Reviews: Hilleberg Anjan 2 Tent, Thermarest Neoair Xlite Sleeping Pad, and ZPacks 20 Degree 900 Power Down Twin Size Quilt

As promised I will now present brief reviews of the three pieces of gear that will make up the shelter portion of our Appalachian Trail Thru-hike. Really, these are not comprehensive reviews, but a few thoughts and observations we made while trying them out for a short three-night hike. I will let you know how they hold up over the course of the six-month trek across America. That will be the true test, but as for now, I am quite happy with our selections. Really, if this were any kind of review I would take all kinds of photos to show you what I am talking about, but right now we are camera-less so I'll just add some photos I found online.

Hilleberg Anjan 2 Tent

First of all, this tent is quite easy to set up. Previously in my life, I had only set up super easy tents and hadn't ever even bothered to stake them down. I always figured since I would always be inside of my tent, I would be heavy enough to hold it down. From now on, however, I will always stake down my tent as this is very important when the weather turns bad. This tent is staked at each corner and twice in front and back. Additionally, guy lines are provided at each corner. These offer extra stability for strong winds and I will always stake them in, just in case. At 3 lb 12 oz, this tent is quite lightweight. Although there are several lighter options, it is certainly lighter than the more cheap and mainstream options out there at your local outdoor store. Most of the structures that are ulta-light are really just tarps and you have to buy an additional floor if you want one and use sticks or hiking poles as poles. This tent has everything you would need for a three-season tent. It easily fits in its stuff sack and slides neatly in even the smaller of backpacking packs. The tent also has two storage pockets and a clothesline inside. We really got to test out the weather resistance of our tent during our trip because during our last night out it had to endure a powerful thunderstorm. This tent is actually two tents, one inside the other, but you still set it up as if it was one because they are connected. This helps break up the wind better, keep out the cold, and also provides a buffer for condensation buildup. Morning dew will always build up in temperate climates and coat the inside of the tent. But with this tent, the outer layer takes the hit and the inside tent stays warm and dry. This is important in ensuring our down sleeping quilt does not get wet since it takes very long to dry. During the storm the rain pounded on our tent, but we stayed dry inside as the storm ran its course. We did get some splash-back along the edges, but I have read no tent is completely free of this. It was no significant amount and the downpour was fierce. It was so fierce that it quickly flooded the ground our tent was resting on so that the water was actually rushing beneath the tent floor and it felt like a waterbed. Still, no water leaked through the floor. The winds were also extreme, but the tent withstood it all. I am quite confident that we will have no problems with the weather while we are in the tent. There in enough space inside the tent to fit two people fairly comfortably. We can sit up and stretch out alright, but we wouldn't want to spend too much time inside when not actually sleeping. We did have to spend many hours inside during the evenings to escape the bugs and we read books without feeling claustrophobic. I think this tent will serve nicely for the duration of our trip because it was rated highly for being durable, weather resistant, and it is a nice plus that it is easy to set up and take down since we will be using it most nights for privacy in lieu of spending nights in the shelters.

Thermarest Neoair Xlite Sleeping Pad

I never liked to use sleeping pads. In fact, we have to bring a sleeping pad with us for every field exercise we do in the military, and yet only once or twice have I actually unrolled it and used it. I always just go without. For several years of my life, I chose not to sleep in a bed, but on the ground to practice living without that luxury so sleeping on the ground without a sleeping pad wasn't difficult. I thought the only use of the sleeping pad was to cushion you. After researching for the AT, I realized a sleeping pad has another important function. It keeps you warm. The ground gets very cold and no matter how thick the tent floor of the sleeping bag is, cold penetrates a lot better to your body from the ground than the air. A sleeping pad creates that distance from the ground so the cold has to first go through the pad. A lot of pads are bulky and roll up so you have to attach them to the outside of the pack. This pad is really light at 12 oz and rolls up as small as a water bottle so you can stick it in your pack. It does not lose its effectiveness though. It was really warm and is fashioned in some kind of way that the air chilled from the ground circulates at the bottom of the pad and back down to the ground while the air warmed by the body lying on top of it circulates at the top, staying warm. The pad is easy to blow up does not reqire any device besides your own lungs. It only take a minute or two. We both are using the woman's pad because they are lighter and I am short enough to use it. The pads fit us just right, so if I were to purchase them again I might upgrade a size just for some extra wiggle room, but it isn't really necessary, especially since we are trying to shave off every ounce of weight we can. When I read reviews of these pads everyone talked about how loud the pads were when you tossed and turned on them. Any movement and the pad makes a crinkly noise like aluminum foil. I was expecting far worse. The noise didn't really bother me. It really wasn't all that loud and on the AT we should be pretty tired by the end of each hiking day and drop right to sleep. I really think this pad does a great job while being both light and packable. I couldn't ask for anything else in a sleeping pad.

