Inertia

It got me. I'm still at home; I've been sleeping in, reading, playing, and generally acting like I'm on vacation. Here's a little story about my trip for your enjoyment.

Winston and I started walking on Wednesday, in the middle of the afternoon. Not the best time to be making a 1500 foot ascent on your first day hiking, but we made it to the side trail to the water much earlier than I'd expected. There was a campground there, as well, that had been mentioned in my trailbook. I had planned to stay there for the night, but after events that transpired to stopped me from going down to the water, in addition to the healthy colony of bugs living there, I decided to keep going.

The book says that the blue blazed trail to the left leads 1/10 of a mile down the side of the ridge to a spring at an old homestead. What it fails to mention is that the trail is nearly vertical and infested with bees. Have I mentioned that I'm allergic to bees? Well, I was allergic to bee stings when I was a kid. I haven't been stung since I was 12 or so, and I'm really not so curious as to allow myself to be stung in order to find out for certain.

I walked to the edge of the ridge and looked down. There were enormous downed trees over the skinny trail spilling down the ridge. I couldn't see much. I certainly couldn't see an old farmstead or any other trace of water. (I should mention that I have since then developed a more accurate perception of how long 1/10th of a mile is.) I didn't know yet that I wouldn't see another soul on the trail until the next day and that it would be fine to leave my pack unguarded by the trail. The logistics of how to get down the trail (with Winston? without Winston? with the whole pack or without it?) It looked like the trail hadn't been used in years. I couldn't even be sure that there would be water where it was supposed to be, even if I did go down there. So I decided that I would just keep going. It was only about 8 miles to the next water source, and I started out with 5, how much could I need?

Allow me to stop here for a moment and tell you what I should have done. And what, had I known then what I know now, I would have done. I would have just taken off my pack and left it a little ways down the trail, taken out my Camelback (which incidentally hooks onto a shirt really well if you need to carry it without a backpack) and gone down the trail and gotten water. I learned that you don't pass up an opportunity for water, period.

So I made a bad decision. I decided to head on. We turned around and went back to the trail. I observed that the holes that I had seen in the ground before had bees flying around them. Bees? Ok, now I'm definitely not camping here. I didn't want to camp anywhere there was that much evidence of human visitation anyway. There may be bears.

Did I mention the bees in the holes? Well, I observed the bees on the way back, and made a note to avoid them. Winston decided that he would treat the holes as hurdles. One, wheeee! Two, whee - Winston, where are you going? Oh, shit. Ruuuuuuuun! I ran to a less-infested area and sat on a log. Off with the backpack, check on Winston, and check the map to make sure that I'm making the right decision.

Winston kept biting at his front leg and his tail. I grabbed his leg and saw a bee with its stinger stuck in his fur. I swatted it away, and it surprisingly just flew away. It was buzzing angrily. I mean it. I could tell, it was angry.

Now that I've convinced myself that I've made the right decision, (note for posterity - it was the wrong decision.) I loaded up and kept walking. Winston is no longer happily skipping along with head and tail held high. (height is relative here) He's now trying to bite his tail and simultaneously walk with his curly tail straightened out and held between his legs.

About another mile to the TN/VA border where we set up camp. (By the way, this is where I learned that I had a little over a cup of water left. Stupid.)

I attached Winston to a tree. I did a thorough check to be sure he hadn't been stung anywhere else and wasn't having any sort of a reaction. Turns out he had been stung somewhere else. Somewhere that even in his surgically altered condition would still probably be extremely painful. Otherwise, he was fine. As I set up the tent, Winston sat there and tried to kill any buzzing thing that came within reach. I don't know what I would have done had he caught one. It was also fun calming him down in the tent. Every time a bug buzzed by the tent, he'd jump up and try to attack through the tent fabric.

By the time I'd gone to sleep, he'd settled down. He didn't jump quite has much when he heard a buzzing. Then the damn cicadas started and we couldn't hear anything else at all.

He did wake me up a couple times in the night.

I'm pretty sure I heard something buzzing outside the tent.