Dreams Really Do Come True

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!  Its really going to happen!  After years and years of dreaming, my thru hiking the Appalachian Trail is becoming a reality!!!!!!!  I've set Sunday March 17th as my start date....*gasp* that's only a month away!  Oh wait...February is a short month...that's 28 days to go!

As you can tell with my prolific use of !!!!!!  I'm beyond excited. In fact, inside I feel like those kids you see running around Gatti Town or Chuck E. Cheese--overstimulated and hopped up on sugar and adrenaline.  Some days I find my mind spinning in overdrive as I finish up my to-do list and planning. Others my hands shake from shear nerves.  My biggest fear is that I'll get ten miles down the trail, break my leg and my dream will be over before it even gets a chance to happen.  I worry that my shoes won't fit correctly, that my stove fuel will run out and I'll be eating uncooked ramen until I can get into a town to resupply.  Oh, and that I'll freeze to death in the mountains during a blizzard. 

Anyone who knows the South, knows that the weather between Mardi Gras and sometime after Derby is a crap shoot.  You never know what Mother Nature will bestow upon us, you may wake up to 70's and go to bed with snow on the ground. I have upgraded my sleeping bag.  The one I have is rated to 35F but I've ordered one with a 0F rating as a safety net. In this situation I'd rather be too warm than try to sleep cold. My next decision is whether I should break down and buy a down jacket. My original plan had been to wear a base layer, an outer layer, a fleece jacket w/ wind barrier and a down vest. Add a hat and gloves to complete my stylish ensemble (insert snickering fashionistas). I may stick to that, once I get moving I'm going to warm up quickly, so it will only be while I'm setting up camp for the night and rest stops that I'll theoretically be cold.  I'll post my finalized gear list before I set out. In the meantime I plan to squash those nerves into their own little mental compartment and let off a little 'pressure' a bit at a time...dealing with them a little at a time, otherwise I may go crawl under my covers and never resurface.

Many people...okay most people that I talk to...are astounded that I'm not afraid to sleep in the woods and that I'm doing this solo (aka I'm not taking a man to protect me). I do not fear bears or really any other animals in the woods.  I prefer not to cross paths with a wild hog...those puppies are bad news and aren't as 'friendly' as bears.  The biggest animal worries I have are surprising a skunk (Thru hikers already reek, can you imagine adding that to the mix?) and deer ticks. In that case a partner to check me for ticks would be handy...

Happy New Year's!  What a year 2012 was; it definitely handed me a lot of lemons so I've made lemonade as best I can.  My last batch of lemonade (losing my job) has spurred me to take my potatoes (bucket list dreams) and make vodka. In 2013 I'm going to combine the two for a nice Lemon Drop!

Being in the field of education, a position will not open up until the fall and lets face it, seven to eight  months of filler jobs is just that, filler jobs.  I'm not saying there is ANYTHING wrong with any job.  Trust me, I need food in my belly and a roof over my head.  Basic utilities are nice too. As many of you know, thru hiking the Appalachian Trail has been a dream of mine.

Have you put it together yet?  YUP!  The plan is to start thru-hiking in mid March! That is "If the Lord is willin' and the creek don't rise" and I still have to find a temporary home for my furry baby.

He's super cute and likes to walk but I really don't want to risk his health and safety.  Nor mine, as a squirrel or bird (or any other little furry critter) sends him into KILL!KILL!KILL! mode.  

Crazy mutt + Cliffs=

So for now, I'm planning, packing, saving, and baby sitter hunting.  Looks like I have 2 1/2 or 3 months to get my ducks in a row and everything set at home for the trip duration.  Wish me luck, I'm Katadhin bound!

Yesterday my folks, my aunt, and I went to Lexington, our nearest larger city for lunch and some shopping.  As we were driving, we passed a few farms with nice looking tobacco crops. Sad thing was, even I could remember the day when the entire countryside on that end of town was tobacco. My family has a long history in tobacco, my grandparents were tobacco sharecroppers as were the past generations of my mom's family. Sharecropping means they rented land and raised the crop allotted to the acreage. They received a portion of the money after the tobacco was sold and so did the land owner.

While I was growing up I remember my mom and my aunt both going 'home' to help my grandparents set their tobacco crop.  Small tobacco  plants were plucked from the loose soil of the tobacco bed and set using a tractor and setting attachment.

None of the people pictured in this blog are my family.

As a kid growing up we had two jobs.  One was to help 'pull plants' from the bed so that the setters could set.  The other was to follow behind the setter and fix any plants that were accidentally placed in the ground upside down. It was looooong tedious work. My mom and aunt always speak wistfully of setting time now.  Setting was a time for socialization (which might have been the reason for all the upside down plants). 

For the rest of the spring and a good part of the summer, the crop takes care of itself.  It needs weeding, watering if it doesn't rain and once it gets up a bit then you have to pluck the tobacco worms off: 

By late summer the crop is taller than most people and begins to flower:

The flowers are broken off , called 'topping' the tobacco, so that the plants resources can focus on growing larger leaves. Once the leaves begin turning yellow its time to start cutting.

