Date: 2003-07-30
From: Palmerton, Pa

To: Palmerton, Pa
Miles today: 5.2

Our first plan had been to take a zero day today, mainly for "Thistle's" benefit. But I persuaded her and "Two Speeds" that we should hitch out to Little Gap, five miles north, and slack-pack back to town. That's what we've done. It helps us with the next section of the trail which is formidable for various reasons.Zinc smelting was the main business of Palmerton for nearly a century, its furnaces polluted the town, and dumping destroyed a large area of the environment along Blue Mountain above Lehigh Gap. The EPA shut down the furnaces in 1980, and a clean-up programme was set in motion. The town's top soil was completely replaced, and a number of attempts have been made to re-vegetate the hillsides.   Hikers are advised not to take water from the land for a ten mile section of the trail, so when we were dropped at the Little Gap trailhead, we left six gallons of fresh water for our north-bound colleagues. Most of our walk today was along a wide track which had been the access road used by the zinc company. Plenty of woodland to begin with, but within a mile we had entered "a wasteland". You imagine that after the nuclear holocaust the world would look just like this. Under a very hot sun, an expanse of white, broken rocks in every direction as far as the eye could see, interspersed occasionally with the bleached trunks of long-dead trees. Strangely, the only thing unaffected is a thin line of smallish trees fringing each side of the access road itself. Beyond that it's like an elephant's graveyard of bleached bones on a massive scale, and the glare from it makes your eyes water. We passed a succession of north-bounders, including "Chafe", and everyone's mood was pensive. Our last mile (or the first mile out of Lehigh Gap) was easily the steepest on the AT up to this point, a very exposed boulder path (what path?) though thankfully not too windy today. At the top, most people would say you have a magnificent view of the Lehigh River, the Gap, and Palmerton 1,000 feet below. For me, it induced a cold sweat and a weakness in the knees. I don't like heights. The descent was more rock-climbing than walking. Often we had to drop our poles to the next level, and use hands, knees and feet to edge our way down. But we took our time, and, with "Two Speeds" leading the way, we got through it without any mishaps. At the bottom, a round of high-fives marked our elation and relief. Back in Plamerton by early afternoon, we saw to our chores. I spent the afternoon in the launderette with today's copy of "The Morning Call", an excellent provincial paper serving Carbon, Schuylkill and Monroe counties. It carried an obituary for Robert C. Niehoff. He was 78, a widower, and a Navy veteran of WW2. He had worked for New Jersey Zinc in Palmerton but then with the maintenance dept of Black & Decker in Allentown for 30 years. He was a member of all kinds of organisations, a pillar of the community. We came very close to meeting. In the months we have been out here, I¢ve often reflected on the coincidences, the chain of random decisions and events, that lead us to meet new people. How often have I been grateful when this serendipitous process has resulted in complete strangers becoming firm friends. But we never think about the other side of the serendipity coin. The encounters that almost happened, but didn¢t because time and space were just slightly out of whack. I could so easily have been sitting in Tommy¢s alongside an elderly 78 year old customer pleasantly passing the time of day over ice cream and waffles. Because we took a half day off the Trail to escape the rain at Pine Grove, or because ¢Thistle¢s¢ feet were pinching after Port Clinton, things happened differently. Bobby Niehoff and I came very close to meeting, but we never did.