When the driver cranked the engine and the truck lurched forward, I was overcome with a feeling of power. My stomach dropped, my adrenaline rose, and the entire acceleration process felt more like a roller coaster than a ride down the highway.
The truck driver was extremely nice and eager to help me find new socks. During our ten minutes together, he told me a little about being a trucker—which sounded like it was even harder than being a thru-hiker. I always knew that truckers worked tough shifts, but the driver told me that the hours were so demanding that most truckers used drugs to stay awake and alert.
I didn’t understand how drugs helped drivers stay awake—or focus on the road—but the guy insisted that for many it was part of the job description.
“You almost have to do hard drugs if you want to keep your job,” he said. “There’s so much pressure not to stop and to make good time that most truckers don’t even take bathroom breaks. They just pee in a bottle, or they cut a hole in their floorboards.”
I casually began to look around for holes, or bottles, or white powder.
“It’s also hard to have a wife and family,” he continued. “You’re on the road most of the year, and when you’re at home, your kids hardly know who you are. Sometimes at the truck stops there will be prostitutes hanging around. I never saw why men would want a hooker . . . until I became a trucker.”
At that, he suddenly became quiet. I wanted to change the subject, so I quickly asked, “Do you pick up many hitchhikers?”
His tone lightened. “Oh yeah, I used to always pick ’em up. I like the company, and hitchhikers always have good stories. But I don’t pick up as many as I used to. A few years ago I picked up a guy who seemed okay at first. But after riding together for a little bit, he told me I looked like this man his girlfriend had cheated with, and he started attacking me while I was at the wheel.”
“Were you hurt?”
“I wasn’t hurt too bad, but I could have wrecked. I left that maniac on the side of the interstate, ten miles from the nearest exit, and since then I’ve been carrying this in the backseat.”
The driver reached behind my seat, pulled out a metal baseball bat, and placed it between us.
If I hadn’t already been on my best behavior, now I was.
The truck driver said he knew right where the outdoor store was and mentioned that it was a Cabela’s.
“I’ve never heard of Cabela’s,” I said.
The driver laughed. “Well, sweetie, I’m sure you’ll be able to find some socks there.”
When we exited the highway and drove toward a building so large that it could have housed the entire town of Port Clinton, I was shocked. Cabela’s was as big as Wegmans!
Taking my gear, I thanked the trucker, climbed down the ladder from the shiny blue cab, and waved good-bye as I walked away. My descent from the cab of a semi with a pack on my back and a yellow mop stick in my right hand probably seemed preposterous to the onlookers who stared at me as they filtered into Cabela’s, but to me, the entrance felt regal, as if I had just departed a chariot with a golden scepter in my hand.
As I paraded into Cabela’s, I was overwhelmed with aisles upon aisles of outdoor “essentials.” I honestly didn’t know there was so much outdoor gear. Granted, in this store, “outdoor supplies” referred mostly to hunting and fishing gear. I looked to my left and saw a section of the store that looked like an indoor marina, and to my right there were aisles of camo clothes, guns, fishing rods, lures, and beef jerky. After entering Cabela’s, I decided that, yes, there are rednecks in the mid-Atlantic.
It seemed ironic that all these man-made goods were designed to help folks enjoy the simplicity of the outdoors, when the more stuff I carried on the trail, the more uncomfortable I felt.
I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because Cabela’s did provide me with the moisture-wicking socks and foot-specific first aid kit that I needed. But though the products were supposed to help people enjoy the great outdoors, it seemed like many of them, like the four-hundred-square-foot tents, blow-up camp beds, and solar-powered radios and TVs, would prevent people from truly experiencing nature.
My hitch back to Port Clinton wasn’t nearly as exciting as the tractor-trailer ride to Cabela’s had been. As soon as I reached town, I headed straight for the trail and by mid-afternoon, I had caught up with Raptor. We spent the night together at Allentown Hiking Club Shelter, and the next morning we hitched into Palmerton to spend another night in town.
Palmerton gave off a better vibe than Duncannon or Port Clinton. In other words, there were people there. We saw men and women walking along the street and going in and out of stores. And although the town did not have a hiker hostel, it did allow thru-hikers to sleep in the city jail.
It wasn’t a real prison, in the sense that it no longer housed convicted criminals. It was the town’s old jail, located underneath City Hall. The large holding cell had metal bars on the outside and wooden bunks on the inside. It felt safe and secure, especially with Raptor there.
It seemed strange that jails punished people by isolating them from the world. As I looked out a small window that was covered with bars and gave a ground view of the outdoors, there was something appealing about being removed from society.
After picking out my bed in the slammer, I went to take a shower. It was the best shower of the entire trail.
