Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail (25 page)

“Thanks,” she said demurely. Smiley was in a chatty, celebratory mood, asking where everybody was, etc., while Crucible looked like she didn’t care if she hiked another single day on the AT in her life.

When I headed on and turned the corner Whitewater and Nurse Ratchet were having a good laugh. “Did you hear that couple in the tent up there?” Nurse Ratchet asked giggling. “They must have been on their honeymoon.”

“You’re talking about Smiley and Crucible?” I asked.

“Is that who it was?” she exclaimed excitedly. “We were trying to guess. She was screaming at the top of her lungs.”

“By the time I got there he called down to me and practically wouldn’t let me leave,” I reported. “She looked like she wanted to drop dead, though—after forty-two miles in one day and now Smiley rampaging.”

And it was rich in irony. The Texan and the New-Jerseyite had chosen the Mason-Dixon Line to celebrate and consummate. The people from the two sides sure were getting along better than during the tumultuous events right in this area 143 years before.
Finally
!

Of course, it was no surprise that romances would be struck up in any endeavor as intense as an AT thru-hike. The same scene played itself out again a couple days later. Smiley had again called out to me from his tent in a chatty mood next to a supine Crucible. The sun and moon of sexual reassurance shone in his face. Fifteen minutes later I caught up with Mayfly, a prim and proper, lanky solo hiker from South Carolina. She had passed their tent, set up five yards off to the side of the AT, while the fireworks were in progress. She related in amazed tones what she had just walked past.

Don’t ask me how, but Smiley and Crucible made it all the way through Pennsylvania. She then had to get off to return to her job as a school teacher, and, if what I heard was correct, her husband. As they say, the Appalachian Trail is the journey of a lifetime.

The AT runs 250 miles through Pennsylvania, third only to Virginia and Maine in length. The elevation is low throughout the Allegheny Range, but the footway is infamous. Seemingly endless broken-up boulder fields present themselves to the hiker. It is also reputed to have the meanest rattlesnakes on the trail. What’s more, thru-hikers normally pass through Pennsylvania during high summer, when the bugs and heat are at their worst. Finally, the AT in Pennsylvania includes long stretches without any available water sources.

Given all that, it comes as no surprise that Pennsylvania is one of the least-favorite states for every thru-hiker. In fact, the two states after it, New York and New Jersey, are also rocky, hot and dry when thru-hikers pass in mid-summer. It all forms a sort of psychological test. And it’s here in Pennsylvania that all the initial excitement and momentum from a long-planned hike completely ebbs and the adventure starts to feel like a real job. Depression sets in and people quit. I tried to look upon these down moments as existential to the entire endeavor.

The trail in Pennsylvania begins in the Michaux State Forest before emptying out onto checkerboard-like pastures of farmland. Arguably, the first one hundred miles in Pennsylvania are the very easiest on the entire trail.

Nurse Ratchet, Whitewater, and I, along with a young kid with an independent streak named Break Time, arrived at U.S. Highway 30 after a few days in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Nurse Ratchet had mentioned a particular “problem” that, if not attended to with a special product, would require her to get off the trail. The four of us hitched to the local grocery store to re-supply, but in keeping with most rural stores, its supplies were limited. While waiting in the checkout line I quietly asked a lady where to get this particular product around this area.

Looking at the four of us, she asked, “Are you hikers?”

“How did you ever guess?” I responded.

“I’ve always wanted to hike the AT,” she bubbled. “Can I give you all a ride somewhere?” We jumped into the back of her pickup and she took us to a nearby pharmacy that had everything Nurse Ratchet required. She then took us to a local restaurant and we were obviously effusive in thanking her when she dropped us off.

As we were wrapping up our meal, Whitewater looked out and said, “Somebody must have left something. That lady is back.” But we all quickly took stock of our backpacks, hiking poles, etc., and nothing was missing.

“I just got home,” she said when arriving at our table, “and was bragging to my husband about these four AT hikers I met. He told me he wants to cook everybody some steaks and do your laundry.” Even though we had just finished lunch we all looked at each other, laughed hysterically, and got up to put our backpacks back in her pickup.

Her husband, Mike, an ex-special-ops military guy was as down-to-earth and authentic a fellow as you could ever want to meet. So perhaps, along with rocks, snakes, humidity, and black flies, Pennsylvania turns out authentic people. All things considered, not a bad tradeoff!

Just as promised they did our laundry and cooked us a full steak dinner. Despite all his adventures overseas in the Special Forces, Mike was wide-eyed and wondrous as he asked one enthusiastic question after another about our journey. They even asked us to stay for the evening, but we were so self-centered we wanted to get back to the trail and eke out a few miles before dark.

