AWOL on the Appalachian Trail (19 page)

It is a welcome change of scenery. In the distance, over acres of broad green corn leaves, there is a farmhouse flanked by huge silver silos. In the fading light, hundreds of fireflies hover over a meadow. It is completely dark when I reach the strip of woods flanking the highway, and I don my headlamp. The AT passes over Harrisburg Pike on a footbridge. Lighted signs of motels are visible down the road to my left. I bushwhack down the embankment on which the footbridge rests. The asphalt on the shoulder is coated with loose gravel, dirt, and debris blown aside by the traffic. I hurry down to the hotel, eager to be done with my day and anxious about the proximity of speeding traffic, not knowing if the drivers can see me in the dark.

This has been one of my longest days on the trail, and I reflect on all the variety I have encountered on this day that started back at Pine Grove Furnace, passed through Boiling Springs, and ends here at a roadside motel. Inside, the lobby is brightly lit and busy. A perky couple is checking in, and they ask the clerk about places to eat. Anytime after dark on the trail is very late, but in the world of artificial light, 9:00 p.m. is still early.

In the morning, I walk over to the diner next door for breakfast. The waitress calls me "honey." Thankfully, diners are ubiquitous at the trail towns. There aren't many chain restaurants, but there are traditional diners with vinyl booths, metal-trimmed Formica tables, fluted glass sugar dispensers, and breakfasts offering bacon, eggs, pancakes, hash browns, toast, and coffee.

A shuttle bus pulls up to the hotel just as I am leaving, and I hop on to save myself the half-mile walk back to the trail. The bus is nearly full with passengers heading out to start their business day. Some have work-issue uniforms, others are in dress attire carrying purses and briefcases; I have my backpack.

For the first six miles, the trail continues as it ended last night, passing farmland, pastureland, houses, and roads. The sky is gray, and light rains add humidity to the hot and buggy day. Workers rest on the back of a flatbed truck only partially loaded with rolls of hay. The rolls are taller than I am and are dispersed across the rolling hills like hairy brown sleeping bags. They are countless, and I wonder if the farmers are disheartened or content to have seemingly endless work laid out before them. The trail reenters the woods, passing along rolling hills, with a scattering of rocks. None of the hills exceed fifteen hundred feet. The trees, taking their cue from the hills, are also of modest height. There is a clearing near the bank of a stream. A slab of rock sits in the clearing, like a centerpiece, and on the rock a hiker has used pebbles to spell the words "I miss Mom."

Rain stiffens as I near Duncannon. Streams of water run off my pack cover, uncomfortably cold as it drips down the back of my neck. I am too close to town to stop for a jacket, so I reach back and pull the pack cover up over my head like a skullcap. The trail enters Duncannon on streets on the outskirts of town, and it follows streets through the center of town. Duncannon has an aged, industrial feel. It is as if there is a layer of steel dust settled upon everything, and there has been a boycott on paint. All of the stores are packed tighter than necessary on Main Street, with restaurants, laundromats, and banks having adjacent store-fronts and shared walls. The shops are elevated two steps above the sidewalk.

The gathering place for hikers is the Doyle Hotel, known for its cheap beer and cheap rooms. Inside the Doyle, I squeeze between occupied barstools to order a beer.

The patron to my right, glancing sideways at me, asks, "You a hiker?"

"Yes," I answer simply, since he knows the answer and is asking to start a conversation in which I'm hesitant to engage. He's short but burly, near drunk, with a reddish face. Leaning with both elbows on the bar, the back of his T-shirt doesn't quite reach his jeans.

"Seen any bears?"

"I've seen a few."

"The bears up here ain't like the bears you seen already. These bears are mean. They'll get you. Snakes, too!" He looks past me to his friend, passing him an impish grin. The two of them must make a game of putting fear into the hearts of hikers.

I'm sorry I can't feign more distress, but their effort is just too feeble. "I'll keep an eye out," I promise, and depart with my beer.

Some of the same crowd of thru-hikers who were part of the rowdy night at the Four Pines Hostel are in the bar at the Doyle, so it is an easy decision to move on. Wingfoot lists another motel two miles down the highway. The owner drives over to the Doyle and picks me up, promising to return me to town in the morning. Before leaving, I retrieve a mail drop that Juli had sent to the Doyle. Now that I am in a more populated zone of the trail, there are more food/shower/laundry opportunities than I can use. I have a few days of trail food in my pack and a new supply in the mail drop, so I opt to forgo the temptation of eating at a restaurant. I set up my tiny stove on the curb in front of my motel room and cook a meal for dinner. I repeat the process for breakfast.

