Nocturnal auditory signatures

While I was home helping Dad cut down everything murdered by the ash borer, I noticed something that I really liked. The sound of Dad's yard is unique to me.

When I was in junior high, I spent the night at a friend's house. He had a tepee in the back yard, and after a few hours of bonfire, we crawled into it for the night. Things slowly settled down (teenage boys are biologically incapable of settling down quickly. If you think that we have, we are fooling you), and eventually we were ready to actually sleep.

Then I heard the roaring.

"What the hell is that??"

"The neighbor's lions."

"...When you say 'lions'..."

His neighbor across the road had a couple lions in a pen. "Across the road" sounds close, but my friend's house (and tepee) were at the far end of a half-mile long driveway through dense forest. I don't know how far away the lions were, but their growls carried through the night, the trees, and the thin canvas walls of our shelter. I wasn't afraid; I was fascinated. I was thrilled. Lions!! I fell asleep grinning after listening to them for ages.

In high school, we spent a week on Hilton Head Island in my great-aunt's time-share. We went out walking at night and heard the bellowing of mating alligators. We never saw them; we just heard them, the growls carrying far through the swampy areas.

I developed a useful skill in college. The campus was in an urban area near a hospital and railroad tracks. Occasionally, police helicopters with searchlights would fly overhead. Trains, sirens, and medical helicopters were commonplace. Now I don't hear any of those when I sleep. On several bike rides and a few hikes, we've camped near train tracks and everyone else will stumble out of their tents in the morning complaining about the trains all night long, and I never hear any of them.

Along the trail last year, I learned a few things about whippoorwills. They love to nest near shelters and tent sites, they are nocturnal, and they will inexhaustibly defend their territory by singing at it. For hours. One night, I set up my tent at a border zone between three whippoorwills, and heard them each singing at the others as I set up my tent, got water, stretched, made dinner, wrote in my journal, and read for a while. I met one hiker who said that he hated whippoorwills because his childhood bedroom had a nest nearby, and that he never slept at night when they were present. I loved them.

At Punchbowl Shelter, which was rumored to be haunted, there is a small pond full of singing frogs. My trail name was Treefrog; I fell asleep listening to the songs of my people. (peeple?) Later, in Maine, we camped at a shelter on a pond where I could hear four distinct species of frogs singing. It was fantastic.

In the south, I often heard owls. I could recognize the barred owl by its call because I'd done a lot of research on them after one of my training hikes. I'm not that good with other species, but at Overmountain Shelter (the Barn), I could hear four different types of owls calling out in the woods. One of them was barred. I can only guess at the others.

In the far north, we were occasionally lucky enough to hear loons. They will call throughout the day, but the sound is especially clear--and unsettling--at night, when their eerie voice echoes in the darkness.

Each place has its own night sounds. At Dad's, I lay in bed at night and listened to the very specific chorus of chirring bugs and singing frogs, and it felt instantly familiar. It was the same sound I listened to as a kid, falling asleep every summer evening. No other back yard sounds quite like Dad's, and as much as I love the sounds of all those other places, that's the place that sounds like home.

Almost There

Today is my anniversary. A year ago today (around lunchtime), I reached the summit of Mount Katahdin and officially finished my Appalachian Trail thru-hike.  Of course, I still needed to hike back down, but what's five or six more miles?

A couple weeks ago, I posted a chapter from the manuscript I wrote about my hike. I'm still waiting to hear back from a few of the agents I queried, but so far there have been no takers. Keep your fingers crossed! Maybe to mark this occasion, I'll post another chapter today. This is the very first chapter of the book. I hope you like it, but I really hope it will show up in your bookstore someday soon.

Almost There

Later, a friend of mine would refer to her as “the crazy lady.”  That’s no way to narrow down the vast field of characters you meet on the Appalachian Trail, except in terms of gender.  It’s also pretty judgmental, coming from a guy who got so dehydrated and hungry that he hallucinated unicorns shortly before meeting her.

I didn’t think that she was genuinely crazy.  Not any more than any other person who grabs a pack and decides to spend a few months hiking between Georgia and Maine.  Like the cat said, “We’re all mad here.”  The specific flavors of crazy vary a bit, but I’d like to be very clear on one point before we delve too deeply into my 2014 Appalachian Trail thru-hike: I never met anyone who I thought posed any genuine danger to me or others.  There were one or two people I didn’t really like, but it was mostly a vague feeling of disinterest.  I just didn’t want to hang out with them.  I never met anyone that I thought was going to pull a knife while I was sleeping and start poking it into people.

This woman was, if anything, overly optimistic, and maybe a little naïve about the scope of what lay before her.  To be fair, that’s how everyone starts a thru-hike.  My little party was four northbound (or NOBO) thru-hikers.  We had met each other individually earlier along the trail, and had serendipitously come together as a group at Winturri Shelter, just north of Rutland, Vermont.  She was hiking alone.  I met her a little before noon on June 29.  I had spent the morning climbing South Horn and Bigelow Mountain, with a ten-minute break on Avery Peak, and was heading down the other side when I met her on her way up.  I’d already seen my highest elevation for the day, but mosquitoes whining incessantly in my ears the night before had kept me from getting any sleep, so I was exhausted, and I confess that although I smiled and listened attentively when she spoke with me, a persistent part of my brain was annoyed that I couldn’t return to the day’s work of getting to West Carry Pond until the conversation ended.  I wasn’t proud of that part of me, so I shoved it in a corner and ignored it as best I could.

“Good morning,” I had opened.

“Hi!” She beamed at me, overflowing with the giddy optimism I remembered from my first weeks on the trail.  Hell, I could remember having it as recently as ten days earlier, but somewhere in between I’d crossed an invisible line, and was now powered by sheer force of will to see this thing finished.  She was southbound, or SOBO, so she had only been on the trail for a couple of weeks.  I was on track to finish in less than ten days.  “What’s your name?”

I stood to one side of the trail, which in that section was a long, sloped sheet of granite canted slightly to one side.  It had been like that most of the way down from the summit, with intermittent stands of small, scrubby trees. Smiling through my exhaustion, I told her, “Treefrog.”  For the first few days on the trail, your brain stumbles on that question, unsure whether to respond with your given name or your “trail name,” which is a bit like a CB handle for hikers.  It becomes your identity so quickly that I started correcting other hikers who would answer “James” or “Ellen” by reminding them that they were “Beans” or “Hoof It.”  In Tennessee, I tried to order a pizza as “Treefrog” and the 50ish woman at the counter drawled, “Are you serious?” with such nasal disbelief that my brother Chris, who was visiting me at the time, barely made it outside before doubling over with laughter.

