Appalachian Trail: Purcelville, VA to Port Clinton, PA

xvii.

Hwy. 12, I think it was called. A ribbon of blacktop rolled out over green hills and between improbable Virginia vineyards. I came down to the highway early in the morning and walked east. Just past the West Virginia/Virginia state line, there was a gas station with a kind of attached mini mart. I stopped and bought a terrible breakfast of fries, oreos and coffee—the only things that seemed to be priced under five dollars. After I’d eaten and filled up my water bottle, I started back down the highway, toward the 12 Tribes Farm. I’d read that the place was about two miles down the road, but, after walking more than an hour, the numbers on the mailboxes still seemed to indicate the place was miles away. The shoulder of the road began to narrow until it dropped off into well-dug farm yards. I tried to walk on the little hump of earth between the pavement and the cornstalks, but it was still too close to the road. My feet slipped and semi trucks barreled by fast and close enough to blow my hat off. I began to think about turning back, but, of course, I had no where to go except to continue on the Trail to touristic and (probably) pricey Harper’s Ferry to wait out the next week.

I had just begun to despair a car, bound in the opposite direction, suddenly did a U-turn and pulled up on the narrow stretch of grass just before me. I jogged to where the car idled and was surprised to find a young woman behind the wheel. She’d pulled over on her own accord. I hadn’t even been hitching. “Do you need a ride somewhere?” She asked, looking at me like I was crazy and clearly needed help.

“Yeah, I’m trying to go to this farm,” and I got in explaining the situation to her.

The woman introduced herself as Juanita, she owned a local cafe and seemed proud to show me her community, which she described in a proud, magnanimous way, like a mayor talking about her constituents. She guessed which farm I was going to--”the 12 Tribes place, right?”--and told me that they were good people and probably wouldn’t proselytize, at least not too much. I was still leery of spending five or six days with a group of people who might try to convert me. Juanita seemed to sense my hesitation. “Listen,” she said. “I’ll run you over to my cafe. You can hang out there while I call a few friends of mine. This valley is full of farms and their owners are always looking for someone to help. I can make a few calls and maybe find you work on another farm; how’s that sound?”

I told her it sounded great. For one thing, I hadn’t even planned on being able to make money with my labor. I’d fully expected to work for room and board. There was also something vaguely romantic in the idea of itinerant labor; it was like reviving a tradition that had been dead a long time. I was really nothing more than a drifter, stopping into a town looking to do some labor and make a few bucks before passing on.

I ordered a coffee at the cafe and Juanita wouldn’t let me pay for it. A few minutes later, she came over and set a bagel sandwich down in front of me. She introduced me to the other patrons of the cafe as an Appalachian Trail hiker and, before I’d started my bagel, I was wrapped in conversation. After hardly talking at all the past few days, it was great to find myself chatting amiably with the same suburbanites who I’d felt had been rebuffing me on the Trail. I felt like a celebrity there in the comfort of the cafe, talking about the bears and rattlesnakes and thunderstorms of the Trail. “It hasn’t always been easy,” I reported, taking another sip of my gourmet coffee and luxuriating in the recliner I was seated in.

Juanita came back to tell me that she’d found someone who was interested and handed me the phone. I spoke with the owner of a local flower farm who told me she could use someone, but was uncertain if she wanted to commit to hiring me, after all, she explained, she hadn’t even seen me. I tried my best to assuage her, telling her that I’d been teaching overseas for the last few years and that she could find photos and reports of my work online if she wished. She agreed to google me and call back. I spent a few anxious minutes, draining the last of my third cup of coffee for the day and waiting for the farm to call me back. When the phone rang, I grabbed it on the first ring. “Ok,” the owner said. “Looks good. Can you find a way over here?”

