Pennsylvania Rocks

Greetings from Lancaster Pennsylvania! Since my last entry we have made it through Maryland and all but fifty miles of Pennsylvania. We expect to be in New England sometime within the next two weeks and we have never been more excited.

Unfortunately, these past few weeks have been the hardest part of the trail so far. Not hard physically, just mentally exhausting. I was warned this would happen in Georgia, by a former thru hiker. She was a middle aged woman from Florida who had hiked the trail with her husband back in the eighties. Her trail name was "Gorilla" because as she put it, "I loved bananas and I didn’t take shit from anyone." Anyway, she told me something that makes more and more sense the farther I hike. She said,"the first thousand miles or so is all physical, the second half is mental" You can see this in the numbers of people who complete the trail. Every year, more than 1,500 people set out from Springer. Of those people, only five to six hundred make it to sign in at Harpers Ferry. Of those that make it, only fifty percent make it to Maine--approximately 200-300 each year.

Now that we have more than 1,200 miles worn into the soles of our shoes, Gorilla’s words make even more sense to me. I understand why so few people make it to Maine and I think it mostly has to do with Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, for lack of a better word, sucks. Now, I don't really hate all of Pennsylvania (after all, this is the state that gave us the Philly Cheese Steak, the Amish, and provided the inspiration for the Rocky movies) just the mountains. They are really boring, and consist of forests that have been decimated by gypsy moths, long, flat ridges with few, if any, views, and nasty, sharp rocks that leave you sore and frustrated at the end of the day. Pennsylvania has been hard on us and we are glad to be closing in on the border. The only thing that has kept our sanity in tact is that we can feel ourselves getting closer to home. The thought that we will soon be in familiar territory gives us that extra bit of mental stamina we need to put one sore foot ahead of the other and fight this rock-induced mental torpor.

I have also found that I am a different person now than when I started. I don't mean that I have "found myself" or any of that other touchy feely BS but rather, I am physically a different person. My upper body has shrunk, my legs now resemble tree trunks and I have lost nearly fifteen pounds of weight (and I didn't have all that much to lose in the first place) My dad has lost almost twenty pounds. When my mom came down to see us, she scolded him, "you have lost waaay too much weight...you should eat more" My friend Rene, who thru hiked the trail last year informed me that this transformation is a normal part of hiking, but it is different for men and women. Women, she said, finish the trail looking trim and tough. Men, on the other hand finish looking like Tyrannosaurus Rexes.

Birdman:

As I have mentioned several times previously, you really meet some strange characters out on the trail. Take Birdman, a grad student from the University of Maine in Orono (who incidentally lives right down the street from my family), he is a brilliant naturalist who hikes with binoculars around his neck, and listens to the thousands of birdcalls uploaded to his ipod while he hikes. If you see him hiking he'll periodically dive off into the woods for snakes and gets really excited about seeing new wildlife. Two weeks ago, we arrived in Pine Grove Furnace state park the geographic mid-point of the AT. There we found a few of our friends milling around the camp store ravenously eating hamburgers and fries. Suddenly, another thru hiker came over and said, "did you hear what happened to Birdman?" We shook our heads collectively. "He had to go to the hospital for eating poison ivy!" Apparently a friend of his had told him that the Native Americans would regularly eat poison ivy. Unfortunately, his bad decision caused him to break out in a full body blister and had to be rushed to the ER for treatment. Apparently he is planning to get back on the trail.

Challenges of the Trail:

Another little known tradition of the AT are the annual challenges that boredom addled thru hikers invent to amuse themselves. The time honored challenge is one called the four state challenge where hikers camp at the Virginia-West Virginia border and then hike the 46 miles through Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland and camp in Pennsylvania. They usually start at three in the morning and routinely don't finish until eleven at night. In this same vein, I heard of a group of hikers promoting a new challenge called the “one night in New Jersey” Challenge where you do two consecutive 35 mile days through Jersey. Needless to say, I opted out of this particular challenge.

One challenge that I did participate in, however, was one with a long and distinguished tradition among hikers called the Half Gallon Challenge where hikers time themselves as they attempt to eat an entire half gallon of ice cream in one sitting. The record is three minutes (although he melted the ice cream first and drank it). Eating that much ice cream is an ordeal unto itself. It takes most people over an hour to finish. I sat down and finished the 3360 calories of ice cream in a lightning fast 28 minutes flat. Everyone was astonished…and a bit disgusted.

That’s all for this entry. With any luck my next update will be from New England!