Date: 2003-08-05
From: Tom's Run Shelters

To: "Mother Hen's", Boiling Springs, PA
Miles today: 23.7

A day with a good start and a great end, but the middle was tough ¢ again.Those funny car-campers left around 7am ¢ got there last night well after 7pm and left early this morning. Interesting. I did come upon a road access probably about a mile or mile and a half up the Trial, so that must be where they parked.I arrived at Pine Grove Furnace State Park, home of the Half-Gallon Challenge (to see if you can eat a half-gallon of ice cream in one sitting), about 9am. This is also the half-way point of the Trail. Kind of anti-climactic, since I haven¢t actually walked the entire Southern half of the Trail. Plus I was alone, no one else around, and it was starting to rain. So after a quick look around the hostel and a look in the store for some film, I raced on through the park.Speaking of film, of all the days to run out! I really haven¢t been taking many photos ¢ most days there isn¢t much to photograph. Today I wished I had it five or six times! First thing this morning I passed ¢ almost didn¢t see it ¢ a rock wall, ruins of some old building. Two or three stories high, the windows still in it, it reminded me of the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis when Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy return to the ruins of their castle and reminisce about when they were kings and queens of Narnia. By lunchtime the rain subsided, but the humidity remained. I was pretty much soaked and dripping all day ¢ from sweat, not rain, ¢cause it never rained that hard. What is this anyway, El Nin?o hits the East Coast, it¢s just taken him five years to get here? I haven¢t had a full week of no rain yet. I repeated my mantra, ¢It¢s cooler, there are fewer bugs, there¢s no shortage of water. It¢s cooler, fewer bugs, no shortage of water¢¦¢ This as I got to James Fry Shelter for lunch, where the spring was dry as a bone and the bugs hassled me relentlessly as I climbed up from the spring, despite the rain¢¦My crash came between the James Fry and Alec Kennedy shelters, just be fore the Trail meanders pointlessly over, through, and around a big rock pile. I guess I¢m seeing a pattern: It¢s always an hour or two after lunch, on a hot and/or humid day, when I¢m climbing, and it¢s hard ¢ that¢s when I get pissed off and want to give up. I still can¢t pinpoint the cause. Today I¢d say PMS was a likely culprit, but it wasn¢t other days, so I don¢t know. The short climbs I had this afternoon (right after I was thinking how flat and easy Pennsylvania was¢¦) were nothing compared to what I¢ve done ¢ Roan, Clingman¢s, Albert, etc. But if my body complains this much (heart still pounds excessively, lungs pant for air, gluts burn and feel like there¢s no energy left in them) about Pennsylvania, there¢s no way I¢ll make it in Maine. ¢This is not hard,¢ I kept telling myself, but my body wouldn¢t believe it.I¢d just eaten, so I couldn¢t have been low on calories. I¢d eaten a good mix of carbs, fat, and protein. I hadn¢t eaten too much, so it couldn¢t be that. It wasn¢t anything super sugary that would have spiked my blood sugar and then caused it to drop. I slept well and long last night. I guess the heat and humidity are factors, but shouldn¢t I be acclimated to that? What gives?!I¢d thought maybe I¢d go on from the shelter and come on into town; I arrived there at 4pm, still debating. But as I sat perusing the register a passel of pre-teen summer camp girls and their two counselors (one of whom must have been at least 18 but acted like a pre-teen) descended on the shelter. That clinched it ¢ I was coming into town. Only 3.9 more miles, an hour and a half or so.I wished I had film again as I passed through the cornfields just before Yellow Breeches Creek and Boiling Springs. The sky was blue, large cumulous clouds gathered at the horizon, sun shining at an early-evening angle. The corn stood up above my head, and as I walked the grassy corridor between fields that was the Trail, the grass seemed to come alive at my feet as tiny grasshoppers fled to safety.I sped through, soaking up the sunshine and open fields, and arrived in Boiling Springs minutes ahead of my projected time.This is the third town I¢ve been to which the Trail passes directly through. I love it already; a small lake in the center of town is bordered by a graveled walkway (the AT) on one side and quaint old homes on the other. I¢m so glad I came ahead into town for the night.The ATC¢s Mid-Atlantic Regional Office is at the North end of the lake and boasts, ¢Hiker Information Center.¢ The door was open but screen door locked, so the only info I got was off the bulletin board outside and from some seemingly ignorant locals ¢ neither bulletin board nor locals were much help. I called two B&Bs advertised on the bulletin board; one didn¢t answer and the other was a little steep for my budget. So I headed over to Leo¢s Ice Cream, also advertised on the bulletin board, ordered a small (!) cup of Oreo ice cream, and asked the girl where was the best place for hikers to stay?Coming into town I¢d prayed, ¢God, if there¢s a hostel here in town, please lead me to it.¢ He did!She told me about Mother Hen, a woman with one young son (who has a rare vascular disease that¢s left him quite handicapped) that lets hikers stay at her house. I walked the three blocks to check it out. Knocked three times, to no avail. Finally decided just to wait 20 minutes; maybe they weren¢t home. So I sat on the porch and watched the little boy across the street play with his new pet rabbit. Cute kid.I finally knocked again when the 20 minutes were up; this time she answered. I hope it was that she didn¢t hear the first time, not that she gave in because of my persistence! I met her son briefly, then she led me to her spare ¢hiker rooms¢ located upstairs ¢ it¢s a late Victorian-style home, well kept up ¢ complete with bedroom, bathroom, and laundry. I showered and did my wash, then picked up and read the Catcher in the Rye for awhile. I didn¢t have much energy left to visit, but I went downstairs anyway to at least say goodnight. She offered me e-mail¢¦can you believe I turned it down to come up and do this before I went to sleep?