On Top of Old Smoky

I have returned to civilization!

My five-day, thirty-five mile backpacking trip into the Great Smoky Mountains was exciting, beautiful, treacherous and proved to be one of the most difficult tests of my physical abilities that I’ve faced so far. There was a lot of high-elevation hiking, thunderstorming, camera-dropping, potato-eating and even a bear! All in all it was an amazing experience that I took time to carefully document along the way. For those of you who want the run-down, read on . . .

MONDAY 7/23: A ROCKY START

Morning meetings at Hub-Bub. Before leaving for Bryson City, North Carolina I stop at Target to pick up some last minute essentials: Clif Bars, peanut butter, some first aid items and a water-resistant camera case to insure lots of picture-taking on the trip. With my trunk packed full of food, clothes and camping gear, I drive two hours N-NW through the rain to Bryson City. Thunder and lightning along the way keeps me worried about the potential for bad weather on the trip, but just as I park the car the sky begins to clear.

I wait for Marshall to arrive from Michigan at a small coffee shop in the city’s “downtown” while watching the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad pass the depot about 25 feet away.

Last-minute calls to my mother, father and best friend Meghan are intermittently interrupted by status updates from Marshall, who seems to be driving through a parallel universe. He is caught the nearly stand-still rush hour traffic of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, which is obviously frustrating but also somewhat welcome in that it gives him time enough to look closely at the strange array of local business whose signs and storefronts he describes to me in detail - a restaurant/rafting joint called “Dan’s Jurassic Adventure Boat Ride and Flapjack House,” a funhouse created in the image of the Parthenon tipped upside down, painted statues of a black bear fighting a blackface man as well as a fully articulated T-Rex skeleton engaged in combat with a B-52 Bomber. It turns out that Pigeon Forge has one of the highest concentrations of pancake houses, adventure parks, go-kart tracks and wax museums on the planet and should actually be called Crazytown.

After I hang up the phone an older man sits down on the stool beside me and identifies himself as a hitchhiker who has trekked down to the Smokies all the way from Maine. Within the first five minutes of our conversation he unconvincingly tries to persuade me that he has hitchhiked to 49 of the 50 states, has an impressive arrest record, was accepted to Harvard (but didn’t attend) and asks me whether I believe bleach is an adequate antimicrobial agent to disinfect stream water and if I will give him a ride into the park. I call Marshall to tell him I will be waiting away from the coffee shop in my parked car with the doors locked.

Marshall finally arrives just after six and we drop his car at the end of our route on a winding mountain drive that is fondly known as “The Road to Nowhere.” Along the way I see an ominous, paint-peeled sign advertising the road as “A Broken Promise.”

From there we drive to the trailhead, divide up the gear between our two packs, decant whiskey and finally hit the trail just before dark. The evening sky is clear and we hike about 3 miles into the park along a narrow horse trail. The last mile is dark enough to require flashlights.

Campsite #60, our first night’s destination, is a gorgeous spot located right on the banks of Deep Creek. We filter water, pitch the tent and cook up a batch of pumpkin soup. The evening seems strangely civilized except for the fact that we both keep hearing what sounds like loud growling, there are spiders EVERYWHERE and Marshall spots a pair of yellow eyes staring at him from in the woods. Before climbing into the tent, we (according to park regulations) fill my pack with all of our odorous objects - food, toothpaste, garbage and anything else that might hold a human scent. To prevent nighttime bear attacks every campsite in the Smokies is equipped with a rather shoddy-looking (though practical) system of weights and pulleys that allows campers to hoist scented materials 15-20 feet off of the ground and out of any bear’s reach. I spend most of the night wide awake, trying to convince myself that the strange noises emerging from the forest are simply the sounds of the nearby stream and are not, in fact, rabid/starved/crazed black bears. The little sleep I do get is one long nightmare involving a bear eating our tent.

At 5:30 AM I bolt upright, realizing that I have left absolutely every door of my car unlocked. “Marshall,” I whisper, “I left the car unlocked.” He doesn’t wake. Embarrassed by my mistake, I resolve to accept the consequences of my error and begin making a mental list of all of the items in my car that will indubitably need to be replaced after the trip: my wallet, my ID, my credit cards, my phone and its charger, my iPod and its charger, about twenty-five cd’s, my keys, Marshall’s wallet and credit cards, Marshall’s keys . . . I stop listing and elbow Marshall awake.

