Welcome to Trail Days!!!

Here I am at either my 10th or 12th Trail Days...I cannot remember which.  I've been coming to this festival for many years.  Trail Days is an Appalachian Trail hiker Fest held every year on the 3rd weekend in May.  It's a lot of fun.  Usually I have very little documentation of the actual event because its too much fun and I forget to take photos....I'll upload a few from years past.

Five or six of us remain as participants and gather every year of what was once a group of about 15.  We miss those that do not come anymore and we talk about them behind their back's saying things like, "I can't believe they didn't come" or "Do you even know if they are still alive" or "Are they still in TX?".  Long time friends don't ever really leave you but are ghosts living in a closet whose door you open every once in a while to peek in at.  You just want to see if they are still there hoping that they come out of the darkness fully fleshed to visit. 

The streets of Damascus, Virginia, a lovely mountain town where the AT runs down main street, are filled with the hellos, sounds of hands slapping backs in hugs and wahoos of congratulations for finished AT thru hikes and questions of "So what are you doing now after the hike and where are you living?"

People who are not involved in the Trail community or ever stood on top of a mountain looking back with nostalgia at where you've walked from, purple-blue mountains stretching on in front of you to the horizon line, have a hard time understanding why my friends and I find this particular weekend inviolate.  Its a you do not miss weekend.  The miles, the smiles, the trials and the tears and laughter echo over, around, within, out from the mountains that surround this lovely little town.  Their welcoming warmth is an image of how we, the hiking community feel about our time on trail and the friendships made there. 

Through rain, wind, lightening strikes and hurricanes, snow, drought and injury, there are our trail peeps walking beside us, with us, kicking our butts, holding our heads/hands/hearts....you make friends out here with names like Buzz, Sherry, Creaky Sticks, Keystone (just met!), Marta & Liteshoe, Judy and Amy, DeLee, Bronco and Wingheart, Krewzer, Sue and Rabbit, Hutch and Sparrow, Suzanne, Lone Wolf and Gypsy, Razor and Red Hat, Bahlpack, Sherlock & Circuit Rider, Journey, Hopeful,  ....friends who even though you see only a few times a year hold similar memories of what it means to walk miles with your home on your back and reflect in their eyes the same understanding of the strength it takes to to walk the AT.  They understand that it is not the things in your life that make you who you are but what you chose to do and who you chose to do it with.

Cheers to you all, my lovely hiking friends....may the miles be kind and limitless...