Playing with Fire-Warm Temp Backpacking Challenges | And then I walked — sarah robison · on the appalachian trail & a life unconventional

A mere 8 days ago, I was bartering with Mother Nature, “if it’s never this frigid again, I promise, PROMISE not to complain about the heat. No matter HOW hot it gets. Honest. Please, PLEASE, warm things up! I’m completely fine to endure the sweaty, sleepless nights of summer in exchange for my ever-present painfully numb, non-blanchable digits. For real.”

I was playing the senior prom night “I’ll never EVER drink AGAIN, God, if you bring this feeling to pass” as you embrace the porcelain throne game.

Until the next Natty Lite…

It is now feverishly hot in the South, and I’d surely welcome the chill over the chafe.

The grass is always greener…wherever you are, if you water it, that is.

So there I was, staring down the barrel of Dismal Falls, and I jumped. Right. In.

Post-Submersion, I traded my saturated attire for a borrowed sarong and my button-down and lay them to actively dry on the stones that surrounded our campfire at the suggestion of Sgt. Pepper.

“Dips, something bad happened. It caught on fire.”, Pepper said, poker-faced.

My very favorite mustard-colored Icebreaker V-neck had been raped by the flames that danced with our stone fire ring. My only shirt in possession was now in shreds.

When I told my Mother that my tee had caught fire, she was relieved to hear that I wasn’t in it at the time.

A hitch to the Goodwill in Pearisburg, VA (riding shotty in Wilderness Bob’s RV) and $16 later, I have myself some new duds. A bit more colorful and with their own tale to tell.

Did someone mention hitches? On Tuesday, May 25th I birthed a new genre of such which I’ve since named the “trash hitch”. I assumed a traditional wide stance alongside VA State Route 606, confidently stuck my thumb over the graveled shoulder of the road’s edge, and waited only for a minute when the driver of an F150 offered me a lift. “No sir, I’m on foot, but my trash here…it’s quite heavy…and I won’t make it to town until…”, I began. He cut me off, “Throw it in the back dear. Happy trails!!”. Did I actually just pull that off? Send my garbage off with a stranger, unshowered and undignified? Yes. I sure did.

Suc-CESS.

When I say that I “sweat”, I mean that I look as if I’ve swam The English Channel after only 10 push-ups. My feet have proven not to differ from my brow, leaving my socks and liners sweat-drenched after a morning’s hike. I had let go of the habit of removing my liners and socks during lunch to save “time”. Time that is now being spent applying Mupirocin antibiotic ointment to the Pitted Keratolysis infection that has found refuge on the soles of both of my feet. Think Lorraine Swiss cheese stuffed with caviar.

Thank you, summer. I’ve prayed for you.

If I would be forced to relinquish the time saved by not letting my feet breathe, I would have to compensate. Keep the see-saw at equilibrium. “Ah HA!!”. I had it.

I would urinate standing up.

Why should the men have an advantage?

As women, we are forced to remove our packs, trek 20 yards off-trail, squat, cleanly wipe, Purell, trek back, siphon water, check for cell reception, and then hoist our packs back up. 10 minutes at a minimum.

Let’s say that I urinate, on average, 4 times per hike. That’s 28 times per week. Multiplied by 10, is 280 minutes, or 4.6 hours per week. That’s 18.4 hours a month, spent pee-ing. This could make or break me.

It was time to stand.

Stand up and pee.

Pack on, I leaned backwards against an old Oak. Assumed wall-sit formation. Pulled my shorts to the side. And let ‘er rip.

Katahdin, here I come.

The rising temperatures have taken with them the plentifulness of our water sources, leaving the majority of smaller streams to run dry (and it’s not even summer yet!?!). This adds a new technical challenge to each day as we must dedicate isolated efforts in mapping out the location of possibilities for water retrieval with much more projection. Last week, there were 2 days in particular that housed stretches that were without water for 9 and 13 miles, respectively. My shoulders went on strike after adding the 8.5 pounds of water to my reservoirs that I was forced to carry to bridge these gaps. That’s 4 liters and as much as I’m equipped to carry at one time- a 1 liter Smart Water bottle, a 1 liter Nalgene bottle, and my 2 liter dirty CNOC reservoir. Each liter of water weighs 2 pounds, 2 ounces. I’ve also adopted the practice of never being completely void of water prior to reaching my next source. Even if that equates to 2 finger breadths, I’ve learned to reserve a splash for washing down a Benadryl or cleansing a minor gash.

Speaking of my picketed shoulders, I’ve lost sensation to the anterior (front) aspects of the area that forms the “V” surrounding my armpits on both sides. I believe this to be a product of the constant pressure that my pack straps are transferring onto my clavicles, a palsy that should correct itself once I am not carrying the weight of my home on my C-spine.

The 80+ degree days have brought me back to the Post Office and taken an earbud out of my left ear. My merino wool base layers and rain pants returned to my apartment (i.e.- the oversized plastic bin that lives in Katie’s basement) and my sleeping bag exchanged for a quilt, freeing me from the cocoon that safely carried me through the frigid conditions of the Smokies. As for the lone earbud- summer brings rattlesnakes, and rattlesnakes can bring death. Therefore, wise to keep an ear out for their “jingles”.

The above, a caution giveth to me by Wallflower, should be added to the expanding list of ways that he has protected me. Saved me, in actuality. Including, but not limited to, locating my misplaced wallet and its contents, realizing that my trail runners were no longer dangling from my pack as we resupplied in Marion and instinctively raced into 4 lanes of traffic to rescue them from a semi, and most recently digging through a trailer full of hostel trash (on his own volition) to dumpster dive for the tube of Mupirocin that I had mistakenly trashed the night before. This was after he walked across town with me to fill said prescription.

Hey- I told the Tramily that I was a handful. They willingly signed up for the Sarah circus.

Beth K. Vogt once said, “Be the ringmaster of the circus. It’s your life.”