Days Mean Nothing Anymore: An Update on the Past Two Weeks

WHAT a cliffhanger to leave on. My bad, guys, I promise I’m doing better now. It took four (4) days zeroing in Damascus after that, but I tapped into my resources (an unending thank you to my incredible best friend and former maid of honor, Tara) and got out of my head and felt like myself again. Shoutout to Broken Fiddle hostel for having immaculate vibes and great movies (The Big Lebowski one night, Tropic Thunder the next) to watch on a projector screen.

I’ve had to reckon with the fact that, in order to keep up with my tramily, every so often I’m gonna have to skip a few miles in order to not break my body. As the weather becomes less predictable and my Big Pain Days become more frequent (at least in regaining stamina after Trail Days), it’s just something I’ll have to do. It makes me feel weak when my depression walls falter, but it’s the way I enjoy the trail the most — being around the people I care about — and so I must hike my own hike and tell that stupid little voice trying to get me down to Shut The F*** Up.

I’m happy to say I didn’t skip any of the hundred miles between 500 and 600! As I write this, Achilles and I hit 600 today and were met with some truly amazing trail magic — and they shuttled me to the campsite we’re staying at tonight because I had a giant flare up this morning. When I wavered on doing what I knew would be better for me and make my hike tomorrow enjoyable and not a living hellfire throughout my joints, Achilles reminded me that it’s okay to do this the way I need to, even if I have a hard time reminding myself of that. (I’m not directly quoting him, but I have enough brain fog that I don’t exactly remember what he said.)

After Damascus (pre-Trail Days), we took what we called a Leisure Week.

Stache, Cheese, Achilles, and I did about 10 miles a day until the 16th, when we drove back down to Damascus for the festival. I, of course, loved it after taking four zeroes in a row. It helped me get my hiker legs back, and I wasn’t stressed about my ability to go further.

It was a really beautiful section. We slept in a huge thunderstorm, had a blast at Partnership shelter (shoutout to the Polycule! Go find Hobbit on here, he’s a great guy and I need to start reading his posts).

Trail Days was… a lot.

A lot of fun! But also a lot of people.

For context, I spent our whole leisure week hype about the festival. “I’ll finally be back in my element!” I kept saying. I (generally) thrive in a big party/festival/giant group environment. It’s why I love working nightlife and why I love my theater family.

But after two months in the woods, I found out the hard way that I don’t truly enjoy what I thought was my element.

Sure, it was a great time. The Hiker Parade was amazing, and the whole gang looked absolutely fabulous (Achilles and I especially, and maybe I’m biased but we were told we were the best couple at Trail Days 2024). I also had an absolute blast on the dancefloor (my actual element, at least with friends around) at Riff Raff — which I personally found to be the most fun group at the whole festival.

But I was socially overwhelmed. I don’t know, maybe it’s the New Yorker in me that isn’t used to so many random people talking to me out of nowhere, or maybe it’s my autism not having had to mask so much on trail thus far, but it was a lot. I was basically having a weekend-long anxiety attack until nighttime when we could just dance and hang out with the whole extended tramily. I was greeted by name and often by people I didn’t know, which is very cool and I appreciated the love… but it was a lot of figuring out conversations that I didn’t necessarily want to have. And wondering if I sounded dumb. And if my face was showing how much I didn’t want to have the interactions.

I just didn’t want to be rude. I wanted to be as friendly as I get to be normally out here. But I didn’t have any time to prepare for that aspect of this. I ended up barely checking out anything I wanted to see, and not meeting up with any of the friends I’d made online and made plans with. In fact, one day Achilles and I just bingewatched Our Flag Means Death in his tent for hours. It was my favorite day.

By the time Stache drove us back upstate, I was relieved and exhausted.

“I loved Trail Days, and I am so happy it’s over,” I kept saying to everyone who asked. Getting out of Damascus felt like I was escaping a claustrophobic tunnel. But it was also the beginning of something very new and different for us.

So, Stache is off trail for a couple of weeks visiting his kids — one of whom is graduating college! He’s going to meet back up with us wherever we are after. Cheese Plate started ten miles behind Achilles and I, and we haven’t met back up with him yet. Moss had taken a couple days in Marion with his folks, and he and Cheese ended up meeting for a short while. We were, all of us, spread to the winds completely for the first time.

Cheese and Moss passed us a few days into the week when we had to cut one full day short and make one short day a zero. The day before Achilles’s birthday, I got sick. Like, needed-medication-immediately-to-relieve-the-symptoms sick. I was going to suffer through it at first. I wasn’t contagious, I didn’t want to skip any more miles, and I didn’t want to burden Achilles with my inadequate physical health. But a few miles in I knew I had to get off trail or it would be a miserable hike for me. And even though he has massive miles anxiety, Achilles came through for me and cut the day short after letting me use his hotspot (when he had service and I didn’t) to videocall the CVS MinuteClinic to get my meds to Tazewell (where we’d booked an AirBnB for his birthday).

