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AT Day 62

Miles Today: 20.56

AT Mile: 1088.1

(Quarry Gap Shelter)

Tonight will be my second night sleeping in a shelter on the AT. And today was a wonderful day.

Those are the first two things that come to mind as I sit down tonight and try to answer the question of “how was the day today?”

The days that are broken up like today are often the most enjoyable. The days that aren’t just a single thing, but instead are punctuated and separated into parts. With clearly defined beginnings, middles, and ends.

I started the day camped beside a river with a lot of other hikers. I didn’t really know any of them, suffice to say that I’d met several of them at some point in the preceeding thousand miles, but I wasn’t hiking in with any of them, and I didn’t set camp with any of them. Rather, some of us just happened to have ended up there all at the same time. Unfortunately for me, most of the people camped there last night arrived there well before I did, so I had a hell of a time trying to find a place to set camp amongst all the rocks and boulders. But eventually I found something and was able to make do. I will note that I have quite the advantage as a solo hiker such a small tent. It’s saved me several nights over. I only came to realize that when I was hiking with Leo a couple weeks back and we had so much trouble finding space for both of us to set together.

I meant to set my alarm for 5am, but forgot to do so, as my watch was charging when it came to mind last night. Nonetheless, the birds started chirping right around that time anyways, so I woke around 5:20, broke camp fairly quickly, and was on trail just after 6am. Would have been earlier, but another hiker named Boardwalk caught me and we chatted for a bit.

Like yesterday, my main goal was to get through the miles in the morning before temps got too high. And that mostly worked out. I did stop for too long at my first shelter around 5 miles in, but there were other hikers whom I knew from before Harper’s. I’m happy that I’ve become better on this trail with stopping in the social opportunities and not just walking by just because I can.

At this point I feel like I’ve gained a good idea of what my AT “community” is this summer. I don’t think that I’ll ever get a “tramily” out here, but I’ve met most of the people that I meet every day out here, if that makes sense. It’s rare that I’m meeting anybody new.

On that note, I met someone this morning whom I had not seen for around 700 miles! He and I actually started on the same day, and had seen one another from time to time in the first few weeks, but after he got Noro we hadn’t seen one another again until this morning. He’s 20 years old and just got out of the military about 2 weeks before starting the AT. He’s a ball of energy and fun to be around. Reminds me of myself in some ways. Not most of them. We’re also very different.

But we hiked together for a bit this morning, then we caught an uber together from Mile 17 into town where there was a Walmart and an All You Can Eat Chinese buffet.

On the way in we had the most horribly negative Uber driver!

Earlier in the day Stranger and I had been talking about how people in the world outside the trail have this tendency of being excited to share terrible news with us, since we’re disconnected from most media cycles and don’t hear about most stories.

A week or two back someone heard me talking about Colorado and had to throw in about some terrible violence that had been happening in Denver–completely unrelated to our conversation about hiking the mountain trails of Colorado. Or I had someone tell me about some guy in Washington who murdered his kids recently. Fucking hell… only once I get out here do I realize just how much I don’t want to know about all the terrible things that are constantly happening all around the world.

But I bring this up because our Uber driver was the opitome of this theme. From the moment we got in he was telling us how things were so terrible all around the world and in his life. I even asked directly if he had any good news or if the world was just all a terrible and bad place. I think he started to realize that I was being condescending to him. I wasn’t trying to get kicked out of our ride to Walmart, but I wanted this guy to see just how terrible he was sounding.

After egging him on for a bit to try and hear *anything* positive from him, I finally shifted gears and tried something different.

“Hey Bobby, did you hear about the guy who murdered all three of his kids last week up in Washington?”

There was a moment before he said no, that he hadn’t.

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “You should look into that one! Yeah! He killed all three of them! You’d love it!”

For the next couple of miles there was an awkward tension in the air as he was undoubtedly trying to recuperate his hope for a tip and I was trying to keep from getting a bad rating on Uber. We both had our motivations to behave ourselves.

For the record, I tipped and he dropped us off at the Chinese place next to Walmart.

Before getting out however, I made a point of telling him that my friend Stranger and I had been having an amazing summer on the Appalachain Trail and that things in our lives had been going splendidly well, that the world we were exposing ourselves to has been a beautiful place, and that we were really fortunate to have his help getting a ride into town for our resupply. In short, I wanted to make it clear to him that the world is not just a terrible and awful place.

