Date: 2009-07-08
From: near Dans Pulpit

To: Palmerton
Miles today: 21.5

Today was the kind of day that, from the very beginning, I knew was inevitably going to end in tears. I took a late morning packing up because I only had to hike 8 miles to rondezvous with my friend Riche. However, two hours into my hike I received a message from him saying that he couldn't make it. Suddenly, I was dealing with a pretty dire situation. I was out of food twenty miles away from any place to resupply. Although I am a very emotional person, I have trained myself to not have emotional reactions to emergencies. This began at sea and I conduct myself the same way out here, as I do out there. I took inventory of what I had, got out the book, and made a plan. The most sensable thing to do was pick up the pace and make an unscheduled town stop in Palmerton. I was not anxious to tell Uncle Charlie that I had lost the box he over nighted me, but I eventually let the ground crew know of the change of plans.      Of course, the day got exponentially more difficult as it got later. My effort to pick up the pace was shot down by the rocks. Each step felt like the rocks would come through my shoes and break the arches of my feet in half. I encountered four giant boulder fields today where I felt more like a rock climber, wedging my fingers into rock grooves to pull myself along. My usual speed of 3 mph was, in many sections, cut in half or less. The worst part was the lack of water. Due to a combination of dry streams, or streams so far off of the trail that you wouldn't go to them anyway, I did a few hours with no water at all. By late afternoon, I was a thirsty, hungry, sad, frustrated, hurting hiker mess!      By six, I had descended into Lehigh Gap and was on the highway bound into Palmerton. I tried for a few minutes in vain to hitch hike the 1.5 miles into town. I hate hitching because the time standing there feels wasteful when I could just be walking. So I sprinted across the 4 lane highway, hopped a guard rail and scurried down to the train tracks where I walked the 1.5 miles into town. Of course, a train came rumbling through and I was sure the engineer would call the police on me. However I eventually made it into town without incident.      Palmerton was an unuaual experience from the very start. On my way down Main Street, ten people stopped me to tell me where the hostel was. At this time I had not decided if I was going to stay in town because I figured if I could pull a few more miles, I might be able to catch Mostly tomorrow. But my body was screaming for me to stop for the night. As I walked up to a big building, the man sitting on the porch motioned for me to come over. He opened the door for me and told me that this is where I was staying tonight. It was a bit eerie, but I was too exhaused to wrestle with my fate.      It turns out that the hiker hostel in Palmerton is run by the Police Department and exists in the basement of their office building. It is called the "Jailhouse Hostel". This was my first stay in a bunkroom on this trip. The man took me down to the basement that was a big room with about 14 bunks. There were about 6 people there I didn't know. As I was looking around the room, my eye caught something familiar, the orange backpack I had seen every day for nearly all of Virginia. Mostly was here somewhere! I was so over whelmed with happiness, not only to have finally caught my buddy but also because I had actually made it through this terrible, treacherous day without crying.      In great haste I got out into town to do my chores and to try to locate Mostly. On the way back from the grocery store, I saw him sitting inside of the laundromat. Walking in, I totally surprised him, and our dramatic reunion may have looked like something from Gone with the Wind.      Later, when town chores were done and we were sitting and talking,Mostly told me that he had decided to leave the trail and would be getting off in Delaware Water Gap in 6 days. And so I didn't make it through the day without crying...