I told her I’d be fine to walk, but Juanita insisted on driving me. When she dropped me off at the farm, I felt a little like a kid being dropped off at summer camp—I wasn’t going back to the familiarity of the Trail, but to a new rural scene and one I knew nothing about. There were several people working, all of them doing so with a sort of easy-going confidence of people long-accustomed to one kind of work. I was introduced to the camper where I’d be sleeping. It was a mouse-chewed thing parked under a tree, seething with the ammonia/plastic smell of long neglected things. After I vacuumed the place out, it seemed better, but I was relieved when the owner asked me if I was ready to work; I didn’t relish the idea of hanging out in the camper any more than I had to.

I worked all afternoon and felt refreshed by the different body movements the work required than the static movement of walking I was accustomed to. It felt good to use my arms, to dig, pull and lift. The evening came quickly, but no one seemed in a hurry to stop work. It wasn’t until it was nearly dark, that I noticed the other workers coming in from the field.

My main coworker was a guy from Nepal named Yamalla. He and I shared a kitchen downstairs. At first he was quiet, but when I started talking about spicy food, he perked up. We started a week-long conversation about hot peppers. I let him try my El Yucateco hot sauce and he let me have a few of his habaneros. We talked about other things, but somehow, our conversation continually circled back to the peppers. Talking to Yamalla in the evenings, after work on the farm, was one of the highlights of my time there. Talking to him was like talking to another hiker around the campfire, only the cooking was easier and I had plenty of stuff to eat.

The next four days, I did all kinds of work all over the valley. Nearby farmers heard that there was a hired hand available and recruited me for odd jobs I planted, threw hay bails, stacked bags of manure and mowed yards. I enjoyed the routine. I’d wake up around dawn, work until lunchtime, take a siesta through the heat of the afternoon and return to work in the early evening.

One day, for the siesta, I decided to take a walk. It felt odd to reenter the woods after working in the fields for just a few days. A doe and her fawn watched me approach the edge of the woods and bounded away just before I reached them. When I walked into the woods, it took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the change in light, but a movement attracted my attention. A raccoon was standing at the base of a tree and as I watched it scramble up the bark, an orange blur, like a flame, burned across the forest. My eyes followed the movement until it stopped, for a second to regard me, hesitantly, before moving on. The black paws, the curious golden eyes and the attentive ears coalesced from the red blur just before the animal took off again and was gone. Id’ walked more than 1,000 miles through the forest and it wasn’t until I stopped at this farm that I was able to see a fox.

I’d only been at the farm a few days when the owner approached me and asked me if I had a driver’s license. Confused, I told her I did. She told me that she was freaking out because they had a delivery run scheduled for the next day and no one available to do it. What did I think, would I be able to delivery some flowers? I told her that I was a delivery driver in San Francisco and that I didn’t foresee a problem, but, internally, I was wondering what it would be like to return to delivery deadlines and congested traffic after two months in the woods. I wondered if I’d be able to handle it. I didn’t share these feelings, though. I hadn’t bought enough food and needed to go into town to buy some more, doing a delivery would be the least intrusive way to do this. The next morning, I found myself driving toward DC.

I was shocked how quickly I returned to my old role of urban delivery driver. I drove into DC, like I’d lived there all my life and finished my other deliveries in Silver Springs and Alexandria with no problem. I almost felt betrayed somehow, shocked that it should be so easy to return to this life after being in the woods for months. I wondered if I’d really done anything if it should be so easy to get back into a car and drive around the city like this. It felt like the two worlds were too close together. On the Trail, I’d felt far away from highways and 7-11s and outlet malls but now I had to confront the fact that I’d never been very far away from these things at all.

That night, the moon rose so brightly above the fields, its light woke me up. The fireflies were still out, festooning the pines around the open fields like Christmas lights. I couldn’t help but to see that the open areas, manmade as they were, had their own unique beauty. I considered the fields, argentine with moonlight and dew and the immense dome of stars overhead, unbroken by the tops of trees. I hadn’t seen so much open space since I’d started the Trail and I realized I’d missed it.