I could hear him telling me to fuck myself, even if he didn’t say it audibly.

—

I’m deeply in need of new shoes. Fortunately I got my resupply guy in Arizona to send a pair to me up trail. They’ll arrive on Friday, but I wont be there to pick up until Monday. These ones will be toasted by the time I get there. But they’ll have to make it.

—

Strange that I would have such a good day today, following the dreams that I had last night. I had terrible nightmares last night. It was one of the dreams that I’ve had several times over. It started about two years ago. The dream is that I accidentally killed someone, and I hid the body. But the recurrent part of the dream is that the body continues to *almost get discovered*. It’s weird because I can make no sense of the murder part. In the dream the details of that part are vague. It’s clearly accidental, and I know that the hiding of the body is wrong, but it happens sort of like a puppet being led by a master. Then the dream is this Kafkaesque story of knowing that I’m a good person and that the murder isn’t who I am, but also knowing that I’m wrong to be getting away with killing someone. I don’t know… it’s a weird thing that I dream maybe every couple of months. It’s awful.

That’s how I started the day. Waking out of that. But then had people to hike with, ate at the best Buffett that I’ve ever been to, consumed approximately 17 pounds of food, got resupplied, showered, am camped at a shelter where I have privacy to half the building.

Supposed to be hot hot hot tomorrow, so everyone here is getting up at 4 and aiming to be on trail at 4:30. God help us. It’s going to be early. But we all want to hike while the temps are good. That way it will be justifiable to rest mid day.

My plan is to resupply in 4 days.

—

Oh! Tomorrow is the half way point, and somewhere there’s a gas station or something where we’re supposed to eat a half gallon of ice cream.

The Buffett today was practice. Tomorrow we eat ice cream!

A well fed Wormwood–Out.

AT Day 61

Miles Today: 32.45

AT Mile: 1068.2

(Falls Creek, PA)

In the back of my head I’ve known all along that it wouldn’t last forever, or maybe even for very long. That eventually I would have to say goodbye.

Nothing ever truly lasts.

But I didn’t expect that it was going to be this soon, or that it was going to happen today. It had become such a part of my life that I’d forgotten about that thing with impermanence.

Life is like that, and the trail is only a reflection of life itself.

And today is a reminder of the pain of love and loss.

Today I lost the owl feather that I picked up on my second day of the Appalachian Trail. The feather that I almost lost 3 days later at the NOC. And the feather that I’ve carried with me for over a thousand miles since then.

I got my loaner pack from Hyperlite while they repair the shoulder strap on my primary pack, and the chest strap is constructed just a little bit differently. And that’s where I’ve been storing the owl feather. But today at one point I looked down and it was gone. I must have lost it when I was reaching for water, an hour before.

Some time later in the afternoon I asked another hiker if she saw it on trail and she said that she had, and that she’d even had the thought that “maybe it was Wormwood’s feather” but that she hadn’t paid it any further attention.

I could have gone back at that point, but by then, I had almost made my peace with it being gone. It would have been at least 6 miles round trip to go back for it, and even then there was no assurance that it would still be on trail.

So I let it go.

Nothing lasts.

Everything is temporary in the end.

—

I started early to trail this morning, thinking that it was going to be another hot and humid one. It was my first day being up by 5:30am, and to trail before 6. It made breaking 30 miles much easier than starting at 8am, like I had been before Trail Days.

Today is my first 30+ mile day in around a month–since before trail days. It’s one of my highest mile days. I certainly didn’t plan it that way, but here we are.

I’m now out of the state of Maryland and into Penselvania. I have no idea how to spell it. I’ll have time to figure it out.

Saw bear tracks in the mud this morning. Fresh.

It rained hard for a short time this morning too, but not for long. Mostly this morning it was just thick fog. Then, as it warmed up, you could see the water hanging in the air. It felt thick.

Surprisingly there was a light breeze to blow the humidity out by afternoon. And that stopped things from becoming intollerable.

For much of today I hiked with a guy I met back at Pearisburg. His name is Rorshock. We’ve met a couple of times, and he doesn’t do as big of miles, but today he kept up very well. Having the company was nice. It made the miles pass much faster, compared to my early morning miles today. Those early miles today were hard. I skipped coffee until 10am, but before that I was really dragging ass.

