Davidson River – J. Parker Nature Stories

2020/07/04 Jumping John Rock is a Gas, Gas, Gas

I wasn’t sure I could go. I was pacing, or at least the best approximation I could do, back and forth in our hotel room, testing out the injured foot that would need to have far more than the 20 hours I’d give it to recover from the nasty turn I had given it on the Flat Laurel Creek Trail. It really wasn’t good. My foot had swollen so much through the gaps in the compression sleeve that I was wearing that the edges nearly cut my skin. I wasn’t sure I could walk down to the car, and was half hoping Jess would push me a luggage cart. I could barely make it from bed to bathroom, and yet in less than an hour I was hoping to tackle a 7 mile, 1100 foot elevation gain hike.

In normal times I might have heard the fat lady sing. But these were covid times, and the fat lady’s performance was canceled as it was against CDC regulations.

2020/07/03 – Sam Knobs and Broomsticks

I kicked it into high gear and moved as quick as I possibly could, poles and feet crashing in furious and uncoordinated fashion into the grassy ground along the trail. And that was when it happened. My right ankle in foot erupted in pain as I had misstepped and landed with my foot sideways on the uneven ground. I couldn’t tell what was actually hurt, foot, ankle, pride….I just knew that it was NOT GOOD. Now, as somebody who has been hiking for years, I’m quite used to the run of the mill twisted ankle. On longer trips I usually get a good twist about every three days. Sometimes, like at Grandfather Mountain in 2017, that ankle twist will be with me for weeks. Twisted ankles are quite common for Jess as well, to say the least. As a former cross country runner, I’m well accustomed to just dealing with your run of the mill ankle twist. But nothing about this felt run of the mill.