She gazed past me, up the slope that would lead her to views of Flagstaff Lake and the peak named for Myron Avery, the man who did most of the hard work of making the Appalachian Trail a reality after Benton MacKaye came up with the idea.  MacKaye is more well known, but Avery actually got things done.  It was head in the clouds versus feet on the ground, traits which are both experienced in a very literal sense by the people enjoying the combined efforts of the two men.  “Almost there,” she breathed, with what I took to be an almost reverential awe.

Nodding, I looked back over my shoulder.  “Yeah, not much further, you’ll be at the top.”  I’d been on both sides of similar conversations for almost four months, but most conversations between people who have just met on the trail become routine after a little while.  Same questions, different answers.  What’s your name?  When did you start (an easy, unobtrusive way to determine which of you is faster)?  Where are you heading tonight?  If you see them again, or if the conversation lasts a while, you get into more detail.  Where are you from?  What do you do in The World?  What brings you to the trail?  Talk to the same person long enough, and you will, in dribs and drabs, get their life story.

She shook her head and looked at me like I’d missed the joke.  “No, that’s me.  Almost There.”

We talked a few minutes more, while she radiated good vibes and optimism and I waved half-heartedly at the few mosquitoes who had ventured above the treeline to bring me the itchy welts they saw as gifts that keep on giving.  Almost There had sold everything before starting her hike.  “Got rid of it all,” she said, nodding proudly.  With both hands, she pinched at a roll of stomach below her hip belt.  “Gonna get rid of this, too!”

I was warming to her.  I couldn’t help it.  I knew I’d make it to West Carry Pond in plenty of time.  My real concern was making it from there to the ferry across the Kennebec River the next day—really just a man with a canoe, but his canoe was the official route across the Kennebec, and if we didn’t make it across by the time he stopped service for the day at 11 AM, we’d have to backtrack 3.6 miles to the nearest campsite and wait for the next day.  Our little party was locked in to our schedule.  We had to finish on the 8^th, because that’s when my family would be there to give us a ride out of the park.  Two of the others had already purchased plane tickets for the 9^th—we couldn’t afford to lose a day.  Almost There had no such concerns.  She was past the Kennebec, and from here to Georgia all she had to do was keep walking, at whatever speed pleased her most.  In her mind, she wasn’t just beginning the hike, but the rest of her life.

“I haven’t decided yet what to do next.  I’ve lived in Maine all my life, but I think it’s time for a change. It’ll be hard saying goodbye, but maybe I’ll just keep going when I get to the end, you know?”

No, I didn’t know.  I knew that I wanted to sleep for about three days straight.  I knew that I felt capable of eating an entire salad bar myself, and chasing it with a pan of lasagna, and maybe some waffles and sausage, and a glass of milk.  I knew that if I saw another “Scenic Viewpoint” sign, I would react exactly as I had for the past week: with a middle finger and a dirty look, never breaking stride.  My body was depleted of all energy reserves.  The night before, I had used a borrowed cell phone to call my girlfriend and told her, nearly in tears, to cancel all hiking plans she had for us in Maine after I finished Katahdin.

But I remembered being where Almost There was.  Not physically, but spiritually.  I remembered practically glowing with excitement, even three months into the trip, knowing that I was finally doing something I’d wanted to do since I was eleven.  It made me happy to see her still so full of high spirits, still looking forward to an adventure I had almost completed.

“I’ve got my passport with me—I could just keep traveling!”  Maybe she would.  She wouldn’t even have to finish the trail.  Many people started a thru-hike and later decide it wasn’t what they expected.  Most of those just go home, but some maintain their momentum and go on to do something else.  In North Carolina, I’d met a man whose wife had to leave the trail when she dislocated her toe, but they were looking into a long-distance canoe trip to replace their thru-hike aspirations.  I suspect that there are an awful lot of people who set out on the trail hoping to find a new direction.  Almost There was the fourth person I’d met who’d sold everything, including their homes, before starting the journey, and their first post-hike task would be to find a new place to live.  I had met a 27-year U.S. Army veteran who set out on the trail to heal her soul, two men who had struggled with drug addiction and who viewed hiking as a form of rehab, and two people who hiked to recover from the death of a spouse.  To some degree, I think many people expect to experience some sort of revelatory change along the trail.  It was one of the questions I often fielded from people who knew a little about the trail, but had never completed a Long Hike themselves: How has it changed you?

I usually laughed it off, telling them that it had made me hairier, hungrier, and tired, because the truth of it is that those were the only changes in me I could discern.  Otherwise, I didn’t feel Changed so much as… Honed.  I had spent most of my life becoming someone who knew they could hike the Appalachian Trail, who had the physical ability and the mental discipline to succeed at such an endeavor, and although I spent 121 days proving that, I didn’t feel like I’d become a new person.  Still, I remembered having the bubbling cheeriness of Almost There, the bright hope for the trail ahead of me.  And, yes, the hope that it would change me somehow.  Most of my time after college had been spent in generally futile efforts to find gainful employment in my field, and although I’d had a few jobs, I’d spent almost as much time out of work, looking for a company that wanted me.  It wore me down, and eroded the confidence I’d taken so long to build.  I was generally a happy person, but I wasn’t really happy with where I was.  In time, that felt more like I wasn’t happy with who I was.  There was something very attractive about the idea of walking into the woods to disappear, and to be replaced, weeks or months later, by someone better.

68

One year ago today, I crossed the border into Maine, the state where Mom was born, on her 67th birthday. I was about two weeks from the end of my thru-hike, and I started the day in high spirits, even though the four friends who'd been hiking with me since Vermont had decided the previous evening to part ways with me for a few days.

This year, I'm working on getting my manuscript published.  I've written a book about hiking the Appalachian Trail, what led me to the trail in the first place, and why I took Mom's ashes with me.  Agents have been queried; now it's a matter of waiting for a favorable response, and constantly agonizing over whether my work is good enough to impress anyone.

Let's find out. Below is an excerpt from the manuscript, a single chapter from late in the trail. There are a couple references to earlier chapters, but I think it still stands alone well enough to be readable.  Why this chapter, instead of one more inspiring, uplifting, or funny? Because this chapter covers that day, one year ago, when I brought Mom home.  Happy Birthday, Mom.