From downtown Duncannon, there is still a bit of a road walk before getting back to the woods, ending with a walk over the expansive Susquehanna River Bridge. From the bridge, the trail ramps uphill into the woods for the most exerting climb I have had in days. Eleven miles from town I take a break at Peter's Mountain Shelter. Rain threatens, but I still decide it is too early to stop. At the crossing of PA 325 there is a handwritten note from a person in a nearby town, saying that he will pick up any hikers who call from this trailhead for a stay at his home. There is no phone or store in sight. A misty raas begun.

I trudge uphill on a gravel-strewn trail that keeps an unnaturally straight line for more than a mile. Just before the rain comes down in earnest, I find a flat spot and set up my tarp. My tarp is supported by trekking poles, and the poles divide the interior space. There is room enough for me to lay out my sleeping pad and bag on one side. On the other side of the poles I have room for my backpack, my shoes, and anything I wish to unload from my pack. On this night, I unload most of the pack and set up my stove to cook inside, out of the rain.

The shoes I bought in West Virginia were my fifth pair for the hike, and I am now confident that they have been the best choice yet. I've worn them for about a hundred miles with a noticeable decline in foot pain. The shoes are the largest shoes I've ever bought and are made of lightweight material that is less constricting. I've taken the insoles out to dry. I lie on my back, extend a bent leg into the air, and look over my toes, which still suffer from blisters. I hold the insert of my shoe against the bottom of my foot. My foot is wider than the insole, even though the width of the running shoe is 4E. And the insole is pointed, tapering off much more rapidly than do my toes. I've seen no one with feet so pointed. There seems to be a fundamental mismatch between the design of shoes and the feet that go into them.

I wake in the middle of the night. Rain is still falling steadily, and water has started to flow under my tarp from the uphill side, the side where my gear is piled. I move all my gear away from the rivulets of water on my ground cloth. A thin layer of water is pooling under my legs. My sleeping pad is thick enough to keep me afloat, but parts of my sleeping bag that have flopped over the pad are wet. I can feel the wetness seeping up around my legs. A couple of hours of sleep are lost trying to scrunch away from the deepest part of the pool while keeping centered on the pad to stay dry.

Every year some part of the trail is rerouted, and guidebooks cannot always keep up. There will be changes in terrain and elevation, landmarks, and mileage. Wingfoot said the trail would dip to five hundred feet to a road at Swatara Gap. The dip doesn't happen, and I never pass a road. As well as I know my walking speed in different conditions, I have no doubt that the trail must have been rerouted in this section. I become wary about getting lost and pay more attention to the white blazes. The trail is wearing me down with some short climbs and rocky terrain. In the midst of the day's most rocky section, I see a hiker note on a sheet of paper weighted down by a stone.

"Rattlers, 50 yards ahead."

There is a sketch of two fat snakes with exaggerated fangs. Though it is little more than a stick figure drawing, it effectively abstracts the danger. There is no date or time on the note, but it looks recent, neither bleached by sun nor blotched by water. I've walked seventeen miles already--or so I think--and I'm tired, drained by watching my step on the rocks and worried about following the white blazes. Added to that, rattlers are now lurking among the rocks. I drop my pack and find a boulder large enough to lie upon, take my shirt and shoes off, and try to make myself new again.

Just before arriving at the 501 shelter, I pass a dozen or so hikers at an overlook. They've come back from the shelter to enjoy the late-afternoon view. Among them I recognize only Leaf and Bearable.

The 501 shelter, just off of State Road 501, is a large enclosed building with bi-level plywood sleeping platforalong the interior perimeter. Many hikers are here tonight. Tipperary is at the picnic table out front. He had heard about my sprained ankle, but is surprised at how quickly I have caught up. A caretaker lives in a home fifty yards away, but I do not see him this evening. I eat dinner and play cards with Bearable, Blaze, and Erica. Card playing is clumsy with the weight-saving half-sized cards Bearable carries. Erica is hiking with her identical twin, Erin, and Erin's boyfriend, Ryan, who have hitched a ride down 501 to a nearby store.

