Date: 2018-05-18
From: Port Clinton, PA

To: Port Clinton
Miles today: 0.0

Jack Graves asks how my bear canister is working out. I remain committed to it. The only downside is its weight, two pounds, equivalent to a day¢s food. Leaving town usually means a long uphill, and I feel the weight. After a couple of days of eating, I don¢t. The biggest plus is not having to hang my food at night to keep it safe not only from bears but also from raccoons (not Rocky), squirrels and mice. I have yet to see anyone execute a proper Pacific Coast Trail hang out here. The one perfect tree along the AT for this purpose continues to prove elusive. More and more shelters offer alternatives to hanging: poles in MD, occasional cables, and bear boxes. It bothers me, however, that the burden of keeping our food safe is falling on the maintaining clubs. My logic, taken to an extreme, would also exclude shelters, privies, marked springs and even the trail itself. So I feel conflicted. The human dilemma, caught between the horns of idealism and pragmatism. Another advantage of the canister is that I can carry things like Pepperidge Farms Cookies without their being crushed. I also love not having to embarrass myself or risk injury attempting to throw a rock bag over a limb. A more athletically gifted hiker might enjoy the latter.  I carry the canister vertically in the top one-third of my pack, with stuff packed along its sides. I can access its contents without removing it from my pack. When I tent, the canister makes a nice seat, especially with a small piece of Z-rest pad on it. Bear canisters are not popular on the AT and probably won¢t be until mandatory, but that raises the issue of enforcement. How would you do it? So far, I¢ve met one section hiker using one and one other thru- hiker, Andrea, with a slightly smaller model of the Bearicade that I use. My primary argument that I¢m carrying the canister for the bears¢ sake falls on hollow ears out here. ¢In all my years of backpacking, I¢ve never had a bear get my food¢ or ¢I use my food bag as my pillow and never had a problem.¢ I try not to debate the issue, but it only takes one instance of a bear getting human food to possibly doom the bear to eventual euthanasia. Carrying a canister strikes me as the responsible thing to do, but I¢m not out here to evangelize my fellow hikers. Hike your own hike; carry your own s%*#. After two days of wearing my new hiking shoes, they feel fairly well broken in. My toes are healing nicely from all the arrested slides caused by my former shoes that wore out in under three weeks. The new ones seem to provide excellent traction, and I¢m hoping they will allow me to hike with confidence again. It¢s been great visiting with my friend Mike. We spent most of yesterday in Wayne, on the Main Line between Philadelphia and Lancaster. Mike is considering buying property there. It¢s a very wealthy community offering a short train commute into central Philly. The entire unincorporated town is heavily forested but on closer inspection I realized that this isn¢t a native forest but a masterpiece of landscape architecture on the scale of Frederick Law Olmstead, a lovely English landscape absent any danger. Copper beeches and azaleas add splashes of color. Trees and shrubs crowd the narrow roadways and along with speed humps calm traffic. We visited Chanticleer Gardens on the Rosengarten Estate, now operated by a foundation but built with the help of a pharmaceutical fortune from a company that later merged with Merck. Even in the rain, the beauty and attention to detail was awe-inspiring. There were some centuries old trees but most date only to the founding of the gardens and are carefully placed for maximum effect. Nice to see that some good came from inflated drug prices! We went into Wayne Presbyterian Church built in 1912, quite a grand structure. A student ensemble was rehearsing what I think was a Bach flute concerto. The acoustics and professionalism of these student musicians were both outstanding. We also visited the old church of St David¢s Episcopal built in 1715 with old style boxed family pews. I wondered where guests would be seated. In the penalty box? Wayne is blessed with a small independent bookstore with a carefully curated inventory. In 15 minutes, I spotted more books that I wanted to read than in an afternoon in Barnes & Noble. If I lived in Wayne, I would be a regular. We had lunch at Autograph Brasserie, one of the best salads of my life. Wonderfully fresh greens with gobs of creamy goat cheese, fresh figs and berries and cubed tender chicken breast with just enough tangy vinaigrette. Mike is gluten-intolerant so I enjoyed both his and my herbed fresh focaccia with olive oil. I should have had a glass of Sancerre instead of water!Today, we visited Pennsbury Manor, a reconstruction of William Penn¢s 17th Century Manor on the original site on the bank of the Delaware River 26 miles north of Philadelphia. Penn was exposed to Quakerism while living on his father¢s estate in Ireland and went public with his faith at age 23. His father, an admiral highly placed in society, was not pleased, but young Penn was resolute, boldly publishing and preaching his convincements, earning himself lodging in the Tower of London for a time. To settle a debt to the admiral, King Charles gave William the lands between Maryland and New York. Penn attempted to apply his idealism to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, insisting upon religious tolerance, trial by a jury of peers and representative government. Witches were not burned in Pennsylvania. Penn envisioned a series of manors along the Delaware but soon found his ideals in conflict with the pragmatism of a tightly gridded city. See, we all carry our bear canisters! Unlike his Puritan neighbors to the north, Penn did not see the forest as the refuge of evil savages, the spawn of Satan. He believed the natives to be a lost tribe of Israel and worthy of respect and discourse. Treaties were kept. When ordered to field a militia in the French and Indian War, the pacifist Quakers had little recourse but to step aside from colonial governance. Back to bear canisters, weighing faith against duty to the Crown.  I will resolve all of my inner conflicts tomorrow by returning to the trail, where there are few decisions more complicated than which flavor Ramen or pasta side to eat. Two days in civilization and I long to be wet, muddy, dirty, smelly and hungry again.