Early in the morning, I went inside to make coffee before going to work. The sun still hadn’t come up. The sky was grey with dawn and the dew was still heavy on the grass when I turned my phone back on to check the time. I was surprised to see I had a message and, as I walked down the hill, I groggily punched in my voicemail code and listened to Gina’s voice saying “Turkmenistan, I think you know what this means.” It took me a second, so early in the morning, to understand what the hell she was talking about. Then it hit me. They were offering me a job in Turkmenistan! I wanted to call Gina and ask her more questions, but it would still be the middle of the night back in California. I tried to feel stressed by the decision, but I could only feel excited. I’d been to Turkmenistan before and while it wasn’t on the top of my list of places to live, it was an obscure place with interesting traditions. What did distress me was that it would mean getting off the Trail. I knew if I accepted the job, I would probably have to go to DC for an orientation; I’d probably be starting work in the early autumn and I knew that didn’t leave me enough time to walk to Maine. But, I didn’t have any of the details yet, so I just let the word ‘Turkmenistan’ roll around in my head while I had my coffee and watched the sun come up over Virginia.

I got a ride back to the Trail that afternoon. I felt like a day-hiker, doing the 7-mile section into Harper’s Ferry: leaving one civilization to walk to another. I was still so close to inhabited areas on the Trail that I hadn’t even lost phone reception. I’d been hiking about an hour when my phone rang. It was Gina, she was getting ready for the flight that would leave the next morning.

“I looked at the Turkmenistan invitation” she told me.

“Yeah?” I asked. I couldn’t believe how indifferent I felt to the whole thing. I hadn’t even tried to check my e-mail before leaving the farm. If anything, I’d been more concerned with getting back on the Trail, to walk into Harper’s Ferry so I’d be able to get into DC the next day.

“It says it’s an unaccompanied post.”

“Great. Then the decision is easy.” I responded. “We’re not going.”

“Yeah, I guess there’s nothing else to say about it.”

“Yeah, if you can’t come with me, I’m not going.”

We talked for a while after that. It felt odd, standing in the middle of the woods, talking on the phone. What I didn’t realize is that I’d left the wilds behind and really wouldn’t be getting back into them again until Vermont.

I came into Harper’s Ferry early in the evening. I found a nice place to camp just outside town, but instead of stopping, I decided to go into town and have a look at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) building. I knew it would be closed, but I wanted to see what the Trail’s Headquarters looked like, if only from the outside.

The sun was setting as I came into the well-groomed historic town. I stopped to look at several sites: a famous rock Thomas Jefferson had written back to Europe about, describing the view it commanded of the intersection of two rivers, an old cemetery and the place where John Brown made his famous assault against injustice.

The town was unbelievably quaint. In the early evening light, crickets chirped and fireflies drifted through the bushes and the bottoms of trees. There was hardly any traffic; the town was as quiet as a small mountain village. When I strained my ears, I seemed to hear the sursuration of scores of hushed front porch conversations.

The ATC was an unimpressive building from the back. I went around to the front and was peering in the window when a woman, sitting just inside the door, closing up for the night, noticed me and got up. She opened the door, asking if I was a thru hiker. I told her I was and she invited me inside to see the building, although they’d closed nearly two hours ago. She gave me a little tour of the place: books and such, huge 3D map of the entire AT, hiker’s lounge where they had soda and candy bars for sale. After she’d shown me everything in the building, she told me she’d take my picture whenever I was ready. I’d read about this and, really, it was what I’d come for. At the ATC, they take your picture and put it in a book with all the other thru and section hikers. It might seem a little self-indulgent, but it’s the only time on the Trail when any authority recognizes what you’re doing. Sure, you’ve got all kinds of individuals helping and encouraging you along the way, but it’s something altogether different to have an institution want to take your picture, like they’re saying, “you’ve made it this far; you’ll probably make it the rest of the way.” I was wearing my rattiest clothes when the woman took my picture, but I was happy to be captured in this way; it was how I always looked on the Trail where there was no decorum.

