Pumpernickel...who came up with THAT word?

Today I felt like I was in some kind of outdoor sensory deprivation
experiment. First of all, I am hiking these days without any sort of
vision correction... Hand are too dirty for contact lenses (I thought
I was getting a nice farmers tan until I realized if I scrubbed hard
enough it comes off) and it is way too humid for glasses. I have
gotten somewhat used to it and I warn anybody behind me they should
not follow me (pardon the pun) "blindly" and should still look for
blazes on trees themselves. Then there's the hiking in the rain with a
rain jacket hood on your head. I hear nothing but "woosh woosh
woosh". It's a bit surreal and yet has a meditative quality to it. At
the beginning of my hike when it would rain, I had an ongoing paranoia
about all my stuff getting wet, but now I have accepted that yes,
everything gets wet (except what gets put into seam-sealed dry sacks
thankfully...then it only gets "damp") and it's okay. Guess what? So
far, everything that has gotten what eventually dries out! It is
really a miracle, and now I hike peacefully in the rain.... well today
anyway.
It eventually stopped raining and a heavy fog set in. I could only see
a few feet in front of me and it made for an eerie ridgetop hike this
afternoon. The sun even popped out and it was a warm breezy evening.
And yes, I had mashed potatoes for dinner. Yum.