Date: 2011-04-19
From: Deer Park Mountain Shelter

To: Elmers Sunnybank Inn
Miles today: 2.8

(In which I find Elmers and take a nero)The shelter is nearly empty, even after Crop Duster and Pipe Maker roll in, but I set up my tent down the trail so as not to disturb the other hikers, whom I have been unable to convince to join my predawn expedition to Elmers.Camping well out of earshot of the shelter, with its snoring hikers and scurrying mice, I find the silence strange. I hear a soft rustling beside my tent and turn to see a beetle crawling on shifting blades of grass, its eyes seeming to burn like embers in the red light of my headlamp. When a leaf falls nearby, it is surprising loud.Without an alarm, I check the time on my camera in between REM cycles at midnight, 2am, 3am and several times between 4am and 5am, when I finally get up. I hike up to the shelter to use the privy and quietly retrieve my bag from the bear cables, and see that Double Check has decided to wake early after all, packing up and leaving while I am still taking down camp.The full moon hangs orange and hazy, low in the sky behind me when I start hiking shortly before 6am. Hiking with a headlight in the dark is its own kind of trance, with my small circle of awareness visually represented by the pool of light ahead of me. Having been a warm night, the early morning temperature is just cool enough to make the exertion of hiking feel pleasant, and I make a mental note that as the weather gets warmer, dawn may be the nicest time of the day for hiking.The sky slowly lightens, turning dark blue and then peach and pink before finally a pale blue, and I no longer need my headlight. As I hike down the mountain I see the small town of Hot Springs below me. After Damascus in Virginia, Hot Springs is perhaps the second most anticipated town on the trail, and one of the few where the AT runs right through the main street in town.When I reach town around 7:30am, I walk up and down the street looking for Elmers Hostel. Finally I meet other hikers who have woken early for breakfast, and they point me to an unmarked Victorian residence that I have already walked up to and inspected without finding any evidence suggesting that it is the hostel. The hikers assure me that it really is Elmers, but I begin to feel that I have fallen for an elaborate prank in which duped hikers wake up before dawn and are tricked into trespassing into the homes of random, sleeping strangers. Only when I walk around to the back door and see an AT sticker and several pairs of dirty boots do I finally summon the nerve to open the back door and walk into the still unmarked house.On the other side of the door a young man stands at a counter chopping onions, and a corkboard covered in pictures of hikers posing by the Katahdin sign leads me to believe I have found the right place. The man is friendly and lets me put my name on the waiting list for the day -- I am third, after Double Check and a hiker whose name I can't make out -- and head across the street to the diner for breakfast.I join the table of hikers who had directed me to Elmers, and by the time our food comes Where-in-the Blazes shows up to sit at the table across from us. When I proudly whip out the hat I have been carrying, he bursts into laughter. "That's not my hat!" he says. Crestfallen, I scroll back through my pictures and realize that Blazes' hat, while having the same distinctive style with decorative braids hanging down from each ear, is a different color. Blazes is touched that I carried the hat with him in mind, however, and considers it a successful mission at least in spirit.* * *When I finally check in at Elmers, I receive the grand tour, and realize that the house really is a private residence that has only lightly been converted into a hostel. The lack of signage helps keep the riffraff away, I am told, though I can't help thinking that it must keep more than a few disappointed thru-hikers away as well.The town of Hot Springs seems to consist almost entirely of thru-hikers. Hikers who had been spread out days apart on the trail all converge on the same quarter mile stretch of town. I meet dozens of people known previously only as names in the registers, and as the day progresses I see people I had thought were days behind, each held back or pulled forward by the allure of the trail town.I meet Sam-I-Am and Origami, two hikers I have been one or two days behind for my entire trip, when they ask about my cuben fiber pack as I'm leaving the diner. I answer somewhat bruskly, in a hurry to retrieve the hiking poles I have forgotten at my table, but feel bad when I realize who they are. Sam-I-Am is bubbly and enthusiastic, and Origami (a guy, I realize only when I meet him) is quiet and reserved. I marvel at how people's written personalities can differ from their spoken ones.Having finished hiking before 8am, the day is the most relaxed I've had so far, a "nero" (near-zero-mileage day) in the parlance of the trail. I spend most of the day sitting, lounging variously at the diner, the hostel, the library, and a cottage that Cookie's mother has rented to host trail magic. I meet Cookie for the first time as he's grilling burgers. Hikers from town and the trail are drawn by the smells and rumors of food, and soon dozens of hikers are sitting around talking and eating. When the thought of eating more makes me feel physically uncomfortable, I head back down to the hostel, warm thoughts for Hot Springs in my heart and belly.