 ZPacks 20 Degree 900 Power Down Twin Size Quilt 

I already explained in an earlier post about how down sleeping bags are really light and warm and advantageous if you are backpacking with a tent because it doesn't work very well if it gets wet. The true test of this bag was to see how warm it was. It is extremely warm! In fact, we could barely use it. We sweated in it and used it merely as a cover for our legs most of the time. It is really going to work well on cold nights, especially at the beginning of our thru-hike. It is light, compresses down pretty far, and will keep us nice and toasty. However, since it is built to fit both of us, it is quite snug in there, which might be fine for someone like my wife, but I sleep very hot and need space to feel cool when I go to sleep. But all that might change on the Trail! I might be so dog-tired by the end of each day that I might very well become the snuggler my wife wishes me to be. We will see. Now, this isn't so much of a sleeping bag, as it is a quilt. It fits over you like a blanket and you tuck the sides under you to keep the air out. So it doesn't wrap completely around you like a mummy. This makes owning a sleeping pad essential, but we found out that having two separate sleeping pads under our single quilt made the sleeping pads split apart. We are going to try using a fitted sheet to connect them, but if that doesn't work the company that made this sleeping quilt also makes some velcro straps specifically created to attach the sleeping pads together. I might find myself wishing we had two separate quilts on the trail if it gets too hot for me, but for now the lower weight and cost of purchasing one sleeping quilt instead of two makes this the right choice for us.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore Hike

After attending a wedding up north, my wife and I decided to spend a few days hiking in the Upper Peninsula. This was my wife's first multi-day backpacking trip and of course our first long hike together in preparation for the Appalachian Trail. We hiked the 42-mile long Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore which turned into more like a 50 mile hike since we took a few detours, some on purpose. Since this was my wife's first backpacking trip I thought this hike would be a big indicator of whether or not she can make it on the Appalachian Trail. I never told her, but I saw it as kind of a trial hike and I wanted to see how she would react to certain aspects of trail life such as walking many miles in one day, carrying a weighted pack, lack of comforts, and severe weather. Once I found out it might rain while we were out there, I must confess, I kind of hoped it would just so we would get soaked and uncomfortable. I wanted to see if those kinds of things would make her feel miserable. Often times we can choose how we are going to let external forces in our life affect us. Breaking a leg is not one of these times, but when you have no dry clothes and you are dirty and sweaty and thirsty and hungry and tired and mosquitos will not give you a break and you still have five more miles to walk, you can either break or not. One can practice to build up the ability to not let these external factors affect one's will to carry on with what must be done.

I was also excited for this backpacking trip since it was the first time we got to try out our three new lightweight pieces of gear: our tent, our sleeping bag, and our sleeping pads. And it was supposed to be a beautiful place, right along the southern shore of Lake Superior with pictured rocks, dunes, cliffs, waterfalls, and a lighthouse along the way.

