day 25 - 04/04

it is incredible what i hike thru in the course of a day. as i wrote yesterday, when i got into watauga it started to downpour. i woke up at 1:30 in the morning and actually thought it was dawn cuz the sky was clear and the moon is almost full. i woke up this morning and it was as if a white curtain was in front of the shelter. the fog was so thick i couldn't see more than 10ft at most. i started hiking and only an hour later and a 1000ft in elevation gain and i am looking down on the fog in the valley as if it is a lake. see the picture below to see how thick it was. this got me thinking, which is always a dangerous thing. lol. hiking out of this fog was such a great metaphor for the drama we all encounter in life. we can't see thru the dense fog of the dramas we get immersed in until we remove ourselves from the fog. then i thought that it doesn't even require the effort of hiking. it just takes surrender. it doesn't matter what are your beliefs or non-beliefs, just surrendering to something greater than the self: god, allah, jesus, buddha, mother nature, mary, the universe, source, (insert your choice), etc. you get the picture. just saying that i no longer desire to be in this drama, please help me to move past it. then i thought how this hike out of the fog was also allegorical for enlightenment - seeing thru and transcending the veil of illusion between our ego selves and our god selves. those who have ascended the fog before us (before us meaning from our limited view within this dimension of space/time), like jesus, buddha, lau tzu, haidakhan baba, have all ascended thru the fog of illusion that is this reality to view this reality from a higher place. ok, enough philosophy for today. ;) 29.8mi from wautaga lake shelter to abingdon shelter. 454.2 total.