I was ready to leave the ATC and head back into the woods, when the woman asked where I was planning on sleeping. I told her my plan to go back to the Trail to sleep and she told me that they were experimenting with a new campsite in town and that they’d sign me up for a spot if I’d like. I replied that I would like that, very much.

The new campsite was beautiful for it’s location behind a motel, on the side of a cemetery that bordered a highway. The sites were very level and a little stream coursed through the thicket. Benches were set up here and there. I ate dinner at one, trying to imagine how I was going to sleep as the twilight deepened and the fireflies came out again. There were only two other tents in the area, and the voices of my campmates drifted up from the hollow below. I tried to imagine how I could possibly sleep. After nearly three months apart, I was going to see my girlfriend again. Since I’d been on the Trail, we’d only had a few scratchy phone calls. It seemed impossible that tomorrow we would actually be seeing each other in person. I had thought of the moment when we would meet in DC’s Union Station 100’s of times, but, that night, finally so close to it, it was impossible to visualize. I stayed up reading for a while and, impossibly, fell asleep, the fireflies still flitting around my tent.

I woke in the dark to the alarm going off on my phone. My train left just after six. I broke down the tent, buzzing with an electric excitement, knowing that Gina was already in the air.

The morning sky was grey-blue and seemed to be full of planes. I went to get coffee from the only cafe in town, nearly floating. It was a short walk to the station, and I made it down there in less time than I thought I’d need. I tried to drink my coffee and maintain my composure, but after the train pulled up, I was worthless. I sat on the train, brimming with happiness. I remembered feeling this way when I’d come back from the Peace Corps; I was in a taqueria in Chicago when the immensity of the time and place crashed down on me and I felt like I was weeping internally with joy. I felt that way among the morning commuters. I put my headphones on, rested my forehead on the window and let my anticipation catch up to me as I went rattling down the train tracks to Union Station and my love.

xviii.

A week later I’m back in Union Station, waiting for my train back to the Trail, watching the ghosts of our meeting joyously embrace at the arrivals platform. I’m trying to eat, to enjoy the city food one last time, but I can barely get it down. She sends me one last text from the airport. “Bye. I love you.” I put my phone back in my pocket. My hands are shaking. There are hundreds of people all around me in the food court; they laugh, shout and pull their chairs obstreperously across the floor. All the noise makes me feel even more alone. I only want to get back to the Trail, to get back there and walk the rest of it, so I can go back home.

It’s almost time for my train. I get up from the table and make my way through the noisy crowd. I put my headphones on again. The music starts where I stopped it before our meeting. It’s impossible that I was ever coming into this city so happy. All I want to do now is leave, to distance myself from the memory of that happiness which seems almost painful to me now.

It was a little after 7pm when I got back in Harper’s Ferry. I pulled my trekking poles out from my bag and immediately started down the Trail. The first shelter area was about 7 miles back and I was resolved to make it that far. I wanted to put DC far behind me and to feel engulfed by the forest again. I just had to repeat what I’d just done. Two more months and I’d be home.

Maryland was easier than anything I’d walked. A good portion of the Trail outside Harper’s Ferry ran between the railroad tracks and a river. After about an hour on the river, the Trail wound back into the woods via a suburban neighborhood. I walked until just before it got too dark to see. I only managed to find the shelter as a bunch of boy scouts were camping there and were out with their flashlights. I set up my tent in the dark, crawled in and fell into a dream-crazed sleep immediately.

The next morning, I woke up confused, mistaking my sleeping bag for a bed and my backpack for my girlfriend. The truth of my situation dawned on me pitifully. I need to get out of here. I thought. I need to get further away from DC. The farther I get today, the closer I’ll feel to the end. I can’t stay here clinging to this moment that’s already passed.