I was a bit concerned with how the hike would turn out once I discovered we had to pay a fee for each overnight stay and reservations for campsites were recommended. I had to fill out a form and list my three top choices of where we would camp each night. It was difficult to make three congruent lists that did not overlap. It all seemed a little too bureaucratic to me. Being in nature is supposed to be an escape of this kind of thing and it seems odd to have to pay to spend some time outside. On top of that we had to schedule a shuttle to pick us up that left only at certain times. So now we also had a time schedule to adhere to. I am glad the Appalachian Trail is free and requires no reservations and does not have so strict of time limits. When our reservations were confirmed I saw they gave us our third choice which was all kinds of messed up. We were now required to walk 4 miles the first day, fourteen miles the second, three miles the third, ten miles the fourth, and ten miles on the last day before our shuttle would leave at 10 in the morning. This schedule seemed absurd and unnecessary and honestly made me quite angry. I just hoped my wife would be willing to break these crazy rules if it came to that. So I started out on the journey a little sad that we wouldn't be totally free.

The first few miles I could not focus on nature or the hike itself. I was not fully present even after my wife pointed out a swimming beaver in a lake and I almost stepped on a bright green snake. In all we saw many chipmunks, deer, and birds, a couple of rabbits, three snakes, and that beaver. At the end of that short hiking day my wife wanted to climb up a large sand dune right behind our camp site. When we slowly reached the top I felt a sting on my legs. I looked down and about twenty biting flies covered my bare legs. I danced a little, but they still attacked so I ran ahead toward Lake Superior to shake them. That is when the beauty struck me. That feeling of sublime you might have read about in books when someone reaches the top of the mountain. In front of me were hills rolling to the east and the west  at the edge of the vast expanse of water. Not a single manmade thing in sight. Pure nature. Behind me were the tops of the trees from which we came. From above they looked like a sea of green during a storm. The green crested randomly like choppy waters as the wind blew through them. And the beauty calmed my mind like a-- OUCH! Another fly bite! Nature is unrelenting in beauty and power, even the small parts of it.

Every time we were on or very near the beach, which was most of the time, the flies would not stop pestering me. Hiking, usually a leg workout, also became an arm workout as I had to constantly swing my arms up to my face and down to my legs as I walked with my wife hiked behind me snapping them away from me with a rolled up shirt. For some reason the flies liked me a ton better than my wife, at least one reason being because she wore pants while I wore shorts. Every time I have hiked anywhere I have read warnings about how bad the bugs are and to be prepared, but they have never been that bad so I decided a long time ago to ignore these warnings whenever I came across them. BIG MISTAKE! My wife knew. She had been up to the Upper Peninsula before and just as I had no idea what pasties were (when I first encountered a huge sign that read PASTIES, I confess, I thought they had made the unfortunate mistake of misspelling PASTRIES and didn't have the money or sign space to fix the error)  I did not know how big of a problem the stable flies were. So I wore shorts and paid the price. And if we were further away from the shore the mosquitos were just as bad. Our DEEP WOODS DEET bug spray was useless against them all.

