Date: 2011-07-04
From: Diana's Apartment, New York City, Day 3

To: Diana's Apartment, New York City, Day 4
Miles today: 0.0

(In which I present the Portrait Awards for the middle third of my hike)Greetings and welcome to the second triannual awards ceremony of 2011! Refreshments are on the table in the back, and be sure to stick around for the fireworks after the awards.Best camp spot: 0.3 miles after Kirkridge Shelter, PA. A hang gliding field big enough to accommodate dozens of hikers and still have room left to toss around a frisbee along with one of the best views in PA provides ample reason to stop short of Delaware Water Gap.Best trail town: This is a tough one, with strong competition coming from Waynesboro, Boiling Springs, Palmerton and Delaware Water Gap. In the end, the winner has to be DWG for being directly on the trail, having a free church hostel and the best bakery I've ever been to.Best state: Maryland. Great shelters and parks with showers and vending machines mean that those who rush through Maryland in a single day are missing out.Worst state: New Jersey. A mosquito infested swampland with no redeeming qualities; if ever there were a state worth rushing through, this would be it.Best three-walled shelter: Bryant Ridge Shelter. Northern Pennsylvania and all of Maryland contained some great shelters, but my favorite has to be Virginia's Bryant Ridge Shelter. An impressively large and well designed two story structure made all the more impressive by being located in the middle of the woods far from any road crossing or other sign of civilization.Favorite new piece of gear: My $11 Walmart speaker. Turning music into a social experience is well worth an extra three ounces.Item I've started carrying more of: Water. After more than a thousand miles of plentiful clean springs, New Jersey and New York are a rude awakening. Fortunately town water is also more plentiful up north, and I've only taken non-town water once since northern PA.Trail food I've started eating more of: Packaged peanut butter crackers. A staple trail food, I came late to the party, but this along with Sunbelt granola bars are now two of my most consumed foods, three or four together acting as a meal replacement with the added convenience of a prepackaged snack.Trail food I've started eating less of: Cheese. Though still a favorite, a few 90 degree days convinced me that it isn't a summer food.Biggest change: The slow train. The big change to occur in the past 700 miles, of course, is the decision to slow down that has affected all other aspects of the hike. Nearly 400 miles into the experiment, I feel confident calling it a success. Less urgency to constantly be hiking is one benefit, but the best part is being surrounded by friends and people I've met before, as opposed to the first half of the hike where I would meet almost entirely new people as I would catch up to and pass them.* * *I stand with a dozen or so other spectators on the apartment roof and watch fireworks through the narrow gaps between the surrounding buildings. The remoteness and obstructed view of the flashes of light make the event seem eerily reminiscent of the type of war that must have inspired the tradition. It's a strange but moving experience, standing with strangers on a rooftop to watch the sky fill with smoke as distant explosions light up the horizon and echo off of the nearby skyscrapers.Tomorrow I return to the trail, and while I've enjoyed resting, I am eager to get back. I miss the social experience and the simple pleasure of hiking, but what I miss most of all is the sense of purpose, which makes life off the trail seem empty and lacking by comparison. If hikers as a rule tend not to spend much time thinking about what they want to do with their life (something many hikers intend to figure out but few get around to), it's likely because, so long as they're hiking, their life already has purpose and direction, making the question unimportant, at least for the time being. This perhaps explains why the only answer many hikers come up with after five or six months is to do more hiking, and to adopt a life style that allows them to return to the trail or pursue another adventure every year or so.I myself have no specific plans as to what I will after my hike (and have only really given it any thought in the last few days, when the nagging emptiness of sitting around doing nothing made it an issue again). I can, however, easily imagine myself missing the trail experience, and seeking out that sense of adventure again, be it on the PCT, returning to the AT, or something else entirely.