Alone Again

          My friends left me.  The hike from Pinkham Notch had been harder on them than I’d realized, and during the night at Imp Shelter, they decided to stop at a hostel the next day.  I passed the hostel before noon, and was certain that they wouldn’t catch up with me by the time I reached Rangeley, our next planned resupply town.  They had tried to convince me to join them, plying me with the promise of beds, showers, laundry, and good food, but they lost me when they revealed their plan to slackpack for a day or so to conserve energy.  Slackpacking is when you hike with only a daypack, and a shuttle either drops you off at the start, or picks you up for the return, and you generally spend both nights at the same place.  Many hostels along the AT offer this service for free, even supplying the daypacks, because it encourages hikers to stay a second night and spend more money.  My decision wasn’t motivated by thrift, but conviction.  That wasn’t how I wanted to hike the trail.  I had never slackpacked, yellow blazed, or taken shortcuts, and I wasn’t going to start less than three hundred miles from the end.  It wasn’t my idea of thru-hiking.  I saw the hostel, gave the signs advertising baked goods and cold drinks no more than a passing thought after three meals from Simon and Irene, and kept hiking.  My friends had slept in, knowing they didn’t have far to go that day.  Doyi’s toes were in bad shape, and Ginko was getting crabby and short-tempered.  We all needed a rest, but I didn’t allow myself a break.  It required some rough climbing and difficult terrain, but that night I was rewarded with white lady’s slippers on the side trail to the Gentian Pond Shelter, which was oriented to provide a stunning view of the sunset over the valley below, and a few steps from the shelter I could hear where the pond drained into a waterfall that worked its way down to the valley.

          I left at five the next morning, June 23, my 106^th day on the trail, and what would have been my mom’s sixty-seventh birthday.  That was the day I entered Maine, the state where she’d been born, and where we would finish our 2,185.3 mile hike together, a dream we’d both had for decades, but only I would see completed.  The weather was beautiful, and I was filled with hope for the day, my eyes damp with all the importance I had heaped upon it.  As soon as I realized, days earlier, that I would cross the border on her birthday, I felt it would be auspicious.

          It was miserable.

          I’d had Gentian Pond and the shelter to myself for hours, and fell asleep by seven, excited at the prospect of nine and a half solid hours of sleep, but two section hikers I’d met and forgotten arrived at eight, making lots of noise, and tried to maintain a conversation that didn’t interest me.  I didn’t get to sleep again until well after nine.  My energy level was low throughout Mom’s birthday, and the trail was very rough.  In the south, I’d estimated my arrival times based upon a walking speed of three miles an hour, and I often arrived earlier than I’d expected.  In Maine, I would estimate arrivals based upon a speed of two miles an hour, and I was later than I’d hoped every single day.  Maine was brutal, and I was never sure whether it was because it was brutal all on its own, or because I got there after hiking almost two thousand miles in under four months.  The hiking machine was rapidly losing steam.

          The day I entered Maine, it took me almost twelve hours to go a little under fifteen miles.  One of those miles was Mahoosuc Notch, a section of trail described by my guidebook as the “most difficult or fun mile of the AT,” a jumbled maze of boulders I’d actually been looking forward to navigating, thinking that as a rock climber, I’d have a distinct advantage.  Before we stopped at Imp Shelter, we had planned on hiking through Mahoosuc early in the morning, when we were fresh, and helping each other through as a group.  I arrived at Mahoosuc in the afternoon, already tired, accompanied accidentally by Pack and Big Hungry.  Pack had a barely-noticeable lisp, and had already hiked the Pacific Crest Trail.  Big Hungry was a fourteen pound rat terrier he’d adopted from a shelter just before starting the AT.  She was so small that she didn’t carry a pack, as many trail dogs do, but spry enough that she had less trouble navigating Mahoosuc than Pack and I.  In one spot, she darted out of the way just as Pack fell on his way over a sedan-sized boulder and landed on his backpack where Big Hungry had been just a moment earlier.  I proudly congratulated myself internally, knowing that my skill and experience as a rock climber would easily get me over the obstacle, and moments later fell at exactly the same place after my foot slipped off exactly the same edge that had failed him.  I dropped six feet with windmill arms and wheelbarrow-handle legs before landing so hard on my right ass cheek that I was certain I’d be limping for the rest of the trip.  It took a minute or two before I could even stand up straight, and I was later surprised to see that I wasn’t purple halfway down my thigh.  I’ve never bruised easily off-trail, and I’d always assumed that it was thanks to a high-protein diet, but the jar of peanut butter I ate every four or five days didn’t seem enough to protect me after that fall.

          It took over an hour to get through Mahoosuc Notch, and the physical difficulty in passing it was only one factor; it’s not a well-blazed section, and Pack and I often had different ideas about where the trail went.  Sometimes neither of us knew, and it wasn’t until one of us found a new blaze and yelled to the other that we both got back on track.  I tore a new hole in one of my shoes, and then painfully drove the exposed toe onto the jagged edge of a chunk of granite on the north end of the notch, after I’d thought the worst was over.  By then, any excitement I’d had about Mahoosuc Notch had evaporated with my high hopes for Mom’s birthday, and the last shreds of my good mood from my final day in New Hampshire.

          Two hours later, I arrived at Speck Pond Shelter and creaked slowly to the floor.  I changed shoes and busied myself sweeping the shelter and arranging my bunk, then took what I needed to stock up on water from the spring, but returned with only enough to get me through the evening.  The blackflies in the area were fierce, and I only found relief from them by wearing my entire rain shell, because they easily bit through everything else I had.  I put on my other pair of socks, because the camp shoes Liz had mailed to me in Delaware Water Gap were made of a mesh material that provided easy access to my feet, and I constantly brushed my hands against each other and my face to keep the blood-sucking bastards off of my flesh.  One of them snuck in under my watch band and bit me on the wrist.  When blackflies bite you, you almost never feel it.  Blackflies carry an anticoagulant in their saliva; the first indication of a bite is pinprick marks on your flesh that bleed like open wounds.  Later, those pinpricks itch like crazy.  I realized I’d been bitten under my watch because when my sleeve pulled back, I saw a bright smear of blood on the cuff of my yellow rain jacket.  I spent most of my evening swearing and miserable, on the brink of tears.  Happy birthday, Mom.