On our third day, we experienced another side of the awesome power of nature. Since we were alone at both of the campsites we had reserved we decided to hike further than our reserved camp site on that third day so we didn't have to hike so far the next two days. Earlier, we decided to walk all the way to the end of the trail on the fourth day so we wouldn't have to hike ten miles before ten in the morning. Instead, we would hike to the nearby town and get a nice meal, and a nice hot shower, and a nice bed at a motel. After hiking those few miles on the third day and arriving at what would have been our campsite for the night, my wife said we should move on, for which I was extremely grateful. So we walked on and came upon a large rock that jutted out so we could see into the vast expanse of Lake Superior, which has the largest surface area of any freshwater lake in the world. Distant booms floated by us as we saw one large storm off to the far east and one large storm off to the far west. We seemed to be aligned with the middle where no storms were and I casually remarked that we might be spared the storm. Ha ha ha. Within minutes the sprinkling began, and then the heavy downpour and the incredible BOOMS. It felt good to be wet . . . at first, especially because the bugs went away. But it rained and rained for hours and the trail quickly became one large muddy puddle after another. We were soaked through and through in no time before the storm passed. We arrived at another campsite with one space left for us and set up our tent, everything damp and mud-smeared, still hearing the distant booms. Just as we finished setting up our small living quarters, moments after we both crawled safely inside and on our pads a BOOM as loud as any I've heard and a light fierce enough to be seen through two layers of tent cracked simultaneously. My wife whimpered something about wishing she was home and I kept imaging a giant tree blasted by lighting above us and crushing our tent. The rain struck our tent like it was hail and I sat up to peer out the one mesh side of our tent where our shoes and backpacks lay on the ground under the outer tent fly. Rainwater flooded around them. I've never seen water accumulate so fast and they were almost covered. Everything not already in the tent would be wet and remain wet for the rest of the hike including all of our clothes, our shoes, and our camera and my cell phone that I forgot to put back in the waterproof bags I so thoughtfully brought along. In fact both of these items are currently resting in a bag of rice, but I have little hope they can be rescued. This is why none of the beautiful photos we took along the way are included in this blog post. But this isn't too disconcerting because the phone was a cheap pay-as-you-go phone which can be replaced for ten dollars and the camera was already broken as it could not read memory cards and so could only store about thirty photos at a time. When I set my hand down on the floor of the tent it squished and I realized that water was amassing beneath us, under the tent. Even though we were on the top of a hill, the water quickly formed beneath the entire length and width of our tent so the entire bottom felt like a water bed. Despite this, the inside of the tent remained dry, except for the inevitable splash-back along the edge, a testament to the quality of the tent. In my next post I will review the tent, sleeping bag, and sleeping bags. After a couple of scary hours the storm finally subsided and we fell asleep.

The next morning we put back on our wet clothes and walked the rest of the way to the end of the trail. My wife decided to walk in some non-hiking shoes that weren't as wet and tied her cheap hiking boots to her pack, dangling. At some point when we had a break from hiking she noticed only one was dangling there and we laughed knowing someone would come across one hiking boot on the path and wonder what had happened. We hiked around fifty miles in seventy-two hours.

My wife did great. She did better than I expected her to. I shouldn't have been surprised because she also did well on our first two-day bike ride together. All in all, we did walk faster and longer than we should have and in the very end she did have a difficult time with each step, and I was hurting as well, but I am not very concerned about this because on the Appalachian Trail we will not walk as far or as fast for the first several weeks, until we are in shape and used to the ups and downs of the 270 mountains we will encounter along the way. We will have few time restraints since we have decided to give ourselves about seven months to complete the hike. She never let the weather or discomfort or lack of bed and shower get to her, except for that one moment when the huge storm suddenly burst on top of us. I am confident that we will both do well on the Trail and make it to the end at Mt. Katahdin.

Lessons for the Trail:
Ensure all gear is waterproofed at the very first sign that it might begin to rain.
Figure out a way to attach the two sleeping pads together so they do not slip apart (we already have an idea).
If setting up the tent on a slope, place pads so that our heads will be closest to the top so we don't keep slipping down and crash our heads into the back wall of the tent.  
Keep up with reducing weight in our packs since all of the other long-distance hikers we came across had packs that looked a ton heavier than ours were and hiked slower and probably were in a great deal more pain.

          

   

Mt. You

While I was baking in the Californian desert, I had a lot of time to read. I finished the book I had brought within the first few days of training. I thought I might just have to sit around without anything compelling to do for the rest of my time there, or borrow another Marine's book which no doubtably would have been an intense action or spy novel which isn't really my cup of tea. To my surprise, a Marine in my squad brought a book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig and thankfully this Marine was also very social and allowed me to take his book away from him most of the time we got a chance to read. I had heard about this book just recently from a friend who recommended it, so I eagerly read it, just finishing before boarding the plane to come back home from training. The book at its basic form is about a man who took his son on a motorcycle trip across America one summer. It is also a philosophy book.

As I was reading it, a few things really struck a chord with me and reminded me of several of the statements I wrote about why I desire to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. These statements are: 

- To spend a significant amount of time away from many of the conveniences of the modern day.

- To be away from the irksome obligations of paying bills, keeping schedules, etc.