Leaf is at the table, having Treet for dinner. Treet is a canned meat product that manages to slip below the bar set by Spam. For entertainment, he reads the label. "Mechanically separated chicken and pork, sodium nitrate, hydrolyzed corn..." is as much as he reads before the heckling begins:

"If you don't separate chickens and pigs, you don't know what you'll end up with."

"Where can I buy hydrolyzed corn so I can use it in my recipes?"

This doesn't curb Leaf's appetite. He downs a can of the stuff. The card game is broken up when Erin and Ryan return from their hitch to the store. They have food and a case of beer. I climb up on my bunk and fall asleep easily, despite the noise made by the group drinking outside. When I wake, the caretaker is noisily crushing and disdaining spent beer cans, sorting them from the trash for recycling. Ryan, Blaze, and the twins are unperturbed, sleeping it off on the ground outside the shelter.

Near lunchtime, I catch up with Tipperary and Sheepstaff, who are picking blueberries near an unnamed stream. Tipperary is often the first one out of the shelter in the morning. Although he still is not a fast hiker, he gets an early start and makes good mileage by walking long and steady days.

We pass Shartlesville road, rumored to have a restaurant. Not knowing any more than that, I head left down the winding paved road, hoping to find hot food for lunch. Past the first bend in the road, there is no restaurant, no building of any kind. Maybe one more bend. I press on, less certain I've chosen the right path. Around the second bend are more bends in the road. I've invested nearly half a mile of walking, and my search is fruitless. I walk back up the road to the trail intersection and decide halfheartedly to continue on the road to the other side of the trail. For a few hundred yards in this direction, there is no evidence of development. The road heads downhill, so the further I wander, the more work I will have to return to the trail. Frustrated and hungry, I turn around.

Shortly after returning to the trail, I rejoin Tip and Sheepstaff eating lunch. I stop and eat with them, each of us exchanging some item from our food bags. Upon leaving Tip, I wonder if this is the last I will see of him on the trail. I plan to walk twenty-four miles to reach the town of Port Clinton today, and I doubt he will go that far. Signs have been posted at the last few shelters, spreading the word that a group calling itself Red Blaze will be hosting a "hiker feed"--a cookout at the town pavilion.

I spend the afternoon walking along a single long ridge, more like walking on an oversized levee than on a mountain range. The top of the ridge is sprinkled with broken slabs of stone. The rock impedes the growth of trees or vegetation, so there are often views to mostly flat land below the ridge. I see roads in the distance and wonder if they lead to Port Clinton, or if I can see Port Clinton, which now must be less than three miles away. Blaze and Erica come by as I amking in the view. They don't have their packs.

"Ryan and my sister got a ride to Port Clinton and took our packs with them. Do you know about the hiker feed?"

"Did you see the rattler?" Blaze questions me simultaneously.

"Yes." I know about the food. "No. What rattler?"

"Right back there, less than a mile back. You walked right past it." I see snakes every day, but I've yet to see a rattler. I'd like to see one, but now I'm worried I'll step on it. I can imagine stepping over these rocks to find one curled up, hidden on the far side of the rock, striking out to get me in the back of my calf.

"We're going so fast today," Blaze says, obviously happy about traveling unencumbered by a backpack.

"I don't know," Erica says, "I kinda miss my pack."

"You can take mine."

The last hundred yards down to town are precarious, steep steps the trail builders have fashioned from stone. Steps like this are common near trailheads, and always unwelcome. The town of Port Clinton, or more fairly, the part of town within easy walking distance of the trail, is very small. By car, I could imagine this place being a one-intersection town I'd pass on a trip to somewhere else, hardly noticing that it was a named location. There are a few residential streets, a bar, and a candy store. There is an outfitter, but it is closed for the day.

The Red Blaze group has pulled picnic tables together to make a long serving table in a field near the pavilion. There are coolers of beer and soda, chips, beans, potato salad, fruit salad, cookies--a first-class picnic. A crowd of at least thirty thru-hikers is here. Shelton, Jason, and Mission are here, along with a few others I haven't seen since spraining my ankle. At least half of the hikers are new to me. Baltimore Jack, repeat thru-hiker and all-around trail bum, is at the grill, churning out hot dogs and hamburgers. A piece of red tape, roughly the same size as a white blaze, is plastered to the back of his T-shirt.