Date: 2007-06-01
From: Tom's Run Shelters

To: Kennedy Shelter 
Miles today: 19.2
Weather: scattered clouds

I am up early, as usual, but I am trying to linger at the shelter before heading out. I only have to hike 3 miles to get to a PA state park where they have food. The store and snack bar opens at 9. This park called "Furnace State Park" is where they have the half gallon challenge. It has something to do with eating a half gallon of ice cream. I love ice cream. There is a hostel at the park and I am going to check it out to see if it will be a good day to take a zero day. Twenty miles further, is the city of Boiling Springs. It is right on the trail and is a good resupply point. In another 25 miles after Boiling Springs is the famous trail town called Duncanon. I will have ample opportunity to eat and to rest over the next few days. I plan to take advantage of these opportunities! The rest of PA is supposed to be less than ideal. They call it the place where boots go to die. I'm hoping my Hush Puppies come through unscathed. Many through hikers have reported that Pennsylvania is the place where they had to buy a new pair of boots. I still see a few items in my pack I might be able to do without. This pocketmail device is one of them. It might be just as easy to write down my thoughts and read them to Ingrid over the phone. I sure haven't had the time to do any serious writing. The story of when I fell down is a good case in point. I wanted to develop a story about how a civil war soldier must have felt when he was hit with a bullit. Am I going to die? Do I have to get up and risk being shot again? Am I paying for past sins? Well, the story never got going. The place where I fell was very near the place where the Battle of Compton Pass was fought. I had been stopping to read Civil War markers all morning and was feeling kinship to all soldiers who leave their homes and march into the jaws of death to kill or be killed. My father was such a soldier. He was wounded at Normandy, was nursed back to health and went back to the front a second time where he was wounded again. The second wound was almost fatal and he didn't have to fight again after that. How many of my anscestors stretching back through the years lived through similar brushes with death. One thing is for certain, if any of them would have died, I would not be here. So many good men dead, so many offspring never given the chance to enjoy a summers day on the 1st of June when a person can go into the woods with a very small pack and not want for much.  Later....I'm having a much better day. I took two hours this morning for writing. It was wonderful. It really is a blessing to know how much I like to write. I took another hour and a half at the store/restaurant at Pine Grove Furnace State Park. It is now 2:30 and I stopped for water but decided I may as well take some time to write. I will get to the last shelter near dark, but that is ok. It is a beautiful day, hot and humid. There is no one else out hiking so far as I can tell. I think I am going to be alright.I suppose looking back at what I had just written confirms that I sometimes write in haste. I had filtered some water and was making good progress North when I saw a lit up Pepsi machine in front of a Body Shop. It wasn't far off the trail and I hiked over. As I fumbled through my wallet for coins the proprietor stepped out and told me the machine did not work but that I could get a drink about a quarter mile down the road. I had a strong desire to get a drink at that point so I went in the direction he pointed. What I found was a little mom and pop general store/sub shop. I bought two pints of orange juice and a turkey sub and went outside to eat it at their picnic table. Then I bought two cans of coke and left. Later I called my wife and drank the two cans of coke. I mention these delays in order that you might see how they added up to throw me off schedule. I have been hiking at a two mile an hour rate for several weeks now. Call it easier terrain or stronger legs or even lighter gear, the fact is that I have reached my goal to hike two miles per hour after struggling with it for weeks. The problem with scheduling my day this way is that talking to my wife or taking time to nap or write is poorly figured in. By the time I was nearing the Kennedy Shelter the wind had picked up and I could hear thunder in the distance. I tried to hurry my pace to make up for lost time but the people who decide where the trail should go had other ideas. The trail started following a rocky ridge line of huge boulders. I had climbed some and was sweating but the aggravation was not the climbing, it was the weaving of the trail through every nook and cranny available, as if someone was playing follow the leader and was trying to find a step too high or a crevice too narrow. It might have been fun under any other circumstance but I sure wasn't in the mood to be played with. I expected the white blaze to go completely around a rock cropping and to come back upon itself. The worst part of their follow the leader game was that I often saw an easier more direct trail following along just below where I was being tormented. If I had been familiar with this area I am certain I would not have been following the white blazes. I would have been making a beeline toward the shelter. It was getting dark, it was promising too rain and I was needing to make better time. I wish I had more time to write... the short version of what happened is this: it got dark, it rained, I got wet. I did reach the shelter and I did need a shower so all turned out well. john-knee-mud johnnymud