Date: 2011-05-27
From: The Towns Inn, Harpers Ferry

To: Ed Garvey Shelter
Miles today: 6.3
Weather: overcast clouds

(In which I nero out of Harpers Ferry and trip on a tarp line)In the morning I head back to the ATC headquarters, and this time I look through the archive. I see the picture of Inferno from last year, and find her comment in the log book, "I can't tell if it feels like I have been on the trail forever or I just started". FastLayne, back in the '06 photo book, looks amazingly young, but seems not to have signed the log book. I imagine how fun it will be to come back later and look through the all the pictures for this year, and am grateful to the ATC for keeping these records.I peruse photos in this year's book so far to put faces to the names I've read in the registers and to recognize the speedy hikers who have zoomed past. Lemur shows up with his mother, returning to the headquarters on his week off to get his picture taken. He passed by too early for a photo during his 40+ mile four-state-challenge hike. He shows me the tarp he bought in Damascus, taking my recommendation on the weight savings of a lightweight tarp versus a hammock system, and the versatility of a sleeping pad, which can be used in a shelter or a tarp.River Rat and German Shepherd show up, get their pictures taken and look through the photo book. With them, Buffalo and Moosehead all in town, the four hikers I've seen most often in the past few weeks are now all in the same place. After a while we all find ourselves sitting outside and chatting on the patio of one of the town's bars. Cayenne and several other hikers we met yesterday are there as well, and sitting with so many friendly hikers on a relaxed afternoon is one of the trip's wonderful gifts. I think how these moments here in town, with their unhurried trail camaraderie can be so iconic of the trail experience without directly involving hiking or being on the trail itself.River Rat's girlfriend Heather, whom I had hoped to finally meet this morning, had her flight delayed and will not arrive until later in the afternoon. Buffalo and Moosehead are eager to meet her as well, and Cayenne pokes fun at us. "You guys, you're so visual. You always just have to see it for yourself." The hotel we stayed at is booked for Memorial Day weekend and the forecast calls for heavy thunderstorms, so I decide to hike out the six miles to the first shelter while the weather is still nice. River Rat plans to hike southbound at a relaxed pace with Heather back to Harpers Ferry, meeting everyone he's passed over the last few weeks, so I will hopefully get a chance to see the two love birds together somewhere in Pennsylvania.I hike slowly out to the shelter, in no rush, and stop for a long break on the Weaverton Cliffs, eating, reading and watching the hawks circle below. Poppins, an '09 thru-hiker, comes up to the cliffs with two friends and we all sit together admiring the view. Poppins arrived at Katahdin too late to summit in '09, returned the following year and continued hiking north up the International Appalachian Trail into Canada. "It's very different from the AT," he says, "and much of it is bushwhacking."It is still early when I stop at the shelter, but the clouds have already begun to roll in and I still have the pleasant lack of urgency from my town stop. The shelter is a large two story structure, and a group of five high school kids and their two chaperones fill the top floor, leaving the bottom floor to me and Checkers, a Czech hiker out for the first day of his section hike. Another section hiker has set up a hammock near the shelter. We all watch the storm approaching. We know that it will hit us soon, and those of us in the shelter are glad to be there. It is my first time in a shelter since the flea incident, but in the face of heavy thunder storms I prefer the dry safety of the shelter to my tarptent.Just after the rain starts I make a dash for the privy, hoping to avoid a trip in the heavier rain to come. I trip over something and hit the wet, rocky ground hard, my toilet paper bag flying yards ahead of me. The hammocker, I realize when I eventually pick myself up, has rigged a tarp over his hammock since I last passed by, and it is tied down with dark green guy lines that stretch directly across the trail like invisible trip wires.I'm covered in mud, but my right arm has taken the worst of the fall, and bright red blood runs down from a three inch wound where a rock cut through the skin. The blood mixes with the mud and dirt, making the arm look as bad as it feels. I spend several minutes swearing under my breath, furious at the hammocker for his negligently dangerous set up and myself for hurrying and not seeing the rope. When I finally calm down and return to the shelter, Checkers lets me use his first aid kit to clean the wound, and the highschoolers give me gauze and tape to dress it.The thunderstorm passes but I still feel like cursing when it has gotten dark and everybody has gotten in to their sleeping bags. My arm throbs, and I worry about keeping it clean through the rain in the next few days and wonder if I'll be able to still use my hiking sticks. One moment of inattention is all it ever takes for things to go wrong, but better to have injured my arm than my leg I think with some small consolation.