Day 20, Monday, September 21, 2020
Fontana Dam to Proctor Fields Campsite
Mile 208.0
Not one drop of rain.
Not one flesh-eating bug.
Not one bramble.
Today was a good day to resume this obscure hiking project.
Except for the Fig Salami, which still gives me the SHIVERS.
When I saw it in the specialty section of the fancy grocery store, near the herbed goat cheese and pancetta and haloumi, I thought, “Yum. Salami flavored with fig and aleppo pepper. That’ll be good.”
But then, after hiking in a few miles and settling in for lunch next to Fontana Lake, I cut into it and knew within seconds that reality had just run my expectations off the road and into a ditch.
The reality was a mass of crushed up figs rolled into a salami-shaped tube and that sleight of hand was one of the low points of my long distance hiking career. I may never fully recover from the trauma. The PTSD may have been mitigated by something that tasted good. But it didn’t. Fig salami is wrong in every conceivable way.
I knew I wouldn’t carry it one step farther. I buried it at the bottom of the lake. Which is where it belongs.
In other news…I crossed the 200 mile mark today. Woo hoo!