There was a half of a deer fawn in the trail today. It was a grusome scene. Best I can guess is that it was either a coyote or a bobcat that killed it. It looked fresh. It was disturbing.

—

My heart wandered just as far as my feet today. I try to remember in the days following a weekend like we just had, that my thoughts aren’t all to be trusted. Especially those that are less productive sometimes destructive.

There was maybe a little bit of that today. Weight on the soul, I’ll call it. I could hear something similar when I talked briefly with Boots on the phone in the afternoon.

But I’m sure the distance and reflecting on the time it’ll be before we see one another again weighs on both of us. As do many things, no doubt.

Life and love are funny. They both circle and play with the idea of loss.

I’m heartbroken that I’ve lost some of the things that I’ve lost. Losing that feather made me choke up and I thought for a moment that I was going to cry.

But nothing lasts.

“Nothing lasts, but nothing is lost.”

Wormwood.

AT Day 57-60

Miles Today: 6.73 (day 57)

AT Mile: 1026.6

(Harper’s Ferry)

Part 1

This weekend has been so many things. Just like the trail has been. In the same way that it’s been impossible for me to pick out single moments of the trail to highlight the whole of the hike, it’ll be impossible for me to pick out single moments from the last four days.

I’ll begin with this–the weekend did not go well.

At least in the sense that “well” means that things moving forward will be simple, easy, and resolute.

Instead, things moving forward from this weekend will be challenging, complicated, and (most importantly), potentially worth fighting for.

It would have been simple and easy if Boots had arrived here and the weekend played out so that we weren’t interested in one another by the time Monday arrives. That’s not how it played out though.

Instead, we end the weekend entangled and intertwined. Even though I still have 1,200 miles of northbound walking to do, and even though she lives in a state that I’ve never wanted to live in, and even though it would be simpler for us both to go our seperate ways–in spite of all that, we’ve ended the weekend with intention of continuing with this thing we started at Trail Days.

—

She arrived Thursday night, having driven more than 9 hours from Tennessee. The night was passionate and intense, as we both expected that it would be.

We slept poorly.

On Friday morning we shuttled back to the AT, 7 miles south of Harpers Ferry to hike that last segement of Virginia together.

Hiking with her was fun and strange. The miles went by more quickly than any that I’ve walked on the AT to this point. We talked the whole time, laughed, and loved.

Spent the afternoon in downtown Harper’s Ferry. Took in the sights and attractions. Took the pictures. Ate ice cream.

A storm rolled in during the afternoon, and we took shelter under an awning while rains soaked everything like an Arizona monsoon.

I honestly wasn’t sure if we’d end up meeting Molly during the weekend until the moments just before collectively deciding that we would. I was nervous. We may both have been.

But any sense of that faded quickly and we met one another completely on saturnday night. We talked and made love. We looked at all the insecurities and uncertainties. Talked about our pasts and former lovers. Tried to imagine how things could work out in the long run with her living in Tennessee and my living in Arizona.

We may have found some answers, and some may have remained unresolved. No matter though, we grew a lot closer on Saturday night–more than I was expecting, and maybe more than I was comfortable stepping into until it happened.

It rained much of Sunday, but we still vacationed like lovers.

We traveled to a cannabis dispensary (thank God for Maryland recreational dispos!), and then to the Antetiam Battlefield Historical National Park. The former road stop was familiar, but the latter was not. Antietam was significantly heavier than I was prepared for. It wasn’t anything like a traditional National Park. It was the land that held the deadliest battles of the American Civil War.

As the Park Service always does, they had an astoundingly well developed visitor center and resources. But it was also a grim reminder that funding to the National Park Service is being slashed by the federal government. I don’t care to make my journals political. I don’t care which party is involved. I care about outcomes. And from what I can see from this perspective, it looks like a bad situation for the future America’s National Parks. I hope that I’m wrong.

That said, we still enjoyed the visit, and it was worth the 30 minute drive north of Harpers.

Someone at the Visitor Center recommended that we visit the city of Sheapordstown after Antietam, which we did and found wonderful. In spite of the rain, Boots had two umbrellas in her car, and so we were able to enjoy the town to our contentment. A crystal shop, a book store, a popcorn popper, and the Blue Moon Cafe for lunch.

