Day Fifteen, 21 miles
The morning begins with a nuthatch alarm. Sunlight streams through the pines. It’s dark and chilly in here, but quiet as we make coffee and prepare for another 20-mile day.
Is this actually a wise idea in this up-and-down mountain terrain?
I guess if you want the tiny window of pretty weather before rain settles in for a week. Moxie is game. In fact she’s determined and we set off.
We head mostly down towards Indian Grave Gap where hikers post numerous complaints about there being no trash cans at the parking lot. I hadn’t thought we were in here long enough to make enough trash to register a complaint.
Beyond is a small Beech Forest enclosure with a clever walk over made of tilted metal. As in most beautiful and wild places, non-native animals were introduced and have practically destroyed the landscape. In this case, it’s hogs brought up here in the 1950s. I spotted three toddling along at the first campsite. So now, for an acre or two at least, we get to see how the Smokies used to look.
As we descend, we discuss food. Both of us have plenty, but it’s hiker food of bars and salmon in a tinfoil packet, string cheese and dehydrated dinners.
What we want are bananas and oranges. We’d give anything for fruit.
Since Indian Grave was totally empty, I start to think it’s too early for tourists.
How wrong I am. Newfound Gap is on a major highway connecting Gatlinburg, Tennessee to Cherokee, North Carolina and the start of one of the most popular trails in the park.
Of course, it’s packed.
I spy the state line sign so ask someone if he’d snap our picture. He’s wearing a name tag around his neck and it turns out he’s part of a wildflower group here to check out spring’s beauty.
We find a place to sit in the shade and a few other name tag wearers stop by to talk – and ask us if we need anything.
A banana? Oranges?
The trail provided these lovely trail magicians who pull out of their packs as if a rabbit out of a hat, one banana and six cuties! They ply us with more treats which are efficiently dispatched.
One tells us how much she wants to do what we’re doing but how hard it is to take the time. We encourage her that she’ll do it one day. Then another asks what our favorite sites were so far. When I say the wildflowers, one man perks up filling in my gaps in knowledge.
The sweet blue flowers with the black center are called bluets and the tiny white ones with multiple petals are phacelia – to which he begins singing Simon and Garfunkel’s “Cecilia.”
We adore this bunch, but need to head on and begin the 1,000-foot climb up and over towards Charlie’s Bunion. It’s actually fairly easy up this slope and we make friends with tourists heading up, stopping twice for water before reaching the short turn off to this intriguing rock formation.
Just as we arrive, a man passes us to tell us his Great-grandfather was Charlie – and he actually had an ingrown toenail, but the name did not quite have the same ring to it.
Charlie was a local pathfinder who helped the Geological Survey choose routes for the trails. His great-grandson lives in Washington and this is his first visit.
We pose for pictures at the bunion and eat food before moving onward on this most spectacular day. The air is dry and the sky a deep blue. It feels like the Sierra, especially now that there are so many pine trees.
I’m so glad to hike with Moxie. I imagine I’d get through here and make good decisions, but we push ourselves to stay ahead of the weather. She prefers that I hike in front and I sometimes share stories, then she will pushing us along as the trail begins to follow a very sharp ridge-top.
The landscape feels so different this side of the Smokies with more pine and steeper mountains. At one point, the ridge is a knife’s edge with both sides falling away steeply. Moxie asks how a blind person could possibly walk this. I wonder why a blind person would walk this.
The views are astounding as we work our way up to Laurel Top. We wind and wind around to get more views as the ridge appears going up and over one mountain after another. It’s beautiful and we are so lucky to be here in this beauty.
And yet. We’re tired. There’s water from a spout made by a leaf and I fill up. Ahead are three big climbs after another. Nothing is longer than a mile, but that’s a mile up on tired legs.
We get more astounding views at the start, but afterwards, it’s woods and rocks and just helping each other move forward.
