The Reality of 15°

November 24, 1997

It went down to 15 degrees last night! That's way cold! We didn't sleep because we were too busy chattering. We poured Sky water in her bowl and it froze in a matter of minutes. I wish it were summer time. I always thought I would prefer the cold to the heat, but I don't. I'd rather be sweating! I rather the trees all had leaves, and there was grass on the ground, and other people were hiking, and that I could write normally without my hands becoming so cold that I can hardly even grip a pen. Well, to make a long story short, when we woke up this morning we decided to head home. Its already going to be impossible to make it to Springer by the time school starts, so who cares how big of a section we have to come back and do. I rather do my hike in sections and enjoy to the fullest, than finish now and be miserable and think of finishing and going home. When we started off in ME we met a lot of Nbounders who were about to finish and were extremely bitter about it. All they wanted to do was get to Katahdin and go home. They weren't having fun anymore. I always said I wouldn't let that happen to me. Being a "thru-hiker" isn't important to me. All that matters is that I have a good time, no matter how long it takes to finish. It gives me something now to look forward to for next summer! So, we decided to begin our journey homeward, hoping to maybe even make it by Thanksgiving and surprise our families. Scott and Lucky kept on hiking. S.S. and I headed for a dirt road where I saw a pickup. I asked the driver to give us a ride to the main road. He said he would and stepped out of the truck, this is when I noticed that he was covered in BLOOD!!! I ran back to get S.S. and Sky and we decided to still check this guy out because there is definately not much traffic here. He said to throw our stuff in the back and thats when I noticed the freshly murdered buck in the back of the truck. During the next few seconds all of my values and morals were flashing through my mind. Do I push them aside and take the ride, or refuse and walk to the main road? Well, at this time we already had it set in our heads that we were done walking, so, we took the ride. Now I am glad that I gave myself an oppurtunity to actually sit and chat with a hunter. I asked him every question about hunting that I could think of, and I still disagree with it. We stopped by his campsite where his fellow hikers were drinking beer and smoking pot at 9 AM! He then took us to a truck stop down the road towards the highway. It was very nice of him, but nothing will ever justify the murder of an innocent creature.

November 25,1997

We ended up getting a ride yesterday all the way to Knoxville with an awesome truck driver. He was so nice. He was on his way home for Thanksgiving. Once we got to Knoxville he asked on the radio is anyone was headed down south. We then met up with another driver heading in that direction and then went and got hotel rooms. However, this morning we were ditched! So went walked to the highway and put our thumbs out once again. Our first ride was great, a really smart environmentalist guy. We had a great conversation, then ended up waiting at the GA Welcome Station for a ride for like 4 hours. Then, Buddy picked us up and took us as far as he was going, only about 20 miles, but he worked at an Applebees and he took us there and offered to buy us dinner. It turned out that our waiter ended up buying our meal for us. What nice people after a shitty day! Buddy even offered us a place to stay, but we all ended up splitting a hotel room with one of his friends and partying down. They were really nice, we're supposed to meet up with them for the WSP New Years shows in Atlanta.