Old Lady on the Trail- Triple Crown at 76

by Mary E Davison

  Moving slowly down a bit of trail along the highway to a pasture, I climbed the stile (a ladder-like arrangement over a fence) and headed up the trail through the sparkling frozen grass of the meadow. The frost caught the light of my headlamp, shining like glitter poured freely on the ground, as I walked under the moon and a starlit sky. The wood of the stile was frosty and quite slippery, reminding me to be careful. A water tower constructed in 1920 could barely be made out on the skyline of the pasture, along with something else that moved in a pocket of dark fog. The moving critter turned out to be a cow trotting to the side of the pasture when I’d entered its domain. I crossed three stiles and as many pastures on my way up the ridge as daylight slowly emerged. There was only me, my footsteps crunching on frozen ground, and an occasional rustle in the grass as small birds were startled by my passing.

  Reaching Leather Hill Road, I called Tramper and told him when to expect me at Hoyt Road. I was there no more than a minute when Tramper drove up. What a great trail angel! Tramper drove me back to the Appalachian Market, where my daughter had dropped me off five days before. Tramper really went out of his way to help a fellow hiker, and I deeply appreciated his help.

  Three days were left for the hiking year, all slack packs. For the first one, Sara and I bundled the boys into the car at 6:30. They dropped Grandma on the trail heading southbound from Seven Lakes Drive. Looking back toward Bear Mountain from West Mountain, the sun glared off the Hudson River. Before going up Black Mountain, I crossed the Palisades Parkway, New York City only 34 miles away according to the highway sign. From the top of Black Mountain I could see the NYC skyline. How amazing to be so close to so many people, yet feel light years away on a mountain trail.

  After a lovely view down to Silver Mine Lake’s bright blue surrounded by colorful fall leaves, the rest of the day was just a nice walk in the woods over a carpet of those bright leaves.

  Sara picked me up at Tiorati Circle, and we drove to Silver Mine Lake for an open rest room. The facilities looked a little shabby, a lady coming out shaking her head and turning up her nose in disapproval. I thought it palatial and rather nice inside. It was clean. There were flush toilets, running water, and soap. It was even heated. It surely beat squatting over a hole in the ground.

  My last two days were slack packs with a motel in the middle. Rock scrambles up Eastern Pinnacles and Cat Rocks were short and fun since the weather and the rocks were dry. And I was grateful.

  As I ate lunch, Foxtrot, whom I’d met in the Chairback Range in Maine, came by going south and stopped to chat with me. It was fun to hang out with a hiker who could really hike. He’d finished Maine and walked through New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and most of New York in the time I’d done part of Maine and most of New York. The two of us a demonstrated the wide variety in age, ability and background of those who walk long trails. He too, as well as Lisa in Maine, encouraged me to think about the CDT after completing the AT and the PCT.

  The fall color was glorious. In many places green was only an accent color against a forest aflame with yellow, orange, and red. I was especially amazed by red oak leaves. I’d never thought of oaks as being other than green or brown.

  A brown, white, and black patterned snake gave me a bit of excitement in the late afternoon. I didn’t know what kind it was as it lay stretched out lengthwise, so motionless he almost looked dead. I stood back a ways and took his picture before reaching far forward to tap his tail with my pole. He immediately half coiled ready to strike in half a second of time. I gave him a very wide berth going by, thinking he looked deadly. When I later looked him up I found he was indeed deadly, a copperhead.

  Agony Grind was the official name of the last section of the day’s trail. I was glad to be going down and not up, and equally glad it was still light and not raining as I picked my way down the steep rocks. I arrived at the road and started walking toward town, two miles away. About half way there, Steve, a fellow hiker, pulled over and offered me a ride, which I gladly accepted. Although hitchhiking is illegal in New York, I do not think it was illegal to offer a ride or accept one.

  Early the next morning I was out the door of my motel room and walking in the dark with my headlamp to a gas station. I didn’t wish to risk being a statistic by walking in the dark on the edge of the highway with cars zipping by. I bought some orange juice at the food mart and drank it while eyeing the other customers. I hoped asking for rides while in a store wouldn’t be considered hitching. The third person I asked, consented to give me a ride up the hill for the two miles back to the trail.