When they dutifully dropped us back at the trailhead where we had gotten off earlier in that day, Mike said, “Could I just ask one thing of you?”

“Sure, sure,” we all replied.

“Please,” he pleaded, “just drop us a line when it’s all over letting us know how it all came out,” and handed us a piece of paper with an address.

“Not only will we do that,” I said, “but we are going to be bragging to everybody about the best trail magic anyone has had so far.”

We were certainly good for the latter promise (we bragged about it in the register at the Quarry Gap Shelter that night and to anybody within earshot for the next few days), but we weren’t true to the former. We lost the address and never sent them a communique.

Hike Naked Day is a surprisingly non-controversial several-year-old tradition on the AT. Perhaps that is because it has been such a smashing success. “Nudity is a state of mind,” one hiker infected with the counter-culture mindset stated plainly. In fact, political and social correctness has now set in to the point that many refer to it as “Clothing Optional Day.”

The standard operating procedure in any male-female hiking tandem on Clothing Optional Day is for the males to hike boldly out front, with ladies meekly and furtively trailing far behind. One male hiker, Dasher, led a coterie of three women in a “clothing impermissible” jaunt through southern Pennsylvania. That night at a shelter he mocked them for self-consciously looking over their shoulders every few seconds. “Wait a minute,” Cutie Pie (one of the three girls) said, “you promised you were going to do nothing but look ahead. How did you know we were looking around?”

“Because I have eyes in the back of my head,” came back the predictable quip.

“How was the participation this year?” I asked Grandpa, a veteran trail wag.

“Better than ever,” he enthused, “but a real gender gap is opening up. I don’t know how we can improve female participation.”

“Making blindfolds mandatory for males would be a start,” Cutie Pie muttered.

For their part, Nurse Ratchet and Whitewater are God-fearing, teetotaling Baptists who don’t smoke, drink, cuss, or hike naked. Nor did I participate. Given how much weight I had dropped, my 6’11” skeletal frame might have scared some unsuspecting hiker even more than a bear.

Pine Grove Furnace State Park marks the halfway point of an AT thru-hike. This was somewhat ironic to me because as a southerner I have most of my life thought of Pennsylvania as a northern state.

The long-running tradition among AT thru-hikers is to attempt at the halfway point to eat a half-gallon of ice cream in one hour. All day, as we raced at an accelerated pace to get there, the buzz on the trail was about who would attempt to do it. In the shelter register 3.7 miles shy of Pine Grove Furnace State Park appeared the following entries:

Tom’s Run Shelters—mile 1,081

5-5-05
: To ice cream or not to ice cream. That is the question.—
Paparazzi

5-5-05
: Having skipped the Four-State Challenge, and even more inexcusably opted out of Hike Naked Day, I will not be denied the half-gallon challenge.—
Skywalker

A heavy thunderstorm delayed my progress, and upon finally arriving, fifteen or twenty hikers were gathered on the general store porch. As I approached people started shouting, “Skywalker, you’re the man. Yeah, baby, you can do it!” I felt like a Roman Gladiator bracing to do battle. But being so soaked, I felt it necessary to dry myself off in the nearby bathroom. The crowd hissed when I announced this delay.

But ten minutes later I was back, determined to join the ranks of AT thru-hikers who have met the Half-Gallon Challenge. I put the half-gallon on the counter and paid the decidedly ambitious price of $5.95. No trail angel was this old tycoon. The rules of the Half-Gallon Challenge are that you are allowed an hour to consume the entire thing. After that, comes the tricky part. You had to hold it down for another hour before rushing to the conveniently located nearby bathroom.

Whitewater and Nurse Ratchet had both sailed through with flying colors earlier. Meanwhile, three hundred-plus-pound Not Guilty had proved to be no match for a half-gallon. After about a half-hour it became clear that my 6’11” frame, and now only 180 pounds, was no match either. Whitewater saw me slumped over the carton and said, “Skywalker, what’s the matter?”

“The sugar’s doing a number on me,” I replied.

“Poor thing,” Nurse Ratchet ridiculed.

When I went over to throw the rest of it away Nurse Ratchet said, “Skywalker, you are the biggest wimp in the world.”

“No,” I replied, “I’m the tallest wimp in the world.” Then I moped over to the hiker register and wrote:

Pine Grove Furnace State Park—mile 1,087

5-5-05
:
UNCLE—
Skywalker