- To have a time away from many of the temptations and distractions in my current life.

- To get away from the many apathy-creating and life-destroying ways of life that hallmark today's standard living.

One of the big issues that Pirsig tackles in this book is the way technology can make people feel detached, irritable, and even dehumanized. I am not sure if everyone feels this way about technology at some point or other in their life, but I am willing to bet that deep down if everyone were honest with themselves, they could find some technology that disturbs their inner-lives, the quality of their spiritual, emotional, and intellectual selves. My wife really enjoys her mornings as a time to be quiet, deep, prayerful, and contemplative, but when the computer is on and I am scrolling fast-paced through Facebook and obnoxious YouTube videos are playing, this sort of environment is threatened. 

Pirsig certainly wouldn't say that technology is inherently bad just as say, money and guns aren't inherently bad. Sometimes their power and ease of use simply makes it irresistible for humans to use them in ways and for reasons that arguably diminish the quality of one's and others' lives. I find myself using that word 'quality' a lot and that is because the book is fundamentally trying to answer the question, 'what is quality?' That question is inescapable when talking about these things, and I will not venture to answer it in this small blog post. Read the book if you want to know more about that.

At the beginning of the book Pirsig writes about the normal modern life and how our consciousnesses might be affected by the technology of today, such as the television and radio. Unquestionably, the Internet would be added to that list if the book hadn't been written in the 70s. He writes: 

We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone. Now that we do have some time, and know it, I would like to use the time to talk in some depth about things that seem important. What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua—that's the only name that I can think of for it—like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, […] an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. "What's new?" is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question "What is best?," a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and "best" was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for.

 It is mainly this shallowness of web-surfing and Facebook and television that I find so difficult to break away from most of the time. It wastes my time without seeming necessary or edifying and hiking the Trail will be a nice break from it. However, I would like to develop a character that does not succumb to the temptation of spending countless hours online watching funny videos. I would like to be someone who more readily prays for three hours straight or decides to devote a few hours of thinking about what makes something quality. If you have made it through reading this far I congratulate you. Most of the time, if I saw a blog post this long, I would skip or skim it. And that is revealing of a problem within myself. Once I got rid of my computer and for several months I was limited to an hour online at the library if I wanted to walk there. I read a lot more books, but I didn't do a lot of the things I  thought the computer was keeping me from. This is because it was not the computers fault. It was my own. I can use the computer to develop as a writer by writing blog posts or I can mindlessly play Angry Birds. I can watch a YouTube clip about building a DIY camp stove and actually detach myself from the couch and do it or I can watch another clip of somebody falling of a table or pulling of a really great prank. 

I was going to include a lot more quotes about how technology cuts us off from becoming people of greater quality, but I will leave it at that because I can provide quotes or my own story as a testament of my ideas all day long, but in reality, you have to see it in your own life if you are going to agree with me or attempt to struggle against the kind of conscious technology may have created in you as in me. 

I will transition now to something else Pirsig wrote about, but it is really all the same thing since it is all interrelated just as all my reasons for hiking the Trail are interrelated. Besides the ones listed above and one about becoming physically stronger, the rest are spiritual reasons. But the spiritual and technological one go hand-in-hand. During their motorcycle trip, Pirsig and his son hiked up a mountain just as my wife and I will do on the Trail for six months straight. The way we relate to technology creates us as a certain way and when we are hiking the trail we will still be this certain way and so technology can still have an adverse affect on us while we are hiking even though we are away from it. We may be largely detached from it for six months, but the fact is that for over twenty years it has permeated our worlds in a big way.  

Pirsig says, "Mountains . . . and travelers in the mountains and events that happen to them are found . . . in the tales of every major religion. The allegory of a physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands between each soul and its goal is an easy and natural one to make. Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardship."

I definitely do not want to live all my life with that mountain staring down at me and so we will climb. We just have to be careful about the way that we climb. Pirsig writes about two kinds of climbers. One selfless and the other an ego-climber who is trying to prove something to himself/herself and/or others. Pirsig writes:

To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, he’s unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then *it* will be “here.” What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it *is* all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.

