AWOL on the Appalachian Trail (22 page)

"You have a long afternoon," he warns, and then he proceeds to ask rhetorically, "Have you ever hrd about the Mahoosuc Notch being the most difficult mile on the trail? Well, some people say that the mile near the preserve is more difficult than that."

He doesn't elaborate, leaving me to ponder what could be so difficult about these lowlands. I have noticed the heat. All of the thru-hikers who rested here were soaked with sweat and left outlines of their backs or butts where they lay or sat on the dusty porch. The trail gets muckier as I progress. I startle a family of turkeys, which trot down the trail ahead of me. Bog bridges lie in long spans over the trail, which now has some standing water.

The trail exits onto a rural road, crosses a bridge, and then runs parallel to a steamy shallow swamp that was formerly a sod farm. This area is called Wallkill National Wildlife Preserve. The preserve ostensibly exists to promote waterfowl, but it truly excels as a haven for mosquito breeding. They swarm me mercilessly, stinging my exposed arms, legs, neck, and biting through my shirt to draw blood from my chest and back. They also drill unproductively into my pack straps. I dab on some Deet, but it does nothing to deter them. I collapse my trekking poles and stuff them into my pack so I have both hands free to defend myself, developing a constant, preemptive pattern of swatting my face, shoulders, and arms, often scoring multiple mosquitoes in a single slap. Damn the national park's preservation efforts. The end isn't even in sight before welts redden and itch, so I add scratching to my spastic slapping routine. There is a park bench located on this path through the breeding grounds. Never have I seen a bench look less inviting. I'm running this gauntlet.

The trail hits the woods and heads steeply up a hill. Most of my attackers fall back. The only ones still with me are the dolts who are sucking on my pack straps. I quickly tire of sustaining my joglike pace uphill. I collapse on the trail, sapped by the ordeal. I'm tired, hot, irritable, and feel like shedding my itchy skin. I've come twenty miles today, and I need to conjure the energy for six more. I take off my shirt, shoes, and socks and air out for nearly a half hour. I put on my new AMC shirt and a fresh coat of Deet and finish the day with renewed vigor. In the late afternoon, I cross another long patch of cattail-laden swamp. There are no mosquitoes to pester me, and a luxurious boardwalk cuts a path for me through the head-high cattails.

I easily hitch a ride to the Church of the Mountain Hostel in Vernon, New Jersey. The hostel occupies the clean and spacious basement of the St. Thomas Episcopal Church and is as thoroughly equipped as any hostel I would see. There are showers, laundry, TV, Internet, and a kitchen. And so, of course, the hostel is massively popular with thru-hikers; at least three dozen are here. A few hours after dinner, Stretch, Tipperary, and I walk a couple of blocks to Burger King for a dessert of milkshakes and fries. I sense, correctly it turns out, that this would be my last chance to spend trail time with Tipperary. I try to walk slowly on our return, to keep a distance from a gruff-looking character ahead of us. Tipperary, with his unfailing congeniality, catches up with the man so he can introduce himself. I wonder if Tipperary has forgotten that people in the real world aren't used to introductions from strangers. I brace myself, not wanting Tip to be exposed to the rudeness I expect him to receive. Tip asks, "Are you a hiker, too?"

Initially the man's expression is defensive, and then his face is softened by Tip's sincerity. "Yeah. I'm a
hitch
-hiker."

Many hikers are still at the hostel when I leave in the morng. They are opting for a zero day, and I envy them. Too recently I took a day and a half off at the Mohican Outdoor Center. A man has offered Trace and One-Third a ride to the outfitter, and the three of them are stuffed into the cab of a pickup truck. I jump in the bed of the truck with my pack and bum a ride back to the trailhead.

With a pack full of food and weary legs, I trudge up the trail. Bono had told about sneaking rocks into the pack of his hiking partner, Rocket. Rocket suspected that his pack was heavier, but he did not find the rocks until the end of the day. Am I the victim of a cruel practical joke? My pack feels heavier than it should. It was unattended for most of my stay at the hostel, and there were plenty of thru-hikers, all potential suspects. I feel foolish and paranoid, but I know I will feel more foolish if I walk all day with ten pounds of rocks, so I stop and unload my pack. There is nothing there other than the same stuff that I always carry. Somehow it feels heavier.

