Knobstone Trail: Day 2

Monday, March 22nd

Miles: 18

I woke up on Monday ready to rumble, lifted my lil head out of my hammock and saw a sun bloom over the horizon. Slowly I watched the morning light creep onto the valley below the ridge I was on, illuminating the trees and hills.

8 am view from the hammock, mornin sun shrouded by clouds today

The first mile of the day I kept on climbing and descending a little on the ridge I had slept on. Then the trail dipped into a valley, where I found the stream I was meaning to make it to the night before, and I filled up on water. I had woken up with about 6 oz to make it to this point. Not terrible, but I was cutting it close.

I really enjoyed hiking along the knobs. Without leaves yet to block the view I got a taste of Indiana’s scenery beyond the branches.

The hills in the distance took on cool tones, blues and purples. Saw a turkey vulture perched on a branch.

Zero road walking on the trail, but a handful of quiet road crossings. 

At one point I came across a spot with bunches of clumps of lilies? Tulips? I’m not sure if they were wild or planted, but seeing them brought a smile to my face and left me feeling revitalized.

Afternoon glow comes once more to the forest

Last mile marker of the day!!!

I definitely pushed my upper limits on Monday and was incredibly sore the day after. I was in so much pain at the end of the day, willing each mile marker to come faster so I could be done with it all, looking at the topographic map on my phone and counting how many more hills I’d have to climb before Leota. But near the end I found myself thinking “damn, this is the last ridge I’ll be on for a while, the last time before I go home where I’ll be seeing those cool-toned hills in the distance”. 

So I’ll hopefully be back next weekend or the one after that to finish off the rest of the Knobstone Trail. 

>:P

And some extra assorted thoughts

I got a GoPro to record parts of my hikes, but I’m finding that I don’t really like the idea of vlogging (I think my voice is insufferable, lots of times I don’t really have much to say besides mm nice rock). The GoPro is also lacking in battery capacity (maybe 6 hours per charge) and backups are heavy. I also feel like the written word and sketching translate how I feel about my hikes better than in video format. But I guess I’ll keep experimenting with vidya because I spent way too much money last year on the silly little camera and like 3 backup batteries.

I’m planning on taking a break from working after this spring semester ends in order to attempt, again, to thru-hike the Sheltowee Trace. Hopefully the middle of may will be a more hospitable time for me instead of high summer, where I was baking in the July heat last year. I got really down on myself for my lack of success last year, and I know it really doesn’t matter how far I walk or where I go or whatever. I think it would just be pretty epic to be able to say I’ve walked from Morehead to Tennessee. And I’d like to get a shorter thru-hike in my home state down before I look forth to other long trails, when I find the time... possibly not until after I get my undergraduate degree. As much as I’d love it I think my old folks would strangle me if i took a year off school to go hike the AT or whatever.

According to the Sheltowee Trace Association’s website (https://sheltoweetrace.org/home/hawk-creek-bridge-reconstruction) the recent storms have brought down at least two suspension bridges in the London Area along the trace. I remember these well from my first full day out backpacking, back last April. Not sure if they’ll be back up by May, since repairs would be a major undertaking due to how deep the bridges were in the forest.

Love you, 

Dan

Knobstone Trail: Day 1

Miles: 7

Animals spotted: Big spider, turkey vultures, cardinals, lots of orange butterflies with black spots (viceroys? Eastern commas?), squirrels, flies, generous handful of other hikers 

I now work at a place that guarantees me Sundays and Mondays off, meaning I’ll be taking full advantage of these consecutive days off and trying to go on one-night backpacking trips as often as possible. I was researching long-distance trails in the US and found out about the Knobstone Trail, which runs for 58 miles in Indiana, just across the border from Kentucky.

Whenever I thought about Indiana, I pictured the midwest... flat... corn? Agricultural price supports? But I found myself surprised at the subtle beauty of the land and also the strenuous nature of the Knobstone Escarpment, full of hills and valleys and babbling streams.

Elijah dropped me off Sunday a little after 3 pm, and I set out on a perfectly blue day from Deam Lake. Before I really got started the trail took me up on a bank with a good view of the lake and hills surrounding it, and I sat there eating some bagged tuna and getting hyped up, watching the idyllic scene of families on the beach and friends kayaking together. 

The trail was really well-maintained and blazed, which is a nice surprise coming from hiking the Sheltowee, where it seems like blazes are rare and every sign is riddled with bullet holes. Every mile was marked by its own little sign. It didn’t seem too desolate, as I had service nearly everywhere and a road was never far.

As the sun was beginning to set on Sunday, I came down from a set of knobs to this savannah-looking field area void of especially tall trees. Near a stream some signage pointed to “Jackson Trailhead”, I had just about passed the 6-mile mark. Bathed in the light of early evening, this was the point where I really embraced Indiana’s beauty. 