This isn't a very good looking crop.

Cutting. 

My dad would sometimes come help during cutting  and housing as would the other men of the family.  This was the time when my granny would cook holiday size meals to feed the work hands. My mom and aunt would help then too.  Keep in mind that cutting and housing usually coincided with canning season...I hate breaking beans and shucking corn to this day...but dang I sure miss those home canned foods!

Housing.

Once in the barn, the tobacco hangs suspended for a couple of months to cure.  Some places smoke cure tobacco, but not here in central Kentucky.

 

After the tobacco cures then comes 'into case', a mysterious state I never fully understood but it has something to do w/ the amount of moisture in the leaves, its ready to be stripped from the stalks.  Once again this was a family endeavor. 

Take a look at the mans fingers in the picture below:

Notice the blackened fingers?  I remember everyone's hands being black as tar and sticky when they came out of the stripping room.  The kids hauled the stalks out as we couldn't be trusted to pull the right leaves or the right way. Different leaves had different names (again, that knowledge is lost to me) and were different grades. That black junk didn't just end up on hands, by the end of the day the inside of your nose would be black and your boogers would be rock hard and black as coal.  Yes, a little graphic but its the truth.

From the stripping room, the tobacco is bound into bales and hauled off to sell:

After that, its bought by various companies and made into cigarettes. Most burley tobacco from Kentucky does not become cigars, a different type of tobacco is needed for that.  Most of the country looks upon those big cigarette companies with hate and disgust in their eyes...the new devils that must be driven out.  And don't get me wrong, I don't like smoking, its a habit I am thankful I never picked up, I saw the devastation it can cause in my own family. But because I have roots in tobacco, I see a different side to it.  I know that the crop was supported thousands of Kentucky families, put food on their tables and clothes on their backs.  As tobacco has become an 'evil' crop most families have sold off the family farms, the land here isn't good for raising much else. So now the countryside that used to look like this:

Looks like this:

Yes, I realize that its been a coon's age since I posted last.  Either there hasn't been anything interesting to blog about or the events are too dang depressing to keep rehashing. Anyhoo, today I joined another member of my Meetup group and went to Mammoth Cave National Park for a cave tour. (Meetup, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the site, is http://meetup.com . People around the world start interest groups there. Plug in your zip code and away you go!)

One of the best things about the Bluegrass state is the variety of available outdoor activities and areas.  We are home to two National Parks and several National Recreations and Historic areas as well.

  

Mammoth Cave has almost 400 hundred miles of explored cave passages, making it the longest cave system in the world.  My tour today? Half a mile.  Sad, I know, but that half mile tour took 2 hours.  Over 500 wonderful knee wrecking steps. Today I took the New Entrance Tour, and it was nice.  Not my favorite, and I've taken most of the tours there.  I draw the line at the Wild Cave tours that have me crawling through cave streams on my belly.  This chick is 'corn fed' as my Papaw used to say.  He meant it as a compliment.  I mean I'm a chunky girl.  The Violet City Lantern tour is tied with the Grand Avenue tour as my favorite.  The VCL is an amazing journey into the history of the cave while using old timey lanterns as the sole light source.  One of the highlights of that section is the stone huts used back in the late 19th century as tuberculosis wards.  Some cutting edge physician from Louisville waaaaay back in the day thought that the constant climate in the cave would be perfect for people suffering from TB.  No, no one was cured but I wonder how many came away with mental issues from sunlight deprivation?  The Grand Avenue Tour is not for the 'faint of heart' meaning, if you don't like to hike, stay topside. At four miles long, its the longest tour offered and allows you to see the most of the cave, though you don't get to see the touristy stops you do on other tours.  You also spend nearly five hours below ground and if you have a mature tour group (aka people who aren't loud and obnoxious) you really start to notice the absence of things...animal/insect sounds, the sound of the wind of the trees, and the sounds of civilization. After five hours being thrust back into the light and sounds of topside you really notice it at first.

But I digress.  You might have wondered why they called the tour today 'The New Entrance Tour'.  Well, obviously its the new entrance.  The man who supposedly discovered the cave system (I apologize for not remembering his name) was actually trespassing on some else's land so he had to find a new way in.  He found a sink hole, loaded in some dynamite and BOOM!  We have a new entrance.  Apparently cave tours were a profitable business back in the 1800's and rival owners went to great lengths to draw tourists in, resulting in the Kentucky Cave Wars.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth_Cave_National_Park#Early_20th_century:_The_Kentucky_Cave_Wars

And no, this is no where close to Hatfield/McCoy territory...that's the far eastern mountain area of the state. So without further ado, here are some photo's I snapped during my forced march through the cave (Our Park Ranger didn't believe in photo opts apparently and got crabby when gaps kept forming in our lines. Dude!  We just want to look at the pretty rocks!):

