Date: 2004-08-23
From: Hemlocks Lean-To

To: Campsite near Guilder Pond
Miles today: 16.4

I broke all of my purist vows today and not only slack-packed, but slack-packed southbound. And I talked County into it. I feel a little bad. There really was no reason other than laziness and my continuing lack of motivation. It felt fantastic, though. I love this hiking stuff without a pack! I felt like I could fly, dance, leap--negotiating rocks especially. It felt like getting my center of gravity back. We didn't even start until one--we ate beakfast with the ridge runners and about six other hikers at a diner--including Goofy, Terrapin, a guy named Swix who went to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI, where my family's from, Dapper Dan, and Kitchen Sink, a sixteen-year-old girl who hiked from Delaware Water Gap to here by herself and who is now going into college. We're dropping her off at her college at some point. We hung out at the outfitter in town all morning, bought some denatured alcohol, and goofed off with the guys. The slack-pack was my idea--I was the one that tempted everyone to stumble--but it just seemed fun to hang out with the ridge runners for another night by the shores of a lake, hike without our packs for a day, be liberated in some senses.My pack is still bothering me a lot, on and off. Nowhere near as bad as the LL Bean pack was, but it's still weird. What's especially weird about it is that it's the opposite shoulder, my left, so I know it's not a residual injury from my first pack. County thinks it's a residual injury from the damaged Osprey I carried into Harpers Ferry, and that very well may be. It even hurt today when I was walking without a pack, so that indicates something wrong inside, rather than coming from the pack. The pack fits well and it's under twenty pounds now, so I know those aren't the problems--maybe it's my posture? The way I hike? I don't know what to do about it anymore except ignore it, but it continues to frustrate me. And it's a good reason to slack-pack. It felt weird hiking south, though. Bizarre. We both felt like we could actually feel the difference on the trail, which is fairly ridiculous. But we ran into some of our friends going north, PopTart among them, who took off two days in NYC.It was a beautiful day of hiking, too, beautiful weather, mostly flat, but through some beautiful rocky patches too. We had to scramble over some rocks as we started, but they had beautiful vistas attached and lovely places to take breaks. We didn't take many, though, because County was worried about missing our ride, even though we were going faster than the rest of the crew. We flew today, and it was fun. We walked along the Housatonic again, for a mile or two--it's always nice walking along rivers--ate fruit from a Russian olive tree, walked through fields and across about a million roads, through some swampy sections that were beautiful but plaqued by mosquitoes who seemed to bother us more without our packs, and ended the day in gorgeous pine forests. I've never seen pine forests before, I'm realizing, at least not like this, where the pine stretch as far as you can see, where the light is dim and red and cool and the ground the same color as the trees. I had no idea they were so beautiful.We met our friends at the rendezvous point and they drove us back around to a campsite we still had to hike into, but it was gorgeous sitting on a smooth rock beach, watching the moon reflected on the water. They had brought no-bake cheesecake as a treat--an odd camping food but a very successful one. We made do with what we had, adding powdered butter and milk, and chocolate chips to one and dried blueberries to the other. Then we had to ward off brave mice as they chilled by the lake. We intended to build a fire, but got lazy and made do with a lantern and radio instead--Terrapin is a DJ in Washington, DC, and he played tunes for us into the night.