“Did you leave your keys in my glove box?” I ask. “Yeah, why?” he asks hazily. I lay back down. His car, our only way back to civilization at the end of the trip, is parked fifteen miles from ANYWHERE and, unless we hike back to get Marshall’s keys in the morning, we will have no way of getting out of the park. Seeing no other options, we agree that we will get an early start in the morning, Marshall will hike back to my car, get the keys and then we will embark on the eight-mile hike we had planned for the day. I fall asleep thinking that the sun will surely wake me before 8 A.M.

TUESDAY 7/24: “A MOUSE JUST RAN OVER MY FACE”

I wake and look at my watch - 11:47 A.M. It is pouring rain. Marshall runs the six miles roundtrip to the car and back (thankfully without his pack) while I pack up the tent, filter water, make oatmeal & coffee and worry that my car has been stolen and that Marshall will be attacked by bears somewhere along the way. The campsite is, admittedly, much less terrifying in the daylight and I take a moment to enjoy the beauty of my surroundings - a heavily shaded deciduous forest bordered by a fast-running stream full of small rapids and flanked by flowering bushes and trees.

We leave #60 around 1:30 P.M. and spend the afternoon hiking eight miles while ascending approximately 1,000 feet along the banks of Deep Creek. We cross the creek and its smaller tributaries somewhere between fifteen and twenty times, a few times by footbridge but generally by hopping from rock to log to rock. It continues to rain throughout the day and we are completely soaked. Along the way we pass a crazy-long bridge made of one log that spans the entire width of the creek, which must be around 35 feet. Careful not to get my camera too wet, Marshall snaps a photo of me on the bridge but it is blurred by the fog and rain.

Much of our hike is extremely slippery and somewhat treacherous, the path often being comprised of wet rocks that barely breach the surface of the fast-moving water. Wet and tired, we arrived at Campsite #53 before 5 P.M. We hang our food out of bear-reach, pitch the tent and put off making dinner until later. We decide to bathe in the FREEZING COLD STREAM, bringing our warmest clothes to throw on after getting out of the water. Just as I finish getting dressed a father-son backpacking duo arrives at the opposite bank. Both are dripping wet and the father is not wearing a shirt.

Back at camp we introduce ourselves and discover, as it turns out, that the father and son who are joining us at Campsite #53 this evening are from the land of many bizarre wonders, Pigeon Forge, TN. I want to ask the father about Dan’s Jurassic Adventure Boat Ride and Flapjack House, but something about him is extremely intimidating. I suspect that this has something to do with the fact that he is basically the most muscular over-fifty-year-old I have ever seen and, in the hour or so that he has been wandering around the campsite, he has yet to put on a shirt.

The son seems to be around thirteen and is obviously very interested in the gadgetry of camping. He is soft-spoken and wears wire-rimmed glasses. As Marshall and I cook up a much-needed dinner of delicious macaroni and cheese, he compliments us on the efficiency of our ultra-portable “pocket rocket stove” and pulls out a similar model to cook his own meal. He then proceeds to set up a rather trendy and hi-tech one-man bivy tent. Marshall and I speculate about what the dad will eat, where he will sleep, etc., as it seems that the father and son aren’t sharing much of their equipment.

These questions are soon answered as Marshall and I realize that the father is clearly not fucking around when it comes to setting up camp. Instead of using a tent he makes his own shelter that consists of a green plastic tarp suspended horizontally about 8 inches off the ground by dead sticks. Instead of a sleeping pad he places a paper thin survival blanket (one of those metallic, astronaut-type deals) between his body and the wet ground. Rather than using his son’s stove to cook, the father pulls out a freaking aluminum can which, despite the fact that the rain seems to have soaked every piece of tinder in the forest, he somehow fills with roaring flames. He cooks his dinner over a CAN OF FIRE.

After dinner we hang up the food and Marshall proceeds to handcraft a full deck of cards out of the pages of my notebook.

I try to covertly watch the father and son interact. They don’t talk much. As night falls, we hang the bag of smellables from the bear-proof pulleys and then play gin rummy in the tent with our tiny paper cards. It starts to rain again and as I fall asleep I can’t help but wonder whether the barely-sheltered father sleeping nearby is getting wet. I hear him call to his son. “Doug,” he whispers sharply. “Yeah, Dad?” says Doug from his tent. He responds: “A mouse just ran over my face.” Marshall and I burst into audible laughter.

Tonight I sleep better knowing that I am only about twenty feet from what seems like a genuine mountain man. Only in the morning do I realize that he would probably hand feed me to a bear in order to save his son’s life.