It will be difficult, through the aching legs, the rain, and the monotony of seeing one tree after another to be truly in the present and not long for the next resupply town when we can get cold drinks and hot showers. It will be difficult not to picture us standing on Mt. Katahdin at the end or what we will do after we are finished hiking the Trail. It will be difficult to enjoy each and every step along the way and to realize that this whole thing is not about that ending moment, but about each and every part of the Trail itself.  

In closing, I will leave you with another quote. For those of you hiking a mountain called Katahdin or Everest take heed, for those of you hiking a mountain called Josh or Sarah also take heed.

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. But of course, without the top you can't have any sides. It's the top that defines the sides. So on we go . . . we have a long way . . . no hurry . . . just one step after the next . . . with a little Chautauqua for entertainment. . . . Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it's a shame more people don't switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant but it never is.

  

The Heat Was Hot and the Ground was Dry, but the Air Was Full of Rockets

I'm back and the 60s and 70s of the Michigan weather seems cold in comparison to the 90s and 100s of the Californian desert! Despite all the rounds I sent down range from my M-16 on the various assaults and all the machine guns, rockets, and tanks fired right next to my head (my left ear is still ringing), it seems as if the bulk of the training consisted of enduring extreme heat. Simply sitting out in the sun for a few minutes was enough to make one drenched in sweat, but we did much more than that.

Once we had to cram sixteen Marines in an Assault Amphibious Vehicle (AAV) for nine hours while wearing flak jackets and kevlars! The only way we all fit was to have each Marine stick his leg between the legs of the two Marines sitting in front of him. We were waiting for a company attack when, after the engineers breached the obstacle with explosives, we would all run out on shaky legs and attack a hill. Of course, only half of the engineers' explosives blew and they had no way to blow up the rest so after waiting nine hours in the confined and enclosed space of the armored vehicle, the attack was canceled.

Another time, the entire battalion was supposed to dig fighting holes in preparation for a defense, but we had to wait for one company to finish training to begin digging. To get a head start, our squad leaders placed us along a line in fire teams so we could begin digging immediately when we received the word. So we sat in the desert waiting. We waited the rest of the afternoon and evening and went to sleep, thinking we would begin the next morning. Morning came and went and still we just sat in the burning sun. A few teams started to construct small structures out of ponchos and poncho liners for shade. Our team followed suit, but it seemed as if the inside of our small structure was even more hot than outside. So I stayed outside in the sun all day long. Later, a Marine informed us that there was a reason why the ponchos had two different sides. The camouflaged side absorbed heat while the other side deflected it. Guess which side we had up! During these many long hours in the desert wilderness, where we had to dig holes in the ground to use the restroom, I longed for simple conveniences. One in particular was extremely difficult to live without. The water we had in our camelbacks could not stay cool. It ranged from warm to hot. I had a few packages of flavored electrolyte powder which made the warm water bearable, but I burned through them in the first few hours. After two weeks of drinking only water, I could only stomach cool water. Cool water or warm gatorade would have made me so happy, but alas, there was only warm water to be had and I thought I was going to break. But I had no option, but to sit and wait for the tedious training to end. Finally, in the evening we got the word that we could start digging and after our fortified position was complete, we took shifts sleeping in our holes and simulated an attack in the morning. By the afternoon our training was over and when we got to Camp Wilson I spent a lot of money on cold gatorades from the PX.      

I'm just glad it will never get THAT hot on the Appalachian Trail, but this story reminds me of the first time I hiked the Appalachian Trail back in 2008. I had just finished basic training for the Marine Corps, checked into my unit in Grand Rapids, and had a solid two months off before any other military commitments. At this point I had only lived in the United States for a year and I wanted to experience all that America had to offer. I casually mentioned to a friend the desire to see a black bear in the wild and she casually replied that there were black bears near where she used to live, in North Carolina, in a mountain range called the Appalachians. So I planned a trip and recruited a friend to come along who has often gone adventuring with me.

