Date: 2004-07-19
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 20.0
Weather: moderate rain

Mile 1265Stealth Camp "Adios PA"July 19, 04Spent the night in jail last night. I should have seen it coming. Allthat talk about computer hacking with Cyberdine and me givin' him pillscuz he said was really stressed. Hell, they're my prescription drugs!Once they're mine, it¢s legal to give em away if I want, aint it?Anyway, I left Port Clinton kind of hungover and creeped out, the latterfor no logical reason I could discern. At not quite 7 a.m., I was up,packed and outa town, vaporizing back into the magical forest as thoughI'd never existed in the town of PC.Except in the 1100 block, the forest isn't so magical anymore. Here inPennsylvania, God said let there be rocks and there are rocks. Big andsmall, from fields of rocks you got to scramble over to an endlessfoot-torturing pathway of smaller stones. The whole state is rocks. And then there's the "green tunnel" effect, which is basicallyrealizing (after 1000 or so miles) that the Appalachian Trail is rarelymore than a green tunnel. Views are scarce, especially now. But I've gotten good at rock-hopping and I like the color green. Always behest of a keen sense of balance, I sort of dance along thefields of bigger boulders. And so this day I danced and danced anddamn near ran in rare moments when the path was clear, until very latein the day, dark in fact, I stumbled like a drunkard exhausted into acampsite. I checked my mileage: 28 miles in one day. It was a recordday.As you might imagine I could barely walk yesterday. But I did. I gotup, deservedly late at 9 a.m., and broke camp in the rain. And I rockhopped and hobbled and stumbled another 12 miles to a shelter where Imet a man. His name was Jim. Jim said he was the caretaker of thatparticular shelter, but I wondered. He looked more like a plainclothes cop or a bounty hunter than an AT volunteer, and it was asthough he'd been awaiting my arrival. Just me. Wet rat coming in outof the storm. No one else in the shelter. Jim gave me a handful of smallish apricots and offered me a ride totown. "Nah, don't go into Slaterton. You don't wanna go there. Youwanna come to Palermton. We like hikers there, and we've got a placefor you to stay, for free!" Now my hackles were really up. But after7 days and 110 miles on the trail without a shower or laundry, I neededtown, bad. So into Jim's truck I climbed and off we went, but not before I noticedthe objects in the bed of the truck, among them a shovel, a pickaxe,some rope and some tarpaulin, things one might use to bury a body inthe woods. Who was this guy? Something just didn't feel right. Butthen, I hadn't felt quite "right" since losing $50 in Port Clinton,right after I'd pulled it oughta the ATM, and then staying overnightagainst my better judgment, and worse of all, seeing Cyberdine go fromjovial to grim to kind of psychotic looking, even after I'd fed him 4 mgsof Klonipin, enough Valium to calm a werewolf.And then it happened. Jim drove right up to the police station andsaid, "Here we are." Oh, shit. They've finally caught me. The net has descended at last. FBI. CIA. Whoever. They'd take me into custody quietly here in thispodunk town and I'd disappear, end up in a shipping container prisonoverseas. It wouldn't matter to them that I'd committed no crime. They find something. It was the Patriot Act at work, and I was fucked.In the tiny old mining town of Palmerton, PA, the city generouslyallows thruhikers to overnight for free in its historic "old jail." Jim was actually a really nice guy, and the "jail hostel" was fine andcozy and full of my fellow thruhikers, most of whom had been theresince the night before, waiting out a horrendous & relentless two daysof rain. Me, I'd hiked 40 miles in that rain, and I was out of mymind.Thank you, Palmerton, for a good night's rest, and please forgive mytypical psychotic musings.