Welcome to Hiker Life!

Hello hello from sunny Charlotte, NC!

I am taking some time off from the Trail eating REAL non-trail food, sleeping in a bed, relaxing, learning how to ride a motorcycle, and just being. And the best part of this break is being with good friends :) Tim, Ayden, Heather, Rosie and Angela!

It has been six weeks and almost 450 miles on the Trail and I'm slowly feeling at home with this hiker life and culture. As a result, I've come up with a mini ethnographic report of this hiker culture, check it out....

You know you are a hiker when:

 Day hikers and section hikers in freshly laundered clothes and recently showered, smell as clean as a spring meadow full of lavender flowers after a rainfall.

After consuming a large salad, a glass of orange juice, two glasses of Dr. Pepper, two vegetarian fajitas, a pouched egg, a banana, a mango, half a bag of goldfish and a pint of strawberry ice cream-you think about buying another pint of ice cream. But this time, chocolate! 

Most conversations with fellow hikers revolve around functioning or non-functioning bodily functions, breakfast foods, gear, town foods, terrain, junk foods, weather, lunch foods, miles, snack foods, wildlife and plant life, dinner foods, the next town stop, dessert foods, blisters, high calorie foods, trail names, cheap foods, the latest trail magic, dream foods, God and philosophy and art and poetry and FOOD!!!!!!

You get out of your warm sleeping bag and tent in the middle of a cold and wet night to take down your bear bag (a hiker's bag full of all food including scented toiletries suspended by a tree 12 feet above ground) to enjoy a delicious midnight snack :) 

Watching dirt drip down the sink after the first, second and third time of washing hiker hands becomes a blissful, refreshing and fulfilling experience that creates indescribable happiness and peace :) (It happens about once a week!)

Eating with silverware, plates, cups, bowls, serving spoons, and napkins on a TABLE and sitting in a CHAIR becomes the most civilized act of the human species.

After sleeping, eating, walking, talking, sitting, and experiencing all the known bodily functions in 13 days of straight rain; cloudy and rainy days become beautiful opportunities for the forest to grow, buds to mature, flowers to bloom and to appreciate dry clothes! Optimism is the only way to go on this trail!

Finding a garbage bin along the trail makes your day :)

There is no need for a french tip manicure or pedicure as the Appalachian Trail provides its own services of firm and callused foot and hand care and dirt tipped nails.

Eating 3 lbs of sweets becomes a weekly ritual.

You begin talking to not only animals and birds in a baby voice but to plants, flowers, moss, lichen, trees, fungus, insects, lizards, salamanders, grasshoppers, crickets, parasites, rocks, centipedes, millipedes, snails, dragonflies, moths, butterflies, stars, and bright puffy white clouds on a sunny day.

You miss being called by your real name-especially by family: mom, dad, reubie, ruthie, becky :) I miss y'all.

(The last two specifically apply to Gaucha. And yes, she's added y'all to her vocabulary.)

I think I've become the trail wildflower photographer :) They are beautiful! I've given a little preview here on this posting.

Peace and love to all who stumble upon these Trail Tales,

Gaucha