Oh The Places You Will Go

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who’ll decide where to go.”
--Dr. Seuss--

Some wonder about the brains in our head part. But our feet are in our boots and we are ready to steer them past the white blazes that mark the Appalachian Trail.

We leave Thursday for Virginia and the place we dropped off the trail. We will get back on the trail 2 days short of 1 year later. Our Thru hike has become a section hike. If we can hike three good months we will attempt to finish the trail in 2009.

If you want to follow our hike, I will post here updates on where we are and things that have happened. I will be keeping an online journal at www.trailjournals.com.

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Supposedly you can get to our journal by going to www.trailjournals.com/flintandjubilee but I haven't been able to get that to work yet. So go to the home page, go to the journals section, be sure you are on the Appalachian Trail 2008 page and scroll down. If you sort by trailname, look for flint and Jubilee, if you sort by name look for Rodger and Jennifer Russell.

This will give you an idea of how many hikers or on the trail, so see, we are not totally insane.

The Quaking Desert

At the sound of the neighing of mighty steeds,the whole land quakes.
Jeremiah 8:16 HCSB



It sounded like a dull rumble coming from up the river. My first thought was it sounded like the arroyo behind our house when I was a kid. Long before flood waters would reach our place you could hear the water’s roar. I didn’t have long to worry about whether we would be high enough above the river to escape the rising water before I realized this was something different.

I could hear the distinct sound of hoof beats. Horses! This is wild horses running down the canyon.

We were camped in a narrow canyon on the Muddy River. The canyon was less than 75 yards wide where our camp set. The river and accompanying brush filled two thirds of the canyon between our camp and the river.

The sound increased in both decibel level and intensity. I began to wonder if I should get in my Tahoe or at least behind it. But I was literally transfixed. I could not move. I stood in complete wonder at the fantastic sound of the running horse herd.

And then they were there. Running between camp and river. In the pitch black darkness I could only see shadows. They ran by in waves, was it 10 seconds, 20 seconds, half a minute? I can’t tell you, only that my heart was beating in concert with the pounding hooves.

Imagine standing in the orchestra pit while the band plays the 1812 overture with the drums beating. You are at a rock concert standing in front of the bass amp and the music is pounding. You hear it in your heart as much as in your ears. This was the experience of the horse stampede.

Then they were past, and we heard the sound fade away down the river until it was only a memory. I looked and Jen, totally amazed. Wow! How awesome was that?

In the morning we saw some remnants of the herd grazing in the meadow below camp. Earlier we had seen signs that there were horses in the area, even spotting one herd the evening we were driving in. On the way out of the desert, later that day, we saw another herd lazily grazing off in the distance.



Can you just imagine the sound that early pioneers heard on the plains before the buffalo were all gone? This small horse herd was heart pounding, I can only regret that I never heard the sound of 100,000 buffalo running by. Mercy!

SNOW!

Woke up this morning, happy as could be,
looked out my window, what did I see,
sitting on my driveway, and over on my porch,
there was snow that I never thought I'd see when we left March.
(with apologies to Buck Owens)

At least I could turn the furnace up and stay indoors. I have been following in my journal from last years hike on the Appalachian Trail and it was one year ago today, April 7, 2007 that we woke up at Icewater Spring Shelter to 17 degrees in the shelter and 6 inches of snow on the ground.


We had no furnace, we had no choice, we had to get up and hike. Well, we did have a choice though we didn't consider it very long. We could have hiked back south to the highway we crossed and go back to Gatlinburg and wait the storm out. Waiting the storm out is what a lot of hikers did. But not us, we hitched up and hiked north to the next shelter, further into the Smoky Mountains.

Boy that was fun. We have it all set up now, we think. If our ailments will allow us, we will be returning to Virginia and to the AT on May 5. Our hope is to hike until the last week in July. Goals:
Jennifer: Get Across Pennsylvania
Rodger: Get To Southern Vermont
Rodger: Lose weight to 200 pounds. (I haven't weighed that since my first year in college)
Both: Just be able to keep hiking for three months.

Jen of course is a pessimist. She also isn't much in geography. She doesn't realize that it is only 731 miles from where we will be starting to cross Pennsylvania. And it is 1033 miles to Southern Vermont.

The people we were hiking with last year all made it to central Vermont by August 1.

OK, so maybe we won't make Vermont. Let's shoot for NY. Wouldn't it be great to leave the trail at the Shelter in NY where you can catch mass transit to NYC? Maybe that should be our goal.

Realistically speaking. Our goal is to remain injury free, and just hike our own hike, at our own pace, and see where we get.

I wish we could convince just one of our friends how much fun this really is.