 

WEDNESDAY 7/23: IT’S STILL RAINING

It rains all night and into the morning. Mountain man and his son start packing up around 7 A.M. and their rustling wakes me. Marshall is feeling a bit under the weather so he continues to sleep while I read more of Marilyn Robinson’s Housekeeping, the only book I’ve brought along to read. Around 10 A.M. the rain finally stops and I leave the tent, take down the food and make coffee. After Marshall wakes we eat Clif bars and peanut butter for breakfast, drink coffee and talk until we realize that the rain is most certainly on its way back to us. Just as we finish packing up, it starts again.

Wet and a bit discouraged by the lack of sunshine so far, we set forth, immediately reaching a dangerously slippery rock hop across a 25-foot wide stream. While crossing, I start to lose my footing and get somewhat stranded midstream. As I pass my pack to Marshall, my camera falls to the stream-bottom. Marshall performs a heroic camera-rescue, soaking his left boot in the process, but the camera is completely water-logged and scrambled. I’m pretty sure it took this picture while filling up with water:

Flustered, I accidentally plunge my right foot into the water. Now we both have wet hair, wet boots, wet clothes, no dry socks, a wet camera, a wet tent and wet packs. Fortunately, the rain lets up a little while we make our 6 mile, 3000 ft ascent of the Fork Ridge Trail under thick cloud cover. The climb is extremely difficult - probably the most strenuous of the trip. I keep waiting for the terrain to level but it doesn’t and we continue to climb uphill over an extremely steep grade throughout the afternoon. Despite its strenuousness, the trail is beautiful and the vegetation increasingly resembles a temperate rainforest as we climb higher. Small orange flags indicate the remaining distance: 15,000 feet, 10,000 feet, 8,000 feet and so on. The trees begin to thin as we ascend and the sky offers teasing peeks of sunshine.

Finally reaching the summit, we cross a small road and hike one more mile, now on the famous Appalachian Trail. We soon arrive at our evening’s destination - Mt. Collins Shelter. Like most of the shelters that house hikers of the Appalachian Trail, Mt. Collins is a small, stone, “12-bunk” shelter, meaning that it houses two parallel platforms long enough to fit six people in sleeping bags, side-by-side. The shelter’s roof sags and its fourth wall is simply a chain link fence with a locking lever to keep out bears. Inside we find a green log book filled with messages and updates from recent hikers of Appalachian Trail. The walls of the shelter are covered with carved and markered inscriptions of past campers: “STEVE HOLSOMBACK & WES BOATMAN, CHRISTMAS EVE 1983,” “R. MITCHELL, R. JOHNSON, E. ROBINSON, S. MCLAIN, C. WATT of KANNAPOLIS NC SET THE WORLD’S RECORD FRISBEE TOSS HERE (139 TOSSES WITHOUT MISS) 5/3/69.” I find myself slightly awed by the shelter’s history.

Eager to get out of my wet clothes and hoping for a little sun, I strip down to my sports bra and underwear and head about a quarter mile down the trail to the water source. The wind picks up, cloud cover thickens and just as we close the last bottle a torrential downpour begins. I am soaked again and now, with temps in the low 50’s, Marshall and I are both chilled to the bone. We put on every piece of dry clothing we have left (including the hat Derya knitted me for my birthday, for which I am at this point extremely thankful) and get into our respective sleeping bags, trying to warm up. I am cold to the point of feeling too ill to move and fall asleep with no feeling in any of my fingers and most of my toes.

I sleep a death-like sleep for almost two hours and when I wake in the early evening the rain is still coming down in torrents. Silently, I decide that the weather is much too terrible for anyone else to be heading to the shelter tonight; I simply cannot imagine hiking in this heavy rain. Not a minute later I am startled by two young men opening the shelter’s chain lock. They have been walking in the pouring rain for the past two hours and are utterly drenched. I am finally warm enough to move.

Our bunkmates this evening are Nelson and Boone. Both men are in their twenties and met while thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Boone has been on the trail for over twenty days and plans to continue hiking until a set date in August, at which point he is jetting to Wyoming for a mountaineering trip in the Wind River Range, then heading back to Maine to continue on the AT from the top down. Nelson is hiking the AT without a set end date, until he loses 30 lbs.

