The hotel I am staying in in Erwin, TN has a public computer, so I finally have a chance to post a proper link to my Facebook blog. Apologies for the difficulty I've had updating this one, but the Android Blogger app is hot garbage. At least with Facebook I am able to update and post photos as long as I have a working Internet connection. https://www.facebook.com/AtreyuAT/

Hi folks... The Blogger apps have been absolutely awful, crashing and locking up constantly. Thus I've shifted over to Facebook instead.


https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ffb.me%2FAtreyuAT&h=AT3i8saZQPebvkMcsetRFmaHmDr94d7iJ17WsEOUnI4wpBKJn27E4etn_c1PqO6i-YT7KqfQUQis2Bv0DtOMP4ZzRSUkL2g-0fIfDUSHAeLRLFIYo2FSW0lb0fdWtJ5iFEEHcjT1onhkuSsKe1vA0Zv_jmLem4-k1g

Inching Forward

I'm off to a slow start, but I think I'll be able to manage for a while. I hiked from Amicalola Falls (having done the steps with my friend Memo on Sunday. On Monday - the day I was supposed to start - I opted to spend one night at the Amicalola Lodge.

I needed a day alone, in comfort, with a hot bath to get myself centered. As an introvert who spent several days constantly around people and traveling, I needed to charge my psychic batteries, so to speak.

I went halfway down the Falls steps again and explored the campgrounds and park while waiting for my room for several hours.

Then Tuesday I had my first full day on the trail. I made about 6.5 miles to Black Gap Shelter, which I arrived 2 hours prior to sundown. Along the way I met several hikers of all sorts, from thru hikers, section hikers and day hikers.

I 'rescued' two hikers who hadn't brought enough water, since I carry too much. As painful as it is to carry it, I NEED to be constantly hydrating. My muscles get more sore and take longer to heal when I don't. And, there are stretches of the trail where there's very little water, or sources that involve taking side trails (blue blazes) that are sometimes quite a hike on their own.

I had to stop a lot, especially on the countless uphill winding paths, full of rocks and roots and mud.

I'm constantly on the lookout for the right kinds of logs or rocks that I can sit on in a way that takes my pack weight for me without having to remove it ... Because taking the pack off, as alluring as it appears, involves putting the pack back on... Which requires an enormous burst of energy that itself causes me to need another breather.

I spent about 2.5 hours of the 8 hours of that days hike just resting, letting my heart rate go down to normal and taking an edge off the burn in my legs.

Lungs, too...

I pitched tent at that shelter rather than staying in the three walled construct, which turned out to be the right call. In total there were 6 others there, 2 in the shelter. Those two both snored like chainsaws.

Also, in the morning we found fresh bear tracks behind that shelter. Looks like a bear came up to the back, sniffed around a little, then turned and headed away toward the privy.

I got up at some point that night to use that shitter, too! Yikes!!!

Wednesday I got up early, but as the sun isn't up until 7:45 am, I didn't want to disturb folks still asleep by breaking down my tent or making breakfast. Thus, when the sun finally came up and I heard another hiker getting their cookware ready, I started to break down my stuff.

I was out of there by 10am. Checking my guides, I determined that I'd be hiking half a day since the nearest shelter was only a few hours away, but the one after that was 8 miles out, and i doubted I could make it before sundown, especially with enough time to set up my site and get dinner ready.

This was the day I completed the Approach Trail, though...making it to the summit of Springer Mt. and getting to see the famous plaque and signed the trail register.

Springer Mt shelter was about 20 minutes downhill from the summit, and is one of the largest shelter areas around. There's about 20 spots for tents, and the shelter had a loft to sleep extra people.

This place was packed. This out of the way nook in the woods had a good 20+ people staying there, and plenty of passer throughs and even a college student collecting data for a scientific research project on thru hikers. Also a photographer came through and had us sign release forms.

I teamed up here with a father and son from FL who were on a section hike for a few weeks. We got wood together and built a fire. While the fire got going and we had more wood than needed, the wind Wed night was insane, robbing all the heat unless you squatted right by the fire, inches away from the embers.

The wind remained an issue overnight, getting as high as 25mph. While my tent is pretty good for rain (when set up properly at least), it sucks for wind. I had drafts all night that penetrated my sleeping bag, which is rated for 20 degrees.

Cell service was more or less worthless at both shelters, but have luck in random places as I go.

Anyway, with the reports of the incoming thunderstorms Thurs and Fri, and needing to re-evaluate some of my gear, pack configuration, and possibly replace my sleeping bag... I decided to get a shuttle into Suches.

It was a brief hour trek from Springer shelter to the parking lot where I eventually connected with a shuttle. Another hiker who's quitting took the shuttle with me, and now I'm holed up in this hostel tonight and tomorrow. Saturday I shuttle back to the Trail.

