It took us about a week to get back into the groove after getting back on the trail. From then until trail days we hiked every single day. Our averages the first week weren’t impressive but we slowly got back to walking around fifteen miles a day (and my ankle was not thrilled on those days, let me tell you). For those who don’t know, trail days is a large hiker festival held in Damascus, VA. HP products offered a shuttle that ran the length of Virginia picking up bus loads of thru hikers and dropping them off at the festival and then taking them back to wherever they were on the trail. The cost was quite reasonable too considering all the work it probably took to get the smell out of those seats afterward. They even brought us bacon covered maple donuts, a delicacy in the world of thru hikers.
Being at trail days was an interesting experience. I haven’t seen such a large crowd of people gathered into one place since before the mess that was 2020. NoBody wore a mask, and NoBody has reported an outbreak so I guess these vaccines are working.
At trail days there is a plethora of live music, food trucks, and outdoor outfitters spread throughout the small stretch of land between a river and a road. Lil Belle and I ate pizza and funnel cakes that we washed down with fresh squeezed lemonade. Sadly I ate all the food before I thought of taking a picture. Though vendors account for the majority of tents therein, service providers (such as haircuts and massages) are also present and many were free.
After dark trail days becomes a huge party. There are fire pits and drum circles. All this seemingly goes on throughout the course of a night which was why getting an Airbnb was the right decision for us. For me, leaving a party is always more satisfying than arriving at one.
After four days of fun we finally got back on trail. We started back at Mcaffe knob, which is one of the most popular photographs of any thru hikers scrapbook. We woke up at four thirty in the morning to get there before sunrise. And here was the beautiful sight we saw.
The rest of that day proved interesting. One thing I noticed was the fact that every other overlook after Mcaffee look exactly the same iF not better than that famous spot. What I have become acutely aware of ever since that day is how fluid time is now passing on the trail. Every day looks just about the same; we wake up and hike uphill until our feet can no longer stand it. All the views are started to mesh together in my mind’s eye and their memory now seem like some collage of epic vistas with green mountains before us and bright blue ridges behind them. It all just seems to blur together. In this state of hiker haze the whole thru hike itself all the many peaks there are to climb seem to come together and create one mountain, one climb, one challenge. Which reminds me of an old mystic’s proverb about climbing the mountain of the spirit: “the last step (up the mountain) depends on the first… the first step depends on the last.”
Is that all a thru hike is? Just one step.
Til next time,
Pan and Bell
from the other side 
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