We cook dinner together and talk, Boone and Nelson eating Ramen noodles (a dinner designed to limit pack weight) while Marshall and I cook perogies and instant mashed potatoes. Lots of potatoes. The four of us share some whiskey and then pile into our bunks, all reading and writing before we fall asleep just after dark. I make a note of how my body is adjusting to the rhythms of the natural world, waking with the sun and moving toward sleep as it descends. A thick fog rolls in and the wind begins to gust into the shelter with significant force. Chilly, I fall asleep to the sounds of rain splashing the roof, mice scurrying over our feet and across the floor, and a terrified Nelson rustling in his sleeping bag in a vain attempt to scare the mice away.

It pours through the night and the wind blows through cracks in the shelter walls, sending ash and tinder from the fire pit across the floor. At this point, because of the foul weather and sheer difficulty of our hikes so far, I am seriously hoping that my fellow artists-in-residence decide not to show up for the tentative rendezvous we had planned before I left. We had decided that if they were able to get a tent and sleeping bags, they should meet Marshall and I at Clingman’s Dome, the highest point in the park, tomorrow at 2 P.M. So far, we have had less than four hours of sun on the trip and it has been too wet to make a single fire. As much as I would love to see my roommates, I am worried about their comfort and safety.

THURSDAY 7/26: ON TOP OF OLD SMOKY (a.k.a. we almost die)

Today is awesome. I wish I hadn’t dropped my camera in Deep Creek! I wake up just after 8 A.M. to the sound of Nelson and Boone packing their gear and I see a cloudless, blue sky. I get up and make a cup of coffee and enjoy the promise of a sunshiny day - one that might allow us to see some of the supposedly spectacular views from Clingman’s Dome, which is the parks highest peak at 6,643 ft. Marshall and I string up a long clothesline and hang nearly every object we have carried with us out to dry in the morning sun. Another day of wet socks and wet boots might have been too much to bear.

We sit by the Mt. Collins Shelter at a picnic table, reading and writing and talking with Nelson about potentially finding a soulmate on the trail. Neither he nor Boone has been lucky enough to find an attractive female AT hiker so far - but they tell me laughingly that each night, as they approach the evening’s shelter, they hope to find a troupe of girls inside, pillow fighting in their underwear. I wish them good luck.

Around noon Marshall and I to the water source and sadly, when we return, Nelson and Boone are already gone. Part of the fun of backpacking is meeting good people on the way and I have to say I was glad to have met the two of them. I notice that they have left their names and messages in the shelter’s log book, Boone including the anecdote of how a mouse chewed the pom-pom off of the hat Derya made me while I was sleeping. D-Bone, can you make me another pom? Please?

Around 12:30 P.M., after Marshall writes our message in the log book, we set out toward Clingman’s Dome with dry clothes and gear. With no cell service in the park, I have no way of knowing whether or not my roommates are actually planning to meet us at our tentatively scheduled time, but Marshall and I set a quick pace to make it through the four mile hike by 2 P.M. The hike begins as a fast-paced plunge down into the valley flanking Mt. Love and ends in a difficult climb up the valley’s far side - I feel like I am climbing slippery rock stairs at 6,000 ft. Here, we are traversing the highest elevations of the Appalachian Trail.

Marshall and I arrive at Clingman’s Dome observation tower just after 2 P.M. and my roommates are nowhere in sight. Despite my earlier hesitations, the morning sun and warmth has me starting to think that the addition of the other AIR’s to the camping trip might not be such a bad idea after all. I am simultaneously sad and relieved to see that they don’t arrive and, with thunder threatening to bring rain, Marshall and I decide to push ahead down the Forney Creek Trail around 3 P.M. Realizing that our trail has actually become a creek of its own from the heavy rain, we struggle to keep our boots dry. I lose my footing a few times, sliding four or five feet down the side of the steep bank flanking our path. This part of the trail is a three-mile, 2,000 ft. descent to the night’s destination - Campsite #68.

Soon it starts to rain and this is where the shit gets serious. Marshall and I are caught in a nearly incapacitating downpour and the trail, which is already kind of a creek, becomes a full-blown stream maxing out at about four inches deep. With our boots and clothes soaked, I begin to get anxious about how we will be able to pitch the tent in this downpour and, as we walk, we pass an eerily abandoned pile of blankets that has been left about a half-mile away from our campsite. It is raining so hard that I can barely see and when we get to the campsite it is completely flooded. Cold and flustered, Marshall and I try to interpret our maps under a fallen tree. We decide to continue down the trail to the next campsite which is supposed to be .4 miles downstream, where Forney Creek widens.