  Walking once again, the dark lightened into day, revealing a golden yellow forest. I’d thought my hike in Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland was beautiful the previous fall, but the leaves were even more gorgeous in New York. That week, that very day, must have been the absolute peak of color.

  New York had nearly as many lakes as Maine, and I passed six my last two days. I also went through the Lemon Squeezer, a narrow cleft in slanted rocks, which usually requires hikers to take off their backpacks to squeeze through. I could walk through with a daypack though awkwardly. Walking over Fingerboard Mountain, Mother Nature outdid herself with glorious color.

  Sara met me again at Tiorati Circle with the boys for a picnic. Four-year-old William delighted in climbing the rocks by our picnic table. Two-and-a-half-year-old Matthew found sticks in the forest to play with, and baby Nathan raised his teething cookie in a baby power salute to the day and the end to the year’s hiking.

  Chapter 21 Fall and Winter 2010

  My Gym

  I used to brag about being a reasonably fast hiker for an old lady. That changed to bragging about being one of the oldest hikers. I met four women in Maine in 2009, who were in their 70s. Way to go! But there were not a whole lot of women hikers over 65. I have no trouble calling myself old. In fact, I flaunt it. In the spring of 2010, I was blessed to be 68 and still able to hike. I celebrated my age and hiking on the trail.

  However, as each year went by I had to be more and more intentional about staying in hiking shape and conditioning before I hit a trail. My friend Kathy had a gym membership and spent time and money working out getting ready to hike. From the time she was young, her parents told her, she should get a good education, so she could get a good job and never have to work hard at physical labor. So she wouldn’t work physically unless it was in a gym or hiking. I didn't have that particular parent tape running in my head, although going to college and getting an education had always been expected. When I retired, I spent hours working in my yard. My yard was my gym.

  Weeding, shoveling compost, pruning, and even splitting wood are hard work. But those activities help keep me in good physical condition. I saved lots of money not paying gym fees, as well as enjoying the fruits of my labors in good food all year long. For an old lady with a bad knee, I stayed in pretty good shape. That, however, didn’t mean conditioning hikes could be skipped. El Nino weather that winter meant Washington had some of the best weather in the nation, so Kathy and I had many good hiking days.

  After mild months from December to February, winter arrived all at once in March, with large dumps of snow in the mountains. My last conditioning hike was solo up Mt. Si. On the way down, about a mile from the top, I took a most spectacular fall.

  As I started to slide in the slushy slippery snow, I didn’t want to hurt my bad knee and just let myself fall over like a dead tree. That protected the knee but resulted in landing on my back, head down, sliding down a very steep part of the mountainside. Yikes! I managed to get turned sideways and stop about 30 feet below the trail. No body parts were hurt, the pack wasn’t damaged, and I didn’t even break my glasses, which were in my pocket. I climbed back up to the trail and walked three miles down to the car. That was enough conditioning. HA!

  Flying east to Harrisburg, PA, a young seminarian picked me up and drove me to Gettysburg, where I was a guest of the seminary, staying in the cottage for visiting Bishops, quite posh f
or a hiker—and I wasn’t a Bishop.

  This accommodation came by way of my trail angel, John Spangler, who had driven me to the hospital at the end of my Virginia section in 2008. I walked around the battlefields in the afternoon, sobered to consider all the blood shed on those beautiful hills and valleys. If you remember your history lessons, much of the Battle of Gettysburg took place on Seminary Ridge, which was and is a Lutheran Seminary.

  Chapter 22 April 6, 2010

  AT

  Winkle

  John drove me out to Old Forge Road in Pennsylvania to meet Winkle, an AT thru hiker, who had followed my journal for a couple years. Her husband, Greg dropped her off. I was excited to meet and hike with my email hiker friend.

  After obligatory before pictures, Winkle and I walked up the trail. It was 84 degrees when we got to the shelter after our short walk, a far cry from the snow on Mount Si in Washington a few days earlier.

  The next day was also hot, 83 in the shade. Hiking with a friend was a pleasure. Our night was at twin shelters at Quarry Gap, the nicest I’d ever seen with a spring routed to a merry stream in front of the shelters and clumps of daffodils blooming nearby. The shelters, absolutely clean, had a covered picnic table and even a Bear Box for food storage.

