Date: 2014-06-08
From: Pine Grove Furnace

To: Wind Gap, PA
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

The TramilyTrail relationships are often transitory, however that does not signify a lack of value or import. This walk is like passing through an elfin portal sometimes: time here continues on, but differently. An hour on trail is worth ten in the real world. You might move slower on foot than in a car, but the slower speed seems to intensify interactions, leading to deeper relationship formations. From Pine Grove Furnace to Wind Gap (the 220 miles of Pennsylvania) a group of us traveled together as a unit that we all jokingly dubbed The Tramily (Trail Family). We ate together, hiked together, lazed together, camped together for two and a half weeks, which in trail time might as well be half a year. Let me introduce them to you here:We travel in the company of a ¢bromance.¢ Roshambo and Shakespeare bounce jokes and insults off of one another like a practiced comedy routine. They are joined at the hip in such a way that it takes about a week before you can figure out which is which. They¢re both tall string beans, but Rosh is a full bearded brunette and Shakespeare is a ginger... he¢s working hard on the beard, but right now it¢s a glorified goatee, much to his ever deepening disappointment. Roshambo is the more outgoing of the pair. He has a wildeyed grin that, when released, gives off the dual impression that one, he¢s on drugs, and two you should probably be on them with him because he¢s having a grand time. He¢s not on drugs. Or at least I don¢t believe he is, but it took me a while to come to that conclusion. He¢s just high on life and willing to share the joy. He¢s built like a runner, all leg and sinew, and watching him walk is akin to witnessing the agitation of a room full of bouncy balls. He is energy.Shakespeare is slightly older than Roshambo and much more reserved. Of the pair he is the one I feel the most connection to, and yet have spoken the least with. He just graduated with a Masters in English Literature and jumped on for the ride when Rosh decided to head out to the trail. He¢s also got a runner¢s build, but he carries himself with less grace than his friend. Both men are tall and gangly, but Shakespeare still has the adolescent gait of a 12 year old, still unused to his new height. It¢s sweet and so is his temperament¢ the kind of fellow you like on sight without quite knowing why.Peppa is twenty-one, petite and fetching. She looks like a doll: all wide eyes and blonde hair. A regular beauty. But her real charm is her ability to laugh at herself. ¢I¢m a s*** show!¢ she said with a twinkling grin after only five minutes of knowing me. ¢I swear to God I bought Calamine lotion in town, but I¢ve torn my bag apart and can¢t find it anywhere. I must have lost it on the walk back to camp.¢ A pause. ¢Or maybe I left it at the store.¢ Another pause as she looked around the grass at her feet as though expecting to find it among the green blades. Finally she looked back up at me and grinned. ¢I haven¢t seen my knife since Georgia either.¢ I love people like this. It¢s not false humility, but rather a deeper comfort in one¢s self that pervades all proximal relationships. I admire her for it and wish I had it: an ability to see, admit, laugh at and accept her faults without wallowing in them or ignoring them. I have much I could learn from her.Her best friend on trail is a young guy named Simba. Of our Tramily he is the member I know the least about. Like Peppa he is returning home to finish his final year of college. He¢s a biology major and can routinely be found lying across the trail trying to get a closer look at an ant colony or lizard sunning itself on a rock. He picks up any non-venomous snake that¢s too slow to evade his clutches and has occasionally paid the price for it in blood. He is a gentle soul. Sometimes I think if he were left completely alone in the woods for more than a day he would happily melt right into them, slowly but surely becoming a tree, or Ent or Dryad. If we are indeed a family, then the matriarch is Da Vinci. She is a Wisconsinite who carries with her an ever present aura of maternal comfort. She¢s married with a nine-year-old daughter, so perhaps the maternal instincts are a natural result of reality, but her age (in her 30¢s), and marital and parental status all make her an uncommon quantity¢ much like Pint Sized, whom I mentioned in a previous post. Da Vinci¢s name is well chosen. She¢s artistic and mechanically minded; a natural creator. She¢s an architect by schooling and a carpenter by trade. She showed me pictures of a jungle gym she had created in her daughters room, complete with monkey bars hung from the ceiling, and I smarted with envy at her daughter¢s luck. Da Vinci is easy going and full of good humor. She¢s a good egg. She curses like a sailor though. And, in an attempt to curb her increasing tendency towards the profane (and well, lets face it, the rest of us weren¢t exactly keeping our mouths clean either), she instituted a Cussing Penalty in which the perpetrator would have to do 10 situps and 10 pushups for each event. This lead to some stream cursing, because, as the penalty is ¢per event¢ as opposed to ¢per word,¢ once you gets started you might as well just keep going and see how much you can get out before you loose momentum. The idea was a good one in theory, but Da Vinci informed us that it was a bit daunting when she realized at lunch on the second day that she was already facing a 150 rep punishment. ¢F*** that!¢ she said after about a week. ¢Who thought up this s***y idea?¢Da Vinci¢s usual sidekick is Lady Moose. I¢ve mentioned her before, as we slack-packed the 20 miles from Bears Den into Harpers Ferry together. She is about my age and a sweetheart. She¢s idealistic and driven. After the trail she has a job waiting for her as a team leader for AmeriCorp and she¢s excited for her next adventure. The group also includes some other familiar faces to you: Dinosaur, of course, Bean Dip and Geared Up. Others have come and gone from our midst, hiking with us and around us for a day to a week, but always with their own plans pushing them forward. We ten stayed as a unit for two weeks because of a promised respite from trail life: a three day stint at the New Jersey Shore. My Aunt and Uncle had generously offered me the use of their beach cottage for four days during the second week of June and we were all looking forward to a few days sans hiking. Because I am writing this in retrospect, and memory is a tricky mechanism to manipulate, I will simply sum up our time in Pennsylvania with one word: Rocks. There were a lot of them. There were other memorable things as well: a visit with the most memorable barber I will probably ever meet, the discovery that chocolate covered bacon is not actually a good thing, stealth camping in a public park, trying to figure out how to buy beer in a state without ABC stores (who knew you could buy beer at a bar to take home with you?!), climbing over trains and through parked train cars to get to the trail, deciding that getting rained on does in fact count as your weekly shower, and so, so much more... The pessimists call this state ¢Rocksylvania,¢ but the Tramily dubbed it ¢Pennsylventures,¢ and were truly happy.