Date: 2004-07-14
From: South Mountain, PA

To: Caledonia State Park
Miles today: 5.0
Weather: light rain

Our second five-mile day in a row, which kind of sucks, especially when we thought an eight-mile day sounded piddly, but the motivation is worthwhile. We even got an early start this morning after camping by the road and getting caught in a vicious thunderstorm last night. It was very cool--thunder and lightning cracking directly overhead. I was afraid trees were going to fall on my tent. I had to pee right in the middle of all the commotion, and as I crouched, exposed to the elements, in the rain, thunder crashing, completely soaked, I felt more like an animal than I have the whole trip. It was an amazing feeling. It's great to be aware of how primeval we are, how little separated from the animals, how we are really just animals. We didn't have water where we camped, though, so we decided to go back down to the road to get some from the cooler where we had trail magic yesterday. But the weirdest thing happened--the cooler was gone. It was a brand new cooler, completely full, left by other thruhikers driving through--the Divas. I can't imagine what happened to it, other than it being stolen by locals. Pretty nasty. The Divas can't have come back to move it. We were tempted to ask for water at the rehabilitation school, but were warned off by no trespassing signs.We knew they had water at Caledonia State Park, where we had heard that a church group was doing trail magic. And we had to stop there anyway, because I had missed my maildrop and we knew that the church group had a U-Haul full of resupply. So we did the five miles--Pennsylvania continues to be beautiful and not rocky. They call this stretch from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts the long green tunnel. People complain about the lack of altitude, the presence of civilization, the crappy views, but I like it. I love the image of a luminescent tunnel of green, a corridor of wilderness next door to normalcy. But maybe that's just me.We came to another cooler at a road crossing--and these road crossings in Pennsylvania are hellish, definitely the most dangerous part of the trail thus far--that gave us directions to the church group. We followed the directions for what felt like miles all over the Caledonia State Park campground and began to doubt the existence of the church group, but eventually found their tentsite. It's ridiculous, in American campgrounds, that these places built allegedly to connect the everyday citizen with nature cannot be navigated save by car. When we got to the tentsite, a thruhiker named Hippie Trails was there cooling his heels. The group had left a sign telling us to pitch our tents and make ourselves at home, and that they'd be back shortly. Hippie had already decided to stay, after doing just three miles, making our five miles seem slightly more respectable, although we were still ambivalent about staying. When the leader, Cook Doctor, showed up, we were already wavering, though. He told us that he was making trail lasagna with hot Italian sausage for dinner and that rain was predicted all day, and we were sold.He fed us chicken and dumplings leftover from the previous night for lunch and we had more snacks and great conversation. I think County and I together must have drank a full gallon of milk. I also took a shower at the campground bathroom, with men's body wash for shampoo, not helping my dreadlock situation.Dinner was everything it had promised to be--definitely worth the five-mile day--especially as far as quantity was concerned, which is what I'm always worried about when it comes to trail magic. We had lasagna, garlic bread, beans and sausage, and dessert, in such quantites that some dessert actually went begging. And then a big campfire and smores. There are a lot of other people here--Papa Bear, who's son thruhiked several years ago, Trum, who's a middle-aged section-hiker from New Jersey, an older couple who live on their sailboat and are hiking the trail as a vacation, Digdug, and Backdraft. County and I talked to the sailing couple (sans trail names) for a long time--we're thinking our next adventure should be a sailing trip to New Zealand. Plus the team of four from the church, who have created a wonderful haven for us here. They refuse to let us do any work. And they promise breakfast in the morning. It should be a good night.