          I stayed at Hall Mountain the next night, and felt a bit better because I’d eaten a filling dinner at Speck Pond, did a better job of hydrating, and to my boundless delight, Hall Mountain wasn’t clotted with fucking blackflies.  I still had one problem: because we’d stopped at Imp instead of Rattling River three nights earlier, I was no longer sure I had enough food to get me to Rangeley.  I’d planned on cooking a large dinner for my friends to celebrate entering our very last state, but we parted ways before that happened, so I knew I had enough dinners—I just didn’t have enough hiking food for the days between the dinners.  I was working out that math early in the afternoon when I stepped out onto B Hill Road, and as I looked for traffic, a van pulled up and stopped beside me.  Even before the gravel stopped crunching, Doyi leaned out of the passenger window, and a moment later the sliding door opened to reveal Socs, Ginko, and Catch Me.  They had gone from one hostel to another, and invited me to join them, but I was still adamant about not slackpacking.  Then they asked if there was anything else I needed, explaining that they were on their way into town for a resupply when they chanced upon me popping out of the woods.  “Actually, yeah—could you spare a couple granola bars, or a Snickers?  I have almost enough food to get to Rangeley, but I’d feel a lot better with two or three more snacks.”

          Doyi couldn’t reach his pack, but Ginko, Socs, and Catch Me immediately started handing me food, and I soon had more than I’d need—in fact, I had enough that I had two extra snacks that day as I finished my hike, and I would be hard pressed to decide whether the extra food or seeing my friends did more to boost my morale that afternoon.  Whichever it was, when I reached Hall Mountain Shelter at the end of my 107^th day on the trail, I was in such a good mood that I left my pack in the shelter and practically jogged up the mountainside behind it to an overlook—several days after I’d started giving the finger to “viewpoint” signs along the trail.  Socs had taken over my planning duties for the rest of the group, and she assured me that I’d see them again in Rangeley in two days.

Say hello to my little friends

Since returning from my hike, my screensaver has been a constant slideshow of my pictures from the Appalachian Trail.  I think it's great, because it often reminds me of moments I don't usually dwell on.  It gives me some ideas for things I still want to add to my manuscript, but it's not always great for productivity, because I sometimes find myself sitting and staring at the stream of pictures, grinning at stirred memories.

Some of my favorite shots (and some of my favorite shots to take) are when I can get really close to a very small subject, and show detail that might be missed by someone else.  Pebbles look like boulders, moss looks like a forest, and lizards loom like dragons.  I love that.  My camera has a pretty good macro function, and I got a lot of use out of it during the hike, though there were a couple times when I couldn't get the shot I wanted because I was too busy flailing at mosquitoes.

Hoar frost

Garter snake

Frosty limb in the Smokies

This young mouse has no fight or flight response at all.

Pollen collection in Harpers Ferry

Black rat snake

A few drops of water to me; a puddle for him.

Wood frog

A spider in the Whites.

These alpine blooms are smaller than your pencil eraser.

This chick was napping in the middle of the trail.  I briefly entertained a thought of adopting her like a parrot, but instead just moved her to where she wouldn't get trampled.

By the numbers

I went through my journals this morning and compiled a list. Some of these numbers may be off by a little (for instance, I lost track of how many round Treebeard, Margarita, and I bought for each other in Port Clinton), but the following gives a pretty good idea of how my hike went, in purely quantitative terms.

Pizzas consumed: 10
Beers consumed: 30
Burgers consumed: 15
Showers: 30
(tiny) loads of laundry: 10
Glasses of wine: 2
Nights I shared whiskey with other hikers: 5
Ice cream cones: 8
Ice cream sundaes: 7
Other ice cream (in gallons): 1.875
Sets of pole tips: 4
Pairs of shoes: 6
Pairs of camp shoes: 3 (one was given to a camper who had inexplicably lost her shoes; someone gave me a replacement pair, and I replaced those with something lighter that fit me better once i had the chance)
Pairs of socks: 3 (one was damaged while drying in front of a fire in the Smokies; one pair made it all the way from Springer to Katahdin)
Ticks found on my body: 7
Tick bites: 1
Mosquito bites: innumerable
Nights spent in hostels: 10 (one of those nights was in my tent on the hostel's back yard)
Zeros: 8
Neros (less than ten miles): 4
Catholes dug: 5
Catholes used: 4
Damsels rescued: 1
Books read: 5
Ponds I swam: 4
Rivers forded: I forgot to count those, but there were a lot more than I was supposed to have
Times I gave directions to shorter-term hikers: 6
Pack weight: 28-35 pounds
Passenger weight: 6 pounds
Calories consumed per day (estimated): 5,000
Nights spent alone: 8
People who came to see me start: 4
People who came to visit along the trail: 15
People who came to hike with me: 2
People who sent mail (and packages): 4
People who came to see me finish: 12
Generations of my family represented on the final day of my hike: 3
Generations of my family represented at dinner that night: 4 (my nephew was too young for Katahdin)
People who donated: 38
What they donated: $1,403
Disturbing mail: 2 (both were very well-wrought jokes)
Disturbing people: 3
People I met who I thought may pose a danger to me: 0
People I met who I thought may pose a danger to themselves: at least 6
Average speed (including zeros and neros): 18.06 miles/day
Days over 30 miles: 6 (I think)
Days that were really close to 30 miles: about the same
States: 14
Miles in the Hundred Mile Wilderness: 99.4
Trail Miles: 2,185.3
Days: 121
Bucket list items completed: 2 (same item, 2 lists)

67

Happy birthday, Mom.

We've had a great hike this summer.  I've met some amazing people, and I've even met people (this impresses and scares me a little) who think I'm amazing.  Partly because of the hike; sometimes because they know I'm bringing a little part of you along.  Not the part that matters--that part I always carry, and so does my brother, and Dad, and everyone else who loves you.

By the time this post goes live, we'll be most of the way through New Hampshire, and may even be in Maine. I don't get many opportunities to get online, so I have to guess a couple weeks in advance when I might be anywhere.  There are several people looking forward to meeting me in Maine, and even crossing the finish line with us.  They take my guesses and make whatever plans they need to make; I know how we'll get there.

I think of you every day. I miss you every day.  I have you with me every day.

And even when the ashes have all been scattered, I will still have you with me every day.  Because raising a kid isn't just about getting them to be their own person; it's about being a great enough person that they want to be a little like you, and keep a part of you with them forever.  At least, that's the way you and Dad did it, and I'm proud to see parts of each of you in myself every day.