A tree lies fallen next to the trail. The top points away, and the underside of the roots face me. A disk of earth ten feet tall was pried up when the tree toppled. I hear digging and then a grunt of recognition. A bear is on the other side of the root disk, and we've both just realized how dangerously close we are to one another. I back away and peek around the roots. To make matters worse, it is a mother bear with her cub. The cub scampers away, and the mom hops up on the trunk of the fallen tree and walks away, sneering back over her shoulder. I fumble with camera settings, hoping to get a shot before she gets too far, when she turns around to have a word with me. I get one picture as she growls and advances toward me. The growl sounds like that of a horse expelling air through its jowls, but much more effective at communicating a threat. I backpedal as fast as I can without turning to run, still trying to click pictures.

When I distance myself, the bear follows her cub. I review the pictures to see what I've captured. The last two pictures show nothing but tree limbs and patches of blue, as I had my camera skewed skyward during my frantic retreat. These two bears bring the total count to sixteen. I'm content to have seen a good number of bears, but I am no longer eager to see more.

I've definitely seen enough rocks. This day is as rocky as any day in Pennsylvania. About nine miles into the day, I hit the top of a ridge capped with a jumble of stones. "NJ/NY" is painted on a boulder, marking the border. Continuing along the ridge, there are many bulging slabs of stone, some as long as seventy-five yards, like concrete whales surfacing in a sea of shrubbery. I navigate this boulder-strewn ridge for five tiresome miles. Many times I need to pull myself up or lower myself down using my hands. At one juncture, trail builders have made a wooden ladder to manage a sheer rock face. I take a break and lie exhausted on one of the whale backs. I could sleep here, but I open my eyes when I hear Tunnel Vision and his brother Bull pass by. "We were ready to draw white chalk lines around your body."

Near the intersection of the trail with NY 17A, I spot a new ice cream stand. This more than compensates for my disappointing progress. While I am gulping down a milkshake, a customer offers me a ride to the town of Greenwood Lake. It is a tiny town clustered along the shoreline of the lake that does not draw in many thru-hikers. I stay at an old eight-room motel in a musty room with no phone. But it is cheap, and I am happy to be inside when an early evening thunderstorm rolls through, dense with lightning.

Hitching a ride back to the trail is tougher than most hitches. I stake out a spot where it will be easy for drivers to pull off the road. A steady stream of morning traffic passes without slowing, and then a police car pulls past my withdrawn thumb and coasts to a stop thirty yards beyond. Hitching is illegal in New York, so maybe this is his way of warning me to move on. Or maybe he watches for the reappearance of my offending thumb.

I go knock on his window and ask with affected naivete, "Is hitching allowed here?" He tells me that hitching is illegal, but if I'm standing behind his car, he wouldn't be able to see anything. It's his abstruse way of giving me the go-ahead. Good intentions aside, my hitching is still spoiled because no driver is going to pull over next to the police car. I head down the road, dreading the possibility of a two-mile road walk just to get back to the trail. As soon as I am out of sight of the police car, I start thumbing each car that passes. Only a few pass before I have a ride.

With all I've read about the trail, I am surprised by the dearth of accounts about the difficulty of this section. The hills are low, but the trail goes steeply up and down, and there is a rock scramble at the top of many hills. This day is harder than the Roller Coaster in Virginia. Taken together, the last two days have been harder than anything since Tennessee.

New York City is sometimes visible from a few of these summits, but I walk this stretch of southern New York in perpetually overcast skies and intermittent light rain. A United States flag is painted on a slab of rock at one of these overlooks. "Remember 9/11" and a number of similar messages have been scrawled near the flag. The attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan took place during the time I was contemplating my hike. The second war in Iraq began less than a month before I quit my job. From a national perspective, this was the most tumultuous era of my lifetime, and I was about to go on leave from the world. These events trivialized my selfish plans and added to my reservations about being away from my family, my job, and the world. There is no objective importance in walking the range of mountains in the Eastern United States. As my departure date neared, my unease faded. The news won't change because I'm not watching it. I had dismissed those thoughts, and they did not reenter my mind until seeing this memorial. I am doing the right thing.