As I rolled up my tent, I found a black widow clinging to it. I took this for an auspicious sign. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with black widows. My mom once caught one in a jar for me and, watching the lithe obsidian movements of the spider on my tent, reminded me that happiness emanates from small events as much as from the large.

I walked through the morning until I came to a large park. The Trail crossed the park and with its benches and potable water, I decided it would be a good place to stop and have breakfast. The groomed aspects of the park signaled a change on the Trail. All morning, I’d been walking easy terrain and the park seemed as proof that this terrain would continue. It was like I’d taken part of DC with me back onto the Trail.

I was making good progress and the weather was good, but I struggled with feelings of homesickness and sadness. I felt more alone than I had since I’d begun the Trail. Even the other hikers I gotten to know, now that I’d stopped for so long, were probably all very far ahead of me.

Attesting to the rapid urbanization of the Trail, I came out in a neighborhood and found myself walking past homes, into someone’s yard (I kept thinking how incredible to have the AT pass through your front yard!) and onto a bridge that went over a highway. At the other end of the bridge, a group had set up a trail magic table. Right away, I guessed them for a religious group. Their youth and eagerness somehow gave them away. I had some rice and instant coffee with them and talked to a few other hikers enjoying their food. The conversation and food cheered me up immensely. I was further cheered to hear that they were well-stocked with provisions and would be traveling north continually dispensing trail magic. Indeed, I was to see the group twice again, once in New York and another time in New Hampshire. Both times, I was very happy to receive their kindness. That day in Maryland was no exception and I felt immeasurably better after scoring some extra food and talking with everyone.

Instead of stopping after about 25 miles, as I normally would’ve done. I stopped for dinner and kept going, pushing for another shelter about six miles down, trying for my first thirty-mile day. It didn’t really get completely dark until 9:30 and the terrain was easy. The night before, I’d walked into the dark and found it less disconcerting that I thought it would be.

The sun went down behind a slight rise in the Trail. The Raven’s Rock Shelter area was just at the top of the rise. Practically the first climb I’d done all day, I labored up the hill but it leveled off shortly, nothing like the climbs I had become accustomed to doing in the Smokies and southern Virginia. I’d talked to a trail runner at the previous shelter who’d told me that the shelter was just at the top of the hill, so I was surprised when I’d walked a while down the Trail and had seen nothing. At one point, I’d smelled campfire, but the subtle hint was quickly lost to the damp, mossy smell of interminable forest. After a while, I surmised I must’ve missed it and turned back. It was now nearly dark and I found I needed my headlamp. When the light hit the trees, they looked ghostly and instead of being on a trail, I felt like I was just wandering through the woods in the dark; there didn’t seem to be any clear path.

Coming back, I met two other hikers also looking for the shelter. I told them I’d gone quite a ways up the Trail and hadn’t seen anything. Together, we turned back and walked to the edge of the hill, where the Trail went back down. Again, we smelled the campfire smoke, but saw nothing: no shelter, no side trails. It was totally dark now and some strange bird was screaming just off the Trail. Each time we passed a certain area in our reconnoitering, we heard it scream again. I was glad to be in the company of these two guys, even if they weren’t very friendly, alone, I probably would’ve been freaking out a little.

We finally found the short side trail that led to the shelter. Only 0.1 mile off the Trail and I’d totally missed the fires and the noise of the more than 20 hikers staying there. For the first time, I had a notion of how easy it would be to get lost. If I could be right next to a roaring bonfire in the dark and not notice it, I could easily walk off the Trail and not be able to find my way back to it.

That night, I renewed my vow to not hike in the dark and the rest of the time I was on the Trail, I kept to it, even if I had to jog a few times in the evening.

xix.