  The next day was hotter yet. My thermometer registered 89, making early April feel like July. We drank lots of water and sprawled in shade when we could find some. Late in the afternoon, Steve hiked by our shelter, the same Steve who had given me a ride to my motel on the last night of my hike in New York. It’s a small world on the trail.

  Much nicer hiking weather arrived that night, a cold front dropping the temperature to 44 degrees. We hiked 11 miles before lunch, not something I could have done in Maine last year or in Pennsylvania in hot weather. A bright spot in the day was passing a little evergreen tree on the trail, an Easter tree hung with many colored plastic Easter eggs.

  Although I was doing better in the cooler weather, Winkle was having trouble with her knee, knee pain and a history of knee injury giving her concern. So Greg, her husband, met her at Highway 94, and they said good-bye to me. I missed Winkle. I’d enjoyed her company.

  The woman at the Holly Inn gave me coffee and poppy-seed bread and drove me back to the trail. Winkle told me someone had broken her arm on rocks at Rocky Ridge, but I had no falls. Finding the recommended campsite completely overrun with fishermen, I had to find something else. The Regional AT Building in Boiling Springs had a bulletin board ad for a resort at $25 a night, which caught my eye. Deal. The resort had a restaurant, another bonus.

  Early spring flowers including May Apples unfurling were a delight in the Cumberland Valley. I loved the way May Apples pop open like little umbrellas, but I wasn’t as happy to see poison ivy. I had to look carefully before putting my body, pack, or poles on the ground.

  At Darlington Shelter I met Rev, a hiking Methodist Pastor. I sang Holden Evening Prayer for him since it was Sunday.

  The Duncannon, in Doyle, had been a fine hotel in its heyday, one of the original Anheuser Busch Hotels, although that heyday was long past. The sheets were clean, and the water was hot (even if it was down the hall). The bed was quite comfortable, and I took a zero day in that bit of yesteryear.

  Thru hikers, or even long section hikers, are not the only ones on the trail. At the Doyle I met a woman with much more severe arthritis than mine. Her goal was to walk one mile on the AT in every state through which it passed. You do not have to be a thru hiker or carry a backpack for even a single night to find enjoyment and worthwhile goals on long trails.

  "Hey, it’s going to be rocky after a while."

  With the help of a shuttle I made an 18-mile slack pack back to Duncannon SOBO. I set no speed records on the rocky trail trying to be overtaken with poison ivy. I moved like an old lady with or without a pack, and 18 miles was a long way for me. I reminded myself three years ago it had looked doubtful that I would walk on any trail with a staph infection in my knee. Any step I took, at whatever speed, was a blessing.

  Some days on the trail were gentle climbs or level stretches in which to recover from more strenuous challenges. I enjoyed the challenges, but I also enjoyed pleasant days walking in the woods with no grand views, few flowers, and not much excitement. Peace and quiet, rhythmic, repetitive strides and the uneventful trail allowed the mind to wander or even empty of thought entirely, another blessing.

  Gentle stretches didn’t last all that long. Pennsylvania is famous for its rocky trail, but what I found even more challenging was the poison ivy. I react strongly to the oil in this leafy plant at any touch to bare skin. I also react if my hand touches a hiking pole, which has previously brushed poison ivy. There were times I chose not to use my hiking poles, not because I didn’t need them, but because they were just one more item needing to avoid the ever-present poison ivy. Finding a poison-ivy-free place for my feet was challenge enough, not always successfully met.

  The skies opened up with an incredible deluge as I approached 501 Shelter, and I ran the last 100 feet in an old-lady, bad-knee run. 501 was a super shelter, fully enclosed with a door and windows, 12 bunks. It was leaking rain on a long picnic table under a skylight. I was VERY glad to have made it to the shelter before the downpour. Unfortunately, I found the shelter was infested with mice, brazenly coming up through wide gaps between floorboards, running all over the place.