Love always,
Ry

in the dark

Camp was still almost three miles ahead of me, and the sun was already dipping below the treetops.  That happens much sooner in the mountains, because the roots of the trees are sometimes well above your head.  You lose daylight quicker when you're below the horizon.  I've been out in the dark an awful lot on camping and hiking trips, and I take a certain pride in might night vision, so I wasn't worried.  Besides, I felt like I could use the practice, in case my headlamp batteries died at some inopportune point next year.  That was the point of all my training hikes: to help me prepare for whatever might happen during my thru hike, often by carrying more than I knew I needed for a short trip, or changing my menu plan.  Walking in the dark was just another useful thing to practice.

While it was still dusky I startled two deer who were almost close enough for me to take a bite out of them.  When they launched through the brush, I saw a third join them, further from the trail.  I was a little startled, too, but I was more focused on closing the distance between me and a campsite before it got prohibitively dark.  Most of the leaves were still on the trees, so I couldn't count on much light from stars or the moon to guide my way.

In daylight, the Appalachian Trail is generally very well marked.  You'd have to try really hard to get genuinely lost.  At night, you have to be more aware of context clues, because you can't always see the next blaze.  If the trail is fairly straight, it's easy.  It gets more difficult when you start switchbacking down a mountainside.  A gap between trees straight ahead can distract you from the sharp dogleg to your right, and unless you realize the footing just changed from beaten path to sticks and leaves, you're in trouble.  After a couple moments when I had to look around me, squinting in the darkness, to be sure which way I needed to go, I gave up and put on my headlamp.  Maybe ten minutes later I gave up again, and switched it from red to white light.  The brighter beam let me see much more, but it ruined any chance of retaining my natural night vision.  However, it also let me move much more quickly.

I was clipping along pretty well, having had a calorie-packed snack I knew would replace my cooked meal in camp, when I heard a grunting noise ahead of me, slightly to the right.

I know the word "literally" gets thrown around an awful lot these days, often improperly used, and it makes me crazy, but I literally skidded to a stop.  Whatever that noise was, it wasn't something my brain could immediately identify, like a treefrog, or an owl, or even the demented laughter of a pileated woodpecker, and that gave me pause.  Immediate pause.  A pause which locked my legs in position, leaving my feet no option other than dirt-skating until all momentum was lost.  My headlamp caught eyeshine about fifteen feet ahead of me, and once the critter moved a little and I saw the second eye, I knew I was ok.  They were far enough from the ground to make a large animal a possibility, but too close together to be anything that bore me a serious threat.  When I got closer, I managed to surprise him with the light just long enough to tell it was a raccoon, as I suspected once I saw both eyes.  I laughed at myself, and kept going.  After the scare the raccoon gave me, I wasn't fazed at all by the skunk I saw fifteen minutes later.  Sure, I slowed down and waited for him to get out of range, but he didn't manage to spook me like his arboreal friend.

The shelter was full when I arrived, and the whispering people eating dinner told me the people sleeping in there were already asleep when the diners arrived.  They said there was still room for me and my pack, but I knew there had to be tent sites nearby.  I kept my light low on the ground, so as not to disturb any tent campers already asleep, and found a good site between two guys I met late the next next day.  I made camp quickly, hung my food bag, and went to bed.  It was dark.  What else was I going to do?

I always have trouble sleeping through the night, but it's different in the woods.  In town, I wake up to hear traffic or people.  In the woods, I wake up to the chirring chorus of bugs.  Later in the night, when even the bugs had gone to sleep, I heard a conversation between some treefrogs (I didn't mean to eavesdrop--I just like the sound of their voices).  Much later, I heard a barred owl reciting soliloquies in the dark.  Just three reasons I love being in the woods at night.

Day One

Today is the first day of my thru-hike.

I've never been so excited, or so anxious, about any other undertaking.  I've been actively planning and training for a year, but I've been preparing, in some ways, since I was five and Mom and my aunts started taking me on volksmarches.  They were little organized hikes, usually in some local nature preserve, and I remember getting really excited when we did one that was five miles long, because in my mind that was a REALLY long walk.  When a dear friend in Oregon said in an offhand manner (still sounding a little impressed) that I was "a very good hiker," I gave credit to the volksmarches.  That was somewhere around mile eight of a twelve mile excursion over Glass Butte.

It had never occurred to me that I was "a good hiker."  I just knew I liked to do it, but I did notice when other people were not good hikers.

Now I'm starting a 2,185.3 mile hike through fourteen states.  Someone gasped when I told them the total length, but I reminded them, "You don't look at it like a 2,000 mile hike.  You look at tomorrow's hike of fifteen or twenty miles.  Fifteen miles is easy.  Then, the next day, you do that again."

When I started this blog, one of my earliest ideas was to somehow use it as a fundraiser for the things that matter to me.  And every time I go hiking, especially on the Appalachian Trail, I think about Mom.  I've started a Mosaic page for her with the American Cancer Society.  Donations made there are in her memory, but they all go into the same big ACS bucket.  Maybe, by the time I reach Katahdin, the page will raise a dollar for every mile I've hiked.

In January, when I was helping my brother with some home-improvement projects, I told him something that had been on my mind for a few months.  "It's not my hike," I began.  "It's not about me.  It's for Mom, who never got the chance to do it, and you and Dad, who want to but can't get out there yourselves.  It's not my hike.  I'm just the one doing all the walking."

I'm never as eloquent as I intend, but hopefully you get the idea.

Posts will continue here over the summer, with both trail updates when I get the opportunity to write them, and adventures past whose stories I've been saving for this occasion of limited internet access.  I hope you enjoy them.  I hope they inspire you to have adventures of your own, big or small, because that's the real point of this blog--I want you to get out there and have as much fun as I do.

Well... as much fun as you can stand, anyway.

Happy trails,
Reynstorm

Questions I get about backpacking

When I reached a point where lots of people knew about my thru-hike next year, I started getting a lot of questions about it.  I loved that, because it gave me free reign to talk about something I had largely kept to myself for nearly a year.  But the thing about conversations like that is that you often learn just as much from the questions as the other person does your answers.  For instance, it's easy for me to spot other backpackers, because they generally only have two questions: Northbound or Southbound?  and How much does your pack weigh?  After that, they may get into more details, like which stove you chose, or how you're going to treat water, but they always open with one of those two.

I'll start with those.