The women’s bathroom had open shower stalls with water pressure so hard that it hurt. The water was really hot, but never too hot, and the steam made the entire bathroom feel like a sauna. There were three showerheads right next to each other, and at one point I turned them all on and ran back and forth through them like a kid running through sprinklers. I smiled the entire time and occasionally laughed out loud. At home, I usually reserved smiles and laughs for other people, but on the trail I was learning to smile and laugh just for me, even if no one else was around.
When I finally finished my shower, I had completely fogged up the women’s bathroom and was the cleanest I had been since leaving Georgia.
Refreshed, I dug out my cell phone to call my mom. I couldn’t wait to tell her I was spending the night in jail!
My mom didn’t have much time to talk. She was at my grandfather’s eighty-seventh birthday party. Everyone was there: my parents, my brothers, my aunts and uncles, and cousins. I was the only one missing.
The trail didn’t mean more to me than my grandfather did. Still, I had chosen to be out here instead of at his birthday party. I started to second-guess my decision not to go home for it. What if this turned out to be his last?
The cell phone was passed around, and with each family member I spoke to, I felt a little more guilty for not being there.
The last person I talked with was my granddad.
The first thing he said was, “I love you, and I am so proud of you.” He continued, “You just keep hiking. I love the outdoors, and out of all my grandchildren, I think you’re most like me in that way.”
I was stunned. I’d never known my granddad felt that way. I mean, I knew he loved the outdoors, but I thought it was the Cabela’s type of outdoors—hunting, fishing, and beef jerky. I had never realized that he saw a connection between my time in the woods and his love of outdoor sports.
After I hung up the phone, I no longer felt sad that I had missed my granddad’s party. I knew I was where he wanted me to be.
Raptor and I spent the remainder of the evening eating pizza and talking in our cell at the jailhouse. It was like having a slumber party with a fifty-seven-year-old man.
The more I found out about Raptor, the more I liked him. I learned that he had worked in a factory for thirty years, and that he was an avid cyclist, which is probably what made him such a strong hiker. But my favorite story he told me that evening was about running off and eloping.
“So you really did it?” I asked. “You just went and got married without telling anyone?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“Well, I
knew that I loved her and wanted to marry her. It’s like the trail. I hear a lot of people say they want to hike the Appalachian Trail, but they never do it. When I want something, I’m gonna do it. I love my wife, and marrying her was the best decision I ever made.”
“So was the trail a good decision too?”
“Ha. We’ll have to wait and see, but I think so.”
At that point we heard a door slam, followed by heavy footsteps descending the stairs.
A short, agitated older man entered the room, turned on the lights, and looked at Raptor and me. Instead of introducing himself to us, he started talking to himself.
He walked over to an empty bunk, threw down his pack, and rummaged through it for his sleeping bag. Once he was situated, he stopped talking to himself and started asking us rapid-fire questions.
“When did you two leave Georgia? Are you hiking together or separately? Who’s the better hiker? How many miles do you average per day?”
Raptor and I looked at each other in disbelief. It was like this man was playing some obnoxious trail version of Twenty Questions. Most of the time, he didn’t even wait for a response before asking the next question.
Eventually, we learned that this man’s name was Neon, which was appropriate, considering he was like an irritated blinking light that screamed incessantly for attention. He had chosen a bunk near Raptor and eventually focused his interrogation on my friend. Since they were close in age, Neon probably viewed Raptor as his primary competition. I pulled out the earplugs that Raptor had given me to block out his snoring and placed them in my ears. Then I pulled my sleeping bag over my head and tried to fall asleep. I didn’t feel obligated to say good night or offer an explanation for going to bed early. At this point, I felt like Pennsylvania owed me an explanation.
The next morning, I awoke to Neon’s boots stomping past my bed. Then I heard him curse at the light switch as he flipped it on. I stayed motionless in my bunk, pretending to be asleep. But I did stealthily remove my earplugs so I could better understand Neon’s rants. Apparently, he had been woken up by Raptor’s snoring, and since Neon couldn’t sleep, he decided that we shouldn’t be able to rest either. He complained out loud to himself about his poor night’s sleep, while at the same time stuffing a large pizza into a one gallon Ziploc bag. He had brought the pizza with him to the jail cell the night before but hadn’t eaten any of it. This morning, he picked up whatever would fit in his hands and mashed it into the bag, showing no respect for the integrity of individual slices. After he secured the bag, he licked the sauce off his fingers, packed up his gear, and left.
I sat up in my bunk and looked at Raptor. He just shook his head, and we both laughed. There was so much absurdity about the mid-Atlantic that it made me appreciate Raptor’s normalcy all the more.
We took our time getting ready that morning, knowing that an early departure for the trail would put us in close proximity to our cellmate.
The climb outside of Palmerton was unlike anything else I had experienced on the trail. We had to use our hands and feet to scramble up a rocky mountainside, only to arrive at a desolate wasteland on top of the ridge. There weren’t any trees, there weren’t any animals, there weren’t even any weeds. It was completely barren.
