Blog of Myself

As I sit before this serene lake, drafting this post I am reminded of Walt Whitman who gazed over a similar pond though his of course wasn’t the site of a nuclear fuels processing plant lovingly called “Nuclear Lake” but the sentiment is the same. Old Walt is the inspiration for this post entitled “BLOG of Myself” as it tends to ramble on without direction or resolution in a transcendtental haze. Having cruised through 3 states now I am diving the stories by the states in which they occured. I am now 1,453.7miles into the trail leaving 722.5 and I am writing from Kent, Connecticut as I wait to see a doctor about Lymes Disease.

Pennsylvania:

If anyone reading this blog is inspired to hike anypart of the Appalachian Trail I would strongly discourage you from hiking any of the state of Pennsylvania. It was here I almost quit, with phone in hand tried to arrange transportation home only then to spent a day resting and convincing myself to push onward. My father’s advice, “just assure us you will quit before you go nuts,” vieing with the platitude, “when the going gets rough…” you know the rest. The only redeeming aspect of Pennsylvania were the fields of wild blueberries swollen, sweet and falling off their stems that slowed me as much as the boulder fields.

I stayed in a hotel called the Doyle that is over 100 years old and is an original Annheuser Busch Hotel, a beautiful relic of a past era and still standing-ish. When I approached the entrance a group of ragedy men were filling in a ditch. “A Hiker!” one of the men announced, “We’re just burrying some of your friends” he said. I laughed but he didnt have any teeth so I did so only cautiously. The owner’s wife escourted me in and sat me at the bar. When I told her I wanted to stay the night her eyes lit up and told me, ” You can even take a shower because we finally have hot water!” she exclaimed with an enthusiastic fist pump. It was then I realized I probably wasnt going to get to watch LOST.

The next day I encountered a family of bears. As soon as I noticed the group, a cub broke free of its parents ran onto the trail spun in a confused circle and ran to the other side of the trail leaving its 500lb parents looking across. Now, I don’t know much about bears but am fairly sure the adivce, never come between a cub and its mother, isnt just superstition. But this dolt of a bear left me know choice. I stood there worried and perplexed and decided to try to scare the parents with a lot of noise and pole banging. This had no affect on the mamouth creatures who simply sat up, cocked their head to one side and continued stuffing their gaping jaws with blueberries. Ill just have to fight them I thought so I built up the courage started screaming and charged up the hill. It was truly a Rambo moment. The bears of course never flinched .

New Jersey.

When I reached my first campsite in the Garden State I was saurprised to find a group of 14 year old girls loitering around a couple tents in nothing but bras and panties. This is not something one often finds on the Appalachian Trail. Soon close to 15 girls piled out of two small tents and were flirting with a hunky ridge runner. As an observer I thought how courageous and at the same time how disturbing. The ridgrunner told me they were part of a YMCA camp and that these girls were struggling. When he left the girls turned their attention to me and I asked them “Where are your counselors?” Two of the most scantily clad young ladies raised their hands. “We are the counselors.” They announced. Uh Oh I thought, at which point one of the “counselors” rangled a group of girls to fetch water (a half mile away). They donned flip flops and headed north wearing nothing more than underwear. 3 hours later they returned escourted by the ridgerunner who had caught the counselor trying to catch fish with her bear hands in a protected glacial pond which was only slightly illegal. The next morning I overheard one of the girls complain how she didnt have any clean underwear for the day to whcih the counselor replied, “This is why I told you to bring at least 5 pairs.” “I did” she said, “but I hung them with the food bag last night so they all got wet.” Oddly enought this didnt provoke the question, why did you hang your underwear with the food bag?, as if this logic was intuitive. I didnt feel comfortable asking so I wished them luck on the next leg of their adventure- a canoe trip. Now how this group of girls will manage to stay dry and out of trouble on a fast river when they couldn’t accomplish as much stationary on land is beyond me- maybe something for a later post.

Unfortunately in NJ, I developed terrible blisters on the underside of my feet after a sudden rain storm. The blisters popped and opened soars that bled into my insoles with every step until the pain was so bad I collapsed on a flat part of trail and set up my tent by crawling on hands and knees. Since my NJ resupply went horribly awry I was forced to carry a 10 pack of hotdogs as my protein, praying that they wouldn’t go bad over 5 days of high heat and humidity . Unfortunately the resealable pouch failed and leaked hotdog juice into my food bag coating everything with a thick grime and even soaking into my paper oatmeal packets adding a sour aftertaste to breakfast.

New York:

Crossing the boarder into New York I felt on top of the world and for the first time accomplished, proud of what i had achieved. I don’t know why but I consider New York an important milestone. From the top of Bear Mountain I could see the Mahnattan skyline stretch out before me and I was filled with awe and excitement thinking of all of my friends running to and from auditions in midtown while I sat high above them basking in sun. New York is a notoriously dry section of trail in which water sources are few and far between sometimes upwards of 20 miles. Trail magic frequently takes the form of gallon jugs of water at road crossings that have saved numerous lives im sure. It was here i had my first dehydration scare. At the top of the mountain prior to Bear Mountain I realized I had run out of water knowing the nearest source would be 4 miels north. I knew I had to get there fast so I started running only to become extremely dehyrated 2 miles in. At that point my body’s natural reaction was to cry which was extremely counterproductive but I thought if im going to cry i need to fun even faster. At the top of the mountain, 4 long miles later, I found water and a thru-hiker who had suffered a similar fate the day before. We recounted our tales of tears. Hers being slightly scarrier when she followed what was supposed to be a quarter mile blue blaze trail to water that was actually a mile and half away.

New York hosted a couple treats inlcuding a dozen pink flamingos stuck into the ground at the top of a mountain, a metro north stop called the Appalachian Trail for thru-hikers who commute back to the city and a section of trail through a zoo that also marks the lowest elevation on the trail.

More to come

-Newt