Northbound or Southbound?
Northbound (see also: NOBO or GAME).  Most thru-hikers go north for a reason: it saves the difficult White Mountains for the end of the hike.  By that time, you've been training for months, and are trail-hardened for anything.  My mom's uncle hiked it southbound, and even he recommended I go north.  Plus, a big part of why I want to hike the AT is to take Mom's ashes with me.  When I was in college, my brother, my dad, and I spread some of her ashes on Springer Mountain, in Georgia, and I feel like heading north from there gives the trip better continuity.

How much does your pack weigh?
With the gear I have now, ten days of food (I don't plan to ever carry ten days of food again if I can help it), and all my cold-weather gear, my pack weighs about 35 pounds.  That's what I remember from my Shenandoah hike in October.  I received a lighter water filter and bottles for Christmas, and if I get a chance to play with my new alcohol stove and get comfortable with it, I can shave some weight there, too.  However, 35 pounds doesn't take my passenger into account, so I'd like to cut more weight, if I can.  Unfortunately, I think I've reached a point where shedding more weight will get really expensive, and probably require changing my tent and the pack itself.  I think the more likely option is better food purchases.  I took a lot of food to SNP that I never ate, even accounting for the extra food I knew I wouldn't need.

I also get lots of questions from people who either aren't backpackers, or don't have much experience with this kind of backpacking.  These are some of my favorites.

Are you taking a knife?
Yup.  I have a tiny Leatherman (another good place to shave weight would be replacing this with a tiny Swiss Army knife that just has a blade, scissors, and tweezers.  I used to have one, but it's disappeared since I was in Scouts).
That's it??  What if you have to cut off your arm or something??
I don't think you understand where I'll be hiking.  I'm really not concerned about that possibility.

How many changes of clothes are you taking?
I'm not.  Extra clothes are what people use to fill up their dressers, and I'm not taking a dresser.  I want that space--and that weight--available for food.  I will take layers of clothing, so I can adjust my insulation according to weather, and a rain shell for when it gets wet, windy, or very cold.
Ok, but what about underwear?
Under where?  Most of the time I'll wear running shorts, which have a liner.  When it gets cold, I have a pair of merino wool leggings which are surprisingly cozy for something you can see through.

Aren't you worried about bears?
I'm only worried that they'll run away so fast that I won't be able to get a good picture.  Bears are generally timid and don't want to mess with people.  On the other hand, people doing stupid or foolish things in the woods have led bears to believe that people have the best food, and many people don't know how to store it in the backcountry.  When bears get accustomed to finding food in camp areas, they return to those areas for more food.  I may have to deal with a bear that has been trained by past hikers to steal my food.  Luckily, most shelters along the AT have some provision for hanging food out of ursine reach.  I'll probably take some cord so I can hang my own bear bag, should I be forced to camp in a place that has no such amenity.
Well, what about wolves?  or snakes?  or ticks?
In the past 60 years, there has not been a single documented case of a wolf attacking a human in North America.  Snakes are like bears; they're not going to bother me if I leave them alone, and besides taking pictures when I get the chance, I leave snakes alone (occasionally, when I can identify a species as non-venomous, I may move it out of the trail for its own safety).  Besides, the areas of the trail where snakes are most prevalent will probably be behind me by the time it's warm enough for them to be out gallivanting.  Ticks and pathogens are my only real concerns.  When Turtle and I hiked the overlooks in Virginia, we would stop at the end of every patch of high grass or other greenery that overhung the trail and checked our legs for passengers.  He led the way through most of that, so he found far more than I did, but that practice will continue this year.  If I find any ticks on me, I intend to do it while they're still looking for a picnic spot, not after they've made camp.  Dad provided me with a new filter for Christmas, and I'm confident that it will effectively treat my water.  Oddly enough, one of the bigger risks to hiker health is other hikers; many think that living in the woods means abandoning all hygiene practices, and those are the people sharing your shelters.  Online forums are full of reports of sick hikers sharing illnesses at shelters.  I plan to stick to my tent for a long time, and only accepting sealed food from others.

What if you wake up one morning and just decide that you're sick of it, and don't want to hike anymore?
I think that's unlikely.  But let's say it happens.  How often do you wake up in the morning and decide that you're sick of it, and don't want to go to work that day?  Starting March 10, my job is hiking to Maine.  If there's a day I don't feel like hiking, I'll probably hike anyway, because it's my job.

Are you taking anything for protection?
Someone asked me this question in front of The Girl, who immediately acted shocked and asked of them just WHAT kind of trip did they think this was, ANYWAY??  After we finished laughing, they clarified, "seriously? a gun, a knife, what?"  No.  Definitely no.  The most powerful firearm I own bears the NERF logo.  I've fired .22 rifles, and have no other firearm training at all.  Furthermore, guns are illegal on many parts of the trail, heavy over the entire trail, and entirely unnecessary.  People seem to think I'm trekking through a warzone.  It's Appalachia, for pete's sake.  I'll be safer there than I am in D.C.

The most interesting question I've heard was actually asked of The Girl by a friend of hers.
Aren't you afraid he's going to spend too much time in his own head?
I thought that was impressively insightful for someone I don't know, but if she had known me, she also would have known the right answer, delivered by The Girl: "He already does that."  Unemployment has given me two solid years to muck about deep inside my brain.  I won't meet any demons on this trip I haven't already taken to lunch.  At least, not the internal kind.

Have any more questions?  I'm not an expert on backpacking (yet), but I am the world's leading expert on my plans.  Ask soon--I leave in less than a month.

Trail Names

Back in May, at the shelter where we set up our tents on the first night, we met T-Square.  "You must be an engineer!" I responded upon hearing his name.  "Yes, I am, retired nuclear."  Later, he asked me what kind of engineer I am.  "Unemployed."

On the same hike, after our group reduced in size by half, we met FedEx, who works for the shipping giant and used to hike in a vest with their logo, and Sunnie Falls, who hoped to finish the AT in the summer between the end of her high school career and the start of college in the fall.  When she couldn't find a better pair of replacement shoes, she had bought a pair of Crocs and had thru-hiked about half of the trail in them since then.  I don't know whether it was the same pair for that duration.  We also met Yellow Jacket (wearing a blue jacket), a woman in her... late fifties?... who was on her last day of her last section of the AT when we met her.  She told us that every day at 10 AM, she had a Snickers bar in memory of a friend who had done the same, and died of cancer months after finishing his thru-hike.

In the Shenandoah, I met Handyman and later learned of the random connection between us through his son.  Handyman had been hiking with Cakes ("Like in Johnny Cakes"); Boulderdash informed me that Cakes held the record for longest sustained fart on the Appalachian Trail.  Two days later, Skurks caught up with me, and I finally met Slim, whom I'd heard about from the other guys I'd met in the park.