So Tim and I met up with a few friends in North Carolina who dropped us off somewhere where the Trail passed through a road. We knew next to nothing about the Trail,  but decided to spend about two weeks hiking and enjoying the nature. We were mostly alone on the Trail, since we were in the south and it was August, when all thru-hikers would be far north. We met a few section hikers and learned a thing or two about the Trail. First of all, we never hung our food and one night some mice picked through our garbage bag full of food. We carried two weeks worth of military rations which severely weighed us down and within a few days we threw over half of the food away. And then there was the water issue.

The Appalachian Trail is riddled with shelters at roughly a day's walking distance away from each other. These all have marked blazes to a nearby source of water. Tim and I would fill up our two water bottles each every morning before hiking. One morning we woke up and slowly ambled down the side of the mountain a few hundred meters to where a small mountain stream was supposed to be located, but it was all dried up. If memory serves me correctly, the next water source was about ten miles away so we made sure to ration what water we had left for that distance. I think we each had about 3/4 of a water bottle. It was difficult to take small sips when all we wanted was to gulp it all down while we walked those ten miles. We finished off our water with a mile or two left to walk and by the time we reached the next water source our mouths were as dry as the Californian air. But when we got to the water, it too was all dried up! I couldn't believe it, but the only thing we could do was keep walking. A few miles away and the next water source was mud! It seemed our only hope was to walk to a town. I don't remember how we found this out (although we did get to look at a map a section hiker had at one point), but we knew there was a road in about another ten miles that led to a town a few miles away. I had it set in my mind that we would reach this town and be able to put down all kinds of nice, cold drinks. I imagined soda, juice, chocolate milk, and every kind of flavored drink in existence. These thoughts replayed over and over again in my mind as we walked miles without a drop of water. By the grace of God, we walked by some berries and spent an ample amount of time sucking on the slightly moist goodness. I wanted to stay longer, but Tim urged me on. I think, for him, the berries were merely a tease and all he longed for a substantial drink. We walked on. Every time we wanted to speak, we had to pull our lips apart, as they stuck together in their dryness. At long last, a few miles before the road, we walked by an actual flowing water source and filled our bottles with the dirt-infested water. We gulped it all down, filled up the bottles again and drank again. Nothing ever tasted so good.

We decided to walk to the town anyway, since something besides water would be a nice reward after so long of hiking with very little water. The town was more than a couple of miles away. After walking down the road for more than an hour, the sun left, and as we walked in the darkness toward a few scattered lights Tim stopped. I turned around and he informed me that he was done. He said he couldn't walk anymore and didn't want to go to town anymore. This notion sounded ridiculous to me since we had already come so far out of our way and the town was probably just around the next bend. Those drinks that replayed through my mind were within arm's reach and there was absolutely no way I was giving up on them now. Tim had been my roommate for four years and this was only the second time in all that time that we fought. Finally, I convinced him to shuffle along and we made it to the town which was more like a village. On one side of the street was a restaurant, but when we got to the front door, the lights were out, the chairs were on the tables, and a couple of people were sweeping the floor. We peered inside, hoping someone would come to the door, but they never came. We went across the street to a small, privately owned gas station, but the hours listed on the front door were over. We were doomed and I felt like a big idiot. The lights inside were on and on closer inspection we noticed a group of about five old men sitting in the corner in front of a tiny television. They were watching the Olympics. Tim and I waved our arms and they noticed. One man stood up, let us in, and agreed to allow us to purchase a few drinks. I bought a large jug of Sunny D, a Dr. Pepper, and a jug of chocolate milk. The man who rang us up asked, "'all 'een eeny bla' bars awt ear?" He was without a doubt, the most difficult English-speaker to comprehend that I have ever encountered, and I've had to decipher plenty of foreign accents in my life overseas and a few very thick British accents. Outside, we sat silently on a bench and downed our drinks. Then we stood up, stretched, and began walking back toward the Trail.

And before the two weeks were up, we managed to witness two baby black bear cubs before they scampered away from us, out of sight into the woods.