Date: 2005-04-06
From: Scottish Inn Motel - Fayetteville

To: Birch Run Shelter
Miles today: 10.0
Weather: scattered clouds

He had the look of a thru hiker as he approached me, that dusty, leathery, weather beaten appearance. As we stopped to exchange greetings however, I was less sure. The pack on his back was enormous ¢ in fact it was a backpack strapped onto a backpack and the whole thing must have weighed 75 pounds. Then he said that his name was Greenhorn.   It was a wonderful day. I had started off at US30 road and had had a very pleasant walk thru the Caledonia State Park alongside a rushing stream ¢ I love streams. I saw him as I was making my way up towards Quarry Gap Shelter, the pines providing welcome shade, as I slowly made my way up Chinuapin Hill. We chatted for twenty minutes, both of us so accustomed to the weight of our packs that it never occurred to either of us to take the weight off of our backs.   He told me that he had lost his job last fall, and that he was now homeless. So he had started on the trail in Vermont heading south. A native of Maine, he had hiked the trail extensively there, but this hike was different. He had packed essentially all that he owned in the world on to his back ¢ it was he who told me that it weighed 75 pounds ¢ and started south in November of 2004. Apart from taking two weeks off for Christmas, he had been making his way south ever since. He told me of hiking thru knee-deep snow, wearing his blue jeans, and carrying a cast iron frying pan. He had been given the name ¢Greenhorn¢ because other hikers considered him a clueless neophyte, but in my book, anyone who can hike half of the trail southbound in the depths of winter, carrying a 75-pound pack, would be better called ¢Determined¢   It was hard for him to articulate what he was going to do at the end ¢ or why he was doing it to begin with. He told me that his father had criticized him for never finishing anything, so he was determined to finish this. At heart he was like all of the rest of us, seeking to find himself on the trail, but being subjected to a lot more hassles and discrimination because of his homeless status. I was reminded, listening to his story, of what my daughter told me ¢ that most people are just two paychecks away from being homeless.      I thought about him a lot during the rest of this perfect hiking day. The sun beamed down, a light cooling breeze blew, and the young white pines rustled their branches in agreement with my thoughts, while providing welcome shade.   Quarry Gap Shelter looked like a picture postcard of a small Swiss Chalet. Some one is clearly putting a lot of work and effort into keeping it clean and spruced up.   The rest of the hike was pleasant beyond belief. Multiple road crossings on a well maintained, if occasionally rocky, trail. Before I knew it, I was at the stream outside the [locked] Milesburn Cabin. I spent a long and leisurely lunch there, before continuing on a pleasant walk here to Birch Run. This is an excellent shelter ¢ an enclosed porch with bunk beds and a stream outside the front. No cell signal however.   Another journal entry here from Slow Barbara ¢ she continues to impress me. The journal also talks of a bat in the roof of the shelter and a rattlesnake that lives near the privy.   Beautiful evening now. Thought for today-      Talk to strangers!