Date: 2011-06-07
From: The Doyle, Duncannon

To: Clarks Ferry Shelter
Miles today: 4.6
Weather: overcast clouds

(In which I nero out of Duncannon)Buffalo wants to send home some extra clothes, so we end up doing impromptu pack shake downs, going through all of the items in our packs and making piles of everything we haven't used recently. In my toiletry bag I find old pieces of trash that I had been meaning to throw away weeks ago, and I decide to send home the heavier of my two headlamps, preferring the feel of the e+lite, and some extra small plastic bottles. Buffalo finds long johns, unused since Georgia, extra shorts and a shirt, a fleece jacket, the large paper journal he hasn't written in for a month and a heavy glass jar of iodine for water purification, replaced by lightweight chlorine dioxide tablets from the hiker box. When we mail our extra stuff from the post office, Buffalo lightens his load by more than 4 lbs, and I save a few ounces.We walk down by the train tracks to the river and sit on the gravel beach. We skip rocks on the river and watch the trains when they thunder by every 15 minutes or so. For lunch we head over to the second of the two pizza restaurants within a block of the hotel and share a basket of fries topped with cheddar and bacon and an order of garlic bread with mozzarella. The fountain soda machine has Birch Beer in addition to the standard options and has free refills, so we each buy a cup. Soda tastes delicious on the trail, and it will be a sad day when I finish hiking and it reverts to being just expensive sugar water.Buffalo's shoes have been sent overnight to the hostel, so we hang around town for the afternoon to wait for them. We spend much of it in the Doyle's bar, since that's where they'll arrive, and we get to meet all of the thru-hikers as they arrive too. Already knowing and being known by everybody feels a little like being a celebrity, or at least being popular. The hikers we meet are glad to see us again, having watched us pull ahead in the logs and now having finally caught back up to us. I meet Hot Sauce, whom I first met and last saw more than a month ago at my birthday party, and it's only the second time I've seen someone from the party again, after briefly seeing Buscey in Daleville. Timber walks in and I get to hear about his aqua blazing mishaps, and the bar has the feel of a reunion for classmates who haven't seen each other in years.I meet Tekla for the first time in the bar. He thru-hiked in '09 and is back on a road trip from the northern-most road in Maine to the southern-most tip of Florida. I think about the cross country bike trip my brother took after the AT, and how many other hikers take similar trips, hooked on the adventuring lifestyle.When the shoes finally come just after 5 o'clock we head out for a short 4.6 mile hike to the next shelter. There we chat with Hot Sauce as well as Sherpa and Sprout, two particularly friendly hikers I'm glad to meet again. Sherpa becomes jealous of our slow train when he hears of the idea. "Muscles I hadn't realized were tense just relaxed at the thought of slowing way down," he says, but he and Sherpa have already made plans to meet friends in New York and the Whites on certain dates, so they have to stick with their schedule.Buffalo and I set up our tents near the trail, away from the shelter, and sit around a camp fire, roasting marshmallows and talking about how difficult it would be to return to a "normal" lifestyle after one like this. We only plan to hike 10 miles tomorrow (Sherpa was embarrassed in comparison by their plan to do 25, not used to being the fast one), so we don't worry about going to bed or getting up early. After so many nights in town, it feels nice to be outside again, to hear the sounds of the woods and to feel a cool breeze through the mesh of my tent.