#73 Flint Mountain Shelter to Bald Mountain Shelter Day 29: ATMM 308.5 to ATMM 327.4
Exhaustion sets in as we summit Big Bald. The rain subsides. I turn back to locate Lody but find something I didn’t expect...
That was a great night’s sleep, thanks to Tylenol PM and tranquil surroundings. I am rested and ready to conquer mountains.
I get the chance to speak with Father Time alone over breakfast. “I am in my seventies,” he says in a somber tone, “I have all the time in the world to hike, well, to get as far as I can by mid August anyway.” I don’t ask about the somber tone.
It has been a great day for hiking so far but it’s beginning to look like rain. We stop for a break at Hogback Mountain Shelter to see what the weather wants to do. The wind picks up as the air turns cooler. Lody and I declare “Snooty Tea-Time with Lody and Sprawl.” Prepare the water. Pinkies Up!
We officially meet up with a through hiker we’ve been leap-frogging all morning. He is known as is B.F. (Baby Face) Nelson. Because of his age and young-looking face he acquired the name in reference to the notorious bank robber from a century ago: Lester Joseph Gillis, aka Baby Face Nelson. Of course, my playful mind conjures childhood images of Buggs Bunny meeting Baby Face Finster, who is also in reference to B.F. Nelson, where B.F. Finster loses his bag of stolen money in Buggs’s rabbit hole. In order to get the money back, Finster poses as an orphan to get inside the rabbit hole. The story plays out in typical Buggs Bunny fashion.
Sorry for the trip down cartoon memory lane. Fiction is much better than reality most times.