—

Coming into this weekend, I was worried that I’d have trouble being present in the here and now with her. I worried that I’d be stuck on the temporaryality of it all–scared that it would have to come to an end on Monday. But one of the greatest things that I got out of this weekend was an ever-present sense of the here-and-now. I really felt like I was *here* through the weekend, and not lost in the prospect of saying goodbye on Monday.

That ache didn’t begin until today.

It’s Monday now. A little after noon.

We managed to successfully sleep in this morning, well past the rising of the sun. We imagined what it might be like to be lovers.

But I felt the first stings of heartache when we began packing the room to check out.

She’d brought salt lamps, soft blankets, pillows, and everything that we could do to turn the hotel room into something that felt more like home. We bought a gingerbread cookie candle in Harpers Ferry and violated the hotel rules by burning it in the room. Shhhhh… don’t tell the front desk.

And it all made the weekend all the better. We felt here when we were here. Time and time again, Boots asked me what I was thinking as the weekend went on, and almost every time I told her that I was just being present and here with her.

We weren’t sure what things would look like moving forward from this weekend. We still don’t *know* but a much clearer picture is formed.

We plan to see one another again. Sooner than later, if we can.

Right now the plan is to potentially have Boots fly up to Connecticut or New York in about a month.

—

We’re still together now–checked out of the hotel, and relaxing at the Harpers Ferry Public Library to keep sheltered from the heat and humidity outside. In the direct sun, no longer hidden by the forest, the sun is intense today. Hiking will be hot and wet.

Boots is reading a book from the bookstore in Sheapordstown while I click and clack on a keyboard for the first time in a few days.

The vacation away from trail has been good for me. It has felt rejuvenation.

It felt good to feel loved.

It felt good to give love.

It felt like something I hadn’t felt in a long time to be with a partner who was on the same page.

The intensity of it scares both of us a bit. But the distance and circumstance right now makes things feel somehow more mannagable.

Nobody knows what happens next. We’re all just walking down a trail, one step at a time. After this far in life, I feel like I have a better idea of what to expect in the next footstep. But certainty is an illusive thing. And accepting that truth has historically been very difficult for me.

If the trail has done nothing else for me however, it has at least done this–it’s helped me to let go and be here.

Maybe that came from the psychedelics in those first 50 days, or maybe from the embrace of the forest, maybe it was because of the Molly, or maybe it was from the tingles of falling in love that caused it.

Whatever it may be, I feel different as I sit here writing this than I’ve ever felt in my life before this.

I have a better idea what to expect in the next footstep, but I’m also more detached from whether or not my expectation is right or not.

Anymore, I don’t fear whether or not things are going to work out the way that I want for them to work out. I feel like I’ve become better at accepting with my entirety that what is meant to happen will happen. It may or may not be what I *want* to happen. But it will be what is supposed to happen.

That makes saying goodbye to a lover just a little bit more managable.

I know myself well enough by now to have an idea of what to expect from our saying goodbye. Boots already shed tears this morning. I’ll do the same in the first miles of Maryland.

—

Going forward, the state borders will come more quickly. Virginia was the longest state of the AT. It makes up around 25% of the trail. Over the next 41 miles, I’ll cross three state lines.

I have a friend named Soul Slosher who I’ll probably connect with tomorrow. He’s a thru hiker with a lot of miles underfoot. I think that he’s hiked 16 long trails! We first met on the Colorado Trail, but then reconnected on his hike of the AZT a few years back, and now he works as an AT Ridge Runner. We’ve been looking forward to seeing one another ever since I shared that I’ll be out east for the AT this summer.

I don’t know exactly where my heart will go in the coming hundred miles or so. Soon I’ll be at the half-way point of the Appalachian Trail. In a couple of days. And from there, I don’t know, except that it will be what it’s supposed to be.

The summer is definitely here though. It’s hot now. Temperatures look like they’ll be hovering in the 80s and 90s moving forward.

The foliculitus on my thighs has been bad and bothersome since that humid day on the Roller Coaster, so I expect much of the same in the months ahead. As such, it’s not my plan to hike between 12-3pm on hot days. I’ve never succeeded at actually taking time off the trail midday like that, but it’s the only way I can see making it through miles like I had leading up to Harpers.