-RSMRandom Thoughts thru PAIn Duncannon, I discovered that I liked open fist boxing thanks tohottie lesbian bartender Sara who, after inviting Pegasus and me to herhouse undoubtedly with the intent of getting Pegasus to stay, decidedto beat up on me. My willingness to hit and be hit by this girl caughtme totally by surprise. Just month's ago, I would shy from any major rough-housing with mysmall nephews Jacob and Matthew. I felt frail. I felt old. Notanymore. Now I'm hand-wrought bronze and forged steel. My legs,without flexing, constantly look as though I'm flexing muscles. Evenmy upper torso has taken on a lean, V-shape. And in response, I havetaken to push-ups, at first in camp and now, of late, along the trailwhenever the urge strikes me, pack on and everything. You get lesspushups with a 30 lb. pack on, but man, they are satisfying, all 15 or20 of them.Now on the mp3 player I discover Lamb. I'd never heard of Lamb, a bandwhose music came to me and my mp3 as part of a huge, 60 gig bundle ofmusic from cyberfreak friends in northern Cal. I recognized the femalesinger's voice immediately, that of the vocalist from Portishead, whosename escapes me, if I ever knew it at all.But then I take breaks from the mp3 to conserve on battery power. Thebatteries are rechargeable, but out here in the woods wall plugs arefew and far between. I tune into radio instead, my little creditcard-sized radio that I've had duct-taped to my pack for months now. And on comes a real throwback from the Seventies, a veritable soulhoo-rah for women called "It's rainin' men!" Cyberdine says it's thePointer Sisters, I dunno.I recently set up thruhiker friend Eric with a Palm VII & keyboard, myancient-but-effective wireless means of reaching YOU and the world ingeneral. An hour ago I got an email from Eric, he and girlfriend Jessand her aunt Chris just behind me (I thought) saying that they were offthe trail as of midday due to auntie's bad boots and the rain. Damn.Now I wanna write Eric and tell him that when he rejoins the trail tojust skip this frikken section, four miles of solid swamp. I'm just afew miles from hitting the 1200-mile mark and it's nothing but bog. The swamp trail! Then sure enough along come a portly family of dayhikers, Ma, Pa & Jr. Whopper, headed straight for the swamp! I'm like,"What are you people nuts?" It's not the first time I've seenPennsyltuckeyians out thrashing merrily over their state's evilrock-infested forest trail and I wonder. I mean, I'm doing thisbecause I'M NUTS! And because it's just one part of a long trail, ofwhich there are many nicer parts. These people outa move to Virginiaor Georgia.Nayber! Alumni thruhiker and trail angel Nayber sent me some shoes! The guy saw how messed up my Lowas were and sent me a pair of Addidas! Used, but in great shape (I wouldn't accept a new pair, I told him). Thank you, Nayber! I've already put 200 miles on them, roaring outa PAand through Jersey now.On the radio comes the song Born to Run, by Bob Seger I think, a songthat always gets me pumped up and all misty-eyed and fulla passion. Icharge up a rockpile singing at the top of my lungs "I wanna die withya Wendy on the street tonight in an everlasting kiss!" That girl Katie I mentioned, the one at my father's church, pretty yetout of my league (League of Rogue Gentlemen, or something), I actuallyhad the following dialogue with her:Her: "So you're hiking the trail. What do you do for work that allowsyou so much time off?"Me: "I do nothing, actually." (My father standing by, horrified)Her: "Where do you live?"Me: "I live in the woods, going on four months now."It was a real winner, lemme tell ya.There are two songs that I will forever associate with my hike of theAppalachian Trail as they've been burned into my brain by Clear Channelradio, the fuckers. One is that damn ballad by Hooba Stank where theguy lamely apologizes for hurting his girl and though he's lost her now,he'll always be a better man. Crap. The other is that song "Fifteen"by, who is that? Dve Mathews? I don¢t know. Burn em both.Climbed up outa Palmerton the other day into another Superfund site, ahorrid toxic nightmare world fulla gnarled dead trees and mutant fungalplant life with eyes that watched you as you went, like a thousandfrogs melted together and stuck in a puddle of goo on ground leachedand bleached by mineral-hungry men with no concern for the world they'dleave their children.But later that same day, miles away in a healthy forest, I ran myhands through dewy blades of grass to wash off the stickiness of aSnicker's bar. I saw a turtle and a ground hog, a black snakeslithering across the trail and one of those brilliant orange littlegnutes, called efts, I believe. And everyday I see deer, stunning,silent, skittish, brazen, playful, close at hand. I have yet to see aneast coast bear.-RSMFor the full story of Rick's journey, visit Jigglebox.com