[woolly bugger]

No, this is not about rubber ducks or tanks or innuendo ...

My (very real) friend is doing a southbound AT hike, originally she was going to stop in NYC, but after completing that portion (950+miles) she's determined to go all the way to Georgia! She's asking for a little help. Good kid, changing her life for the better on the trail!

Check it out! I donated to I reckon I'm hiking to Georgia http://www.gofundme.com/feedlarrybird?pc=em_dr_11

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[Hogleg]

You caught me at a bad time Wooly. I just gave all my money to baileyylona737.

[MerilSwan]

Really I like this post. It is very interesting to the users or customers of this form. So here I would like to say thank you for share like a post with us.

[austrotard]

Really I like this post.

me too.

[Reef Runner]

Really I like this post.

me too.

I can't lie. Reef really likes it too. What's up, shunned?

[MaineDrifter]

She's going the wrong direction !
Help her out WB, you have to start in GA then you get to end in ME, at least that's how we did it back in the day.

Best of luck, an awesome experience that helped set me straight.

[woolly bugger]

She's going the wrong direction !
Help her out WB, you have to start in GA then you get to end in ME, at least that's how we did it back in the day.

Best of luck, an awesome experience that helped set me straight.

Okay, here's an up date....

She's southbound, and made well into PA, where the winter nights took there toll, her "trail partner" an she decided to make a change of plans and headed south for the winter, they took a bus to Miami, then hiked to Key West and back, now they are hiking the Florida Trail, if you can call it that.

Here is what she has to say about that.....

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After our first day in the swamp I could still see a little glory in everything around us, the cypress domes, the lush islands, the pine flats. Today I will be pleased if I never see the swamp again.
The water began at only ankle to mid calf deep, and with a few breaks during the day on pine flats, which are essentially a few hundred feet of dry land on which you can take off your backpack and sit down. I began our first few days listening to David Bowie, wading through my own "Moonage Daydream." I let the slosh of my feet keep rhythm with our dear deceased friend and I sang out through the cypress sloughs, " I'm an alligator! I'm a mama papa coming for you! I'm a space invader, I'll be a rockin' rollin' bitch for youuu. " I was an explorer of a forgotten planet, deep in the swamp of the Everglades. But very soon my hip began to throb and my rhythm sank with my spirit.
We waded through water for eight hours, with only a few places to take off our packs, making six miles seem like sixty.
Our third night out a nasty storm, rumored to be a tornado, dumped inches into the black lagoon and flooded our island and our tent. We packed our things early, before dawn, and left our flooded camp surrounded by lightning and the boom of thunder. The water had been knee deep for miles and with each step my shoe sank inches into soft mud, sucking my foot down and filling my shoe with heavy soot and water. Each push stressed my aching hip, pulling my foot up and then thrusting it forward, displacing three feet of water with each stride.
It was our last day in the swamp but I was finished with it. There was nowhere to stop for miles. For hours I was wading through knee deep water, unable to take my backpack off for even a moment. My hip was agonizing and the cypress strands showed no sign of land, no hope in the distance. We would approach islands and the trail would skirt them within ten feet and move in the opposite direction, getting just close enough to show us that the island was under water after all. I was desperate. I could feel something brewing in my guts. Without the crutch of pharmaceuticals, drugs I have just recently stopped taking, I felt hopeless and I was filled with rage. My eyes teared up and I let out a primordial scream, a shriek filled with disgust. Primitive and ugly, it matched the landscape it echoed across.
I learned a lot about myself in the swamp and I am deeply grateful for the experience. Although my hip is grossly torn and each step I took today was painful, each step was on dry ground and I thanked the earth for granting it to me.

gofundme.com/feedlarrybird

[fatman]

She's southbound, and made well into PA, where the winter nights took there toll, her "trail partner" an she decided to make a change of plans and headed south for the winter, they took a bus to Miami, then hiked to Key West and back, now they are hiking the Florida Trail, if you can call it that.

Here is what she has to say about that.....

sft.jpg

After our first day in the swamp I could still see a little glory in everything around us, the cypress domes, the lush islands, the pine flats. Today I will be pleased if I never see the swamp again.
The water began at only ankle to mid calf deep, and with a few breaks during the day on pine flats, which are essentially a few hundred feet of dry land on which you can take off your backpack and sit down. I began our first few days listening to David Bowie, wading through my own "Moonage Daydream." I let the slosh of my feet keep rhythm with our dear deceased friend and I sang out through the cypress sloughs, " I'm an alligator! I'm a mama papa coming for you! I'm a space invader, I'll be a rockin' rollin' bitch for youuu. " I was an explorer of a forgotten planet, deep in the swamp of the Everglades. But very soon my hip began to throb and my rhythm sank with my spirit.
We waded through water for eight hours, with only a few places to take off our packs, making six miles seem like sixty.
Our third night out a nasty storm, rumored to be a tornado, dumped inches into the black lagoon and flooded our island and our tent. We packed our things early, before dawn, and left our flooded camp surrounded by lightning and the boom of thunder. The water had been knee deep for miles and with each step my shoe sank inches into soft mud, sucking my foot down and filling my shoe with heavy soot and water. Each push stressed my aching hip, pulling my foot up and then thrusting it forward, displacing three feet of water with each stride.
It was our last day in the swamp but I was finished with it. There was nowhere to stop for miles. For hours I was wading through knee deep water, unable to take my backpack off for even a moment. My hip was agonizing and the cypress strands showed no sign of land, no hope in the distance. We would approach islands and the trail would skirt them within ten feet and move in the opposite direction, getting just close enough to show us that the island was under water after all. I was desperate. I could feel something brewing in my guts. Without the crutch of pharmaceuticals, drugs I have just recently stopped taking, I felt hopeless and I was filled with rage. My eyes teared up and I let out a primordial scream, a shriek filled with disgust. Primitive and ugly, it matched the landscape it echoed across.
I learned a lot about myself in the swamp and I am deeply grateful for the experience. Although my hip is grossly torn and each step I took today was painful, each step was on dry ground and I thanked the earth for granting it to me.

gofundme.com/feedlarrybird

someone should copy this to Aggers
relates: he's not taking my calls

[woolly bugger]

Here's a post card she sent me a while back...

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[woolly bugger]

The Trail

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Yesterday the song Modern Love blasted into my head phones and I was Denis Lavant, running, leaping and pirouetting, not through the water, but on top of it. With every ounce of my being I was thrusting my self forward, sending the crimson tinted water into the air to hang suspended in time while I did a cartwheel and ran as fast as I could. I was spinning in circles, throwing my body down the trail at an outrageous speed, throwing rocks at alligators, yelling out to all of the hogs on the prairie, " I love you! "

And then the song ended and I woke up to Five Mile Slough, a very long, deep ditch of water isolated by a giant prairie in the middle of goddamn nowhere, Florida.

We've been walking through knee, waist and chest deep water for fives days now, after a record breaking eight inches of rain in the past month. After a few days of this I lost a little piece of my humanity, but I'll be damned if I didn't learn humility in the process.

[B.M. Barrelcooker]

I've been there.........not geographically........I hope she can push through.


Better days ahead.

[fatman]

I'm really diggin' this