Date: 2011-05-30
From: Tumbling Run Shelters

To: Quarry Gap Shelters
Miles today: 12.2
Weather: few clouds

(In which I get trail magic in the park and take a trail nero)Planning a short day, I hang out in my tent in the morning, surfing the net on my Kindle. I see Billygoat at the shelter before he leaves. He's planning to hike the thirty or so miles to the halfway point today, so there's a good chance that I won't see him again this thru-hike.On the trail I meet Moosehead for the first time since Harpers Ferry. We stop for lunch by the side trail for a shelter 0.3 miles off trail (the sign optimistically says .03 miles, but hikers returning from the shelter dispel this notion). Weekend hikers scouting for a Boy Scout trip have extra food, so Moosehead and I reluctantly agree to take care of some of their extra weight, acquiring new burdens of fruit snacks, crackers and Gatorade powder. When Buffalo and German Shepherd show up we share some of the trail magic that we have not yet eaten. Lemur shows up as well, having taken one more day off than he had planned. Surprisingly, he joins our slow-day hiker caravan instead of speeding off, and we tell stories as we hike the three miles to Caledonia State Park.Being the Monday of Memorial Day weekend, the park is filled with picnicking families. The book listed vending machines and a snack stand, but the building they're in is closed for renovations, leaving the park without food or drink for sale. We look enviously at the hundreds of picnickers and I decide to try my hand at yogiing. I find the oldest looking group I can find, hoping for a church group, and ask them if they know of a soda vending machine. They confirm the closed building and offer me a bottle of water, but having already filled up at a spigot, water is one of the few things we don't need.We find a place to sit, the dirtiest, smelliest occupants of the park all clustered at the same picnic table. I search for a bathroom and stumble upon a women sitting with a pile of food in front of her. Two section hikers are just leaving her table and the woman waves me over. Her name's Annette and she drove all the way from Michigan to visit the area and do trail magic. I run over to tell the others, who were already walking over to the bathrooms. Annette has sodas, Doritos, Oreos, Twizzlers, fruit and granola bars and is looking for hikers to eat it all. We do our best, sitting and chatting with Annette and each other while we eat. Annette, though not a hiker, has friends who thru-hiked fifteen years ago and heard stories of trail magic during their hike. The park, so tantalizing before, looks twice as beautiful now that we have food.Since we all plan to hike only another two miles to the next shelter, we hang out at the park for a couple of hours, and though none of us are starting or ending the day in a town, the day has the feel of a nero. We hike the two miles slowly, then resume our leisure at the shelter. Crazy Goose and Ducky, a couple from Connecticut, are at the shelter, and Lemur has decided to stop there as well.The shelter is as well accommodated as the shelter from last night, and we admire the small touches like the hanging pots of flowers and the frog lawn ornament. We joke about getting a garden gnome to the shelter, and Crazy Goose says that someone should bring the gnome up to Springer with a sign asking each hiker to carry it forward one mile. We all love this idea, and then someone points out that southbounders would carry it backwards, and the idea for AT Gnome Battle is born. North bounders against south bounders, and the gnome would have the rules written directly on it so everybody could play. The gnome would have to be within sight of the trail at all times, and no thru-hiker could carry it for more than a mile at a time. We envision GPS trackers and live updating websites, and imagine how cool it would be to watch the progress of the gnome over the thru-hiker season.Stopping early and spending the evening hanging out reminds me of the early days of the trail in Georgia, when hikers would sit around the fire every night, and I feel the same sense of strong camaraderie that I did in the beginning of the trip. On nights like this, the trail seems like one of the most wonderful places anyone could hope it to be. I imagine how much former hikers must miss the trail experience, how eager they must be to reconnect with it in whatever ways possible, and how soon, in the scheme of things, this trip will be over.