This whole backpacking thing means different things to different people. To my brother, it means he is almost disconnected from work for more than 2 days and he never sleeps better than he does with a tent over his head and the night filled with forest sounds. Me? The times I felt best were when I had that pack on my back and the hike was easy and there was something awesome to see. The tent, the sleeping bag, and the nights were the parts that I dreaded. And, it appears that I'm not the only one. I can still remember having a conversation with a group of through hikers, asking them how they handled sleeping at night. There was one of the guys, that reminded me of an old friend, Mark Bollenback. That is a funny thing, by the way. Paul says there is some gene in us that makes us see faces in clouds, trees and in nature. There is some gene in me that makes almost every new person I meet look similar to somebody I already know. This new guy that was talking about sleeping was like my friend Mark, only on steroids. I'm a pretty good sized guy, and he could have picked me up like a toothpick. He had a big red beard and looked like some kind of eco-Viking. I distinctly remember him telling me that he slept great on the trail, averaging at least 3 hours of sleep a night!
I was getting several versions of the same story from everyone I met, except my brother. I also remember a girl named "Bottles" telling me about meditation, calming tea, and reading a book before trying to sleep. The next day she told me she had taken Advil PM as a last resort.
Bottom line was that I didn't sleep much on the trip, and I very much wanted to, but the one night that I was virtually guaranteed not to sleep was the night of the ascent to the Audie Murphy monument. We climbed forever that day, even as the sun was setting off in the distance, and supper was only a memory, we were trudging uphill on the trail, dripping sweat in the 90 degree heat. About dusk, we came to a level spot that we realized was a jeep trail on top of the mountain. It was the trail to the monument, and we still had half a mile to go. "Screw that!" I said and decided we needed to camp right there in the middle of the trail while there was enough light for me to work the zippers on my tent before the spiders could get in. We stopped and got our tents and bags ready, alone in the quiet night before the stars and moon came up, when suddenly a hiker came upon us. He merely said hello, and continued on to who knows where in the dark. I kept thinking, the trail still has surprises for me.
But, I was as tired as I could get, and absolutely knew that I would pass out as soon as I hit the pillow, that is if you count a wad of your clothes as a pillow. What I had not counted on was the breeze passing us by, and me laying in a 20 degree sleeping bag with a layer of sweat on my skin, not unlike a day at the beach without a shower. I lay there and finally went to sleep with dreams of bears going through the pockets in my backpack and drinking all of my water. I kept waking up, thinking that perhaps an early start to the day would not be a bad thing. I checked my watch and saw it was 11pm and groaned. Surprisingly, Paul heard me and was having trouble sleeping as well. For some strange reason, that cheered me up more than it should have. We finally decided that if neither of us could sleep, we'd get up at 3am and hike down the mountain to the convenience store, that was supposed to have everything in the world a hiker could want. In fact, because of my lack of sleep, I was starting to waking dreams, that usually involved an icebox of beer and sitting back in Paul's chair by a babbling brook.
After a while of laying there in my sleeping bag, reassuring myself that the sounds I was hearing were of the wind blowing my tent rainfly, and not some pranking bears getting ready to pull their next trick, I decided it was time to hit the trail. Paul agreed and we quickly packed up our stuff in the dark and headed down the ridge, bypassing the monument for the greater good of the store with cheeseburgers, beer, and all the water you could ever want.....not 100 yards later, we passed the tent of our hiker friend that had come across us the night before. I sure hope we didn't wake him...but I'm pretty sure we did.
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