I've decided not to go back to Springer, but to skip ahead to Neel Gap, where there's an outfitter I can get advice and gear from. I need some sort of device to attach water to my backpack strap in front for easy access, and a new GoPro casing - my current one broke (better that than the GoPro itself!).

Some think it's a cheat to skip ahead, but I'm not a purist. Pushing myself too hard, too fast is a sure recipe for failure.

So, tomorrow I might walk to a post office to ship some stuff home, and I'll work on pruning my pack more. It's an art getting everything in there in a sensible manner that still distributes the weight as evenly as possible. An art I've yet to master.

And Here I Am ...

I took an Amtrak from Worcester to NYC on the 7th, then Memo and I drove south all day on the 8th, landing in North Carolina where we spent the night with a friend of Memos.

On the 9th we drove to Amicalola Falls, after dark, and it was ridiculously foggy out. On these twisting, winding roads with steep drops on the sides.... That was a brown-trousers drive!

It began raining as we set up our tents, and then we went to catch the 9:10pm showing of Captain Marvel at a nearby (relatively speaking, 30 minute drive) cinema.

Afterwards back at camp Memo hit the sack and I ended up awake until 3ish.

We woke up late, around 10:30am, Sunday morning. Memo decided to stay an extra day since we didn't get much of a chance to do interviews and get footage for the documentary he's making on my trip.

So we went into town, Dahlonega, to hit up REI for extra tent stakes I needed. It was a cool little town with historic brick sidewalks and was the location of the first gold rush in the US.

Back at camp we walked about 3/4ths of the way down the famous Amicalola Falls stairs to get a good view of the waterfall. Despite not even having my pack on, those steps were murder on the way back up. Freaking beautiful, though!

While I'm still doing the approach trail, I'm bypassing those steps since I already walked them. The trail picks up at the top of the falls, not far from the lodge I'll be staying in tonight.

Yes, I decided to stay an extra night. With Memo staying the extra day, that didn't leave me with the day of solitude I feel I need to get myself centered and in the right head space.

Also, I'm scared as hell if we're being honest.

So, one night in a warm bed before heading out sounds perfect, despite the premium I have to pay for the lodge compared to the campsite.

I was up until 3ish last night as well, fretting over the hike and especially mindful of Memo... Who had ingested two pot cookies and got higher than I've ever seen anyone get, especially him! But that's a different story!

So, I woke at 6;30 and got Memo up an hour later, as he needed to get to DC in one long drive today. Yikes!

So, we got some footage at the trailhead with the arch, drove up to the lodge to reserve a room, and I left my pack with the lodge and saw Memo off around 9am.

I can't check into my room until 2:30pm, so I've been bumming around the lodge and waterfall for a few hours. Still have 3 hours to kill. Hence, finally finding a good time to update here.

So... Tomorrow I'll be up early (sunrise is around 7:30am here currently, which surprised me. Back in MA it starts getting light around 5:30-6am), and I'll walk to the top of the Falls where I'll begin/resume my Thru!!!

...inching ever closer

I know it's been pretty dead here since the move, but there's just not a lot to report on. I'm more anxious about the waiting around than I am about the actual hike - though once I'm en route next week, that could all change.

For now, I'm still at my moms. Tuesday I'll head to my sister's place for the last two nights in Massachusetts. Thursday afternoon I catch a train to NYC, and Friday morning we drive south.

I've made some adjustments to my gear, but not much significant. I did cave in and got myself a decent North Face rain jacket that was on sale 30% off at a local outfitter, so I can ditch the cheap-ass Frogg Toggs now.

My big concern is no longer weight, it's bulk.  Now that I've packed some clothes in with the rest of my gear (sans sleeping pad and inflatable pillow, which are in use), I'm having a difficult time envisioning what I'll do when I need to take off my down jacket. It compacts, but I'm already pretty bulked up. When I'm at my sisters place I should have more room to work with, allowing me to spread all my stuff out and try several different packing configurations. If I'm smart and persistent, I should be able to find a way to make it all fit without needing a fucking shoehorn every time I need to retrieve an item.

But organizational skills were never my forte...


About this blog... I may work on the branding (for lack of a better term) a little.  While writing about mental illness in relation to this hike is still important to me, it may not be helpful to have that as the primary focus. 

So, I'll probably try finding a better title for the blog at the very least, and allow myself to post shorter and sillier stuff in addition to my self indulgent introspectives on my struggles with anxiety and depression. 

After all, as serious as I tend to get a lot of the times.... there's a lot to be said for opening one's self up to the absurd.  It's good to be silly, sometimes!

At my Mom's

There's not much new to report, aside from having completed my move out of Sue's place. Most of my stuff is in storage now, and I am staying with my mother for the next three weeks.