Mammoth Cave is considered a 'dry cave'. Formed as the local water table dropped in elevation, there are very few stalactite/stalagmite formations that most people think of when they think 'cave'.  Instead it has immense open rooms. But there are places in the cave system where the surface sandstone (the cave is entirely limestone) has cracked and water seeps vertically causing beautiful formations:

At the bottom of the Drapery Room

Sadly we saw no bats, and just like the bears in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in my many visits, I've never seen any. Ranger Drill Sergeant said that according to the park biologists, there are 8,000 bats living in over 400 miles of tunnels...so its odd to actually see them in the cave and generally when the bats move into a tour area, the tour gets shut down until they move their sleeping grounds. We did see some wild life in the cave though:

That's a cave cricket if you are wondering.  First time I've ever seen one in a cave, we had them living in our garage when I lived in Southern Indiana.  I'm not a squeamish girl, but let me tell you, these MF's are CREEPY!  Their legs are 2+ inches and they are HUGE!  I soooo wanted to squash this one, but I figured Ranger Drill Sergeant would not be amused.  

Someday I hope to visit the majority of our National Parks, especially those west of the Mississippi.     What National Parks have you visited?  Are you lucky enough to live close to these areas or do you have to travel a great distance? http://www.nps.gov/findapark/index.htm

Shhhh....don't speak.....

Did you ever wonder why January 1st is designated as New Year's Day?  I mean, generally its cold, rainy (here in Kentucky), snowy if you're lucky and DARK. Everything is hibernating, the trees and bushes are bare, the ground brown.... Nothing looks 'New'. I'm sure there is a historical reason, but I'm just ranting, so who cares?  Why isn't New Year's Day March 21/22? You know, the first day of Spring?  Lets take a poll:

Which of these too pictures looks like it represents the concept of "New Year"?

A)

This was the aftermath of the 2009 ice storm.

Or


B)

My namesake: wild violets.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Don't get me wrong, I love winter and snow and ice. But nothing says "New" like the first Spring blossoms.   So HAPPY NEW YEAR (again)!

This is a red bud tree. All the weird flowering spots are where branches were
broken off in the ice storm from pic A.

Close up of tree 'sprouts'

It's mid February again, the one time of year that I absolutely hate-other than those dog days of summer when the world is one big sauna you can't get out of.  There are several reasons I feel this way and very little I can do to change things.  The first is that my little sister's birthday falls at the beginning of February.  Many of you know that she was killed back in '96 in a car wreck and it's something I've never fully gotten over.

A week later you have that lovely holiday *roll eyes everyone* Valentine's Day.  Maybe if I had a sweetheart to send me flowers or chocolates I wouldn't hate it so much.  Hell, its not even getting those things on February 14th that bugs the crap out of me because I'm really not that materialistic.  Its the fact that there isn't someone special to spend my time with.

The big kicker for me is that I am now less than a week away from turning 36 and as I pull out my life goals list that I started oh, so many years ago, NOTHING has been accomplished.  None of the travel, personal goals, nothing.  And I feel like my life has been one big boring screw up.

As the new year begins and we creep closer to April, I get really down on myself.  One of my biggest dreams is to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.  I want to thru-hike it as opposed to section hiking because I want to take that once in a lifetime opportunity to watch mother nature break from her sleep and unfurl herself in all her glory and fury.

Georgia to Maine: 2,200 miles

Between now and April I really get the blues about this dream that is slipping away.  Most north bound hikers start between mid March and early April.  Technically the trail is 'open' year round but during the winter certain sections get shut down because of the weather and the Northern terminus Mt. Katahdin closes down on October 15th (or earlier if the weather gets bad).

You may be saying 'What is stopping you from doing this and what can you do to change it?"  Believe me, I ask myself the same questions regularly to see if my answers change.  My first answer is $$$.  I have to save the funds to pay for the trek as well as $$$ to live on once the trip is over, 'cause lets face it, how many employers are going to say 'Suuuure!  Take 6+ months off for a vacation!' and still have a job to come back to?  Yes there are a few, but I've never worked for any of them.   By the end of 2013 I will be completely debt free (WOW!  I know!). That will free up $$$ to go into the dream fund.  And most of my big ticket equipment has been purchased over the years so all that's left is personal items and perishables.

The biggest issue holding me back mentally is my parents.  I gave up a dream job to be closer to them because of their declining health.  I really don't expect my mother to live another 10 years and if she does it will really shock me.  My dad's health has leveled off and it seems to be just the usual 'growing older' issues he is facing, his heart and diabetes are well under control at present.  I'm the only child they now have and our extended family can't be relied upon to help which makes me feel extremely guilty to take off into the wilderness for a walkabout. 

So for now I am focusing on getting my body in better shape, my finances in order so that when I am able to (Dear God let it be before I'm retired!) then this picture:

1st Blaze on the AT

And this picture:

Joel and Courtney 10/1/09

Will be ME and not my friends! 'Cause let me tell you, it really sent me reeling towards depression when they set out to accomplish MY life goal.  (If you care to read the trail journal they kept during  their trip here's the link:  http://trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=266291