Old Lady on the Trail- Triple Crown at 76

by Mary E Davison

  A reroute went around the superfund site, a barren mountain needing reclamation from a century of unregulated zinc mining and smelting emissions. Still, there were blooming bleeding hearts on my trail, symbols of sorrow for the rape of the land and promise of better from Mother Nature’s healing.

  Mechanical Man and his wife, Crayola Lady, took me to their home and showed me to the shower, also feeding me a wonderful roast pork dinner topped off with an ice cream sandwich, all a hiker could want. They told stories of hosting trail legend Earl Schafer and showed me pictures of their son, the BMX bike racer.

  Mechanical Man and Crayola Lady offered to bring my gear to me at Wolf Rocks, the farthest south evidence of glaciers on the AT, making the majority of the day a slack pack through the rainy forest under my umbrella. The rocks were large chunks, smoothly polished by ancient moving ice and slippery in the rain, requiring I move with caution to avoid a crash.

  Reaching Kirkridge Shelter, I found Yoyo, whom I’d met on The Priest in Virginia. He’d walked the entire AT in 2008, but was back on the trail now because he missed it. It was nice to have company. We were in our bags by 9:00, listening to thunder and watching lightning flash over hills around us while rain pounded the roof, very glad to be dry under that roof.

  On my last day in Pennsylvania, I traveled along as fast as I could go, which wasn't very fast, but it was as fast as I could go. Heading down from Mt. Minsie, I saw the smiling face of Tramper coming up to meet me. Tramper provided a ride for me half way across New York in 2009, and now he’d agreed to help this year with another very essential, and rather large, chunk of transportation.

  Together, we hiked down to Deer Head Inn, where I’d stayed the previous year, and Tramper had spent the night. I used his shower before he checked out. Yay. It was wonderful and unexpected to be clean and was probably good for him, too, as I sat in the same car with him for a few hours. Driving across New Jersey and New York, we yakked trail talk all the way. What a great trail angel.

  An Iguana In His Shirt

  Tramper dropped me at Hoyt Road at 4:30, and I walked to the nearest shelter. I was soon drenched in sweat, and all my nice cleanliness was gone in Connecticut’s heat. And, oh yes, it was raining there, too. Connecticut had trail that wasn’t a pile of rocks, but I found the shelter trashed. Food was dumped in a puddle in front of the shelter, trash strewn around and the privy tipped over. Shelters are the bedrooms of hikers and it was horrible to see them damaged by vandals.

  Volunteers maintain trails and shelters on the AT, and it would take a lot of work to clean up the mess, especially to restore the privy. It made me very angry. These jerks were a dreadful contrast to the wonderful, gracious trail angels, who cared for hikers and trails. I scraped up the ruined food from the mud puddle and buried it. I gathered up some of the trash. I couldn't do anything about the privy.

  Leaving the vandalized shelter, I walked along the Housatonic River and hiked up Shagitoke Mountain on trail sometimes smooth, sometimes resembling Pennsylvania rocks or Maine rocks. Pennsylvania rocks were like a trail strewn with Tonka Truck size rocks, all kinds of Tonka Trucks.

  Maine rocks were more often polished slabs of rock. Neither were pleasant for me in the rain. I was glad to reach Kent, buy my dinner from the IGA and go to Cooper's Creek B&B on a tip from the Outfitter. The B&B was lovely and my hosts, Cooper and Mary, were delightful.

  Connecticut has uphill and I moved rather slowly, out of practice with uphill as much of Pennsylvania had been relatively flat. That conditioning hike on Mt. Si was a distant memory, and all those miles Winkle and I did so well at the start of this year’s hike seemed like unobtainable aberrations. Connecticut had uphill. Yet Connecticut also had the easiest, flattest five miles on the whole AT.

  Toward the end of the day, headed to Cornwall, I met Cyron, a young hiker with a very large pack and an iguana carried in his shirt. His pet iguana suffered from the cold unless warmed from his skin. I’d never seen an iguana on the trail before and haven’t seen another since. Cornwall had a motel, a Post Office, a grocery store, and a package store, enough for me to get my resupply box, eat, shower and sleep. I didn’t need the package store.

