This morning I went to pick up some resupplies at 8am ish and came back only to find that my walking companion, Turtle, was planning on hiking out with someone else. This wouldn't be a problem under normal circumstance but I had fed her, hung her food with mine, paced with her, etc for the previous 5 days. Thanks for the heads up.
The pity spiral that followed was pretty crippling. It truly hit me that I am out here, alone, still over 2,000 miles from the top of Mt. Katahdin away from my family, friends, boyfriend, and puggle. Even though I got a liner for my sleeping bag I still have yet to wake up with warm toes and sleeping through the night has still been elusive because no matter how fancy this sleeping pad is still not a pillow-top mattress. The pain that I'm in daily is excruciating. On the uphills my calves and hamstrings burn. On the downhills my ankles, knees and toes are screaming from all the pounding. And that doesn't even include the constant pain in my feet just from the act of walking so many miles each day, more often than not slipping along through slush and mud along the sides of mountains.
As I said, it's brutal. And completely self-inflicted.
We only did about 10 miles today all of which was littered with trail magic (gummy bears soaked in moonshine anyone?) but we got a late start and didn't start walking till almost 1:30pm. The first four miles were a breeze but the next 6 were muddy, slushy and soul crushing. I almost pushed my emergency button and just sat down to wait for rescue. I guess the view from the top was nice though.
Tomorrow hopefully we get to civilization again to avoid the pending thunderstorms. Hopefully tomorrow is a better day.
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