Unbelievable

 

Ok, y'all.  I am so excited about this feature.  (I love how I refer to features within my blog like it's the New York Times).  Anyway, I just sat and went through all of our hundreds and hundreds of pictures of our thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail and... it was amazing.  I mean really.  Suddenly I'm having one of those moments where it's hard to believe something is real.  Dustan and I have these moments sometimes, we'll be sitting around talking and one of us is yakking our head off and the other one is like "Stop, I'm having an I-Can't-Believe-You're-You moment."  And we'll both get quiet and just kinda nod at each other, remembering what it was to be painfully (almost angrily) in love with each other - in silence - before the other one knew, each of us being too prideful to let on.  Waiting on God for green lights, for hope, for a word in due season.  All of it came, of course, in much glory, but I remember so clearly the letters and the late-night calls of "Will we ever sleep in the same bed, really?"  

So anyway.  Yeah - I'm looking at these trail pictures in a bit of disbelief.  You have to know how quaint Harpers Ferry was, and how beautiful Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania is and how incredibly other-worldly the Whites and most of Maine are.  I am so *so* excited to pull out pictures that never got published on the first blog, and to tell stories of things I forgot to remember along the way.  I could do a whole series on Food on the Trail, Wounds on the Trail, Animals and Insects on the Trail, Friends of the Trail, Hiker Trash on the Trail - it's gonna be so much fun.  If you're not the hikery, outdoorsy type, that's okay.  Take heart.  While I was out there, I wasn't really either.  I was just putting one foot in front of the other, bidding bathtubs and mattresses goodbye, getting into fights with that dreamy man of mine, (not caring that we shared the same tent if you know what I mean) and learning how to pick out hiking pants that wouldn't chafe too bad.  

As you would suspect, most all of the scenery and views were straight up epic, all the way from Georgia to Maine.  Looking at our pictures again tonight, I remember it afresh.  From the mountains of Tennessee covered in snow - not a leaf in sight - to the scraggly, stubborn pines hanging out on top of a balding summit in New Hampshire.  (Pointing)  Epic, epic.  The "ponds," they called them in Maine, even though they were vast enough to be tidal, the babbling crystal pools underneath ancient root systems in North Carolina, our first bear sighting, mornings in springtime - epic, epic, epic, epic.  You know nature in its most primitive and varied state is all gorgeous, mind-blowing serenity.  But I think it would be superficial of me (and a little boring) to only focus on the grandeur.  Because one, it's pretty much a given that it's ....yup, epic.  And two, there are also really gross, funny, entertaining, honest, ugly things about the AT.  

Like - did you know snails poop?