Seven Days on the Appalachian Trail, Day 5: hermit graves & wild mushrooms

[To see the original journal entries recorded during this leg of our adventure, click here! But this post has all the photos.]

Sun shines in a star pattern through the branches of tall trees. Everything in the foreground is in shadow.

What a gorgeous morning. Despite a fairly terrible night’s sleep, it was hard not to look around this morning and feel pretty great about everything, even whatever strange life choices caused me to sleep in a three-walled hut in the middle of Tennessee.

“I feel crunchy today,” I mumbled over my oatmeal, which I was eating hydrated compliments of last night’s rainstorm.

“Crunchy in your clothes, or your soul?” Hobz asked.

Actually, I meant my bones. I never did find out what it means to be crunchy in one’s soul.

Large boulders framed by trees in the mist.

We headed out into the wilds. Every day, my food-laden pack gets a little lighter. I expected the hiking to get easier each day – not just from the lightened pack, but from the practice – but I’ve been shocked at how noticeable the change is from day today.

Yesterday we lost four miles with our early stop. The plan, today, was to make all of them up, for a hike totaling 15 miles. The elevation gain would be comparable to yesterday’s, which spread over a couple extra miles, didn’t seem so bad. I was feeling good, and the boys are basically pack-mules, so they’re always good.

Dustin appears to be wearing his backpack in the center of the photo, but upon closer inspection you can see that his backpack is still hanging on a hook attached to the roof of the shelter. Dustin is very tall. — Photo credit: Hobz

The trail winds through the undergrowth, away from the camera. A very large, twisted tree trunk curls from the bottom right corner of the photo, over the trail toward the top right of the photo, almost like a bridge. Laura stands under the trunk, looking very small. — The forest, as always, is really beautiful, and sometimes presents quite surprising things.

Laura stands center, surrounded by green undergrowth, looking up at a flower that grows from a very tall stalk and dangles face-down, as if looking back at her. — Such as downward pointing lilies considerably taller than I am.

Grass and underbrush nearly obscure the trail, which runs from the bottom to the top of the vertical photograph. — I’ve heard loads of stories about how many hundreds and thousands of people hike the Appalachian Trail every year. Somehow, I thought it would be… wider.

As previously mentioned, when I hike, I like to stop and smell the wildflowers, admire the rocks, marvel at the insects, and generally allow the world to awe me. Nature is marvelous, and my soul craves wonder. One of the things that I’ve found most unexpected about my time on this eastern trail is the lack of wildflowers. Last year out west, I felt like I’d died and gone to wildflower heaven. I suspect it’s mostly a question of seasons, but we’ve seen very few flowers out on these trails this month.

What we’ve seen a LOT of is mushrooms. Mushrooms of every shape, size, color, and (I’d venture to say but can’t prove) flavor. They are magnificent, and after I finish talking about our hiking, I’m going to put up a ridiculously long post with photos of all the different mushrooms we encountered. I’ll try to restrain myself to just a few relevant (or especially pretty) ones for now.

For example, the chicken-of-the-woods:

A large batch of chicken-of-the-woods (orange and yellow shelf mushrooms) grow down the side of a tree trunk. — Just… LOOK at them! You can practically hear them BOK-BOKing!

A smaller batch of much larger chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms growing from a tree trunk. — Just… LOOK at them! You can practically hear them BOK-BOKing!

I first encountered these mushrooms last year in Olympic National Park on a backpacking trip and took photos of them because they’re so pretty. Only after we got home did I look them up and discover they’re also delicious and quite safe to identify. I decided then that if I found them again, I was going to make dinner with them.

Laura stands over the fallen log which is covered with chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms, looking greedy. — Greedy Laura wants the little chickens in her stewpot.

I plucked a small flock of chickens and tucked them into my hip pocket while Dustin and Hobz looked on, either amused or bemused.

We carried on. Lunch happened around 7 “miles” again today, and for the first time on this whole trip, we bumped into another backpacker when we stopped. He was out with his giant, friendly, unleashed dog (friends: don’t be this guy), and seemed rather adrift, both locationally and metaphysically. He had started his adventure by hiking all day in the wrong direction, and now wasn’t entirely sure where his next destination was or where to find water. We gave him the best advice we had and waved him onward.

During lunch, as we stewed in the humid day and our still slightly-too-humid pants, Dustin discovered a hostel available at today’s 12-mile mark. It wasn’t right on the trail, like Kincora or Boots Off, so it didn’t show on Hobz’s trail map, but the owner was willing to come pick up stray hikers at the trailhead and return them there in the morning.

“I never stay in this many hostels,” Hobz observed, “but if you guys would rather do that, I’m up for anything.” He really is a flexible hiking buddy. Since we were all feeling a little crunchy in our clothes, the detour seemed worth taking.

Around today’s Mile 11, we arrived at the tomb of Uncle Nick.

A stone monument fills the whole frame. It is mostly constructed of found stones mortared together, but in the center is a carved tomb stone reading:

UNCLE
NICK GRINDSTAFF
Born
Dec. 26, 1851
Died
July 22, 1923

[obscured text below]

A closeup of the text that couldn't be read in the previous photo says:

Lived alone, suffered alone, and died alone.

The link above goes to more detailed information, but the basic story is that he was a local boy who left to gain his fortune in California, but the only fortune he found there was the ill sort. He returned a changed man, bought the land on top of this mountain, built his cabin, and lived there alone but for a dog and a rattlesnake for the rest of his life. He was not a total hermit, making occasional trips into town for supplies or to neighbor’s houses for dinner. His body was found by someone checking in on him a few days after he died. A local we bumped into told us the ghost of the dog haunts the area.

Kind of sad, kind of sweet.

