South Carolina

Wow. A whole lot has happened in the last two months. I got to spend some time home in Minnesota, and it was great. There was time to meet up with some friends and family over the holidays. I enjoyed a nice cold and snowy December, which is the first good winter kickoff our state has seen in about ten years. It wasn't more than about ten days after I finished hiking that I injured my knee at work. This slowed me down considerably. I was hoping the damage was not serious, but when things didn't improve after a few weeks I got a MRI scan, and this showed a torn PCL ligament. The doctor sent me off for physical therapy and also to get a sports brace (like the ones they wear in the NFL). Unfortunately, since the injury is being covered by work comp., I have to wait for everything to get approved; this process is incredibly slow. It may be over a month before I actually get the brace, despite my regular calls to the insurance rep.

To complicate matters even more, I began to have problems with my knee and hip joints after my injury. At first I thought that this might be a side effect of walking with a limp, but then it spread to my shoulders, my hands, and all over my body. I was tired all the time, and most activities would wear me out. My whole body hurt, and my motivation to do much of anything plummeted. I went from over sixty hours a week of activity to nearly nothing. Talk about cabin fever. I think I watched more TV in 45 days than the last 10 years of my life. I was re-tested for Lyme's disease in early Jan, and it came back positive (I tested negative in August). I've been taking meds to treat this, and around Jan. 15 I started getting better. Now I feel dramatically better. The "spider" bite that I thought I had this summer was in all likelihood a deer tick bite.

I've learned many things from this whole experience, namely that I HATE navigating the health care system. But I also see that there is a strong relationship between how many insistant calls I make and how quickly I get what I need. Essentially, nearly every other day I call up the people in the health care business and "remind" them of what they need to do. Otherwise I end up waiting indefinately while my paperwork sits on someone's desk. I do see a light a the end of this tunnel!

In other news, I began my move to Columbia, South Carolina this last Monday. I bought an old van from my friend, Dave, so I could move my stuff. I held my breath pretty much the whole trip, but I made it here in one piece. The van is really LOUD, burns a gallon of gas every 11 miles, has a dysfunctional right turn signal, and tends to die when I put it into gear. It was a fun trip. I have since made it to Columbia and found a place to live. It's a small, excuse me, TINY house that's located about 1/4 mile from campus. I moved in today and I'm excited to have my own little place. It's perfect spot, and a great price to match. Columbia International University is about six miles north of downtown Columbia, and there's not much around here but pine forest. Over the next couple of weeks I hope to find a job of some sort so I can start paying for rent, food, etc. Please pray that I get a decent job!

The real world

Thru-hikers commonly refer to the life they left on pause (or the life they left behind) to go hiking as "the real world." It started out as an inside joke, but as the months wore on, we came to accept the idea piecemeal. My normal life of emails, driving, cell phones, and work slowly drifted from consciousness and I came to a place of pure existence. The tasks I would carry out each day were simple and routine. I was always responding to repetitious and predictable stimuli. It did not require much thinking. Although my time was occupied with activities such as hiking, preparing food, eating, setting up camp, sleeping, socializing, etc, I noticed that there was little need to be intentional. I could just live in the moment for days at a time. Even meal planning and navigating towns became a routine. I didn't have to make lists, but rather I would shift into autopilot and let my legs carry me around to complete the various errands. Occasionally I would need to work at kicking a bad habit or developing a good one, but once this was completed I'd shift back to cruise control.

Now while this manner of living did well to foster a peace of mind, it also had the deleterious effect on my cognition. My mind atrophied and I began to lose acuity and vocabulary, as well as basic communication, higher processing, and problem solving skills. I did a little reading and journaling, but this did not sufficiently address the problem. I arrived home on Nov. 11th and have fully immersed myself in my hobbies, which I now see as brain exercises, and I am regaining what I had begun to lose. It's coming back rapidly. Today is my first day back to work at the grocery store, where I will help out for the holiday season. I see it as additional opportunity to reinvigorate my mind.

I'm quite pleased with my little lesson in psychology and I don't regret for a minute that I took me nearly five months to learn it. I have a new appreciation for being intentional. I have to push myself to do it, but the rewards are much greater than I had once perceived. I am still working through a few vestigial quirks that I developed in Appalachia. For one, I can't bring myself to call anyone on the phone. My agitation is that I can't predict what the other person is going to say. Well, duh! ...I'll get over it. The other quirk is that I have to know where all my belonging are at all times. When hiking, it was imperative to keep tabs on my stuff, because if I misplaced something and hiked onward, I wasn't about to turn around and retrieve it. Obviously this is not the case in my house. Even so, when I misplace some item I put everything else on hold and begin a furious search until I find it. I plan to work at growing out of this one too!

The last week

It's almost over. Hard to believe, but I'll be parting from my 65 hour-a-week hiking routine, and then reacclimate to the real world. I caught what was hopefully my last hitch of the trip. Some guy in his 80s who was lecturing me about how I should know the infantry division he served in WWII. At least I knew a bit about General MacArthur, or else he might have told me to get lost. Well, I've still got to do laundry and buy some food before making my way back to the trail from Franklin, NC, so I'd better fly.

The home stretch

A month in the old dominion state

Next stops:

Troutdale, VA 24378 Monday, Oct 8th

Damascus, VA 24236 Wed, Oct 10th

Erwin, TN 37650 Wed, Oct 17th

After hiking for 105 days, hiking on the AT itself has become quite the routine. It's basically the same thing every day with minor variations. I spent the last two weeks hiking with a group of other southbounders, up to 11 others, so I've had plenty of company and variation, both important necesities out here. Today, however, I endevoured alone to blaze into the town of Pearisburg, which presented a more adventurous alternative. I followed the sound of traffic to the freeway and engaged in my favorite activity of attempting to hitchhike...which I abandoned after about 40 minutes and resigned myself to walking along the road. In the mid-atlantic people don't acknowledge your existence; you might as well be invisible standing on the side of the road. In the south, however, people stare.

"Hey, lookey thar, Ike, an App-a-latch-in trail hiker."

"Gee whiz, Bobby, I wunder if he'll get a rod inda town?"

Ok, so I just made up that dialogue, but they might as well be saying that. It's always good to hitch in with a female, if one is available, because not more than one car will go by before those good ol' southern gentleman and ladies will suffer to see a female hiker wait to be brought into town. Well, good for them.

After getting to the "downtown district" I dropped by the PO and then off to the newly opened bagel shop. People at both places were wonderfully helpful and friendly. I then made my way over to the church hostel via my horribly innaccurate schematic map. At the place where "Gale Road" should have been was "Hale Road." Figuring a typo, I took it and it turned into a dead end. I asked some guy standing next to his truck for help.

"Yer lookin' to find yer way back to the AT, I reckon?"

"Uh, no sir, I'm looking for the Catholic Church"

He preceded to tell me of a "short cut" over a hill and down a dirt road which would lead me right to the church. He said I looked "well enough equipped" to take it. So I head up this hill, which probably hadn't seen another pair of feet in a year or two, and it turned into this giant briar patch. Figuring I was almost through it, I just kept working my way up, and it got thicker and thicker. I could imagine the man who lived at the bottom of the hill busting his gut laughing at me getting all caught up in the briars. I'm impressed how he kept a straight face while talking to me. Finally, after getting cut up and tearing up my clothes, I came out in someone else's back yard, asked for directions again and found the church. Getting here, to the library, got me lost again on accord of my innadequate map, but oh well. At least I will have explored half of Pearisburg before I head out on the trail again tomorrow.