 

A wide field with subtle hills in the distance, under a huge, blemishless blue sky. Hawks circled in the distance. Far away, I saw a town on the left side of my field of vision.

I realized the trail was leading up to climbing the big hill in the second picture above the caption, apparently called Round Knob. It was a hard climb but every time I turned to look back at the land I could see more of it with the gain in elevation, the whole space laid out for me. 

Campsite!

I decided to call it quits for the day a little after the 7 mile mark. It wasn’t marked on the AllTrails guide I was using, but I found a ridge line campsite just a bit after ascending Round Knob and thought it was the perfect place to watch the sun set and then rise the next morning. And so I ate my pasta-roni dinner while watching the orange and red bleed out of the sky through the trees. I could still see the same line of hills from the savannah to the west, and though I was shrouded in wilderness, I could see the lights of the town I saw earlier in the day come on as the blue of the night lapsed into deep navy. 

I decided to test my luck with rawdogging it in a hammock, no tarp. I brought a zero degree bag because I’m prone to getting cold, and this turned out to be a really epic setup imo. I was warm but I could poke my head out and see the branches reaching out above me.

I was really excited to try out my new backpack, a Six Moons Designs fusion 65, on an inaugural trip. First backlepacklin pack I’ve ever gotten for myself! I found the setup really accessible, with a lot of handy pockets and a big main space with a roll-top. It fit a bulky non-down zero degree bag really well with room to spare, so while it may be unnecessarily large for summer backpacking, I felt justified in getting a larger capacity pack for winter/early spring/fall shenanigans. 

Really blessed to experience the early days of spring on trail. 

4:30 am march 5 2020

For you, Martin:

I love you very much. [redacted] I have been meaning to do this but you know how I am. Tonight [redacted] and I got upset, and cried and went out and smoked a cig and then ran at the arboretum until my lungs were on fire and I knew my legs would be sore into the night. Then I came home [redacted] loving [...] hurts a lot of the time. And we sat crying together [...]

Feels like the contents of the reservoir near Henry Clay leaked out of my eyeballs tonight. I wish my aggression could punch holes into walls, but my anger just diffuses into frustration into despair into sadness. Tears from my shamed face like warm dripping blood.

My legs were bare against the cold of the night, too numb to shiver. I look up and realize the dark canvas above me has shifted, stars once hidden behind hazy whorls of cloud now shine through, the half moon stands clearer now, brilliant white sentry posted in the abyss of a world before dawn. I realize I am so small, my heart and brain and flesh insignificant bits of muscle and goo,

While up there stars and moon have staked their claim for endless years, decades, all of the fabric of time, and I have barely been here for eighteen years, there is still so much I do not know, so much land for me still to trample under my feet, to walk along aimlessly restlessly, to bear the frenzy of my my beating feet while I’m dancing shamelessly, alone in the sun. And in my lifetime how could I ever expect to take it all in? To visit every nation on the earth, to smell the salt of all the seas on each beach, to eke out bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest. My existence

Is the crumb of quiche on my couch that is the universe, there is so much I will leave the world without having run my hands through, so i guess i am just gonna have to stuff down as much as i can into the gullet of my experience while i am still young because who knows when I will be gone.

In three weeks I will take one week off work and set off on the Sheltowee and see how much of the trace I can feast on with my eyes, but I’m scared of my hunger for something that I just can’t place my labor-weathered finger on. I go out on the road and I get my foot on the floor and go racing towards the mountains, away from whatever I’m running from in lexington. I start on the trail and walk until I’m tired and weak and i lay in my tent, nestled in the isolation I’ve been dreaming of but I still feel empty.

I emerge from the woods the next day, civilization’s barns and roads and vast, empty fields a jarring contrast to the song in the patterns of endless forest. At the canopy the leaves are splayed out, branches grasping for a handful of sunlight, fork babbling through the valley shows me the way, fallen leaves crushed underfoot with every step, the rustle of the squirrel and robin in the undergrowth. Oh god Martin it is so good to be out there and i miss the kiss of a dying sun when I’m out on my own, and it is 4:30 am and I haven’t been up this late in a grip.

But I was breathless on the way back to baby harold, and the landscape of the woods broke back into the civilization I had come from, and I wondered why i did it at all, but i also crave it with all my being, but maybe it’s something else I’m craving, or maybe I should just go to bed now. 

I may have fucked myself over by [redacted] who doesn’t have the capacity to return it [redacted] dangling off his belt loop like a carabiner. But we’ll be here, the the armpit of town together for the next gap of time, whatever happens. [redacted] I shrugged, emptily said “it is what it is”. But I don’t know. Maybe I’ve made this mistake and it will hurt so deeply when he goes. Or maybe I just have to hold onto what I have [...] and live for every moment until the University of Kentucky sucks me back into its bubble.

I’ll be fine.