"The two most important words in the English language, he repeated in his mind, were patience and hope."

Yes, loyal readers, that is a quote from Dirk Pitt--Clive Cussler's hero. Your patience and hope has brought you back to me. Let's all take a moment to compose ourselves. The excitement is almost unbearable.

So I've been off the trail for a few weeks now. It's just that I haven't really felt inspired to write anything. It was weird going from solitude to cell phone service in the space of a car drive back to civilization. Today has been deemed "catch up on emails, letters, facebook, and myspace but NOT bills day." So here I am.

But Nevena, I thought you were gonna be gone all summer. Um, sorry, change of plans. I hiked 163 miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia to Fontana Dam, North Carolina. A good portion of that was solo. But some of it wasn't. I even met some cool folks on the trail that I hiked with and/or had the same itinerary and hung out with in shelters at night. I really had an awesome time. June had to get off the trail in Franklin, NC (about 55 miles south of Fontana) because she was showing 4 ribs, and I didn't want to solo hike all summer. By the first week in, I was pretty much set on getting off the trail at Fontana. So here I am. TA DA!!

A few highlites from the trail:

* June almost DIED. We ran into not one, but TWO timber rattlers within the span of 50 feet. And she was lucky enough to run by the first one TWICE. Talk about puckering.

* One day we hiked 19.3 miles. That was the day we climbed Mt. Albert. Son of a bitch. We hiked it the second half of the day with a guy we met, David. That was good because about 10 minutes into the second half, a mother of a storm let hell drench us. It lightninged all around us, hail pockmarked our raingear, and I quiet frankly came awfully close to peeing my pants.

* Another day it was just me and June. That was the day we reached the GA/NC boarder. I was really excited because my guide book didn't mention that Mt. Everest had a cousin in those parts. That was another son of a bitch mountain (there were about 4 total). Anyway, there we are, huffin and puffin our way up the mountain when we ran into a lady SOBO'd (south bounding) who we had stayed with at a shelter a few nights before (she hiked from road to road and then got a ride and hiked another section from road to road). She was with a barrel-chested man who looked slightly red. I was surprised to see her since I'd guess she was in her mid-sixties and I didn't realize she'd be heading south. Anyway, so there we were, halfway up that hell of a hill and I ran into them. The man goes, "Hi, I'm Ron Blank. Have you heard of me?" Being oxygen deprived and not-impressed with famous people my first thought was, "Are you the man who shot Hogzilla??" I had read the article the day before I got on the trail about the second Hogzilla-type hog who had gotten shot in Alabama so....No, he was not the man who shot Hogzilla. He was well-known along that part of the trail for bein hiker-friendly and owning a hotel in Franklin. I stayed at that hotel a few nights later. Can we say seedy? Oh, by the way, I didn't actually verbalize the "did you shoot hogzilla" part. I just thought it.

* I made some friends who I'm still in touch with.

* I learned a shit ton about hiking and camping in general.

* We camped on top of Blood Mountain one night with a group of folks. It was one of the more memorable nights--we sat on top of the boulders and cooked dinner and watched the sun set and then we played some cards.

* I re-newed my faith in humanity.

* I totally busted it in front of a group of 15 boyscouts.

So that's that.

Now I'm down in good ol' Florida. Yup, YEEHAW. Awesome, awesome. School starts in a few weeks. And that's about it.

I hope that left you satisfied.