“Orange Juice & Rattlesnakes”

AT Day 66

Miles Today: 24.94

AT Mile: 1185.3

(Stay-AT-Swatara Hostel [tent])

I was poking around in the rocks, looking for rattlesnakes, when the man in the blue shirt with the orange juice caught my attention. I had been so distracted by the prospect of finding snakes, that I completely missed his blue shirt, just on the other side of a shrub when I walked up to the point.

This morning I had messages from Boots who had looked at the miles and notes up trail on the FarOut app, and she’d found a spot where everyone was leaving comments about a den of rattlesnakes. Having not seen any rattlesnakes yet on trail, and being at least a little bit curious to see if I could find them, I wandered off trail at Twinkler Ledge to the place where they’ve been reported last week.

It’s been raining the last few days though, and temperatures are strikingly cooler than they were last week. Last week apparently everyone saw rattlesnakes there. There were reports of people finding anywhere between 5-7 of them!

Not that I wanted to get too tangled up with snakes after the relationship that I had with a girl names Sparkler some 2 or 3 years ago, but I still wanted to poke around and see if there was anything worth finding. Some people aren’t so quick to learn their lessons I guess.

“Hey!” Shouted the man with the orange juice. “Do you want some orange juice?” He asked, holding up a container of orange juice.

I hesitated for a moment, first to make sure I didn’t accidentally step on a rattlesnake, but then to think about his proposal.

“I don’t know,” I finally said. “If I drink it, are you going to carry the container out for me?”

When he told me he would, I accepted the offer and gladly took the his container of juice.

I hadn’t had orange juice in a long time. It reminded me that I used to really like orange juice after a day on trail. It also reminded me that it’s been a long time since I’ve had any psychedelics on trail.

It’s been 14 days since I started my break from mushrooms and (L)ove. I had Molly with Boots in Harper’s Ferry a week ago. So in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that I’ve lost my familiarity with psychedelic medicines. But it has been a minute. And the offer of orange juice from the man with the orange juice reminded me of that simple fact. It also reminded me of how important those medicines were to the first 50 days of my hike of the Appalachian Trail.

The man with the orange juice told me that his name was Dave and I told him that my name is Wormwood. He commented that he hadn’t gotten himself a cool trail name yet, but proposed that maybe “OJ” could be his name. I told him not to worry about it; it had taken 1600 trail miles before I found Wormwood.

So I never did find any snakes there, but Dave reminded me that it had been some time since I’d had any mushrooms. As such, when I got back to trail after my detour to find snakes, I dropped pack and ate a gram of psilocybin mushrooms.

It was an hour later that I stopped and stood still, looking down the trail, and I said, “This was a profoundly good idea.”

The trip today stood as proof that there was a tollerance that had built during the 50 days that I’d been using mushrooms before taking my break. The impact of a gram was significantly greater than what I had been getting when I’d been doing my 50 consecutive trips.

—

I spent some hours today deep in thought about what it means to be alone and the role that being alone has played in my life… moreover, how I feel about being alone right now in my life.

It’s obviously all spawned out of reflecting back on what happened between my ex-fiance and I in 2023. That relationship ended in a tremendously bad way. There were some awful things that were said. There were days that I didn’t think that I was going to make it to see 2024. But I must have been wrong; somehow I made it all the way to 2025… and to the AT… in spite of the odds.

We were 11 days short of our wedding when she called the relationship to a close. That then led the next 18 months of my life into a spiral of disaster and self destruction.

I’ve had a lot of time on trail to think about it. To think about the prospect of being alone.

In short, I’ve spent the last 18 months trying to find companionship and a ticket out of this feeling of lonesomeness and pain. Only now that I’m on trail–literally just this week–do I now start to realize that a lot of what I was doing was grasping for the thing that I had lost when I lost my fiance. I was trying to get it back in another form.

Then–long story made short–a girl finally opened up to the prospect of joining me, and now I’m here… in this place of deep irony, where I have to wonder if what I wanted all along was what I had before all of this began–the very thing that I already have and have had all along–to be alone.

Before meeting the girl named Sparkler who I almost dedicated my life to, I had reached a point where I was in acceptance that I’d spend the rest of my life alone. And I was authentically and fully okay with that.

I haven’t felt that kind of peace with the prospect of being alone since before meeting her. It’s been more than 6 years since I’ve been okay with being alone. And it’s been more than 18 months that I’ve been trying to fill that hole with another partner.

