Date: 2004-06-26
From: pine grove furnace hostel, pa

To: carlisle, pa
Miles today: 27.4

hmm..er..excuse me...commander barb? surry control? this is graham shackleton with houston control. it seems we have a problem. we know your hiker friend has been walking across an internetless pennsylvania, on, if you will, "the dark side of the moon". our deep space probe EOS 9 has been picking up recent clues that he may soon enter an internet access zone. however, we also have evidence indicating he is engaging in brief bursts of astral projection, while hiking. would you please inform him such activity is in direct violation of federal statutes, especially as he is travelling through a national scenic corridor? we simply cannot have people, or near-humans, circumventing or bypassing our surveillance capabilities.                                                                                                      sincerely,                                                   graham shackleton                                                   hokey smokes laboratory                                                   houston control, nasagee, mr. shackleton sir,i'll try notto do that again.in the near future.how's that?            -meanderthalday 93 sat jun 26   27.4 mi 1114.5 totalcarlisle, pa   some of us linger at the ironmaster's hostel, catching up on our journals. i start hiking about nine, thinking i might try for 19 miles, to the town of boiling springs. i get there about six pm. there's a beautiful stretch of water, a long pond running through the town, with trout leaping out, and fishermen, ducks, and boaters, and there's picnickers and great gardens and majestic trees along the shores. there's awesome alfredo fettucine at anile's restaurant, and halfmoon introduces me to cuba libre and her husband mike from philly. she's (cuba) very funny: at first she sounds french-canadian, then later hispanic. we think she does it on purpose.   the weather is clear, cool, and breezy, and halfmoon is intent on hiking into the evening, eight more miles to carlisle, to an inexpensive motel and good restaurant. i decide to try for it as well.   the trail runs through hedges and along cornfields that stretch a mile or more, and then through long, narrow wooded corridors. then there's wheatfields, and a pasture where the trail runs between two horses munching on grass. the evening light is incredibly beautiful. a rabbit darts out of a cornfield, runs into the brush as three fireflies flicker over him, and i half-expect Farmer MacGregor to come out of the corn with a shotgun.   as the light fades, the fireflies increase to a point where i see a hundred at a time. i pass through thousands of them. they are beautiful to watch; they are magic, and i feel surrounded by a small, moving galaxy of animate, winged stars.   ahead i hear some vague urban hum i hope is carlisle. about 9:30 it gets so dark i put on my headlamp and step into an inky stretch of woods. i hear great numbers of wings stirring and flapping about three feet above me. blackbirds? grackles? the sound spans about ten feet; it subsides behind me. by ten, i find the motel and share a room with pipesmoke, tapeworm, and luna. they tell me the wings were bats'! we had walked through a gauntlet, close under a canopy of nervous bats. there were easily a thousand of them. we think they'd come from caves nearby.