“Surprisingly Pleasant”

AT Day 68

Miles Today: 26.00

AT Mile: 1220.9

(Hamburg, PA Microtel)

Yesterday was a weird day, but anymore I don’t know what a “normal” day on the Appalachain Trail would actually look like. I think I said a week or two back–this trail experience has been like an onion. Sorry to reuse an overused metaphor, but there I am doing it anyways.

It was weird to have a 4-sided shelter (all the shelters on the AT seem to have 3 walls and 1 open side, but this was the second that I’ve seen with 4 walls. And thank god I decided to stay there, because every time I woke in the night it was still raining. I think it rained basically from 10am yesterday until somewhere around 3am today.

It was still sprinkling off and on this morning when I got back to trail. There were 13 of us in the shelter. Maybe 5 of them got to trail early–mostly the older guys. Then I was somewhere in the middle.

Here’s another one of those examples of the trial (or god, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it) creating a beautiful story out of my experience on the trail:

Last night I tossed and turned a lot. I was really struggling with some internal/emotional/spiritual pieces, and in brief, I had a very terrible night. I had nightmares, and every time I woke up there was this strange self-loathing piece that seemed to grow as the night went on. I was dreading getting to trail in that mindset, especially knowing that it was likely to be a long and mostly rainy day.

But then when I stepped onto the trail, there was another hiker who had left just before me but who got turned around. So we basically ended up hiking out from the shelter together, and we stayed together for somewhere around 3 hours this morning. I hadn’t met him before last night, but his trial name is Caboose. He’s with a trail family of probably 5-7 other guys in their mid-twenties.

He’s very well spoke, and clearly educated, and so the conversation was really good between us. So good that it made the miles go by quickly and for my mind to stay completely distracted from the self-loathing bit from this morning.

About an hour into our hiking together I noticed that my thoughts were becoming notably etherial and philosophical and I mentioned to him that I’d taken a gram of mushrooms at camp. Funny, our talking through the entire trip was very nice ultimately. We talked about war, family, work, motivations, hiking, post-trail-depression, and about hiking in general.

I swear that hiking with him completely changed the tone of my day from something that I was dreading into something that was wonderful.

And only now that I’m here writing this at the end of the day, do I see that I started *and* ended the day with other hikers. I started with Caboose, but then when I got 26 miles into my day and I was in the town of Hamburg, PA to resupply, I ran into Stranger and Plinko at the Cabelas. We had dinner together and they let me in on the hotel room that they’d rented across the street. So a day where I thought I was going into a hard one turns out to be good, because of the connection I found with other hikers. How about that… Maybe being solo isn’t the end all be all of hiking…

—

One other big big thing happened today.

When I woke I had a message from Boots telling me that, in spite of the odds against her, she’d managed to find coverage from work next week and had a flight picked out to come up to visit in CT.

It mostly caught me off guard. Even though we’d talked about it over the last week since she left, it didn’t look like it was going to come together. Then, boom–it went through.

I felt a bit overwhelmed by it in the morning–mixed in the emotions from last night and the rain and the mushrooms and all that today. But when I called her this evening, she reaffirmed that I don’t need to worry about anything and that she basically has it all taken care of. She’ll fly in next Friday and back home on Monday. In the meantime she’s arranged with my friend, Hemlock to get transportation for us to and from trail and about the airport. It’s all worked out in such a way that I basically hike, she lands in my arms next friday, and we’ll have a few more days together before the trail’s all said and done.

I’m not stupid… and I know Boots isn’t either. To the contrary, she’s an astonishingly bright girl. I know that she’s felt the distance that has existed between us since our time in Harper’s Ferry. I know that it comes from my needing to be invested in and focused on the trail, but I also know that she’s smart enough to see the importance of our making something of this time we have at the start of what may build into a longer relationship. She wouldnt have bought tickets to fly across the country to see me next week if that weren’t the case. She’s doing what she can to keep this thing alive, and even though it’s new to me and I don’t know what to make of it, I’m treating it the same way that I’ve tried to treat all things on trail, and I’m trying to just go with the flow.

Things feel better that way.

—

On a hotel room floor tonight. Back to trail tomorrow. Might be able to make it to a hostel if there’s open room and it’s still raining. Will see tomorrow.

Next resupply is in 3.5 days at Delaware Water Gap.

Wormwood.