morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2004-07-10
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Manchester International AirportJuly 11, 04So now Jesus is a pita here at the Rye Bethany church, and the pastorsays he will come like a thief in the night. And steal what? I wonder.All our bread? The pita and the rye. Haha hodeeho. (Until today, I'dnever seen a communion where the Body of Christ was finely choppedpita bread) Let him come. Me, I'm gone. Been here, done the familything, and determined perhaps once and for all that discussion ofpolitics or the news or religion is pointless with my father. Godbless him. The banquet has been laid out, and he will have his placeat the table. Me, I'll buy Christianity when it opens its arms andsays all who believe in a supreme being will be welcome in Heaven. Fornow the Jews are out, and forget about the Mormons, the Muslims, theBuddhists, etc. "Don't get hung up on that," my father says. "Don'tget stuck on that issue or you'll never come to know the good thingsabout Jesus." I'm stuck at the exclusivity clause. I will probablyalways be stuck here. Stuck in the Hades between Heaven and Earth. Stuck between the zealous likes of my father and all my independent,intellectual, artistic and thoroughly anarchistic agnostic or atheisticfriends who believe in no god and find my hopeful belief in Heaven anabsurdity. In my father's church this morning I met a pretty womannamed Katie. Very lovely, tall, no doubt believes in Heaven. Doubtfula smoker. Probably "my" ideal match. I left that church sad thismorning, sure that no such woman would ever have a broken and hobblingChristian summer camp refugee-gone gonzo drug-addled devourer ofearthly life, the Mad Hatter in an oyster-sucking contest with theWalrus. Here at the Manchester airport bar awaiting the flight that will takeme back to Duncannon and the Appalachian Trail, these are the thoughtsthat I'm thinking. Where am I? What's it all mean? And will I, when I crest that coldrock far up in New England where Maine juts hard into Canada, will Ihave written something worth reading, worth publishing? Will I havestomped the American terra and told the tale well enough and withenough pride and gratitude in my American freedoms to please a nationof fear junkies, and maybe even, the poor battle-crazed soldiers inIraq? Will I?-RSMFor the full story of Rick's journey, visit Jigglebox.com
Date: 2004-07-15
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 24.0
Weather: light rain

Six miles south of Port Clinton, PAJuly 15, 04Crazy days. Rolling my bones alone, again. Twenty-two miles today,just four days back on the trail after a decadent ten days off drinkingbeers and eating and getting zip for exercise. Nada. Then whammo! Twelve miles Monday, twisting my ankle late in the day. Then 17 milesTuesday. Twenty yesterday. And I thought when I twisted my ankle thistime I was finished. It hurt that bad. But I talked to it, andmassaged it, and took it slow each day until, as usual, by midafternoonand into evening I was back to dancing across the stone fields offrikken Pennsyltuckey like a ballerina with a hump (the backpack). Nowtomorrow just six miles into Port Clinton where I'll pick up my firstof a new string of resupply boxes, grab a hamburger somewhere, a showerif that comes along, but then back on the trail for at least a 14tomorrow. I've decided I want OUT of PA by Tuesday night. Today isThursday. I got nearly 90 miles to cover. I'm gonna do it. [Postscript: I made it out by Wednesday]I'm thinking of a title to name the book that must surely come out ofall this gibberish. One idea:"The Fantastic Possibilities:or how I walked through your yard unnoticed this summer while RPGswhizzed across your TV screen"It's wordy, I know.New terminology:Pink Blazer - a guy who adjusts his pace to hike with a womanBlaze Licker - white blaze zealot overly concerned with passing &/ortouching every white blazePuron - same as above, comes from words "purist" and "moron"Brewhiker - a thruhiker who utilizes beer as a means of motivation toget from town to town (since one cannot possibly hike with beer, letalone cold beer, one must keep going to get to the next beer)Green blazer - one who uses that other (unfortunately illegal) form ofmotivation to get down the trailSuperpower privy - a lightning fast bowel movement technique perfectedto get in and out of a stinky privy in one hard-held breath.-RSMFor the full story of Rick's journey, visit Jigglebox.com
Date: 2004-08-02
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 1449.0
Weather: overcast clouds

