And the next day it rained

The boulder around us are in a circle like giant beasts or Henry Moore sculptures. The morning was foggy at first but the rapidly tracking mist revealed much of the bald, including the meandering path we had taken through the grass. I sat and looked at that path, traveling up the green meadow to the horizon and on into the woods. North Carolina has a richer depth of mountain than Virginia. Range after range rise on all sides from this bald mountain vantage. We have a small one burner hiker's stove and one of the weight indulgences I bring is an espresso pot - the European metal kind with the reservoir on the bottom, grounds in the middle and a cavity for the coffee on top. It is black with use at many campsites. Just as we had finished our coffee and oatmeal, it began to rain, so we retreated to the tent for gin rummy. Joe is a masterful player, but I was winning.

We heard two couples pass by our site and talked about leaving the tent with everything in place (and dry) and just hiking. We were very far from any road so tent thieves would be scarce. I started out alone in the rain but came back for Joe because it was too beautiful to miss. At this altitude the weather moves rapidly. We descended into woods with the path a torrent of water and mud and stones. It was quite steep. Then suddenly, the rapture: Big Hump meadow, rising up. Another bald full of waving grasses and wildflowers with an undulating path to the false summit. We went through a stile, saw evidence of cattle but no animals, although we had heard there are longhorn cattle as well as horses grazing there. It was transcendent.

The day before, schlepping up a seemingly endless rise, we encountered a solitary man who gave us encouragement. He said he had hiked this trail 7-8 times and it was his favorite. He said the first time he emerged from the the woods, "it was a rapture, seeing Little Hump and Big Hump was even more splendid." His tangy North Carolina accent made his passion for this trail even more poignant. From Roan to the Humps are said to be the most beautiful stretch of the AT.

That evening we hiked to an old red barn, an AT shelter with a capacity for 20. When we arrived a young woman was asleep in her sleeping bag at 6AM! I judged her to be a through hiker because her socks and boots were thick with mud but carefully laid out on the platform in case drying might happen (doubtful). I had noticed at another shelter a curious handmade contraption handing from the ceiling - a rope with the bottom of a plastic bottle over the first knot (to keep rodents from climbing down) and a second knot containing a smooth thick stick about 5" long. Finally, I saw these mysterious devices in use: to hold a wet jacket and another to hold a pack. The shelters are notorious for mice, so hanging food and other items makes sense.

The barn had two open sleeping platforms facing the mountains with a picnic table and a fire ring. Inside, since there were stairs to the loft I went up to see the vast room with no windows but many slits of light through the ancient diagonal plank walls. The floorboards were irregular widths but all quite wide, because the barn was ancient. There was just enough debris upstairs to make the loft seem unappealing despite the broom attached to the wall beside a sign, "This shelter maintained by volunteers."

Back at the picnic table we consulted the map and the hiker turned over and sat up - a young man, and a through hiker.

He said he typically hikes 20 or so miles a day with his 26 pound pack and one liter of water. We left him rolling a cigarette, talking to a group of 7 boys from a nearby camp. It would have been a noisy night in that barn!