Ten minutes later there is no campsite to be found. As we stop under a toppled tree stump to decide what to do, it begins to HAIL painful half-inch hail and lightning is striking approximately every thirty seconds within what seems to be a square mile of our location. We are cold, soaking wet and afraid that the hail might indicate a drastic decrease in temperature. No joke, we make a pact under the fallen tree stump that neither of us is going to die. In my mind I praise any and all hidden forces of this universe for preventing my roommates from being caught with us in this weather.

With no choice but to retreat back to the flooded campsite, we trudge a half-mile up steep slopes in the rain and hail, letting our boots slip into the four-inch water that is literally flowing over the trail. I walk through the brush to avoid slipping and don’t notice until much later that I have been walking through pricker bushes that are ruining my legs and hands. It is still hailing, I can’t see, my legs are bleeding and a steady stream of water is now running between the bottom of my socks and the inside of my boots. When we finally make it back to the campsite, I am unnerved to find a soaking wet, abandoned sleeping bag lying in the bushes and a tent (whose odor reeks not-so-faintly of death) strung up in the bear-proof pulleys. Not seeing another option, Marshall and I hastily set up the tent in the driest spot we can find, then get inside to try and warm up.

Though the rain soon stops, the day’s inclement weather has instilled a rather intense fear in us both and we are hesitant to leave the tent, afraid of more torrential rain and/or hail. But it is only 6 P.M. and after cooking a quick and small dinner of red beans and rice we decide that it is too early in the evening to retreat inside. As we sit on the banks of Forney Creek, Marshall reads David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green and I write in my yellow notebook about our terrifying and berserk day. We are perched close by the tent on a rock ledge about fifteen feet from Rock Slab Falls, the main attraction of this campsite and one of the most gorgeous spots we have seen in the park so far.

Here, Forney Creek spills over a fifty foot cascade and lands in a clear shallow pool. The falls are made of dark granite rock striated with thick, white volcanic dikes (as you can see in the picture above, which I will later explain how I was able to take) that formed from the intrusion of highly felsic magma into cracks in the granite. This magma quickly cooled to form stripes of silica-rich quartz. (That’s right, I took field geology in college.)

From here, the creek falls over another fifty foot cascade, ultimately ending in a deeper pool surrounded by flowering bushes. It is undeniably beautiful.

The sun isn’t able to break the evening cloud cover but thankfully it doesn’t rain again. Around 7:50 the sky is getting darker, my body begins to feel over-extended from the day’s tribulations and I tell Marshall that I am going to write for ten more minutes and then get into the tent. Again, I am having trouble discerning imagined forest/animal noises from the pseudo white noise of the creek. I think I hear the voices of people. I even think I hear somebody calling my name. Suddenly, over my shoulder I see my three roommates and Christina bounding down the trail. I don’t think I have ever been more amazed, ever.

They tell me that they got a late start getting out of Spartanburg and hit the storm that Marshall and I got stuck in while they were driving through the park. After the rain stopped they decided to try and stake us out at the campsite, hoping that we would have stuck to our schedule. As they set up their tents and unpack their packs, my jaw hangs in disbelief. I cannot believe they made it. Later, I try to explain the dire nature of our near-death experience earlier that day, but somehow the seriousness of the incident fails to register when placed beside my roommates supply of tofu dogs (complete with accompanying condiments), provolone cheese, bottled water and three different kinds of cookies. Really, they brought all of these things.

My roommates arrival is a very sudden and unexpected change in the course of the evening (I definitely decide not to retreat to the tent at 8), but we have a great dinner, turn Nicholas’ tiny flashlight into a makeshift lantern and stay up well past dark talking, drinking and laughing about alternate life-scenarios we have invented for the ridiculously-mustachioed Tom Selleck, who indubitably rides to work in a speedboat that he detonates just prior to making a spectacular dive from the deck, then peeling off his wet suit on the sandy shore to reveal a tuxedo.

Anyway, this Thursday is one of the most surreal days I have ever experienced, but thanks to the other AIR’s and Christina, it turns out to be a wonderful evening. With bellies full and smiles wide, we head to bed.

 

FRIDAY 7/27: THE OPPOSITE OF LAME

Groggy, I wake at 9 A.M. to find all of my camping buddies still asleep. I take down the food bags by myself and sit on the bank of Forney Creek drinking coffee, writing and watching water spill over the nearby cascade until everyone starts wandering out of the tents around 10. Christina’s hip is bruised from sleeping on a rock. Arielle had nightmares of being pulled out of the tent by bears. Nevertheless, everyone agrees on the pleasantness of the previous evening and, aside from Marshall getting stung in the hand by a bee and the disgusting act of putting on our hopelessly wet boots, this morning is equally as pleasant.