Almost two months since I left the Trail, I find I can still conjure up memories of nearly any place. I’ve reread Walk Across America and A Walk in the Woods and when the authors mention places on the AT, I can see them. Sometimes, I go into reveries and remember long stretches. I like to think of a place and then try to visualize as much of the Trail after that place. It’s beautiful to move back through the Trail in my mind. This has probably been the greatest gift of having walked it; I now carry a stretch of the globe in my mind that I can retreat to any time I’d like.

But not every section is as detailed. When I think of crossing the Mason Dixon which I did later the next day, I don’t remember much but berries and amazingly level terrain. In fact, that’s all I see for Pennsylvania. Other than a single climb I did at the Super Fund Site, the state blurs together. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it, if anything, it was the opposite, perhaps I enjoyed it a little too much.

AT thru-hikers have a tendency to exaggerate their complaints. I think this is the result of being in such an insular environment, one that you have to interact with every day, a little like an office or a classroom, only one that you sleep in and spend every waking hour besides in. Rumors also figure into this exaggeration. I think I heard Pennsylvania was lousy before I even got out of Georgia; I continued hearing it with greater intensity as I moved north. Before leaving Shenandoah, many people were already complaining about it. Without even stepping into Pennsylvania, hikers were already bemoaning their fate in that they’d have to cross ‘Rocksylvania.’

The other great thing I got out of the AT was the ability to listen to people without believing a word they say. If you believed half of what people tell you about the sections of Trail coming up, you’d never be able to keep walking. To hear some of these people talk, you’d think Everest was just up the path, either that or an endless, scorching rock field.

Despite the critics, I enjoyed Pennsylvania, but, not so much for its bucolic charms. The forest was perfectly fine, but now that it has to compete with my memories of New Hampshire, North Carolina, Vermont or Maine, for God’s sake, it doesn’t stand a chance.

When I think of Pennsylvania, I think of the towns—nowhere else on the Trail does the AT cross so many towns and with the great yawning wilderness stretching back behind you to Georgia and the moose and porcupine haunted wilds of New England ahead, one is glad of the reprieve.

After I crossed the Mason-Dixon, I had about a day of rain, enough to make me stop early. I was up early the next day, headed down near the tiny town of Caledonia, Pennsylvania where they happened to be having some kind of craft fair. Everyone was setting up their tents for the day when I walked onto the green that separated the rows of vendors. I stopped and looked intently at a booth that was selling all kinds of horrible-looking deserts such as watermelon-flavored woopie pies. I was slightly disappointed to not find anything without egg or dairy, but looking at the bright pink and green pastries, I surmised it was probably for the best. I continued up the green finding nothing but crafts when a kettle corn vendor called out to me.

“Hey. You hiking the Trail?”

“Yeah.”

“C’mover here. I’ve got a bag of popcorn for ya’. We always give a free bag to the hikers.

I thanked the vendor and headed over to a picnic area to fill my water bottles and sample the treat. Now, since I worked in a movie theater for a few impressionable years, I have never been much of a popcorn fan. I was happy to have something extra to eat, but I didn’t expect the kettle corn to make my day like it did. Out of the park, the terrain continued to be ridiculously easy and as I walked, I was constantly munching popcorn. I couldn’t seem to even make a dent in the bag.

As I walked, my mind drifted from topic to topic. The ease of walking on the nearly flat ground, the redolent summer pines and the popcorn had made my day. It didn’t seem like it could get much better when I passed an elaborate half-way marker replete with miniature American flags and even mileage counts in either direction. I took a picture of myself in front of the construction (it was about a mile off from the actual half-way point that year, but I figured it was good enough), thoughtfully regarded it for a moment and then realized that I’d walked in, now it only remained to walk out. If the only points of egress on the AT were in Amicalola Falls in Georgia and Baxter State Park in Maine, than it would make just as much sense for me to continue walking north as it would be turn back and walk south. Obviously, this wasn’t the case and I could walk off the Trail anywhere I wanted, but, still, it was fun to consider it more like a tunnel through the forest with only a way-in and a way-out.