Stealth camp, Schaghticoke Indian LandsMile 1449August 2, 04Damn-near running to get to Pawling, NY in time for dinner, legs andarms and poles drawing blurred circles beside me like the pistons andarmatures on old steam train wheels, I stop at a stream and splashdown, cool off. Exhausted, I drop flat onto the small foot bridge andrest a moment. Looking up, I see steam coming off my body, mistingskyward and waves of heat (my heat!) to warp the trees and sky above.That was the same day the shirtless day hiker with hairy chest andfolds of fat hanging over his pack waist-belt stops and in makingconversation asks me what I'm listening to. "Morphine," I said. Andhe says, "You're shooting morphine?" all accusatory-like. I look athim like he's grown a third head and reply, "You asked me what I waslistening to, Sir," the word sir coming outa my mouth with a thickdose of sarcasm as I smell cop all over him. "Do you think if I wereshooting morphine I would have made it 1400 miles from Georgia to here?Music, man. The name of the band is Morphine." I decided he was either a cop or a moron, spun round on my poles andflew down the path at speed, a coked-out laughing squid taking up landtravel with legs to spare.Last night it was cowboy campin' here by this trickling little brook, atub-sized pool all my own and my on my rain poncho spread out oversweet soft bed of green green moss, no tent, just the sil-nylon tarpstaked in on three corners and ready to be pulled full over me in caseof rain. No rain came. Cold dinner of sweet granola and dried fruit,powdered milk, then out like a light with the last light of day, wornout from an early morning rise in Brooklyn, the commuter train back tothe trail and the ensuing 16 mile hike outa New York state and intoConnecticut. Just three miles from Kent now where I will intercept a package of foodand very possibly stick my whole heavy pack and everything but the"bear necessities, the simple bear necessities" in a box and ship itoff, off my back, off my sore dying feet, then RUN! like a cheetahcross Conn and Mass and into Vermont where at last I'll feel the CherryGarcia ice cream buzz of the sweet, sweet finish line not far ahead,and great New Hampshire fulla family in between. Beautiful! Get methere, feetzes! Get me there, Jesus! Get me there Jehovah and Buddhahand Allah and all my friends and pets long dead or not so long, Luci inthe sky with Matilda. Get me there! I love you! I love you all and Iwalk now to kill time, grandiose, to hasten this journey back to you.-RSM
Date: 2004-08-04
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 1500.0
Weather: few clouds

Mt. Everette, MAMile 1500August 4, 04Decompressing now after a charge of the light brigade across 57 milesof Connecticut to arrive in MA in time for my cousin's birthday. Connection? None, I suppose. `Cept perhaps that I was born inMassachusetts, and for 1500 miles I've felt I was "walking home." Justin was probably born in Mass, too, his father's family going wayback in Malden (remember Don Vito? That¢s his grandfather.)I hate to say anything disparaging about the guy who wrote the trailguide book that 3000 hikers spent $16 a pop on, but here goes. Wingfoot, you RUINED MY LIFE! For months I had been planning carefullyto "return home" to my birth state of Massachusetts after decades awayin California, the AT as my ticket home. I had planned to step overthe border into Mass at precisely the hour of my birth on my birthday,to time it all perfectly. I fell a little behind this week, so had to pull a 27-mile day to makeit last night on time. I even gave up an invitation from several otherhikers to join them in hefting beer up a mountain outa Kent, Conn. fora party at a shelter a few miles shy of Mass. No way was I gonna missmy goal. Well, I made it! I crested a mountain and in descending down I saw asign with arrows that said Connecticut this way, Mass that way. It wasright where the book said it should be, so I took it as the state linesign. I was so pleased. Then I got up this morning, hiked half a mile downstream, and arrivedat a big sign in the woods saying ''Welcome to Massachusetts!'' What? Now either the Commonwealth of Mass just recently moved their stateline, or Wingfoot's guidebook is WRONG! My dream is dead. Thanks to the man everyone on the trail calls Wingnut, I had failed inmy mission. Crestfallen, I began a long grueling ascent up the firstof many mountains ahead of me here in the Berkshires of Mass. I was sodepressed I could barely speak. And as one after spider web orsilkworm strand or whatever the hell they are struck me in the face, Ibecame angry. I tripped over my poles. I slipped on wet rocks. "Dammit, dammit!" I shouted. Wingfoot ruined my life![Editor's note: We apologize for the peremptory nature of the precedingstory. Wingfoot's mileages in the thruhikers guidebook were wrong andthe author did thus inadvertently fail (by half a mile) in his missionto cross Connecticut in two days, but the bit about it being hisbirthday and everything about the ruination of his life is purebullshit. Thank you.]Afterthought:Hitched a ride out of Kent back to the trail with a stunning womanroughly my age or younger named Athenade. I wanted to marry her rightthen and there, but her ring finger was hidden by her grip on thesteering wheel and she was late for her god-daughter's birthday partyand had to run. C'est la Vie.-RSM
Date: 2004-08-05
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 1534.0
Weather: broken clouds