I have another friend from the CDT who will be joining me in about three weeks. His name is Hemlock. He’s a Triple Crown hiker and lives near the AT in CT. We’ve been in contact all throughout the last five years, but even more these last two months that I’ve been on the AT.

I’ve really been looking forward to sharing miles with him. He absolutely kicked my ass when it came to hiking on the AT, but this time around I’ll have trail legs and he’ll be coming to the trail without training. I’m planning on taking the miles easier for that week, and I think that it’ll be nice to have the company again.

As for the rest of the miles ahead, I expect them to be somewhat lonely. The trail’s nearly half-way through. I was told by another Triple Crown hiker I know from the PCT and CDT that he expects me to “find my group” around the half-way point. I don’t know that I’ve found that group, but I do feel like I have a clear picture of the social role I play on this year’s Appalachian Trail.

I get that I am a solo hiker. There are others like me, and we connect from time to time. There are lots of other thru hikers whom I’ve met and know well enough to call by trail names. But I don’t expect to find a “trail family” on the AT anymore. Instead, I think that I’ll likely remain this solo drifter, a coyote-spirit, loner, and dreamer.

This trail has done me a lot of good.

I’m not ready to pretend that it’s done or that there are no great challenges ahead. I know otherwise.

There are still 1,200 miles of trail ahead. There are still a lot of challenges and hardships ahead.

The difference now is that I’m no longer afraid of what comes in the next footstep. Because now I believe, much more fully than before, that wherever the next footstep lands, it’s where it’s supposed to be.

Part 2

It’s been a few hours and a few miles now since we parted ways and said goodbye. The girl named boots, who I met beside a bonfire as strangers, walked with me over the bridge between West Virginia and Maryland after we finished lunch in Harpers Ferry. The town had been good to us, and she reminded me several times that this would only be our first visit to Harpers; that we’d surely come back again. 

I thought that I would cry after we kissed and I went north on the Appalachain Trail again, but it never came to be. That’s not for lack of significance in the weekend or the human connection that I found in a girl called Boots; rather, I think that I was just ready to be back on trail. 

It was just past 3pm and the temperature was high again. So was the humidity. I wonder if it will be possible to become more used to this humidity-temperature combination over the next thousand miles, lest this summer become a lot longer than it might otherwise be. 

Fortunately, the trail was fairly flat for most of the afternoon, and temperatures dropped noticeably as the evening wore on. 

One thing that I was surprised to learn coming into Maryland is that moving forward for some time, you can only camp in designated spots, mostly at or in shelters. This is completely different than anything I’ve seen except in National Parks. As such, I can’t just wing it and hike until sunset, then find a place to camp. I actually have to get to a designated site and hope that it’s not taken before I get there. 

For that reason, I didn’t go any farther than this tonight. I stopped hiking at 7pm because it was another 5.7 miles to the next place it’s legal to camp. I didn’t want to go that late, and so here we are. 

I did however stop at the last shelter for dinner and talked with some other hikers there. Five of them were women dressed in what looked to be Quaker or Amish attire–bonnets and dennem blouses. They spoke English, but then would break into a tongue that I was completely unfamiliar with while we all sat around a campfire by the shelter. When I asked the dialect, they told me that it was Penselvania-Dutch. I had a volley of other questsionos that I wanted to ask, but managed to keep it to the basics–whether it was common around here and such. 

As we all sat there I cracked open the last nonalcoholic beer left over from this weekend in Harpers Ferry. I hadn’t planned to bring it to trail, but it was still left when we packed up from the hotel room, and I didn’t want to leave it behind. I could feel a cold quiet in the air as I opened a “beer” in the group, but watched as it settled quickly as well. It was then that I remembered that there had been a sign about prohibiting alcohol in Maryland along the AT. It was an NA beer, but I still felt some weirdness in the moment. Of course the first time that I’d bring an NA beer to trail for the last 400 miles would be within 7 miles of a regulation prohibiting alcohol. 

Anyways… goodbyes are hard. But I felt good at our parting today. I know that I feel the same sense of heartache when I reach the end of the trail too. That’s just how life is. Beautiful things come to an end, just like everything else. And in some cases, that impermanence is what makes them so beautiful. Or at least that’s what I like to believe. 

Wormwood. Out.