I don’t want for my weekend with Boots to have only been that… a means to realizing that what I’ve really needed all along has been this thing that was right at my fingertips–to be by myself again. I don’t want for her to be only that and nothing more. She is more than that. But in addition to all those things she is to me and has done for me in the short time we’ve known one another, she also is the person to let me feel okay with being alone again. And in that there has been incredible value.

—

There were some hours this morning where I felt a sort of resentment about these trail journals. I know that might be a strange thing for me to be writing here… 66 days into daily journals about my hike and sharing it with the world and some 400-600 people who have been following along (according to the stats that I get from WordPress). But as I dug deeper into it, I suspect that it’s from the uncertainty that I’m feeling in regard to things after spending the weekend in Harpers Ferry with Boots. I don’t feel like it was the wrong thing to do. Like I wrote yesterday–I felt recharged and reaffirmed after the time we spent together.

But it also made me feel weak to seemingly *need* that kind of external validation… to need someone who can come into my life as a form of proof that I’m worthy of being loved. This morning I was feeling guilt, or maybe something that bordered on resentment for having to be so human. It made me wish in a strange way that I didn’t have to write these journals and share them with the world. Which is so strange to me because I’ve actually become so fond of writing every day. Maybe it’s just that I become disdainful about the simple fact that my story can’t just be simple, happy, and straight-forward. Sometimes it’s going to have to be a story about being lost and confused… in the midst of trying to stay oriented and on trail.

I’m sure there’s a beautiful metaphor in there somewhere, worth digging out another day.

—

It’s been raining the last couple of days, and the rocks of Pennsylvania have become slippery.

Over the first 1,100 miles I only fell one time, somewhere around mile 500. Then last night I fell twice on my way down the side trail to get water, and this morning I took a hard fall that left me completely splayed out on the rocks. I’m fortunate in all three falls that I didn’t get hurt any worse.

—

I’m noticing something about the other hikers I meet on trail. It came to my attention last night and this morning, when I thought back on the people who were at Peter’s Mountain Shelter with me. None of them seemed weak or unweathered. The hikers I meet on trail now are the same *people* I met earlier on in the trail, but they’ve become different in themselves. Even a hiker who started the AT with no trail experience is now pretty damn experienced by most standards, if they’ve managed to make it 1,100 miles on the Appalachain Trial. I remember in the beginning it seemed like the trail brought a lot of fairly inexperienced and somewhat “soft” hikers compared to what I’ve met on Western trails. But they don’t feel that way anymore. We’ve all been through hard weather and bad days by now. A lot of people have left the trail and ended their thru hike by now. But those who are still here are much different than the selection of people who were here at the beginning.

Anymore I don’t feel like a strong hiker amongst the others. At best, I feel like just another one of them. More often than not I find myself as the somewhat slower guy on trail. A lot of hikers are moving a lot faster or pushing a lot more miles than I am anymore.

That said, I’ve also slowed. But I can make excuses all day if you wanted me to.

—

I have in my notes from today, a one-word bullet point that says “swamp.”

Not sure what to say on that one except that I hiked through a swamp today for around 100 yards. If nothing else, it was at least a unique section of trail compared to the otherwise all-encompassing forest.

—

Tomorrow I’ll hike 11 miles to a road crossing where I’ll hitch a ride into Pine Grove, PA. My friend back home sent my next pair of trail shoes there to the post office, and the ones that are on my feet right now are in desperate need of replacement. I aim to get around 500 miles out of a pair. I think that I’m looking close to 575 on these ones. The few extra miles might not seem like much, but I have found that with trail shoes, they go downhill fast after around 450 miles. And that might have contributed to why I’ve been falling so often too–because the tread on my shoes is worn down.

—

I’ve stopped for the night at a hostel called Stay-AT-Swatara. I’m going to stay in my tent for $10, but they had Whoopie-Pies for sale, made by the Amish folks down the road from here. They were divine. Oops… did I just admit that I had more than one of them right off the bat? Yes… I did.

But they also have showers, and I’m in no rush. I made nearly 25 miles today, and that puts me close enough to be able to get to Pine Grove comfortably tomorrow.

I’ll also add this–I have come to realize that writing these journals from seat and table is so many times easier than writing them in my tent. My hands and wrists cramp with how I have to do it in my tent. So I’ve been drawn to shelters and hostels and restaurants not only because I’m a lazy human being, but also because I’m liking being able to write from a more comfortable position.

God… I wish I could have another one of those Whoopie pies without getting a belly ache. Instead, I think that I’m going to bring this to a close and step over to get a shower. I’d like to be to trail early tomorrow, but I also don’t give a damn. I’ll likely still have some mushrooms. Not going to be doing the every day thing anymore, but am going to use them as feels right.

Until another night–

Wormwood.