When we got to the next gap, he spent an hour trying to find a shuttle that would take us into town. No one would take us — save one guy willing to do it for $140 — but we had time and service and trail magic (shoutout to Superman, the mayor of Riff Raff and maker of some of the best chilli I’ve ever eaten) and eventually he found a solution.

And what a truly beautiful and incredible solution he found.

Achilles got us a shuttle to Burke’s Garden Hostel, where we’d stay for the night before shuttling to my meds and then our AirBnB the morning of his birthday. And, my god if it wasn’t the most beautiful area I’ve ever seen.

They call it God’s Thumprint, and though I may not be religious I believe they were right. Partially an Amish area, the gorgeous valley is (apparently) the product of a mountain caving in on itself. The trail actually runs the rim of it, and some of the coolest rock formations line the trail up there.

It was definitely a blessing, for sure. Achilles had been stressed about cutting the day short originally. I had told him I didn’t want to skip any more miles and would be cutting the day short regardless, and that it was up to him what he wanted to do. That if he went ahead that’s okay, but I would need to then make up those miles while he wasn’t hiking to not fall too far behind him. To be fair, I was in so much pain that I seemed angry or upset when I was just determined not to let me talk myself out of taking care of myself. He was reluctant (and frustrated) at first, and then was okay with joining me. More-so once we got to the hostel.

We sat outside and looked at the mountain ridges around us past nightfall. It was beautiful. We watched the thunderstorm coming towards us from miles away — a fascinating electrical storm with thunderclaps hitting so long after the lightning we were observing. It was like stargazing, but cooler.

Another blessing was that one of the women staying there we had met camping the night before, and she was a doctor who had antibiotics I wasn’t allergic to! So I was able to get relief sooner than I had expected. I was drowsy but in significantly less pain. I even slept through the thunder that awoke everyone else. Maybe it was the antibiotics, or maybe I’m just a sucker for a memory foam mattress.

The mountains were misty for the morning of Achilles’s birthday.

It was like the universe was making up for the fact that we had fallen behind our friends and not gone as far as we had intended to. Even the birthday boy himself was happy to be off trail in the beautiful area we had landed ourselves in accidentally.

The ride out of Burke’s Garden was beautiful, just like everything else there. We got to see horse-drawn buggies! It was so cool!

After getting my meds from CVS (Renee is a lifesaver for driving us the whole way), we were dropped off at the AirBnB. Sidenote — HIGHLY recommend staying there. It’s the only AirBnB in Tazewell, and it’s a lovely apartment. It’s right above a cafe (with good coffee) on the main street of the town. And what a lovely town it was. From what little of it we walked through, we loved it. Achilles even started looking up if there were jobs open to teach in the area.

We got lunch at Front Port on Main, where our server (I believe her name was Sarah) made an absolutely delicious espresso martini (something I love) and where we had some amazing sandwiches. He got a french dip, I got a three-cheese grilled cheese with tomato, bacon, and sweet onion aoli. We scarfed them down and I recounted Trail Days to Achilles for his notes.

It was the first time on the entire trail that it felt like I was back home.

Sure, Greenpoint is far busier than Tazewell, but it was aesthetically similar enough and relaxing enough that I felt at home. Plus, the apartment we stayed in was very North Brooklyn. The storefronts reminded me of the ones I’d frequent in the city as well.

It felt less like a zero and more like a day off of work — the kind where I filled it to the brim with enjoying where I’m at rather than resting between hikes.

Idyllic, some might call it.

Then we watched cartoons all day between Achilles taking birthday calls.

Look, I’m trying my best not to make this all about Achilles (it is my blog) but we’re hiking together and it was his birthday, so this is mostly an Achilles post.

I made him spaghetti with meat sauce because he wanted spaghetti. Rather, I boiled dry pasta after making a Greek meat sauce I usually make for pastistio. Also garlic bread and asparagus. (He said it was one of the best spaghettis he’s ever had, but I’m gonna reel in my ego on that.)

We watched X-Men 97 (with a break for the first act of Hamilton while I cooked) before falling asleep halfway through Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Extended Cut.

A great birthday, in his opinion.

And a great zero in mine, with it being flanked by two impressively annoying Big Pain Days.

We only made it about 4 miles the next day, though we were planning on 9. My body was not having it.

I woke up with this symptom I call ghost hands. It feels like someone has sat on my arms and forearms for so long that they feel phantom-like, as if they aren’t really my own and are being controlled remotely from some far-off location. Like the radio signal is weak.

Ghost hands are a scary symptom for me. They generally come with my worst flare-ups — ones where the flare isn’t physical pain but rather my nervous system being so out of whack that pain doesn’t even exist anymore and I’m just foggy.

It’s when I’m most likely to be a fall risk, or fainting risk.

I was determined to go all 9. I’m a badass, I spent the morning telling myself. I’m a badass bitch from hell. Old women and blind men walk this trail. Hell, a guy with brain cancer is walking this trail. And so too shall I. I will not fall today.

But I was dizzy. I couldn’t focus on my surroundings the way I normally could — I could only focus on one thing at a time: The ground in front of me, keeping myself upright, the woods around me, the sounds I was hearing, and my brain spiral of self-motivation that kept distracting me from the trail. My anxiety was high, and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to react if I came across a snake or bear. Achilles kept stopping what felt like more frequently than he normally does. It seemed like he was just stretching, but part of me thinks it was also to make sure I wasn’t passing out on trail. I felt slower than I’d ever been.

