Gilligan on the AT Revisited: 05-Jul-1993
July 5, 2008
This is a 5-month long series of blog posts that are the entries in my journals written on most evenings as I hiked the Appalachian Trail in 1993. The journal entry appears first — indented — and then any additional commentary from my 15-years-removed perspective follows.
7/5/93 – Mon.
This will be a short entry, as I did 26 tough milees today to get to punchbowl shelter, and I am tired. I got to John’s Hollow Shelter before 2:00, and it just wasn’t a nice enough place to kill an afternoon. I did drink five quarts of water between when I left this morning and when I arrived here this afternoon.
I’m staying with Possum, Crazy Hawk, and Mr. Wendal, all of whose entries I’ve been reading in registers for some time.
I met some interesting people today, including 3 guys who are day hiking the entire A.T. one weekend at a time, 2 members of the Natural Bridge ATC, and the 3 people I am staying in the shelter with this evening (more on them another time).
The string/cord solution on the boots worked not too well, but I used 3 strips of adhesive knit to just tape it, and that lasted about 8 miles very well before blowing out, so I think I’ll try that again tomorrow.
It looks like I may make Waynesboro by Thursday. Things to make sure I get there:
- Duct tape/barge cement
- Cortisone cream
- Toothpaste
- Insect repellent
- Moleskin
- Socks (?)
- Cord (?)
- Bootlaces
- H20 “stuff sack”
- Coleman fuel (?)
As always, I miss Julie very much.
It’s interesting, although not all that surprising, how much I was tracking time and mileage. Clearly, I had a watch, and I had my mileage book that I used to plan how far / how fast I would be travelling. At the same time, I bumped into people who were even more mileage-focussed than I was…but I was clearly closer to their end of the spectrum than I was to the “just-walk-happy-go-lucky” end. If I did it again today, I suspect I would have moved a bit closer to the mid-point on that spectrum. A bit.
Posted in Appalachian Trail, Tim
