I’ve made it 444 miles north on the trail from Harper’s Ferry, WV, where I started, and I’m just barely on track with my 90 miles/week goal. I have made it through two states since my last report!
I find the most fun way to remember states is to characterize them by negatives. Pennsylvania was the land of the ticks. One day I removed 66 [unattached] ticks from my legs, socks, and skirt. This was just beyond Palmerton in an area which is an EPA Superfund site (like Rocky Flats) because the zinc smelting plant there has poisoned the entire area with heavy metals. So only grass grows… and heavy metal mutant ticks.
In case you feel like you were missing out, I’ll give you a taste of what it is like to hike through New Jersey: wake up to the sound a swarm of mosquitoes outside your tent. Get out and cover yourself with 100% deet. Pack as fast as you can while the mosquitoes feast, then hike as fast as you can to leave them behind. By 10:00 it is 90 degrees out. (One good thing about the heat is that occasionally a mosquito would land on me only to drown in sweat before it ever got a chance to penetrate.) Never stop, except maybe to apply more deet and to eat — everything you eat tastes like deet. Deet drips into your eyes from the sweat on your forehead so that soon you view everything in a deet-induced haze. Once you get to camp, filter water as fast as you can, while the mosquitoes feast, brush your teeth with a tooth brush that now also tastes like deet, set up your tent and lie awake for hours on top of your sleeping bag in your own personal little sauna amid the buzzing of the mosquitoes at the mesh. Repeat three or four times. The last night in New Jersey it rained, which did away with the heat and the mosquitoes. It also rained for the next 2 days and nights without a single appearance of the sun. But once it finally cleared, I got everything dried quickly.
I normally sleep in my bivy shelter (a Black Diamond Tripod Bivy, like a little one person tent), but in New York I found myself alone at several shelters (there are 3-sided lean-to type shelters all along the Appalachian Trail for hikers to use), so I could make them my little home for the night. One such shelter was the pavilion at the Graymoor Spiritual Life Center run by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement who make it and a cold shower available for the use of hikers and homeless. I carry a bookmark with a picture of St. Francis (and his prayer on the back, which took me many miles to finally memorize) with me everywhere, so we felt at home there. At another shelter I had a clear view of the New York City skyline (about 40 miles away), which is the first time I’ve seen the city.
The pain in my left knee I complained of in my last report disappeared after two short days and some ibuprofen, but last week I had the exact same symptoms appear in my right knee. After limping several miles I met a hiker named Medic who claims to have received some orthopedic training in the Navy. Medic is not a through-hiker; he described himself as voluntarily homeless, the recipient of some kind of military disability welfare, and spends his time cleaning up the trail and helping hikers. He diagnosed me with patellar tendinitis, and cut one of his socks in half to make a compression band for me. It actually helped, and I was able to hike several more miles (including a few steep rock scrambles) with less pain. Once the ibuprofen kicked in, the inflammation went away and has not returned. I think I’m just getting my hiking legs in.
I saw two more black bears, but it wasn’t as exciting this time since they were in a cage. Also, in New York just north of Bear Mountain there is a zoo on the Appalachian Trail. As in, you can be walking on the Appalachian Trail and looking at animals in cages AT THE SAME TIME. New York is a wild place. One of the bears in the zoo was playing with a stick, and then it lay down with it between its paws and started chewing on it. Just like Mahli
[my sister’s dog]
.
Unlike the various blood-sucking parasites, the people in New Jersey and New York are very generous! At several shelters I had local hikers give me soda and food and offer to give me a ride to town if I needed any supplies. At one state park a lady was sitting in her car handing out drinks and oranges to through-hikers as they came out of the woods. At one point I took a side trail which went a mile down to a town (Greenwood Lake, NY). When I got there they were having some kind of festival with booths out on the street selling food. I was looking at the prices for hotdogs at the Knights of Columbus booth when an old Knight asked me how long I’d been on the trail. I said “about a month” and he immediately bought me a $6 bratwurst and 2 donuts.
Yesterday at a shelter there was a guy named Climber Ed (WA1LEI) who had hiked up with a HAM radio, car battery, and HF monopole antenna (made out of a very long fishing pole, PVC pipe, and speaker wire). He was also cooking hotdogs and had sodas and candy for hikers.
It rained all day Friday — and I don’t mind hiking in the rain — but the trail here is hard dirt with lots of little hills, which turn into skinny ski runs for people hiking in Crocs in the rain. I was sliding all over the place. In one of my several spectacular falls, the two metal stays which makes up the internal frame of my pack punctured through the bottom of my pack. I borrowed a needle and some fly fishing line from the proprietor of the outdoor outfitters in Kent (where I am now) and have it temporarily patched up. This backpack never fit well, so I am going to use this as an excuse to buy a new one once I get to an outfitter that sells them (the one here does not — though they sell ice cream and hotdogs, and have WiFi and outlets, which is even better than backpacks). There is a bus system in Massachusetts which services several of the towns near the trail and which will probably take me to an REI or EMS somewhere
[I ended up ordering a new pack from REI and having my mom ship it to me in Williamstown. But I did take the buses all over the Berkshires to buy a new leatherman scissor tool]
. That’s my plan, anyway.
Diode