On my first backpacking trip last year, I introduced myself to a pair of ladies partly to be friendly, but mainly because I wanted to learn about the pack one of them was carrying.  Grieze was clearly alarmed when Timber told me her real name, but if it helps, I've since forgotten it.  That's the thing about trail names: they are not the labels we have grown into, but the labels which define who we've become.  I've always felt that you can't give yourself a nickname, and that the people who do invariably choose something they think will sound more impressive than the rest of us generally believe them to be, but a trail name is different.  Grieze ("Greezy") explained hers by telling me that she just sometimes feels crabby.  Timber falls.  Boulderdash felt like that's what he was doing during a particularly rocky section of the trail.  Handyman has a home improvement business.

I think you can pick your own trail name, but I've also heard that it's best to have yours before you start the AT, or risk getting stuck with something applied to you by other hikers.  Just imagine what Cakes could have been called.  The Girl has said that I am good at naming things, but I have yet to pick a trail name.

On my very first AT hike, Mom called me IronKid because I seemed unstoppable, but I think I might be too old to get away with that one anymore.  I like Treefrog because I carry one (I also have strong legs, climb trees, and make a lot of noise at night).  The Girl's entire family thinks I should be Ryno, because that's what her nephew calls me.  I admit it's pretty good (as is the variant Ryno Dino--I sometimes run like a velociraptor when carrying him piggy-back), but I feel like it would be more fitting to use something my nephew calls me.  The problem is, he calls me Mom.  He also calls his mom and several household objects Mom, and occasionally uses Mom as a verb, command, adjective, or expostulation.  Diagramming his sentences is a nightmare.

After a few days without a shower, I think I smell like a Bad Onion.  The Girl calls me a Master Baker (maybe because I'm known for my Bagels?), usually while laughing inexplicably, but she thinks I should be Snake Bait.  After the Shenandoah hike, when I was invariably the first hiker out of camp each morning, and thus the first to catch my face in every single spiderweb, we both liked Web Walker.  I've considered Off Belay, for one obvious reason, and because when you're off belay, you have reached a point of safety, where you can take care of yourself, and I like to think that's how the trail will treat me.  Back in May, I considered Branch (it was almost my real name, I'm a branch of my family tree, and there are branches on trails, trees, and streams, each of which I'll see plenty of this year), but for some reason I think a trail name should have more than one syllable, and I have no rationale for that whatsoever.

However I label myself, I need to decide soon; my feet hit the trail on March 10.  Any suggestions?

SNP AT

In the spring, I had an (obviously failed) plan to get in one backpacking trip every month until at least October, to make sure I had the right gear, familiarize myself with said gear, and spend some time on the trail mentally cataloging shelters, water stops, and resupply points.  I have been backpacking four times this year.  Whoops.

I also had a goal of getting at least one week-long trip, because I felt like the weekend getaways weren't taxing enough to give me a good idea of what I was starting.  I nearly succeeded.

My route, roughly, through Shenandoah National Park

On a recent Sunday afternoon, after the second half of a two-day Ultimate tournament, The Girl drove me to Front Royal.  (On the way, we took the Jubal Early ferry across the Potomac.  Not that Jubal Early.)  The Appalachian Trial passes a few miles outside of town, and I was able to start hiking at about 3:30 that afternoon. The problem was, to make my schedule for the rest of the week work well, I'd have to hike about fourteen miles that afternoon, which meant finishing in the dark.

Chicken of the woods?

The Girl hiked with me almost as far as the Tom Floyd shelter.  On her way back to the car, she met Skurks, a southbound thru-hiker who I didn't meet until Wednesday night.  Skurks and I didn't realize he had met someone I knew until Thursday night, and I admit being pretty proud that I was able to maintain that much lead for at least a couple days.  I didn't meet any other long-distance hikers that day, but just outside the park boundary I met a family of five (there was a sixth member who was sick, and stayed at home) and their three cats who had followed them on the mile-long walk from their home.  The mother of this group has a southbound thru-hiking cousin on the trail this season; the father works for a tree-trimming company whose trucks I've seen in our neighborhood.  It was neither the last, nor the most striking example of "small world" that I encountered that week.

The Gravel Springs shelter was full when I arrived that night (about 8:30), and the picnic table was full of people cooking and eating their dinner as quietly as possible.  I slipped past them to find a tent site, and was glad that my late lunch and heavy trail-snacking left me full enough that I didn't feel cooking dinner that night was necessary.

Monday morning sunrise

There was a tent on either side of me that night; Handyman rose from one and greeted me on his way past the next morning.  I later learned that Cakes ("as in Johnnycakes") was in the other.  I packed quickly, and was the first to leave the shelter area that morning.  My proof?  Spiderwebs in my face, all morning long.  For a while, I considered the trailname Webwalker.  But being early has its advantages, too.  A few miles from camp, a side trail led to a spring, where I saw my first two bears of the week.  I'd never turn down an opportunity to see bears.

Not a bear, but still neat to see so close.

Later that day, I started to feel the effects of skipping dinner the night before, but I had plenty of snacks to sustain me.  Knowing it could be my only big training hike, I had filled my pack with ten days' worth of food, just to make sure I could carry that much next year, should the need arise.  I know now that I can, and that I don't want to carry that much food again if I can help it.

The view from Mary's Rock is not usually blocked by blue buffoons, but it was that day.

I spent Monday night in my tent, pitched behind Byrd's Nest #3 shelter (there are at least three more structures in SNP called Byrd's Nest; one is a picnic shelter relatively close to the trail, one is on Old Rag, and I still haven't found the last).  Handyman and Cakes both passed through on their way to a nearby campground, and Big Island stayed in his hammock two tent sites away from me.  Boulderdash had the shelter to himself until a late arrival joined him.

Tuesday sunrise

I found Cakes and Handyman the next morning as they were wrapping up breakfast, and exploited the running water to brush my teeth, fill my bottles, and "camel up."  The three of us hiked together from there to Skyland, talking variously about Boy Scouting (it was the nineteenth anniversary of the day I became an Eagle Scout), job searches, and the possible impact on our hike of the impending government shutdown.  Truth be told, it had been a popular topic among everyone I saw on the trail that week.

I was slow with the camera, but this bear started closer to me than any other that week.  It was pretty exciting.

