Date: 2004-08-10
From: Stewart Hollow Brook, CT

To: Meeting New Hikers
Miles today: 18.1

It was cold early in the morning and my shirt and underwear briefs were wet on the clothesline. The thought of putting them on that early was repulsive. While the chill remained in the air, I wore my fleece pullover. Before hiking, I clipped my wet underwear briefs to the rear of my backpack where they would be exposed to the air and would dry.I shoved a forked stick inside my short sleeved hiking shirt. The forked ends of the stick reached up into the sleeves.While hiking, I held the stick and waved the shirt about to hasten the drying process. After doing this for a while, I refined the process. Rather than waving the stick and shirt above and beside me, I held it downwards. This way, gravity minimized the folds in the fabric, thus exposing more of the shirt to the flow of air. I tried another approach¢holding the stick and shirt behind me as I walked. The airflow lifted the bottoms of the shirt like a wind sock, improving the flow of air to all parts of the shirt. The best and most simple technique was to angle a side of the shirt toward the sun. But the sun was low in the sky and I was usually walking under trees.There were spider webs above the trail. My shirt on the stick raked in some strands of the webs. When the terrain led me uphill, it was time to take off the fleece pullover and put on the shirt. My drying efforts with the stick proved beneficial. The shirt was no longer wet; it was tolerably damp.While ascending a steep hill, I met a hiker in his sixties who was carrying a huge amount of gear, or better said, was straining under the weight of a staggering load. On his back was an external frame pack jammed full of stuff. A sleeping pad hung below it. An extra pair of hiking shoes dangled on the side. He was holding by his chest an internal frame pack stuffed to the gills. Another item in his hands was a trash can liner that contained more items. The man was sweating profusely and breathing hard. He took off his external frame pack and placed it on the ground. Then he hiked upwards with only the internal frame pack. He put that pack down, descended the slope part way, reshouldered the external frame pack, and hiked up and beyond the internal frame pack. Stated simply, he was relaying his gear up the slope. I considered picking up one of his packs to assist him, but decided against it lest he think I was trying to steal from him.I struck up a conversation with this person. He said that he was hiking on the trail from New York to Vermont. He told me that he likes to read and that his internal frame pack contained magazines, books, and newspapers. As he spoke, I noticed a book sticking out of the pack. The title of the book was "How to Stay Alive in the Woods." He told me that he carries extra clothes for visits to towns.The guy had a sense of humor. His trail name, actually one of three, was "Mule."I met a father hiking with his ten year old daughter. Her trail name is Daddy¢s Girl. They were walking a section of the trail between Maine and Pennsylvania. The hiking was hard today, with many ups and downs. To make things easier, I picked up a stout piece of wood and used it as a walking stick. It was a good decision. The stick eased the pressure on my knees while descending steep inclines. At one overlook, I saw in the distance a race track with racing cars moving along the course. I could hear the tires squealing.It was getting late when I caught up to Gather. We decided to make camp somewhere in the vicinity of a hydroelectric plant on the Housatonic River. One of the buildings on the premises has a water faucet and a shower nozzle affixed to an outside wall. Hikers are allowed to use those fixtures. The wall with the shower nozzle is visible to passing traffic. I did not want to take a shower with any clothes on; it would have meant drying more clothes. During an interlude in the traffic, I dashed with no clothes on from behind the building to the spot under the nozzle. I turned the handle on the wall and enjoyed, or should I say endured, a cold, thirty second shower. I turned off the water, hurried back to the rear of the building, and dried myself with a couple of bandanas.Lately, I have been sharing campsites with Gather. At the end of each day, he sets up his bivy sack, I string up my hammock, then we sit down at the same spot to cook our meals and eat supper. Tonight, I told him that I am thinking about reducing the number of miles hiked each day. I explained that the terrain has been getting more difficult and we have been making camp almost at dark. I would prefer to have some time while there is light in the sky to dry clothes, compose my journal, and relax. Gather agreed that it would be nice to make camp earlier, but did not say that he wanted to ease the pace.It was 10:00 p.m. while I lay in my hammock composing this journal entry. Someone with a middle aged, male voice approached in the dark and asked if there were hikers camping at this pine grove near the hydro plant. My immediate reaction was one of dismay. I assumed that a security person from the plant was about to evict us from the area. I got out of the hammock to speak to the person. He approached with a lit headlamp on his forehead. To my relief, he identified himself as a thru hiker named Doc Narly, someone I had never met.I could barely make out the features of his face. We sat down and chatted. He put a red gel over his headlamp and his face went completely dark, only his forehead and part of his balding head were visible.He told me that he enjoys night hiking for the intensity of the experience. In the Shenandoah Park, his headlamp illuminated bears only thirty feet away.He produced a plastic bottle and asked if wanted to drink a shot of Drambue that someone had sent to him.I accepted his offer. He poured the liquor into some kind of a shot container with a string attached to it. I could hardly see the thing.I offered up a toast "Here's to meeting new hikers," and downed the shot.It was strange, conversing and drinking a shot with a person I could barely see and had never met. It was the front part of his head, glowing in red, that I looked at while we spoke. The rest of him appeared as a dark shape. We talked for 3/4 of an hour, and then he walked to a nearby spot to set up his shelter and go to sleep. I climbed back into my hammock and composed my journal.The unusual circumstances of this conversation is a great example of the easy camaraderie that can happen between hikers on the Appalachian Trail.