A Marathon to the Motherland, and Other Short Stories

Updates from the Mountains

Episode #7: Shorts Weather = Short Stories

Hellooooo! I’m still kicking it out here! I know it’s been a while since I’ve sent an update on my journey, and as always, a LOT has happened since my last email. For starters, the last time I checked in I was around mile 370. As of today (May 5th), I’m at mile 625.4! 

It all hasn’t been butterflies and rainbows, but MAN to I love the trail. Every day there’s some story or event or experience that i could never predict. The amusing, the beautiful, the strange, the miserable, the crazy, etc. In an effort to sum up the past two or three weeks, here’s a set of approximately 5-sentence long short stories of some of my favorite things that have happened recently:

April 18 -

Happy birthday to me! Eitan and I hitch a ride in some old, rickety pickup truck into town. We eat all-you-can-eat pizza from a liminal space restaurant, then I bought and ate a pint of ice cream. Then I had a food coma on a bench outside of a hostel.

April 21-

It was 37° and raining that morning. I was miserable. After hiking almost 20 miles, an extra mile down a highway led us to a dive bar hostel. I had a beer and a bowl of Mac and cheese at 4pm. Then I slept in a loft in a “hostel” above the bar and talked about peeing and pooping with fellow hikers who I just met. Classic AT experience.

April 22-

It was Bibo’s birthday and he wanted to celebrate. We stayed in a hostel that only housed 8 people. We ate too much and then took shots of Melort, which Bibo had specially delivered from Chicago. He was amused. Nothing like a party with 7 of your best friends who you met just a couple weeks ago.

April 25-

26.2 miles to a gas station. 10.5 hours is a good marathon time, right? Well, I walked right into Virginia and into Damascus. Welcome home!

April 26-

While in Damascus, I went into a thrift store. I got some MAJOR heat- a short with a gorilla face across the whole front. And it’s from the Cincinnati Zoo. I payed $2 in cash for that Harambe shirt. Then wore it to a distillery bc I’m classy.

April 28-

Walking through the Greyson Highlands was sick. The wild ponies literally walk right up to you. I took a selfie with a couple and one licked my salty leg. Cleanest I had been in days.

April 30-

The whole squad showed up to Partnership Shelter. You can order pizza from a landline at the Mt. Rogers visitors center nearby. So we did. But after an hour of waiting, we called again to learn that the place we ordered from does not m, in fact, deliver (despite them saying they did when we first called). A small group hitched a ride into town and our pizzas were retrieved.

May 1-

Nothing particularly exciting about this one, just the amusement of being stopped by a train on the trail. Imagine being in the groove hiking down the trail and you have to stop and wait for a train to pass.

May 4-

The night before I was filtering water and thought there was a bear rustling in the leaves. It was just a grouse. The next morning, the grouse appeared next to me as I was packing up my tent. And it progressively got closer. And closer. And even blocked the path when I was trying to leave. I think it’s a government drone.

May 5-

Here I am at Wood’s Hole hostel. It’s a collection of chestnut wood cabins with a garden and a farm. They focus on sustainability, cool homemade vegetarian meals, offer organic coffee all day, and provide daily yoga. I could live here. It’s lovely.

• The Loaner Clothes Fashion Show

  • The most underrated part of the trail. Loaner clothes are the clothes that hostels provide for hikers while we wash our one outfit that we own. The thing is, it’s the most RANDOM assortment of clothes ever. So it’s always fun to make the most heinous outfits you can to optimize style and comfort.

• Food Decisions Are Made (good, bad, and ugly)

  • The pint of ice cream following all-you-can-eat pizza.

  • Putting instant mashed potatoes in rehydrated kale and bean stew.

  • Peanut butter and cheezit tortilla wraps for lunch most days

  • An entire pizza along with shared sides of cheesy bread and garlic knots and the works

  • An entire tub of hummus and a bag of carrots in less than 24 hours

• “This is the trail?”

  • The train tracks

  • Walking along highways and sides of roads

  • Open fields AKA tick city

  • Literally through towns

  • Right by two gas stations?

  • Gravel roads for extended periods of time

Thanks again to everyone who has supported me in any way!! It’s so so much appreciated :))

(I tried to attach some pictures to this, but service is bad. I’ll try again tomorrow)