We wake up late, hit the coffee hard, and then get an even later start to our hike after dicking around in town. It's 11:00 AM already and I'm dreading the next fourteen miles of farmland. Halfway through the fourteen miles and I realize someone is shooting a gun, wait, no, many people are shooting guns, and close to the trail. Eventually we're walking right along a shooting range and I keep thinking, "Why the hell did they put the trail here?" and wondering just how mad I'll be if I get hit by a stray bullet.
A few hours later whilst making my way through vast corn fields, I'm listening to a podcast. This particular podcast features Neil Degrasse Tyson (baller astrophysicist) and he's talking in his smooth narrator voice about all sorts of shit, but bells go off in my head when he paraphrases a JFK quote about the first Apollo missions. It has to do with not doing something because it is easy, but because it is very hard. And that's what this hike is. Very hard.
Fast forward a few more hours. I'm feeling awesome, just about running up a thousand foot incline and thinking to myself, "I do this thing, not because it is easy, but because it is very hard." And I'm realizing something. I feel good. In fact, I feel great.
It's as if someone has flipped a switch in in brain and suddenly hiking is fun again. And my foot doesn't hurt. And I feel motivated. And I'm ready to crush miles. Food even tastes good again! What's going on?!
I hear a buzzing and a wasp stings me in the arm.
As of now I'm doing a nightly tick check and watching my arm slowly inflate around the site of the sting.
But I don't care and life is good.
P.S. I found a real old cemetery and a real old car wreck in the woods today. Some of the grave stones were from the 1700s, I shit you not. I cannot attest for the oldness of the car... But look at that thing!
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