  The next day I took a slight detour on Sharon Road as Cyron had told me a stream on the trail was impassable. As I walked, I listened to singing birds accompanied by woodpeckers adding staccato rim shots. At one point in the day two different woodpeckers did a duet in snare and tom tom, at least it sounded like that to me. I had lunch on Easter Mountain, a good place for a pastor. At the Iron Bridge I caught a ride to the Toymaker's Café. There was no bed or shower, but the Toymaker let me camp in his yard.

  The Toymaker also let me dry out my sleeping bag inside in the morning and fed me hot, fresh cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Yum. Red columbine, violets and white hobble bush added to my pleasure as I walked. Three young guys in the shelter that night fed me caramelized apples for desert. Sweet. Double entendre intended. I sang Holden Evening Prayer for these Presbyterian young men, who even said prayers before eating. They appreciated Holden.

  The book said the day would be strenuous, and it didn’t disappoint. I was on the trail at 6:30 on a hot day, up to 84 degrees and went over three mountains for a total of about 2,400 feet elevation gain, some of it quite steep. The prettiest part was a lovely woodsy walk among hemlock and pine trees by a stream with many small waterfalls, Sages Ravine. It reminded me of the Cascades, and I loved the white hobblebush against the dark water and the dark greens and browns of the forest. That night in Massachusetts other campers gave me a spoonful of chocolate cheesecake for dessert. Desserts two nights in a row.

  "Now why did you go and do that?"

  When it was warm enough at 5:30 AM that you could envision going without clothes, it was a sure sign the day was going to be a hot one. Hiking in heat just saps me, turning me into a dead daisy, greased pig, stewing me in my own juice or any other cliché describing heat. Even easy miles seemed hard in very humid heat.

  Two bands of mushroom gatherers met me in the flat area I walked that day, one of them even interviewed me for their newsletter. Another mushroom gatherer gave me a cookie when we reached a parking lot. At the road, I could see a store close by and I needed more water due to the extreme heat of the day. I guzzled a Sprite from a vending machine at an antique store but the proprietor said he didn’t have any potable water, and he looked like he wanted me out of the store. He seemed somewhat lacking in the milk of human kindness as well as water. A smaller shop had an accommodating woman, who pulled out a gallon of water and told me to take all I wanted.

  The last five miles uphill in the heat took an eternity. Black flies and mosquitoes swarmed in the heat and bit hard, leaving scars. Trail builders seemed sadistic, routing the trail through avoidable rocks. Bugs tried to devour me when I bathed at the shelter and pumped my water. The shelter had a scroungy look, and something had been chewing on the wood of the bunks. The Gentleman, the hiker from England, had signed the shelter register earlier in the day, saying he was evaporating in the heat. And this was spring, not summer, only May 2nd.

  I woke up to banging on my bunk, looking down at my feet with my headlamp to see the mangiest looking porcupine ever, trying to get up in my bunk with me. I told him I didn’t need a bedfellow, shining the light of my headlamp in his eyes. He gave me a squinty-eyed look of pain as if to say, "Now why did you go and do that?" as he clambered back down to the floor, waddled over to the edge of the shelter, down the side and out into the still fairly dark morning.

  Heaven and Goin’ Home

  While hiking through more woods and by a lovely lake with a beaver lodge in the middle, the title of a Hemingway novel, The Sun Also Rises, bounced around in my brain as a trail descriptor. Each day dawned on the trail. Even if the sun were hidden behind clouds, dawn came with its light every day. Each dawn, each moment, and each step on the trail had sameness, yet particularity and potential for something new to happen. My job as a hiker was to keep walking and see what wo
uld turn up.

  Sights ran the gamut from mangy porcupines searching for salt from sleeping hikers and their gear to lovely woods, lakes, and beaver lodges seen though raindrops under overcast skies. Experiences varied from pain and exhaustion to great joy, walking by myself or making multitudes of connections with people on trails or in towns. The sun rose every day on trails rich with potential adventures.

  Two days after the porcupine tried to crawl into my bunk, I had an opportunity for a very long slack pack. Who was it who told me it would be easy? The Cookie Lady? She was told by thru-hikers? Didn't I know that I could never do what a thru-hiker does in less than twice the time they do it?