Of course on the downs, we talk, but I become the cheerleader for the ups while Moxie says over and over she just wants to take off her shoes. I give her some special medicated bandaids for her blisters and urge her on…
just a coupla girls alone in the woods
Earlier in the day, an older woman hiker tells us that the shelter we’re headed to is not great for camping, but there’s a horse corral just beyond with flat spots for tents.
I’m not sure exactly why the national park doesn’t provide adequate space for the enormous number of hikers that come through here. Many of them are damp, puddly, rodent-ridden, uneven and generally unappealing.
Indeed when we arrive, the shelter itself is crowded and every semi-flat spot is taken by tents, so the horse camp makes better sense.
I send Moxie ahead to attend to her feet and then I collect water for both of us. As I do, an old man walks over to tell me how he doesn’t want to camp here, complaining about the noise and how loud everyone is.
And then he follows me up to the horse camp.
And invites his buddy.
Oh this can’t be good.
I’m already in my underwear when his buddy begins setting his tent a centimeter from mine. I ask if he might set his door the other way, and he makes a large, expressive, over-the-top-gesture adding “We certainly don’t want to bother you.”
Translation: We are designed specifically to bother you.
As Moxie and I quietly sit in our tents and enjoy dinner, these two – Tim and Bob they tell us – bring the noise and the loud with them, sharing every single thought in their head at full volume inches from us as if we don’t exist, yet in an oddly boastful manner that requires us as audience.
Bob is a bit more naturally rugged, the sniggering party animal looking for a good time. Tim is slender and sunken-chested, with glasses, giving him a Poindexter look. He has to try just that much harder to be accepted into the pack.
So why talk, they must be thinking, when yelling gets the point across more emphatically and makes us appear more manly to our captive women.
They discuss their mileage, and what they ate or will eat or want to eat or might eat. They unravel the finer points of a bear hang and discuss the moment it will rain tomorrow. They label each and every action they make like pulling out a toothbrush and putting it in their mouth.
It’s a kind of inconsiderate man-spreading in loud pointless statements that consume every ounce of space in this small setting.
As I try to ignore their oafish fraternity-brother, we’re-finally-away-from-our-wives-and-can-act-like-boys behavior, a real winner slips out of one of their lips:
It’s sure a lot better being up here than down there. A heckuva lot more peaceful!
I guess that would depend on how you define peaceful.
We giggle in our tents a little, both frustrated at the ridiculousness of the situation and the fact that we’re trapped listening to non-stop narration. After one shared laugh, I swear I hear them whisper, “They’re making fun at us.”
Still, on and on and on they go past 9:00 pm “Hiker Midnight.’ Even when the supposedly loud people have stopped talking below at the shelter, these two old jerks can’t help themselves and start it all up again with a parody of The Waltons saying good night to John Boy, Mary Ellen and the rest.
OK, guys, enough, time to stop talking I plead.
To which old jerk A (Tim) replies, “With all due respect, screw you.”
How…respectful.
I see he’s not only a loud boor but somehow missed the day they taught little boys how to act with a class around women. He definitely wins the “jerk of the trail” award.
I must admit I am getting tired of the entitlement of white men of a certain age.
I remember a time on another trail when a man threatened me with violence for taking his chair. This was a grown man with children and grandchildren who was so completely incapable of managing himself he was ready to strike me over a chair.
Are these men bothered/emasculated/threatened by strong women capable of walking as far (or in my case, farther) than they are? And do they realize their aggression is not only unbecoming but can be interpreted as dangerous?
I am sleeping under a piece of nylon ten feet from him when he tells me off and that I don’t “own” this place. Wow. Proud moment.
I can do this all night! He goes on.
To that, Moxie breaks in to shut things down. “Dudes, it’s Hiker Midnight. Let’s just all go to bed.”
And, for a second there, it goes quiet.
I take a few breathes to calm down, then begin to put this bullying jerk-of-the-trail into his proper pigeonhole of complete asshat.
And just like that, another hiker arrives shining his light on our tents.
This time, though, he’s alone and I’m so grateful not only that he’s here but that he has no one to talk to at full volume.
The trail gods be praised.