The trail enters Harriman State Park, and I have a short reprieve from the rocky ups and downs in southern New York. The terrain in the park is grassy and open. Snakes like it here. I pause while a black snake slithers across the trail ahead of me. Snakes have been abundant over the past few weeks, so they no longer take me by surprise. I've seen a handful of them already today and hardly give them a second thought. I take note of this one because it is exceptionally large, at least six feet long and as thick as my wrist.

Before my day is done, there are more clusters of boulders. The trail passes though a crevasse in a huge slab of bedrock. The crevasse is chest-deep and barely wide enough for a person. The formation is known as the "lemon squeezer." My pack scrapes both sides as I squeeze through. A little later, at Fingerboard Shelter, Tunnel Vision tells me he had to carry his pack over his head. Bull and Stretch are also at the shelter, along with a section-hiking father with two young kids.

The father and kids have claimed one end of the Fingerboard Shelter, probably a bit worried about our shabby appearance. Stretch, Tunnel Vision, and Bull are all young men, but trail wear makes them all look older, especially Tunnel Vision with his scars. I am happy t the three of them are still young enough to act like kids. They imitate their favorite animated shows and giggle at their own humor. They are puerile in the best sense of the word, and they make me think better of the world. Tunnel Vision looks up at a wet sock hanging from a rafter overhead and asks, "Is that going to drip on my head all night?"

"Not if you sleep with your mouth open."

Later he performs a mock distress call: "I'm lost."

"Where are you?"

"I'm on a mountain surrounded by things that are tall and green...yes, they appear to be trees. I am directly under the sun right...about...hold on...right about...now!"

This shelter is made of stone and planted on a huge slab of smooth rock, giving it a wonderful, earthy feel. Thunderstorms rage much of the night, making for a restless night of sleep. Bats fly in and out of the shelter between bursts of the storm.

Everything is wet the next morning. My shoes get soaked from grass and undergrowth that are wet from last night's rain. More rock scrambles slow me down. The day is hot and humid, and the trail is demanding. I'm sweating more than I have anywhere on this hike. My clothes look like they would if I had jumped into a swimming pool. I reach the Palisades Parkway and see a road sign, unbelievably stating it is only thirty-four miles by highway to New York City. Four lanes of traffic zoom by at seventy miles per hour. I question my ability to reconcile this speed with my slow-moving world, and I wait for a spacious gap between vehicles before crossing.

Six miles later I reach Bear Mountain, New York. Bear Mountain is the name given to the city, a park, an inn, and a bridge. The park has vast mown lawns and a pond. Dozens of people are out picnicking, strolling the path around the pond, and feeding ducks. The Bear Mountain Inn is a sprawling rustic resort with a fancy restaurant, where the waiters wear white shirts and vests. My sleeveless shirt and shorts are wet rags, but unabashedly I plop down in a booth to eat lunch and dry out in the air-conditioned room. Beyond the inn, the trail passes through the Trailside Museum and Wildlife Center, along the same asphalt path where parents show their children a small assortment of zoo animals. A boy climbing on the Walt Whitman statue asks me, "Why do you have those ski poles?"

Then the AT crosses the Hudson River on the catwalk of the Bear Mountain Bridge, a four-lane suspension bridge. This is the lowest point on the Appalachian Trail: 124 feet above sea level. I carry my pack east over the bridge. Directly below, a tug pushes a barge north up the Hudson.

Stretch, Tunnel Vision, and Bull had told me of their plan to stop here and take a day off to meet friends in New York, so this is the last I will see of them on the trail. Crossroads left the trail in New York to return to work before losing his job. Tipperary is behind; Crash and Patience are hopelessly ahead. I am sobered by my separation from thru-hikers I was most connected with in the southern part of my hike. Where are Ken and Marcia?

In the restaurant my clothes had dried from soaked to merely damp. Back in the woods, they are quickly drenched once again. A southbound hiker greets me. He is wearing a full sweat suit, hood plastered to his head by a baseball cap, and gloves. He tells me he is out just for the day. A couple of years ago he suffered through Lyme disease, so he hikes in ninety-degree weather wearing stifling attir to ward off ticks.