The town of Pine Grove Furnace wasn’t far from the half-way point and there was an AT museum there along with a general store home of the ‘half-gallon challenge’ in which hikers (most often, or probably exclusively thru-hikers) try to eat a half-gallon of ice cream in under an hour. If you should be able to finish the ice cream, there’s no prize, the ice cream isn’t free, but, from what I hear, someone takes your picture. The two guys I saw out front who attempted the feat looked absolutely miserable. They both held partially melted containers of ice cream, down and at their sides, more like the way you’d hold something you were about to throw up into rather than the way you’d hold something you were eating out of. I asked them how it was going; they couldn’t quite manage an articulate response. It sounded like their mucus membranes had been clogged with ice cream.

I continued walking and was surprised to enter a large recreational area surrounding a lake. Kids and their parents were everywhere. Brightly colored balls whizzed by, I couldn’t believe I was still on the AT. It was like I’d walked into a city park. I stopped at the locker room and availed myself of the free shower before continuing on up a hill and back into my domain. Back in the woods, the silence seemed almost unnatural after the crowds I’d been passing through all day.

xx.

The next morning, I ran out of gas before I was able to boil water for coffee. The entire trail, I’d been making coffee in the morning, but now, I was going to have to go without. I tried to console myself with the fact that the town of Boiling Springs was only about ten miles out, but ten miles is a long way with out any coffee.

I didn’t make it too far before I broke down and emptied a packet of instant coffee (only for emergencies) into half a bottle of luke warm water. I shook it up and then gulped it down quickly. The faster I drank it, the easier it was to convince myself it was real coffee.

After a few miles, I came to some boulders. The AT twisted and snaked around these craggy rocks. One frequently had to squeeze between them or pull one’s self over them. I wondered if perhaps I had hit the infamous rocks of ‘Rocksylvania’ but they didn’t last long and, inexplicably when I came down from the hill top where they’d been, I found myself walking through a corn field. It was so flat as to seem unreal, up to that point, the AT had never been totally flat, but here it was, at least a mile of trail, leading into town through farm country. I relished the change. The walking was easy and, for once there was plenty of sunshine. I looked back at the hill I’d come down from, against the flat fields, it looked impressive and really gave me a sense of having walked from somewhere far away and much more wild.

The town of Boiling Springs was picturesque. The quaint downtown ringed a pond. It almost looked a little too nice, like someone had landscaped the whole place. I filled up my thermos then settled down next to the lake to watch the ducks peck at the water and make a few phone calls. By mid-afternoon, I was back on the Trail walking through 14 miles of farm country. My earlier excitement gradually began to wear off and soon I began to feel immensely irritated by the persistent sun shining in my eyes, the flat and dull landscape and the lack of any variation. I knew that the section wouldn’t last long, and I was able to appreciate it for what it was, but it made me happy that the AT is mostly forested. It would be much more difficult and not nearly as interesting to walk through fields all day.

The 14-mile stretch, as it was entirely surrounded by private property, was devoid of shelters. The first place where a hiker could camp outside the town was past the 14 miles of fields, up on another hill. When I hit the forest again, the sun was beginning to set and I was happy to be back among the trees. I did a modest climb up to the shelter. At one point, the trees opened up and I had a beautiful view of the valley below. The contrast between the cultivated valley and the chaos of the forest around me, made me feel like a wolf, looking down on the works of man with a lack of interest bordering on disdain.

After Boiling Springs, I started hitting towns one after another. Two days later, I stopped through Duncannon, PA, a shabby little place that signaled to me that I was back in the familiar post-industrial North. I stopped at a laundromat to wash my clothes and was nonplussed to find the place had no bathroom. There wasn’t even an attendant to ask if there was one nearby I could use. A woman waiting for her clothes to dry told me I could use the bathroom of the pizza place across the street. “Of course,” she added. “They’ll make you buy something.” Rather than risk having to buy a calzone or something just to change my clothes, I went to the infamous Doyle Hotel down the street.