We eat bananas and peanut butter and three kinds of cookies for breakfast. I take pictures with Derya’s camera while everyone packs up and the sun starts to filter lightly through the dense forest.

My roommates leave around noon, heading three miles back up the slippery and steep Forney Creek Trail to Clingman’s Dome. Marshall and I leave soon afterwards, having planned to hike downhill seven miles to a horse camp not far from manmade Lake Fontana. This is inarguably the most gorgeous day of the entire trip; the sunshine is bright enough to break the tree cover and keeps us warm as we descend in altitude. We encounter at least twenty stream crossings of varying difficulty. Most of the first crossings are made simple by the presence of rickety log bridges, although the longest one of these is made more treacherous by a tree that has fallen on to the bridge and seemingly taken out some of its structural support. The water level is extremely high because of the week’s intense rain and, at the crossings where we have to rock hop, I take off my boots to wade through streams multiple times.

Marshall and I are both overjoyed by the change of weather and the more relaxed pace that it has allowed us. We reach Campsite #71 around 3 P.M. It is a large expanse of clear cut forest that is punctuated by an enormous, 30 ft. tall stone fireplace. There are lots of bees and I am disgusted by the lingering smell of smoked meats. We stop for water and a snack and both admit that, between the beautiful weather and the downhill trail, we are both feeling a little underworked for the day. We decide that the best course of action is to enjoy the sunny weather while we can and avoid getting cooped up in the tent with evening rain by abandoning the original plan and hiking our last five miles out of the park today. Without looking at a map, I assume the last five miles will be downhill.

Wrong. The last five miles of our twelve-mile exit hike are almost entirely uphill but I enjoy the change of difficulty immensely and we continue at a fast pace as thunderclouds begin to suggest impending rain. Conversation along the way is lively but Marshall shushes me suddenly when we are about two miles from the car. About 200 ft. ahead of us on the trail is a black bear. At first it looks like a big dog or perhaps a man in a furry costume, but as the hairy mass begins to move it looks infinitely more scary and bear-like. I am slightly frightened but after taking all of the trouble to keep our food out of the reach of bears I am glad to have some proof that they actually exist. The bear sees us and sprints away at a terrifyingly quick pace.

The prospect of returning to civilization puts some spring in our step during the last stretch of this 12-mile hike, but we are nearly stopped dead in our tracks during the last half mile at the sight of an enormously long, unlit tunnel that connects our trail to the “Road to Nowhere.” I unsuccessfully try to take a picture of the trail with my broken camera (and later steal one off of the internet for this blog post).

The tunnel is so long that it takes us almost five minutes to walk through and it is tall enough to house at least one semi-truck, maybe two. Somewhere in the middle of the tunnel my depth perception starts getting funky and I can’t tell whether the end is getting closer or further away. In the dark I imagine that I hear footsteps echoing behind me and that the tunnel is a definite hideout for hiker-crazy kidnappers.

Exhausted, thirsty, and very smelly, we make it out of the tunnel alive and find Marshall’s car safe and sound, just where we had left it. We peel off our boots, round up my vehicle and head back to Spartanburg for what are indubitably some of the most satisfying showers of our young lives. Almost five days later my legs still look like they were rubbed in catnip and stuck into a basket of cats - but it was worth it. That’s about it in terms of details; I’m sure I’ve missed something important but you get the idea, I’m sure.

Marshall, I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, thanks for a wonderful trip and for coming to visit me again in the crazy south.

In terms of reading, I’m still working through Robinson’s Housekeeping but I’ve also started Murakami’s latest, After Dark. Also, I know I’ve praised Rebecca Solnit already, but I finally got around to reading her article Detroit Arcadia in last month’s issue of Harpers. It really got me thinking about American culture and public policy and I would recommend it to anyone, especially you Michiganders. Since my return I’ve been watching Wet Hot American Summer (on Arielle’s recommendation) and Children of Men, which was thoroughly upsetting but amazing. For listening I’m still clinging to Lavender Diamond and Elvis Perkins, with a little bit of James Brown on the side. Also, Nicholas and I have been having some awesome conversations about the scientific relationship between space and time and how everything stops making sense when it moves at the speed of light. Thoughts?