  Eight miles into the 19-mile day, I realized I’d lost my belt pouch that held lots of handy little things, including on this particular day, my headlamp. I was once again disgusted with myself. Something else lost. This trip was the trip of lost stuff. Drat and double darn, darn, darn. The missing pack pouch also had my candy, my knife, my pole tips, my hat toggle, tissues, my comb, nail file, toothbrush and importantly, the extra pain medications I’d been saving up for this very long day. There was no way I could go back eight miles to get it. There wasn’t a thing to do but go onward. Later in the day I met two day-hikers and expounded my plight to them. They listened to my rantings and promised to look for the pack pouch. I told them their trail name should be Sweet Couple, but they said they were not always sweet. Listening to my tale of woe, they were sweet to me.

  Other than losing the pack pouch, the day went pretty well. Trout Lilies, painted and red trillium were in bloom. blue chiming bells graced the meadow and marsh marigolds made yellow splashes of color by streams. Walking by beaver ponds, I saw moose turds, so I knew there were moose in Massachusetts.

  Getting tired at the end of the day, I worried as I had no sleeping bag with me and had lost my headlamp. I HAD to get to my destination before dark. The knee was stressed, and I had no extra meds. As thunderstorms hit in the afternoon, I hoped I and my trusty umbrella wouldn’t get hit by lightning while we descended from high places in the rain.

  I took a break at a shelter just off the trail to eat and replenish my energy, a most fortunate stop. Steve, a SOBO section-hiker (trail-named Goin' Home) said he would look for my pack pouch. Not only would he bring my pack pouch to me if he found it, he would be renting a car in Great Barrington and driving to North Adams, where he would pick up his own car to drive home past West Point to New Jersey. And when would he be doing all this? Friday. Wow.

  Would he consider a rider to West Point?

  Yes. Yes, he would. And for only the cost of some gas. All this conversation happened in the few moments it took to quickly chew up a dozen almonds and some jerky and pack up to fly down the trail again. He had my name, address, and cellphone number, and said he would call if (or if not) he found my pouch. I might lose things, but I was blessed again with very remarkable trail magic.

  The find of a potential ride lifted my spirits, but I was still very tired and pushing my limits by the time I reached the road and the Cookie Lady’s house. The weather had turned very cold, the wind blew extra hard, and storms were ready to unloose torrents of rain as the Cookie Man met me with my gear.

  I now know what heaven looks like: like an old farmhouse turned into a garage, old stained carpet on the floor and a John Deer tractor pushed out of the way to make room for my sleeping bag. It was warm and out of the wind. Electric lights meant I didn’t need a headlamp, and the toilet was flushable with pails of water. I was so grateful.

  The wizened elderly gentleman, eager to help me, brought me a half gallon of WARM water for washing. He was indeed, what an angel looks like. My knee hurt like crazy, and I twisted my back getting ready for bed, but I was so happy to have found this warm and lighted place. And life was good.

  On the way to Dalton I met Tattu Jo, a very fast, ultra-light PCT hiker out to experience the AT, the trail where long-distance hiking began. In Dalton, a wonderful manager at the Shamrock Village Inn went out of her way to drive me to the Pharmacy for a toothbrush and a comb and to a little store in the opposite direction, where I searched unsuccessfully for some sort of flashlight.

  Concerned about not having a headlamp, I set my alarm for an extra early hour and left the motel at 5:30. Passing through the little town of Cheshire I found a $2.00 keychain squeeze flashlight. It would suffice to get me through the last night. The sweet woman in the store even paid part of my tax since hikers don’t generally carry change. You meet a lot of very nice people when you take a long distance hike. Before leaving Cheshire while eating two hot dogs from the convenience store, I sat on a patch of grass behind some mailboxes and watched the traffic go by.

  My knee started hurting on the last five miles of the day. Not taking a zero day after a 19-mile slack pack didn’t allow the knee time to recover. It became more and more difficult to find a pain-free position, even when resting. I finally, gratefully, reached the shelter. Come on knee, hang in there for just one more day.

