Saturday, November 11, 2000

Trail Day 172 on the ECT/123 on the AT
Trail Mile 2726 on the ECT/2030 on the AT
Location: NOC (winterized) Base Camp Hostel, Wesser, North Carolina

I'm awake this morning at seven but linger in my warm little nest for another half-hour, for it's crispy-cracklin' cold! By the time I'm packed, have faithfully performed my daily duty, and am prepared to depart, my fingers have turned to sticks. This never fails when it turns cold. The circulation in my hands is bad so I know this is going to happen, yet it always scares and frightens me. I can stand the blue-numbing cold and the pain that accompanies it, but the inability to make my fingers work, no matter how hard I concentrate or try is really scary. Somehow I manage to get my gloves on and my fingers crimped around my trekking poles. . .and I'm out and going for the day.

Upon claiming the first bump above the shelter, do I see the most breathtaking and spectacular occurrence! Although the summits and ridgelines hereabout are covered in hardwood, the leaves have fallen now, the views for the most part unobstructed. And what a view is there before me now. More, I suppose, a phenomena than a view! Everything is topsy-turvey.

In the sky we call clouds"clouds." On the ground, clouds are not clouds, they're fog. But what I see now is no ordinary fog, for below me and to the horizon in all directions are thousands of square miles of the most brilliantly white, glass-surfaced clouds I have ever seen, perfectly flat, perfectly smooth, as if a sea. Projecting through this fog-sea are legions of islands stretching to the blue, islands that are formed by the heaven-high pinnacled sharptops that are these majestic southern Appalachians! This scene before me reminds me so much of a similar scene from another place, another time. [MORE. . .]