The first night sucked, I'll be honest.  Though I was so spent from the move, and then a movie afterwards, I was still unable to sleep Saturday night.  I'd inadvertently put some items into storage that I needed, including the inflating device for my sleeping pad.

As an aside: As to why I didn't just blow the thing up manually.... I don't know. My mind was fried, somehow this obvious solution eluded me at the time.

At any rate, I slept on a concrete floor with only a thin layer of carpeting, and my sleeping bag... and didn't manage to fall asleep until 8am Sunday morning for a fitful 3 hour session.  I woke up hurting everywhere.

I also really started feeling this oppressive weight of depression and hopelessness that I often find myself falling back into when I spend time around my mother. I hesitate to say so as I don't wish to hurt her feelings if she ever sees this, but it's clearly one of the puzzle pieces of my own mental illnesses .... thus I feel it should be explored to some extent.

My parents argued a lot when I was little. It wasn't violent, and neither of my parents were abusive or anything... but their marriage fell apart after my mother fucked up our family finances with credit card debt and hid the bills and notices that came in the mail out of fear of what would happen with my father. 

Of course, the longer she put it off the worse it became, and had she come clean sooner things might have been different... but by the time it blew up, his photography business was in jeopardy and my dad had to mortgage his mother's house, and I'm sure made a hundred other sacrifices to stay afloat. 

As it became evident that she couldn't call a mulligan on this fuckup, my mother sank into the deepest depression I'd ever witnessed from her, at least overtly.  She spoke of suicide frequently, and even made a semi-serious attempt to drive a car into a wall - which I "heroically" stopped by jumping on the hood of the car as my family yelled at her from the lawn.

Around that time I recall our last family vacation together as a full family, at Cape Cod, when my mother got upset and went down by the Cape Cod Canal by the suspension bridge, crying and sitting on the rocks by the water and giving us the impression that she might jump in.  I was terrified and felt helpless. 

Still, with the pocket money I had been given for souvenirs, I bought a jewelery box at some touristy knick-knack place along the boardwalk that had a poem about "Mothers" printed on it.  It was all I could think of... to give her a present, maybe make her feel loved.

I never knew what to do when my mom got like that.  Anything I did seemed to just make her cry, as did giving her the jewelery box.

I came to understand not too many years afterwards about the depths to true depression, and how words of comfort seem hollow and meaningless.  How kind gestures are appreciated, but feel misguided and vain. In that dark place, sometimes you just want to stew in that despair. Attempts to penetrate the darkness are irritating, sometimes infuriating.

Just let me feel like the world is collapsing for a while, ok?  Stop trying to make things better. There's no point.  There's no... hope.


Well, at any rate... my mom never drove into those walls, or jumped into those canals... but she did carry that baggage forward in many unhealthy ways... and as dad moved out and my sisters both tricked off to college... it was just she and I, for years and years, just enabling each other's depression and mental illnesses' worse natures.

It took an entirely different unhealthy relationship - with my ex wife - to finally get out from under that shadow, and it took the prospect of hiking the Appalachian Trail to help guide me out from that shadow. 

But I'm back in this shadow, doing one last stint before heading south to Amicalola Falls to begin my new, hopefully healthier life.

If nothing else, let this be the extra fire under my ass...

Three weeks, and I'll be on the Trail.

Current Status Update

So, I sort of fucked up with the cabin reservation.  I somehow managed to overlook the fact that Blood Mountain Cabins are located at Neal's Gap, which is the first major stop along the A.T. where people resupply for the first time and start offloading all the crap they're already sick of carrying.

It's approximately 4 days into the hike.

Had I kept my reservation, it would have meant either skipping those first 4 days worth the the A.T., or finding transportation back to Springer Mt.

Rather than go with a pricey cabin or room - which are booking up fast - I opted to get a campsite at Amicalola Falls State Park instead - which is where the A.T. does indeed start.

On the positive side of things, I packed all my base weight stuff (except the sleeping quilt, which is still being shipped) into my backpack, figured out how the correctly attach my trekking poles to the pack and added several water bottles to simulate extra weight.

I then figured out some - not all - of the strap adjustments to make the frame fit me better.

It felt much, much lighter and more comfortable than anticipated.  Yes, when I add food and clothes it'll get heavier, but seriously.... I've carried heavier loads back and forth to work when bringing laptops and hard drives with me.

Granted, I was lugging them for short periods of time and I wasn't doing it up every mountain I come across, but still... by every measure of physical comfort, I am pleasantly surprised thus far. It's one thing to look at the weight as a number on a spreadsheet.  It's another thing altogether to have it on your back!

So, my train ticket to NYC is booked. My campsite is booked. I move out of my apartment this Saturday. Gear is shaping up nicely, with a few things still on order.