish out the day.
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