Date: 2003-08-26
From: RPH Shelter

To: Telephone Pioneers Shelter
Miles today: 16.6
Weather: overcast clouds

The tears and stress last night made sense when I discovered this morning that Aunt Flo (as we called it in high school) had come to join me for a few days. And wouldn¢t you know my tampons are in my box at the Kent post office, two days away¢¦ Hmm. Bramble didn¢t have any with her either, and gave me a sympathetic ¢Oh no!¢ when I asked. As usual Bushwhack and Bramble took off first this morning. I was ready before Toby and Rodent, but ended up behind them when we all actually left. ¢Are you okay? Your eyes are all red,¢ Toby said as he passed me. ¢You must be really tired.¢ ¢I am really tired,¢ I assented. I didn¢t say anything about the stress I¢d felt the night before or how I hadn¢t gotten to sleep until late.Bushwhack and Bramble told us about a deli (and store ¢ hope they have what I need¢¦) not far off the Trail at NY 52; the plan was to rendezvous there. Someone said it was pretty flat between the shelter and there, but they must have had a skewed definition of flat. Much of the way the noise of Taconic State Parkway drowned out the peaceful sounds of nature; I just hate that.I can definitely tell I missed my Sabbath rest last week. I am sure it has made a difference in how I¢m feeling physically and mentally. Bushwhack and Bramble originally planned to hike with me through Sunday, and I figured I¢d go ahead and hike this Saturday, too. But by this time I can tell I¢m going to need it off. I just can¢t push every day all day like Toby and Rodent can. I need Sabbath for the physical rest and the time to refocus spiritually. My spirituality has been sadly neglected these last couple of weeks.I¢d talked to the two Southbounders who were at the shelter last night about how I still felt so slow uphill. They both presented the idea I was pushing too hard, ending up all anaerobic, and thus not feeling improvement. So I took it real easy on the hills this morning; I felt much better, but I was interminably slower. At any rate at last I reached 52 and ditched my pack beside Bushwhack¢s and Bramble¢s and headed off down the road. I even ran a little. When I got to the deli everyone else already had sandwiches and etc. Bramble said with meaning, ¢They have everything you need¢¦¢ So I went straight in and ordered a sandwich ¢ with roasted red peppers!!! Yum ¢ and asked to use the bathroom. The young guy behind the counter said they didn¢t have a public restroom. I said, ¢It¢s kind of a female emergency.¢ He went back and asked someone, but came back and said sorry, they couldn¢t let me use it. PMS was overtaking me, and I was close to tears, but it didn¢t move him. Suddenly a man in the back room called out, ¢You have an emergency? It¢s okay, leave your sandwich and come back and use the bathroom.¢ Nothing like subtlety. My eyes WERE red when I looked in the mirror; I attributed it to all the tears, took care of business and went back out to meet everyone else and try to look like nothing was wrong¢¦ Yeah, right.Anyway we laughed and joked and had a good time, eating at a picnic table outside the deli. Toby ¢banged down¢ a couple of sodas, as he is wont to put it. Another Southbounder was there and we tipped him off on all the cool stuff he had ahead of him, telling him where to stay and eat at different towns along the way.Toby and Rodent took off ahead, we caught up to them at the Morgan Stewart Shelter, then they took off again. Toby¢s meeting his cousin at the Appalachian Trail Railroad Station (where on the weekends hikers can catch a train into the city! That would have been fun to do, but this is Tuesday and I already had my side-trip into the city.) tonight, then he¢ll come back on the Trail in the morning. There were a lot of road crossings today. Somewhere between NY 55 and the shelter there was a lake; Nuclear Lake or something like that? It¢s not listed in my book. Apparently it¢s been contaminated by nuclear waste of some sort. Really makes you feel comfortable walking by it! It is pretty, though. From the other side we heard shots being fired on a firing range. The Trail seemed to lead us closer and closer as it looped around the lake, but at last we veered off West and away.And back uphill. So I fell behind again until I came across Bushwhack and Bramble resting on an old tumbledown rock wall. I looked at my book, trying to figure out how much farther we had. It appeared this was the last of the climb up West Mountain, so I estimated .3 miles. A father and son came down the Trail headed to do some fishing and we asked them how far the road was. ¢A half-mile or so? We¢ve been walking for about ten minutes.¢ Second lesson of the Trail (right after ¢Don¢t ever believe it¢s all downhill from here.¢): Don¢t trust dayhikers¢ time or distance estimation.It must have been at least a half hour, possibly forty-five minutes, before we finally reached the turnoff to Telephone Pioneers Shelter (why the name? I don¢t know). We actually arrived somewhat early today; of course, we didn¢t hike as far. Toby was still here when we got here, lounging and snacking with Rodent. He had three miles to go to the station. After he¢d left, Bushwhack and Bramble headed down to the water source (which leaves much to be desired¢¦), leaving Rodent and I alone.Now, I am ashamed to admit that when I first met Rodent I consciously didn¢t take much interest in him because ¢ he won¢t mind my saying so ¢ he is a total pothead. All his shelter register entries are accompanied by a rat¢s head with a joint hanging out its mouth, and his entry near the halfway point at Pine Grove Furnace State Park in Pennsylvania typifies most of them: ¢We¢re almost to the halfway point. Wish I had some weed to celebrate.¢ It¢s not that I didn¢t want to talk to him at all or that I snubbed him or anything, I just sort of closed my mind towards him. Maybe that makes some kind of sense. However, since we¢ve been ending up in the same place over the last several nights, I have gotten to know him better. Tonight I grew to love the guy. ¢Yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices become when once love comes to bend them,¢ wrote Herman Melville in Moby Dick. When we were left alone, he brought up the subject of me quitting or jumping up to Maine or whatever it was I was considering doing. He gave me a good talking to. ¢How can you just quit?! You¢re just not having fun; you need to do something crazy. You need to stick with Doppler (Toby) and me. You¢ve come so far, quitting¢s just not even an option¢¦¢ What a cutie. I was encouraged and determined to keep going, at least through Massachusetts. And I think I learned a good lesson in pre-judging.I¢ve begun to call this ¢Plan Q.¢ First I had Plan A, which was to hike every mile from Georgia to Maine. Then in Pearisburg I wasn¢t sure I¢d make it, and Norway said they wanted me as soon as possible in October, so Plan B evolved to hike as far as I could through the end of September. Then I skipped through Virginia, and Plan C became to continue on in Pennsylvania and get as far as I could through the end of September. By Delaware Water Gap when I had first decided to get off and then convinced myself to keep going I coined Plan Q and decided to let it cover whatever I decided to do from then on. Even if it changes it¢s still Plan Q, just for simplicity¢s sake.Rodent hates shelters and nearly always tents. Bushwhack and Bramble likewise prefer their tarp-tent. Like Toby, they made theirs themselves from a pattern you order online. I¢d like to look into doing that. I¢m not really a sewing girl, though; I did take Home Ec in high school, but it didn¢t stick much.So anyway I was left to sleep alone in the shelter tonight.