Goose Pond Cabin, Berkshires MAMile 1534August 5, 04Every day I walk now hard and fast and always thoughts in my head andalways I think, "When I get to my destination, I will write at lengthon these thoughts." But always it is the same. I arrive exhaustedfrom 20-some miles and 3, 4, 5 thousand feet elevation gain over thecourse of the day and write nothing, falling asleep in my bunk orbeneath the sky, keyboard splayed out on my belly, tiny input screen asdark as I am drunk with fatigue. Now on the dock here on Goose Pond that perfect golden light of lateafternoon, 7:30 p.m. on this August night in the Berkshires, lights upthe green corset of full rich forest surrounding the pond, flawless,uninterrupted. Such light is the most fleeting of gifts. It is given,and then gone in an instant. I have bathed in the pond and washed my sweaty body, toweling dry witha pack-sized towel most people refer to as a washcloth. I eat fignewtons and toss crumbs to the fish milling around my still-screaming,now-soaking feet. They eat the crumbs and get greedy. A big one nipsat my toe and when I jerk away in surprise I scare away the lot ofthem.I came earlier to a bridge over the pond's outlet perhaps a mile fromhere. I was punch drunk from fatigue and nearly pitched sideways offthe little bridge and into the brook. These words came to me then: Tippy tippy topsy turveySpent and bent and a little scurvy.Not a hundred meters later I came to a sign in the wood announcing thatthe cabin was still another mile off. I sat down hard on a mossy rockand began to cry. I am new to the game of extreme physical fitness,and I push myself too hard. My endurance grows and grows, but my feet,and sometimes my ankles, are not keeping pace with my muscular andrespiratory health. I cry because for the past hour I have had that recurring sense thatwith the next step or the next I will piss myself, my bladder controlsomehow connected to my pain threshold. I don't know. It's all newto me. But I had to push. I had to push out of stony PA and throughNew Jersey and New York and Connecticut, too. And now I'm half waythrough Mass, in just two days. It's madness, but I had to do it tokeep from quitting altogether. It's psychological. I had to achieveNew England, and once in, to get to Vermont as soon as possible. Why? I don't know. Because Vermont lay flush up against my beloved NewHampshire. They're like bosom buddies on the map. And New Hampshirewill soon follow Vermont. And then there's nothing left but Maine. Iwant this victory in my life, this finish. I want this badge calledKatahdin. I want to have finished something for once in my life. Somy feet will just have to carry me there. Somehow.Wait. Have I never finished anything in my life? Yes, of course Ihave. Oh, yeah? What, exactly? Don't remember. ''Not listening.   Not listening! Schmeogal notlistening!.''-RSM
Date: 2004-08-22
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 1663.0
Weather: few clouds

Mile 1663Wallingford, VTAugust 22, 04Then suddenly I stopped. Just like shutting down a jet engine withthe flick of a toggle switch, I shut off weeks and weeks of madstomping through mid-Atlantic states and came to rest, like that jetengine from the sky in "Donnie Darko," smack dab in the Marlboro-lovin'arms of David, my Mazatlan hero. I'm looking at a wallet photo, relatively old, of my nephews and I. Relatively old in the sense of their rapid growth, now four and six,perhaps half those ages in this photo. It is very dear to me, thisphoto. I have carried it on this entire journey, usually in thehigh-use zone of my map pocket, zip locked-in against moisture with mycurrent topo and a torn-out page from the trail data book. In the photo, Jacob and I are wearing Hawaiian flower print shirts,Matthew's shirt is slightly stained with the dribbles of a 2-year old. Jacob the elder holds his brother's shirt, a kind of embrace, and I,reclining in the back, embrace them both. I have long hair that fallsto my left shoulder in one big curl, ridiculous given my shiningforehead and goatee. No matter. I don't look at the photo to look atme. I hold Matthew's tiny hand in mine. We are all wearing sandals. I'vecome to call the photo "the Teva ad" after someone pointed out thislatter fact. I tuck the wallet print back in its AT zip lock pockethome and proceed to try and tell the story of weeks untold. Weeks andweeks and so many small states through which I blew like an anxiouswind only to stop dead in a poppy field in a chi-chi outlet mall townin lower Vermont, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, Dorothy and me. But the sun is setting in the West and I grow sleepy. Just ten milestoday, not much. And twelve out of the poppy field yesterday. I feeldrugged, though I am not. As I said, I escaped the poppy fieldyesterday. Nearby, a hoot owl hoots. Little critters stir all about me, me backin my hammock tent again after swearing it off long ago. What are yougonna do? I am cowardly. So tonight the lion sleeps again like thepupa. Perhaps tomorrow I will awake with both courage and wings. Iwill need both to finish this thing. The days are growing shorter andOz, though closer than ever, seems impossibly distant, impossiblyirrational. Ah, well the Daddy Long Legs have mostly left, and withnights in the mid-forties, mosquitoes are almost gone as well. Ah, but I was going to tell you all about my week off-trail with DoctorDave. That will have to wait until another day.-RSM
Date: 2004-09-01
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: broken clouds