  Not wanting to go out into the rain, then falling by the bucketfull, maybe even the wheelbarrow-full, I devised a mouse proof place for my food by putting my comestibles and smelly stuff in the shelter’s empty five-gallon bucket for recyclables, turning the bucket upside down on a solid plywood bunk and putting a chair on top to weight it down.

  That took care of food storage. I pushed my pot from the doorway out in the rain to get enough water to hold me for the night and went to sleep listening to pounding rain on the skylight drowning out the sounds of mice scurrying across the floor.

  Weather in the eastern USA was quite variable that spring, a heat wave to very cold. On a brisk morning I almost walked in a circle on a rocky ridge, following the trail from one viewpoint to another. At lunch on a lovely lookout, I watched turkey vultures play, soaring and gliding between me and the forest canopy below my lookout perch.

  Then I had a disaster when picking up my resupply box at the Post Office. My driver’s license was missing. OH NO. Nothing else was missing, only the driver’s license. The postman accepted my Costco credit card with my picture as an ID and gave me my two boxes. Wondering where the driver’s license was, I also wondered how I would be able to board an airplane at the end of my hike without it.

  Near Pocahontas Springs, sitting in a rock armchair someone had constructed in a grassy clearing, I made cellphone calls to every place in Duncannon or Port Clinton I’d stayed or purchased anything, but had no luck finding my missing driver’s license. Oh well, walk on.

  My cousin emailed me, asking if the Pennsylvania rocks were as bad as the Maine rocks. No, everything is easier than Maine, at least until New Hampshire. There are plenty of rocks on the AT in every state, just more of them in Pennsylvania—big ones, little ones, rocks sometimes scattered, sometimes very, very thickly covering the trail and sometimes big piles of boulders.

  Pennsylvania also has lovely woodsy trail on old dirt roads decorated with violets and bluets. The views from Pulpit Rock (a must for a preacher) and Pinnacle Lookout overlooked the patchwork quilt landscape of farms, pastures, and woods. Eckville Hiker Center Shelter even had an outlet to charge my phone. Pennsylvania wasn’t all bad.

  The rocks became much worse from Dan’s Pulpit past Balanced Rocks. The guidebook claimed a spot I was to pass later in the day would be rocky. I kept telling myself, while carefully walking through heaps of rocks thickly scattered on the trail, "Hey, it’s going to be rocky after a while." I was only mildly amused at the incongruity of the time element in the statement. Now I knew why Fox Trot, whom I’d met in Maine and then New York, had flitted like a butterfly
over the rocks. Besides being young, male, and having knees, he was from Pennsylvania and must have had lots of practice with rocky trail. I didn’t flit like a butterfly. I lumbered and labored like a behemoth hippo with a broken leg. But I did safely get through the rocks.

  While resting at Blue Summit B&B that night, I looked for my guidebook and found it missing. Not something else lost! I’d already discovered I had no maps for that section, evidently having put them in a different resupply box. I was disgusted. I liked to think of myself as a reasonably competent trail person, not a ninny who kept losing things.

  Past Blue Summit, a knife-edge pile of boulders called the Cliffs required careful navigation with a bum knee. The Gentleman, a hiker from England, passed me, saying he’d seen my guidebook lying on the trail, but he hadn’t picked it up. After the Cliffs came Bear Rocks, which I decided to climb for the view, meeting three SOBO hikers who climbed with me. One of them, Patty, heard I’d lost my guidebook, and they would see it along the trail. She immediately gave me hers, saying they had three and didn't need it.

  Wow. Thanks. I could always just follow white blazes, but it was very nice to be able to tell how far I’d come and how far I had to go. A blaze didn’t carry that information. Getting a new guidebook mid-trail was a wonderful gift.

  I took a zero day at Slatington Fine Lodging— (Fine was the owner’s last name.)—an old rooming house with shared bathrooms and men, old and young, the tenants. The door had a double dead-bolt lock, and I had no trouble and found the owner quite helpful as he arranged a ride for me back to the trail.

  From Lehigh Gap, the trail went straight up the rocky face of Blue Mountain, 1,000 feet in less than half a mile. My bad leg was challenged, but the sky was blue, the sun was out, and the views were terrific. I sang, "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning." At least I did when I wasn't catching my breath or figuring out how to navigate over rocks.