First things first: I’m behind on my blog posts. Again. Time was the one thing I expected to have in spades while hiking the trail, but it’s become apparent that even out here the clock never slows. From morning till night I’m on the go, walking mostly, then parsing words with passing hikers, filling water bottles, snacking, pulling out gear, packing it away, always moving, hardly ever still.

And so, as the trail has taught me, it’s time to strip away the niceties. I said goodbye to feather beds, and now I say the same to the long-winded soliloquies in my blog. I have little time to write so I’ll just have to mince my words.

Here goes:

April 15th, I left Waynesboro and crossed the boundary into Shenandoah National Park, Cosmo still in tow. Whereas before the trail had lurched up and down mountainous terrain, here it glided, smoothly paved, along rounded hills. A treadmill would have given me more trouble. The nine miles to the first shelter was quite literally a walk in the park.

Along the way I met a former “EOD bomb tech” from Florida lurching along like the Hunchback of Notre Dame under a prodigiously sized bag. He was one day in, and struggling. Suggested he drop the ten ton solar battery in his outside mesh pocket.

Didn’t see him again after that.

April 16th. Cosmo and I pulled another 27. Because we’re both young and don’t know how else to live other than fast. Our previous 27 miler had been three days ago, and was forgotten like the distant past.

Needless to say, I stumbled into camp around 7:15 in a deja vu daze, fully resolved never to do another one of THOSE again.

The shelter was packed. Finally met the elusive Postal Poet and was happy to match a face to the poems I’d been reading in shelter logbooks since day one. Here’s a taste of his work.

There was also a gang of off-duty fireman out for the weekend. As could be expected, they were busy playing with fire when I made it in, building something I could only assume was a Viking funeral pyre out of full on tree trunks. Our firewood for the night could’ve been the washed up wreckage of the Spanish Armada had we been on the coast.

They were hilariously crude and made fun of each other mercilessly, the way only true brothers do.

April 17th. The bonfire the night before must have been some kind of omen. By mid-morning 5,000 acres of Shenendoah timber were engulfed in flames and billowing smoke into the sky. A strong crosswind was pushing it west.

This all would have been fine if I were sitting at home watching the blaze on television from a plush leather couch, but I wasn’t. I was in the park. And worse, I was west.

I’d breathed my fair share of second hand smoke in the low-lit dens of college parties, but this was on another scale completely. It was hard to inhale for a long time. Three hours at least. As in the thunderstorm a few days earlier, I didn’t know which was a better course: to turn back and risk getting cut off, or push in a direction that may put me further in, closer to the fire.

I kept going, and thankfully the smoke thinned out as the trail veered more sharply to the north and cut across a ridge.

Virginia hadn’t gotten rain for a long spell. All it took was a spark and the woods went up like tinder. Here’s to hoping it wasn’t a hiker or a fireman who struck the match.