  On my last day, it was a cold 37 degrees in the morning, and I was glad for the evergreens that grew beside the trail protecting me from the wind. I knew the tourist attraction on top of Greylock Mountain wouldn’t be open, but I fantasized on the way up about stopping in for a second breakfast of waffles swimming in butter and syrup. As expected, no one was there. Oh well.

  Taking pictures of trout lilies, trillium, and spring beauties, shedding clothes, eating, and resting the knee, I took my time that morning. An older day-hiker, who passed me going up as I was going down, asked me to look for his water bottle. Hey, I'm not the only one who loses things.

  I stopped at Prospect Point to enjoy the view, the loveliest of the trip. My body was tired, and the knee felt fragile, but as I reveled in the view of North Adams and the unfolding mountains of Vermont behind the town, I wanted to just keep going. I felt like Kathy and I’d felt on our last night in the Sierra. If it weren't for exhaustion and bodies wearing out, we would keep going forever. I guess only another hiker could understand that state of mind.

  After descending the steep trail on slippery leaves, I approached the highway. A man got out of his car and said, "Hey, AT hiker, can I take you somewhere in town while you’re here? Where do you want to go?" Wow. I hadn't even gotten to the corner, and I had my own driver. I rode to Subway for a footlong and called Steve.

  Within an hour he was there, bearing my lost pack pouch. Someone had riffled it. The headlamp, knife, and nail clippers were gone. The candy and Chapstick had been chewed. Whoever had taken the headlamp should have taken the whole thing. To pick up something someone lost and may not be returning for is understandable, but to riffle through it and leave items that would attract wildlife scavengers showed a lack of couth and kindness for the trail. How nice it was of Steve to have looked for it, found it, and returned it to me.

  So I lost some stuff but made a new trail friend. We drove to New York with a stop for pizza; I paid him a donation for gas, bought his pizza, and we chattered trail talk the whole way.

  That night I lay on a soft bed, clean and with my family. I could be an old fuddy duddy grandma and lose things, having them returned to me kindly. My son sent me my passport to get me on the plane back to Washington.

  It was good to go hiking, and it was even better to have family. Two days after I was home and had my new driver’s license, I received a call from The Doyle back in Pennsylvania. They found my driver’s license in piles of paper work. It was too late to help me get on the plane, but I was glad my identity `hadn’t been stolen. And another 363 miles of AT was completed.

  Chapter 23 Summer 2010

  GPS

  After traipsing up and down Fuller Ridge in the snow in 2009, stressing my knee and covering two or three times the mileage I would have done had I known where the trail was, I didn’t want to repeat such a thing ever again. I’d talked to hikers who had no problems as one of their party had a GPS. Following the GPS kept them roughly on the trail, though they couldn’t
see tread under snow. I splurged and bought one.

  Then I had to learn how to use it. 2010 was a heavy-snow year in the Sierra and Cascades, so I had snow on which to practice. I hiked from Longmire, up to Rampart Ridge and then over on the connector trail to Van Trump Park and down the Comet Falls trail.

  Going up the trail I discovered inaccuracies. The GPS would say I was 100 feet to one side of the trail or the other, all the while I was walking on the trail. Hmmm. When I was on snow, I sometimes misplaced the trail but learned how to follow the GPS and the logical routes of trail on the hillside. My conclusion was that it was a help, even if not always spot-on accurate. Walking on steep hillsides of snow that day was a LOT of work.

  Although I was never irreparably lost, I was very tired, and thought how embarrassing it would be to have to be rescued by a ranger. I connected with the Comet Falls trail, so a ranger wasn’t necessary, and I learned some of the capabilities and limitations of my GPS.

  Two PCT hikes were planned for the year, a short one in Oregon and a longer one encompassing Northern California.

  Chapter 24 July 18, 2010

  PCT—Oregon

  Yellowstone

  Kathy (Grapevine) and Linda (Gray Squirrel) chose to hike some of Oregon with me, and Kathy’s husband David would provide trail support, including being a great cook.

  Immediately appreciating smooth western trails, I started up the Rye Spur Trail. Later in the day, Kathy and her 10-year-old Godson joined me, but they only lasted one night as her Godson asked to bail the next morning. Sky Lakes were very pretty, but the mosquitoes liked them, too, congregated in clouds and followed me up the trail.