He said we could reassess our plan for the day when we got to Jenkins Shelter.

We ended up staying there until the morning. And for the first time, I didn’t feel bad or stressed about it. I knew (and vocalized) that I could go the next 5 miles to the campsite we had planned on stopping at, but it would hurt my next day and likely leave me exhausted and lethargic for longer.

Like I said in the last post: When I get sick, I get sick for days.

So we decided to make the next day a good one and enjoyed our short day back on trail — complete with watching almost half of The Two Towers Extended Cut since I’d downloaded the whole extended trilogy onto my phone.

Then I once again arose in the morning feeling like a complete human being.

And what a great hiking day it was.

We went about 13 miles to Helvey’s Mill Shelter, and for about half of those miles there was finally cell service. Virginia is gorgeous, 9/10 section, but an absolute dead zone save for this pocket and a couple of ridgelines. It’s honestly and truly about half of the reason I hadn’t made an update since ~150 miles ago. (The other half is AuDHD brain.)

We decided to shuttle into a Subway in Bastion and pack out footlong sandwiches — an incredible suggestion by Achilles after seeing others doing the same. I got to talk to my little brother (AND my favorite friend of his) while walking along the road part of the trail. Then I got to FaceTime one of my best friends for god knows how long once we got to camp.

I miss her. I miss everyone, more now than ever.

Most of my friends’ schedules back home don’t line up with when I have service, and even when they do they rarely pick up for me. I didn’t mind it at first, but I miss them and their voices and speaking to my dearest loved ones, and it gets harder each time I get their voicemails.

Plus, it’s a battle with my anxiety not to internalize it. But that’s just me.

So whenever one of them is available to talk, it feels like Christmas. And it always feels like Christmas when I get to talk to Natty. She gets me on another level than most of my friends do and I love her so multiple expletive-ing much. And her dad!! I got to talk to him, too, and he was so excited to hear about the trail and so proud of me.

I keep making lists in my head (and in person) of what to do when I get to New York. Where I want to go, what I want to see, the restaurants and places I want to show my friends. But more than anything, I just want to see the people I haven’t seen since March (or, in some cases, January). I want to see my friend Kevin and his son, my nephew. I want to see my mom and dad. I want to see my boys, my OG Greenpoint Squad. I want to see Steven, and Sebby, and Keith. I want to see my girl Lorraine now that she’s got her JD! I want to see Phil and Allyn, and Lenz, and Careline, Rachel, and Kad. I need to see Elliott, my brother and partner in crime. I hope to catch Tara, but she might be in Japan. I want to sing at Jared’s karaoke night and tell my friend who made me a professional DM about my real-life D&D adventures.

I want to see my girlfriend.

I miss her. A lot. We don’t get to talk as much with all the deadzones in this state, and she’s going through it a bit right now. I haven’t heard from her since the Monday after Trail Days and I just hope she’s alright. I know we’re good, we talk about everything and don’t lie to each other. But I hope she knows she’s a badass who can do anything the way I know she is.

Today? Today I skipped the miles and feel very good about it.

As I’ve been writing this, a huge thunderstorm came through. I got myself to not feel bad about “being weak” (as the stupid voice likes to say) by feeling useful— if I hadn’t gotten here early to set up a tent, Achilles and I would have had to set up camp in the torrential downpour he’s still walking through right now.

And, as loud as the thunder is and as bright as the lightning flashes up my Fly Creek (with increasing frequency on both ends), I’m not having a panic attack.

I am not the tallest thing in this RV/camp site. I am not far enough away from the treeline to be a target. I have cell service enough to call my dad, who would love this storm. And I’m… not overwhelmed.

It’s been years since I’ve been able to enjoy a good thunderstorm. Especially by myself. And while my body may not have been strong enough to walk the last 10.1 to get here, I feel stronger than ever waiting out the storm from within my tent, alone.

I am a badass bitch from hell. Nothing can phase me unless I let it. I’ve made it 600 miles on this trail, a feat I wasn’t sure I would be able to accomplish but never told myself I couldn’t do. A feat I know some folks back home mocked and questioned behind my back (but next to one of my closest friends), or didn’t believe but were happy to see me go. I have felt worse pain in NYC than I have out here. I have cowered from more fear in NYC than I have overcome out here.

I’m a new person. One who cares more about the important things, and everything else can suck it. I’ve come so far already. I’m going to go so far. I know it. The things that plagued my every thoughts back home before I left are insignificant specks of dust on my rearview mirror now, no more than life lessons to learn from. I’ve never been so happy to have had my heart and life shattered into a million tiny pieces, because it brought me here.

My song this time is one I haven’t listened to once on trail (until writing this article). “Could Have Been Me” by The Struts

I wanna taste love and pain

Wanna feel pride and shame

I don’t wanna take my time

Don’t wanna waste one line

I wanna get better days

Never look back and say

“It could have been me”