The Doyle fits right in in a town like Duncannon, but if the AT hadn’t passed down Main St., The Doyle probably would’ve gone out of business long ago. I’ve heard from many people that the owner isn’t really very concerned with keeping the place up and that the only people who’d be willing to sleep in such a filthy place are hikers who are already filthy themselves—however, it should be noted, there’s a difference between the kind of filth one’s exposed to in the woods (mostly just dirt) and the kind that festers in old motel rooms. Almost everyone I talked to who stayed there used their sleeping bags rather than risk the sheets.

I found the owner of the place amiable enough, she told me I could use the bathroom for $800.00. I told her I didn’t have it. “Figures,” she said and waved me in to what looked like a broom closet with a toilet. Neither the stall nor the sink area were large enough to accommodate my changing efforts so I had to hold the stall door open and sort of waiver between them. The door was on a spring and resoundingly clapped me in the ass every time I had to put my arm down. I came really close to dropping my clothes in the toilet bowl and fell into the trash can more than once.

After I finished washing my clothes, I decided I wasn’t going to bother going back down the street to change in the cramped bathroom again. It was mid-day, the scorching sidewalks were empty and there was no one in the laundromat but me and another hiker.

“Hey, go outside and let me know if you see anyone coming will ya?” I asked the hiker.

He walked outside, looked back and forth (a little to conspicuously, I thought)and gave me the thumbs up. I changed my clothes, standing behind one of those laundromat carts I’d slung some clothes over in attempt to maintain a modicum of dignity.

The walk out of Duncannon brought one over a bridge, under and over railroad tracks and past a highway. Even with a steep climb out of the gap, it was great getting back in the woods, but even up above the town, the rocks were covered with graffiti. I stopped and talked to a ridge runner who told me that someone had tried to burn down the next shelter earlier in the year. He only got caught because he’d been yelling or something. Luckily, I was planning on going to the next shelter, a little further down.

At night, the skies were dulled with the glow of the streetlights below, but there were more fireflies than I’d ever seen before.

Two days later, I came down a ridiculously steep descent into the tiny town of Port Clinton, PA which had two great amenities. The first was that the town allowed camping at the end of the one street in and around a pavilion. The second was that someone had a soda machine set up in their yard.

When I got into Port Clinton, the weather was blustery and the sky a deep grey. I was convinced I had just missed a downpour, but as the late afternoon wore on, the sky gradually lightened and the wind tapered off. The scene around the pavilion was a little too festive for me, so I retired with my book to a barbecue area near a wide and shallow river.

I set up my tent, made food and read for a while before deciding to go back down the street to the soda machine, for a root beer night cap. When I got back, I was annoyed to find a drunken woman setting all kinds of crap on the picnic table right next to my tent. She had her pick-up pulled up to the table with its lights illuminating the scene. The Counting Crows were blasting from the truck.

“What are you doing?” I yelled over the music.

I could barely hear her over the warbly strains of Mr. Jones, but it sounded like she said “weenie roast!” I looked at the picnic table and realized that I hadn’t misheard, at 10 pm, this woman was getting ready to start a weenie roast right next to my tent.

“Do you think you could do it somewhere else?” I asked, trying not to sound too pissed. I knew she was just trying to do something nice, but 10 pm, after a day of hiking, feels like 2 am, besides, I knew most other hikers agreed with me, hot dogs or no.

“You don’t want to have a weenie roast?” The woman sounded incredulous, like she couldn’t imagine how any normal human being wouldn’t jump at the chance. I told her I was tired and thanked her again. I pointed her in the direction of the pavilion.

“Those guys might want to,” I suggested. She thanked me and drove over to the pavilion blaring Omaha, I watched her talk with another hiking representative. I guess no one over there had been too into the idea either, a few minutes later her truck was peeling out, taking the mournful strains of the Counting Crows with it.