Date: 2004-08-04
From: Backpacker campsite outside Del.Water Gap,PA

To: Brink Road Shelter, New Jersey
Miles today: 20.0
Weather: few clouds

Our first twenty-mile day since the quest to see my brother began! Giving us five miles up on our average. It was a brutal, unforgiving day, though. I hate twenties, I've decided. I never met a twenty I've liked. Which does not bode well for out PCT plans, considering you have to hike twenties the whole way. We had a really cool bear encounter this morning, though. We ran into Freebird and Having Fun at Sunfish Pond, the first glacial pond encountered on the AT going north. They had just heard two bears fighting, one huge one and one about half the size of the other. The big bear had treed the little bear, which was not little, by any stretch of the imagination, because we went up and saw it in the tree. It climbed down, while we were there, trying to get free of the other bear, but climbed right back up the next tree, so the first bear must have still been watching out for him. It was a beautiful day, though, and we walked right along the pond for about a mile. There were blueberries everywhere, too, and I kept stopping to eat them, which annoyed County because he wanted to do a twenty-plus mile day. We stopped and took a lot of breaks, too, because there were some gorgeous sunny vistas.New Jersey is astonishingly beautiful. It's mainly ridge-walking, and still rocky, but big boulders run the length of the trail on the ridges, so it's fun walking. The ridges are beautiful, too, vistas on either side, with small trees and shrubs on top of the ridges. So I was having a good day up until the last five miles or so, as usual. I try to keep track of landmarks, especially at the end of the day, because it gives me a psychological boost to know how far I have left to go. But I didn't have a landmark for the last 1.9 miles and those miles nearly killed me. We were walking up and down the same beautiful ridgelines we'd been walking on all day but they're fairly tough walking--you have to walk up steep, rocky terrain to get to the ridge, walk along the ridge, hopping from boulder to boulder, and then back down steeply eroded, rocky trail to the forest floor. It was still beautiful--the sun had started going down, and the light had started to get dusky and dim, but then it started raining--not much, but just enought to make the rocks slick. And my mood plunged.I don't know why I have such a hard time at the end of the day, or on long days, or in the dark, but I become absolutely miserable and I don't know how to pull out of it. What makes it worse is how beautiful everything is, the mist rolling in off the gray mountains, the hazy light still hanging in the air, the rocks beneath your feet. And County was up ahead loving it, turning back to smile at me, and all I could think about it was how much I wanted to stop, how bad my feet and back hurt, how many damn ridges I'm going to have to climb up and over before I can quit, and how I hate that I'm pushing as hard as I can to keep up with him where he's having the time of his life. Which is definitely not a good attitude.Once I get in that zone, I can't figure out how to get out, at least not until we get into camp and I can rest and eat. It's a vicious circle. We didn't get to the shelter until dark, around nine: meaning it took us twelve hours to do a twenty-mile day. I hate it that I can't stop and pick blueberries without cutting into our mileage. It seems so antithetical to everything a thru-hike should be about.I keep saying that, that I want to stop and enjoy things, to pick the blueberries, swim in the lake, lounge at the vistas, but we never can, because we're in a race to get to the next shelter, the next town, the next something. Right now it's Hanover, and then Katahdin. It's ridiculous. I still can't reconcile myself to that at all. But I don't know how to fix it. We're here tonight with Tex and Wipeout, a girl we met in Port Clinton who just took a week off with her boyfriend. She got in late too, but did the twenty-five from DWG. I was so tired tonight that I didn't even go get the water, generally my task for the night. There are three different large groups camping here tonight, summer camp kids, and they are making extraordinary amounts of noise. When we walked down to the shelter, in the dark, we thought we were in the wrong place there were so many people. Probably because it's the only natural spot in NJ. The mosquitoes are bad, too, but fortunately some trail angel left a citronella candle in the shelter, so we should be fine.