Hi! It's been years, I know. I've lost track of days... It's close though.
We're on the home-stretch now. My girls are selling cookies like crazy to make the money for the trek to Georgia, we've been hiking and preparing and fixing/replacing our gear for months.
Now the fun parts: gear lists, schedules, musings on technical details and working out who's meeting us where.
Practicing the fine skills of boot drying and hiking in wet feet.
We went on our first long hike of the year last weekend. The weather was pleasant--which was a nice change from the torrential downpour we camped in the weekend before (Day -155, -154)--we had breezes and cloud cover to keep us cool(ish). This is still Florida after all.
We went up to Jonathan Dickinson State Park and hiked the East Loop. It's a 9.8 mile loop that passes by the Scrub Jay campsite at mile 5.5. We stopped for lunch there because there is a well with water (must be treated), benches to sit on and a composting toilet.
The trail is mostly flat and in the open. There are a few spots where there is some shade, but the park is mainly sand, scrub and dead trees. The first 2.3 miles of the East Loop out towards Scrub Jay has a bit of up and down over some sand dunes.
All the rain last weekend filled up the little dips in the trail and we had more of a swamp slog than we anticipated. The girls learned the value of proper hiking shoes and why we wear long socks. (ie: dry feet and fire-ant/cactus/thorn encounters).
This is old news. And I didn't say anything before because I was hoping that it would just go away. I have a deep, unconditional love of the Postal Service, no doubt born from nervous anticipation of Mail Call at camp. I send and receive postcards regularly, I send bills through the mail. I know how much a stamp costs and I believe it is no small marvel that for $10.75 I can have a package personally delivered to my family 3,000 miles away.
The postal service is required by the Constitution to provide affordable service and delivery to every citizen, but they don't get any funding. They must support themselves, which is becoming problematic in these times of reduced mail volume (Darn Internet!) To further complicate things, they need congresssional approval for any major decisions--like reducing delivery days. My love isn't enough.
Now, instead of nervously awaiting the mail to see if they still loved me back home, now I'm nervous that my mail won't come at all. Beyond that, I'm afraid I won't be able to afford to send packages for resupply, or that I won't have anywhere to send them.
Closing the post offices in Fontana Dam, N.C.; Glencliff, N.H.; and Caratunk, Maine, would leave hikers without an easy way to get food and switch out equipment at critical points during their treks, which usually take between four and six months
Nothing makes me want to be outside more than 6 hours spent thus: put the purple circle over the green dot. Repeat 500,000 times. I wish that was an exaggeration. I can recall many bad days on the trail that beat a good day at microarray quantification. Even days that involved frozen rain or leeches.
On the bright side--there's a large comfy chair in the secret office where I do this work, for quick restorative eye resting sessions, and I have a window that I can see out of without pressing my face up against the glass to catch an sliver of sky without buildings. I can watch the storms roll in across the parking lot now.
Spent the weekend with a handful of the Scouts giving the Scout House a deep deep clean. We unearthed many artifacts and made some shocking discoveries. A can of asparagus that was bulging and older than every Scout in the room. A mysterious set of rusty keys that don't go to any of the locks in the house, or do they??? Mice eat crayons. Ok, well maybe it wasn't that exciting. But, it's clean now. Hurrah!
Whenever I'm on an overnight with Scouts I make sure to anticipate their fears or worries. A big one on the list of 'things that make Scouties go Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!' is Night Noises. Before we go to bed, or during campfire we try to come up with as many sounds as we can that we might hear in the middle of the night. "What noises might you hear tonight?" The kids usually do a pretty good job of coming up with night time forest sounds (traffic, loud music from the neighbors [we camp inside the city sometimes], owls, coyotes, etc etc etc), and I make sure to add the ones they might not anticipate. For instance, peacocks at 2 am can be terrifying for the uninitiated. It gives the kids a chance to think through the noises they might hear, and a chance for the Responsible Adults (tm) to explain that it's No Big Deal (ie: don't wake me up!). "There now you've heard all the night noises so you won't be scared!"
Why are we talking about Night Noises?
So last night I'm laying snug in my bed asleep at a time when normal people are sleeping--oh, say 1am. Slowly I realize that I'm not actually sleeping anymore because there's this really strange noise coming from my bedroom window. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Somewhere in my foggy brain I know exactly what this noise is. Someone is throwing rocks at my window. But my brain doesn't latch on to that because WHO DOES THAT? Second option, and obviously the logical one is that I'm experiencing PARANORMAL activity. (Did you see Insidious?) I'm sure there are ghosts outside of my window. I'm scared, but I crawl out of bed to look anyway. There's no one there. That was a little disappointing. I drug myself all the way out of bed and to the window and there's no ghosts or John Cusacks with boom boxes and Peter Gabriel or anything. Boring.
Since I'm up anyway I decide to hit the head before going back to sleep. When I walk out of my room towards the bathroom I hear the softest of knocking coming from the front door. Robbers don't knock and my dogs aren't barking. I figure my dogs can't hear spiritual apparitions. Now I'm sure it's a ghost. I tiptoe across the living room towards the glowing outline of the front door. I peek through the peep hole. Nothing. Can't be anything but a ghost. I consider fixing the chain lock before opening the door but I figure that the ghost can slip through any gap. I open the door.
It's my roommate. She's not tall enough to show up through the peep hole, or apparently savy enough to take her keys with her when she leaves the house.
