Date: 2011-06-19
From: Leroy A. Smith Shelter

To: 0.3 miles after Kirkridge Shelter
Miles today: 14.1
Weather: overcast clouds

(In which I eat lunch in Wind Gap and camp on top of a hang-gliding hill)Tom starts hiking early, and I leave half an hour later, while Mehap and Travis are just finishing packing up. Like most hikers, I enjoy hiking solo every now and again, and usually meet back up at rest points. I use the morning solitude to listen to an episode of Car Talk, entertaining if not entirely relevant hiking listening material. I stop at a view point and when Mehap and Travis catch up we hike the last mile down to Wind Gap together.At Wind Gap we are met by Travis's wife Erin and their friend Katie, who have come to pick up Travis. They come well equipped with trail magic and at the gap they drop off two coolers stuffed full of Gatorade, water and Tastycakes. We take Erin's car down to the Gap Diner where we eat lunch and tell stories from the past weekend. With all the restaurants and trail magic from the past week I run the risk of walking in to Delaware Water Gap tomorrow with nearly as much food as I bought a week ago in Princeton, but it's a risk I'm willing to take.They drop me and Mehap back off at the gap where we say goodbye to Travis and grab some more Gatorade and Tasty Cakes for the trail. We stop at the shelter outside of Delaware Water Gap to be able to nero into town tomorrow and stay at the free church hostel (which we assume limits stays to one night like most free hotels). When I see that the guidebook lists a campsite with a view 0.3 miles after the shelter, I go for a jog without my pack to investigate.Unlike most of the rocky PA viewpoints, the one I find just after the shelter is a flat clearing of mowed grass next to a precipitously steep drop off. The clearing could hold dozens of tents and overlooks one of the best views in PA, a valley of farm land and forests, with a lake and city off in the distance. Back at the shelter I convince Mehap and the two section hikers out on their first night to abandon the shelter for the clearing, and I leave a note in the register for Tom.We haven't even set up our tents when Tom shows up, followed by two recent high school graduates and their father out for a few nights. We set up our tents (I borrow Tom's trekking pole this time) and then toss around Tom's frisbee in the large remaining field. We chat with the sectioners, telling stories and making jokes.One of the biggest changes that has occurred in most thru-hikers over the past several hundred miles isn't any specific new experience, but the comfortable familiarity that comes from having done everything so many times before. One particularly rewarding example of this is the easy familiarity with strangers that most thru-hikers have by now. We walk into towns and talk to people on the street, draw waitresses into our conversations and greet new hikers like they were family. It's an openness not just to new people, I think, but new experiences -- the knowledge that things will change but that no matter what happens we can take it in stride and have a good time. This is, I sometimes think, the real lesson of the trail, for which hiking is simply a convenient and enjoyable catalyst.