Well yesterday one of the more unexpected things over AT trip happened. I was sitting in my crazy Creek and heard footsteps. So I looked up and jogging down the trail poles sticking out sideways, fanny pack and all was a man with a cat on his shoulder. He was a weekend warrior type dude who ran sections of the AT with a cat. The cat’s name was Baxter He would camp out in the shelters along the trail and his cat would catch mice for him. He would not eat in mice but they would not get in his food because of this cat.
We also met a man wearing a fedora, a man wearing a kilt and a man whose trail name was smoke. Smoke told us lots of stories about his adventures on the AT. He was doing something that he called boomeranging the trail. This meant that he was going to start at the middle and travel all the way down the AT into Georgia, then go all the way north into Maine, and go back to his original starting place. I found this to be truly impressive, he said it would take about two years. When we met him he was about seven months into his hike. He was living off about $200 a month and that was just for food and possible supplies that he needed to buy.
One of the very cool stories that he told us was about the time that he almost got attacked by a bear. He said that he was camping out one night and heard dirt bikes. So then the next morning when he heard a sound that very closely resembled it is assumed it was a dirt bike. But then after going round a curve in the trail the noise was directly above him. He said he looked up, and saw a black bear growling as it crawled down the tree. He said he just stopped and lay down the ground to act like he was dead. The bear came over and sniffed him and walked away, he was very lucky it did not have clubs with it.
Another funny thing that happened on my trip, was that Chris, my field instructor, spent time sitting below a fire tower stroking his beard and looking like a guru. I am now on a conquest to find all Chris's very amusing moments.
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