For a while, I was in the lead of our little group, and it was during this portion of the morning that I had my second most exciting encounter of the week.  I heard some noise to my left, and scanned the hillside, but didn't see anything.  Usually, those noises are just squirrels int eh leaves, making noise vastly disproportionate to their size, but the previous morning I had heard the thuds of the bear's paws as I approached the spring, and I was still keyed up at the idea that I might see another.  I kept walking once I failed to see anything--even a squirrel--among the fallen leaves, but as I passed a tree, I heard more scrambling noise, and a crashing thud as a bear hit the ground coming out of the same tree.  Moments earlier, Cakes had been complaining that he hadn't gotten to see a bear yet, and this one nearly fell on top of us.

View from a morning snack break.

I sent a couple postcards from Skyland, and Cakes and Handyman decided to stay for a hot breakfast, but when we arrived, we had found verification that the government--and the national parks--had been closed.  We had 48 hours to get out.

Knowing that I would one day write about that hike, I had a moral dilemma.  But I'm going to be honest here: I kept hiking.  I wanted to go as far as I could in that 48 hours, and I'd like to add in this paragraph that I was outside the park boundary by Thursday afternoon.  In the meantime, I stuck to the trail, practiced Leave No Trace, packed out my garbage, and avoided park services.  Later, I learned of several people who went on day hikes in national parks during the shutdown, and one group in Maine who ignored the closure and then required a rescue, thereby taxing the park's skeleton crew.  I do not condone any of those activities.  I felt bad for the rangers who had to tell people to leave; that's not how they want to spend their day.  On the other hand, most of the people I met (and all whose trail names I have mentioned here) were one-way, long-distance hikers, and didn't have the option of getting back in the car and heading home.  We all did the best we could to get out of the park by the posted deadlines.

An hour after I sent a postcard to my nephew telling I had seen three bears, I saw a fourth wandering down the trail ahead of me.

Looking west between Skyland and Big Meadows

A fawn eating either an apple, or a hickory nut.  After I finished taking pictures of her, I turned around and saw her mother on the trail, watching me.

I shared a campsite with Handyman that night, and learned that his son volunteers in the same park group as The Girl and I.  I also learned that he had talked to a ranger who had told him that they weren't going to bother the thru-hikers; we had official legal sanction to continue our hike, and I relaxed a little.  I am not accustomed to living outside the Law.

Looking north along the trail Wednesday morning, just before I caught up with Boulderdash.

Wednesday afternoon, I stopped in Simmons Gap for water, and met my first ranger on the way out.  "You know the deal right?" he asked after some introductory questions.  "Get out of the park as fast as I can?"  He nodded, checked my backcountry permit, reminded me to stay out of park campgrounds, and sent me on my way.  I felt better then, because I had personally gotten clearance from a ranger.  That night, I found out that Handyman had left the park in a ranger's truck.

Marbled Orb Weaver. I saw an awful lot of these along the trail, and felt bad when I had to tear down a web to get past.  They are a beautiful species.

I spent Wednesday night at Pinefield Hut, where there is no field, and I had to look around a bit to find a pine tree.  It was still a beautiful spot, and I arrived early enough to pitch my tent on the hillside above the shelter, rub my sore feet, stretch, and spend some time sitting quietly and listening to the forest before I made my dinner.  I think it was the most relaxing time I had all week, and it made me really happy to be there.  I forgot how much my ankles hurt, and the worrisome starts of blisters I was developing, and how I hadn't slept very well all week. I didn't care about any of that--I was just happy to be out in the woods.  That night I met Slim, a thru-hiker who was carrying a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and Skurks, who had met The Girl Sunday afternoon.

I gotcher mobile home right here.

Thursday was my longest day on the trail.  Depending on where you got your information, I hiked between 26 and 28 miles that day, with plenty of climbs, and only one reliable water source.  It was also the day of the best sunrise all week.

Hello, Thursday.  So nice of you to join us!

I could have gotten water at park campgrounds, but after the ranger's warning, I decided it was best if I avoided them entirely.  It wasn't easy.

Black Rock summit, 3,092 feet

Halfway between Pinefield and Calf Mountain shelters is Black Rock Shelter.  I figured that would be a good opportunity to refill my bottles.  Luckily, I didn't guzzle everything I had before I arrived, because there was a boil advisory at Black Rock, and I didn't know whether that meant I had to boil it in addition to filtering it, so I left without any new water.

hiking down from Black Rock summit

By the time I got to Calf Mountain shelter, I felt pretty bad.  Not dehydrated, but exhausted and sore.  I was also hungry, because I knew most of my food would make me thirsty, so I had skipped my last snack break and stretched the time between the others.  When I arrived, I chugged a liter of water, refilled both my bottles, and ate something.  I felt better immediately.  I also felt better when Skurks, the sandaled bad-ass southbound thru-hiker, arrived and declared that day was "a rough hike."  If it took a toll on him, I didn't feel so bad about feeling so bad.

Gecko and Mule (British citizens with nice accents and warm spirits) were already at Calf Mountain when I arrived.  Later, they let me use their cell phone to contact The Girl and tell her that I would be at our designated meeting point a day and a half early, and would she please come rescue me, and bring something cold to drink?

I saw stick insects Thursday.  I like stick insects.

tractor seats on top of a hill, arranged in a ...viewing area? near a communications tower.

Friday morning was a relatively quick hike, when you consider I was averaging close to 20 miles a day the rest of the week.  I got to our rendezvous by 10 AM, talked to a Coast Guard retiree who was disappointed that he and his wife wouldn't get to see Skyline Drive, and waved to Skurks as he went to meet his ride into town.  The Girl arrived about forty minutes after me, cold drink in hand.  But the highlight of the week was just before 9 that morning.  I was climbing, and saw some motion at the edges of vision.  From the size, shape, and color, I guessed it was some sort of raptor; then I realized I hadn't heard it, and wondered if it was an owl.  Then it flew back towards me, and landed less than twenty feet away.

my friend the Barred Owl

Twenty feet away and almost directly above the trail!!

It's hard to tell with all the leaves, but the trail goes right under the owl's limb.

I had hear them earlier in the week, and loved listening to them at night, but I hadn't seen one.  This was closest I'd ever been to an owl without a cage or handler involved, and I was captivated.  We spent close to ten minutes staring at each other.  I took almost twenty pictures, just hoping a few would turn out well, and he occasionally looked over his left shoulder, to show me he wasn't nearly as impressed with me as I was with him, but I was happy just to spend the time with him.  It was a great end to a great hike.