Final Mail Drops to Maine:I slowed way down in Vermont and so haven't even reached the Mt. Washington addressyet. The final mail drops will be:September 6:c/o General DeliveryGorham, NH 03581HOLD FOR AT THRUHIKERSeptember 9:c/o General DeliveryAndover, ME 04216HOLD FOR AT THRUHIKERSeptember 12:c/o General DeliveryStratton, ME 04982HOLD FOR AT THRUHIKERSeptember 15:c/o General DeliveryCaratunk, ME 04925HOLD FOR AT THRUHIKERSeptember 18:c/o General DeliveryMonson, ME 04464HOLD FOR AT THRUHIKERAfter Monson, I enter Maine's 100-Mile Wilderness and will be out of contact until roughly October 1st.
Date: 2004-09-05
From: Franconia Notch

To: Paradoxia
Miles today: 0.0

Paradoxical UndressingSeptember 5, 04By propane lamplight in the silence of her family cabin, Yazzy tells us the story of a man who not so long ago bid his wife goodbye, ascended Mt. Lafayette, sat down on its west face and prepared to die.  He easily succeeded in a day and a night, dying of exposure.  I think of that term ¢paradoxical undressing¢ I have heard a lot recently.  Apparently a result of hypothermia, a victim goes from feeling very cold to feeling too warm and thus sheds layers when they should be adding.  I guess this results in many a frozen dead person being found in the nude.  Paradoxical.  It seems the man was not alone in hissuicidal mission.  The story goes that several members of his family expired insimilar fashion, the most recent, a brother or a son, merely walking off intothe Alaskan winter wilderness never to be seen again.  Okay, but I¢m getting ahead of myself.  It would be a few days before I¢d hearthis story yet.  When I did hear it, I didn't ask Yazzy in what season the Mt.Lafayette death took place.  I should have after what I went through up there. I can tell you this much: it could as easily have been last night as some nightin the depths of winter.  Easier in fact.  In winter, the guy would have had amuch harder time climbing the mountain.  Snow shoes and all that.  It is nowearly September, and trust me, last night would have done just fine for dyin'.Or tonight.I know this because I climbed Mt. Lafayette just hours ago.  I climbed and Iclimbed and I damn-near ran at times, pausing only to scramble up rock facesor piles of scree or stop and hold Nalgene water bottle to dripping stone for water enough to last another hour or two.  I know this because for the first time in recent memory I am forced, despite pouring sweat, to don a second layer against the cold.  And then a third.  By the top, I am climbing in two soakedunderlayers, my Patagonia fleece and my North Face 700-fill goose down jacket. Everything I¢ve got.  Backup.  Rewind further still.  It¢s a Sunday in early autumn...Click here for the continuation of this story on Jigglebox.com!
Date: 2004-09-13
To: Katahdin
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

Just finished bagging Mt. Washington and all the Presidentials! Out of the Whites and bound now for the Maine State Line! Woo-Hoo! Laid low in style during the northeast residue of Hurricane Francis, staying at Yazzy¢s camp up near the Canadian border. Fantastic!! Now Jessica, Eric and I are off to visit my Dad for the night not far from here (Gorham). Hoping but doubtful that I'll catch up to Chef, Chris & Elly, Still Frank and many more. And that Beat Box and Franko & Bennie will catch me! Library computer with someone standing over my shoulder so, gotta go! Be sure and check back in late October here or on Jigglebox.com for the complete story of this coming final month, and for tons of pictures which I have been unable to post from the trail. Cheers to all of my fellow Thruhikers, Brewhikers, Thoroughikers and Barleymakingithikers. I support you all and wish you well, empathetic as I am. I would at this moment be best described as amongst the Barelymakingit. Ciao! -Lord Duke Jester Jigglebox
Date: 2004-10-05
From: White House Landing