A photo of the stone monument to Uncle Nick taken from farther back, showing the whole monument at center. Hobz crouches immediately to the right of the monument, holding up a peace sign and smiling at the camera like a dork. Laura stands to the left, looking at the camera and laughing in disbelief. — I guess this is a meme, but I didn’t know what Hobz was doing at the time and it was funny.

As we approached the trailhead, Dustin dialed our ride, and it wasn’t long before a fast-driving dude from up the road roared up to deliver us to Switchback Creek Campground.

The joint wasn’t nearly as fancy as Boots Off or quirky as Kincora, but it had the promised hot showers and the little cabin we rented had AIR CONDITIONING. That was well worth the $20/person price tag.

A grassy field stretches out under a blue sky, with small log cabins to the left and the post of some large building to the right. Several trucks are parked in the background.

A photo of the front of one of the small cabins with Laura sitting on its front steps, chin in her hand, smiling at the camera. The door to the cabin is open, and a small dresser with a lamp can be seen inside. Backpacks and gear are scattered on the grass in front. — Air-conditioned cabin, sweet air-conditioned cabin.
(Photo credit: Hobz)

A pair of bunk beds against the cabin wall to the left, a small dresser with a lamp center, and the edge of a third bed barely visible to the right. The walls are very white, and an AC unit sits above the lamp. — Real beds, real sheets.
(Photo credit: Hobz.)

A selfie of Laura, to the left, with Dustin visible to the right in the background. Laura's hair is wrapped in paper towels, a few wet curls sticking out. She looks pleased. — It didn’t occur to me to find a towel before I got into the shower – I was feeling very single-minded at the time – so I wound up drying off with paper towels. There are worse things.

And then it was time for my mushroom feast.

“Jamie says I’m not allowed to eat mushrooms and die,” Hobz said as I laid out my chicken-of-the-woods collection.

“I have written a mathematical proof that they are safe,” I told him, “and I can show my work.” I had, in fact, re-done my research because this is the kind of monkey business you don’t just assume you got right that one time you looked it up on the internet a year ago. Chicken-of-the-woods has only two potential look-alikes: chanterelles, which are also delicious, and jack’o’lantern mushrooms, which look absolutely nothing like chicken-of-the-woods with the exception that they are both orange.

A pile of recently plucked chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms. — whole chickens

Chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms, torn into bite-sized strips. — whole chickens

In a tiny fridge in the shared kitchen space, I discovered a stick of butter. It belonged to a dude named Max who had been in residence at the campground for several weeks while he refined his plans for political revolution, and he agreed to let me mooch a little.

Cooking mushrooms in a camp pot over a propane stove isn’t ideal, but we got it done, and the results were so delicious and so chickeny I nearly wept. We accompanied this main feature with a pouch of chicken pesto pasta, and it was a feast fit for kings.

A small warning I found on only one of many pages I looked at noted that some people might have mild tummy discomfort after eating these mushrooms. I imagined that we were talking about “ate too many brussels sprouts” discomfort, but proceeded with caution anyway. We ate about half of what I’d cooked and let the rest go. If this chicken was a success, there could always be another chicken another night.

Hobz sits at a picnic table with a pot of chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms in front of him. He is holding up one piece of mushroom, looking very serious.

From another angle, Laura sits in front of the pot of chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms. She is biting into one, looking pleased.

Hobz did get a little rumble in his tum, but I blame whatever mystery concoction he ate out of a pouch. Dustin and I felt fine.

I fed the extra mushrooms to my new buddy, Max, who turned out to be a bit of a local mushroom expert in addition to his other, slightly nutty philosophies. I showed him all my mushroom pictures and he told me what he knew about several, while opining on society’s distrust of such humble fare.

“They don’t want you to know that you can just go out into the forest and find your own food!” he said. I’m not totally sure who “they,” are, but they are also the ones who want you to believe that most mushrooms will kill you. “Did you know almost no mushrooms will actually kill you? I mean, a bunch will give you a stomach ache or whatever, but there are very few actually deadly mushrooms out there.”

I looked this claim up. He is, in fact, right about the very low number of actually deadly mushrooms, but the large number of mushrooms designated as toxic can do anything from give you gas to make you wish you were dead, so… don’t be a madman. Always double-check your math, and if the sums are too close, err on the side of not having to wish you were dead.

Conversation proceeded to how the United States is actually a communist country (the “wrong kind” of communist, though?) and how the only way to fight back is to stop letting them have our money. Max hasn’t paid his taxes in seventeen years. I found his ideas too perplexing to even push back against, so I let it wash over me for awhile. Dustin had left to call his mother, but Hobz eventually sent me a text message asking if I needed him to make a distraction so I could get away. He’s a good wing man.

The buzzing laundry machine did the job, though. Blessedly clean pants awaited me, not to mention an air-conditioned sleeping arrangement. I tucked into bed that night with clean hair a happy tummy, in good company and two more days of wandering the woods to look forward to. I fell asleep feeling very grateful.

DAY FIVE STATS

Now please enjoy today’s photographic trail candy, which is getting increasingly mushroomy by the day:

Trail Map Says: 10.7 miles (cumulative: 44.4 🙂 )
Laura’s Watch Says: 12.32 miles (cumulative: 52.42)
Elevation Gain: 2,289 feet
Elevation Loss: 2,133 feet
Start Time: 8:43am
End Time: 4:20pm
Active Hiking Time: 5:40
Average Pace: 27:39!
Average Heart Rate: 123 bpm (high 153bpm)
Total Calories Burned: 3,031

Jack’o’lantern mushrooms! (probably – I didn’t know that’s what they might be at the time, so I didn’t inspect their gills or give them a sniff). I dare you to confuse these with my beautiful chickens. [Alt text: very large bright orange mushrooms rise on thick stalks from the base of a tree.]