To: White House Landing
Miles today: 0.0

White House LandingOctober 5, 20042:35 a.m.Yazzy sleeps sweet and warm in cotton sheets (a great luxury of trail life) on good thick mattress in old four-poster bed and I am happy for her, feeling for a moment grand, a wealthy man. A Lord in the royal sense.But this Lord¢s bowels go off like some dumb clock every night now at two in the morning it seems, causing every order, or disorder rather of dressing in layers and locating eye glasses and headlamp and cursing under breath as I climb from tent out over sleeping Yaz, or as with tonight subtly slip from big bed but still must dress to make the hike to privy high on hill. Which gets me thinking about the bill and $60 for the two of us in private room, yet not toilet or running water or shower, all said amenities remote in out-buildings here and there throughout the property. And I just know any city folk or any ANYBODY with a real sense of the value of money not skewed and screwed like mine would find this a deal. I fight back years of so-called poverty consciousness and choose instead to revel in this island paradise on the water¢s edge, on the edge of the world with fifty miles of lonesome forest all around in any direction, all this on the edge of winter, the cold wind whistling round the house tonight in the dim gray not dark of near full moon somewhere up there lending pale illumination to low-lying blanket sky. Wind outside, yet here in the common room of the otherwise empty guest house silence such that one lone fly¢s desperate end-of-season buzz is heard loud, a death rattle really as autumn snaps its late start fingers, drops a ticker-tape parade of dazzling colors, leaves, and in its fast retreat glances back over birch-white shoulders and whispers ¢Go! Hike now and go home, go west young man of California comforts and Pacific ceaseless dreams. Go! You have done well foot soldier.¢ And Autumn old and tired turned away and as he went dropped golden flakes of fading summer sun from Aspen fingers quaking.In the quiet of another night on water¢s edge a loon cries melancholic long and lonesome as the moon and two trees rub together in the dark, one fallen against the other, a friend indeed and held up, and together with the help of the wind they, too, sing a song more lonesome than the loon. My heart breaks and is daily healed in the forest. This end comes natural as winter and yet I do envy me it. -RSM
Date: 2004-02-06
To: Can't Wait to be on the Trail Again!
Miles today: 0.0

NOTE: Use the link to the left to view our journal from our 2003 hike. This site will be devoted to our 2004 section hike.In three months we'll be heading back out to the Appalachian Trail, ready to resume hiking. We had planned for last year's hike to be a thru-hike, but events (my Dad's death and my Mother's needs, our "older" bodies, and recurring foot problems) conspired to make it a 650 mile(Jitterbug)- 700 mile(Hoover)section hike. This year we plan to hike the 503 miles of Virginia that we skipped--from Damascus to Linden. Then, given that our bodies are holding up, we plan to move up to Pennsylvania where we left the trail last summer. I will hike the 50 miles that Hoover did without me, and then we'll go as far north as time and our bodies permit. I hope that we'll be able to make it to NY by early July when we have to head back to Arkansas. We still want to finish the trail, although it will take us three years to do it instead of one!We are taking our training seriously this year. Last year we thought we were in pretty good shape when we hit the trail, but nothing we could have done would have prepared us for the Georgia mountains. This year we have a better idea what to expect, and we plan to be in good cardio-vascular shape when we start hiking. We are doing spinning, weight training, and yoga at the gym, and I am walking 4-5 miles a day on our golf course. Hoover walks the course and carries his bag when the weather permits. As soon as things warm up a little here, we plan to take 1-2 hikes a week with full packs so that we can re-accustom ourselves to the weight on our backs.This year I won't rely so heavily on maildrops to resupply. Last year we got tired of eating the meals I had dehydrated, and I had planned way too much food for us to carry. We didn't come close to eating the 4500 calories per day that I read we would need, so we ended up putting a lot of food in hiker boxes. This year I will package smaller quantities, and we will resupply locally more often. It will also make the hike easier to plan from a logistical standpoint.Our current plans have us starting in Atkins, VA (north of Damascus) on May 8th, and hiking southbound back into Damascus for Trail Days. Then we'll resume hiking north from Atkins after Trail Days. These plans are flexible, however--one thing I learned from last year's hike is to go with the flow. We hope to see all of our friends in Damascus in May! Happy Hiking-