“Did you know this was a Superfund site?” asked Raptor.
“Super fun? What makes it super fun?”
Raptor laughed, “No Odyssa, Superfun-Duh.”
“Oh. What does that mean?”
“It means someone screwed up, did something really harmful to the environment, and then the government spent our tax dollars trying to clean it up.”
“What happened here?”
“There used to be zinc plants in and around Palmerton, and the emissions they let off killed the vegetation and polluted the river. If you think it looks bad now, think about what it must have looked like twenty years ago, and think about how bad those emissions must have been for the lungs of the people who lived here.”
I tried to take shallow breaths until we climbed off the ridge and back into the forest.
After making it safely past the Superfund site, Raptor and I decided to hike separately, but we agreed to reconvene at Delaware Water Gap. Delaware Water Gap was a source of confusion for me because the term “water gap” made me think it might be a river crossing, but the words were printed in bold in my Data Book, which meant it had to be a town. In addition, the phrase had me erroneously convinced that the trail went through the state of Delaware.
The one thing I did know about Delaware Water Gap was that there was pie there. Warren Doyle had given us lots of trail pointers at the institute, and I had made plenty of notes in my Data Book. Beside Duncannon, I had scribbled, “DO NOT STAY THERE!!!!!” But beside Delaware Water Gap, it read, “Mmmmm . . . pie!”
I was excited about the thought of pie, and I hiked quickly toward its promise. That’s when I had my second encounter with Neon.
“Hi, Neon,” I called.
He didn’t respond, but he did increase his pace.
I hiked up behind him. Instead of stepping to the side of the trail and letting me pass, he started walking faster. I kept up.
“Excuse me, can I get by?”
He pretended he couldn’t hear me.
I shifted to the left and then the right, trying to pass, but he shadowed my movements and wouldn’t allow me to go around him. It felt like I was being boxed out underneath a basketball net.
Finally I faked left, spun right, and hiked past him. Score!
Neon was the first person I had met who was actually trying to race people to Katahdin. It was fine if he wanted to hike fast, I didn’t have any problem with that. But he should do it because he wanted to hike fast, not in an attempt to race other people.
The next time I saw Neon, I was sitting on the patio of a bakery eating apple pie in the town of Delaware Water Gap, above the Delaware River, but definitely not in the state of Delaware.
Neon did not stop for pie. He just kept hiking. I hoped that he would beat me to Katahdin so I wouldn’t have to see him again.
That night, Raptor and I stayed in Delaware Water Gap at a church hostel, where the congregation had converted the sanctuary’s basement into a bunkroom and common area for hikers. The hostel had a great shower, a comfy couch, and it was stocked with pie that I had brought back to share with Raptor.
After reducing my daily miles and spending several nights in towns, my feet felt much better. I also had started to carry pink flip-flops with red hearts on them, which I had picked up for three dollars in Palmerton. When I wasn’t hiking, I would put on the flip-flops to let my feet air out. They also made me feel pretty, which helped my morale.
That evening, I told Raptor that I wanted to start hiking more miles and spending more nights on the trail since my feet were feeling better.
“Yeah, right,” he said. “You just want to race Neon!”
“How’d you know?” I laughed.
We stayed up talking and eating pie well past my normal hiker-bedtime. There was a lot to celebrate, after all. This was our last night in Pennsylvania, and I couldn’t wait to leave.
15
MORTALITY
DELAWARE WATER GAP, PA, TO BEAR MOUNTAIN
STATE PARK, NY—107.9 MILES
The rocks continue into New Jersey just past the glacier-formed Sunfish Pond to High Point and then begin to disperse. The soft earth is a welcome transition, but during a heavy rain, the path quickly turns to mud. There is an enchanting mile-long boardwalk that spans a mile of protected wetland near Vernon, New Jersey, and a scenic dirt path that leads through a marsh and bird sanctuary in Unionville, New York. Thirty-four miles north of New York City, the trail crosses the Palisades Parkway and climbs up Bear Mountain before descending to the Hudson River—at 124 feet above sea level, this is the lowest point of the trail.
After 230 grueling miles in Pennsylvania, I had made it to New Jersey. I expected the rocks to disappear immediately when I left Pennsylvania,
but they didn’t. I also thought things would suddenly get better in New Jersey, but I was wrong.
For one thing, I didn’t think I would miss Raptor as much as I did. But my first night in New Jersey, when I found myself in Gren Anderson Shelter alone with Neon, I felt like I had made a mistake by hiking ahead.
Neon insisted on setting mousetraps throughout the shelter. I don’t know if he carried the traps in his pack or if they were already in the shelter when he arrived, but he baited the devices and encircled our quarters with them.
“I don’t want any mousetraps around me,” I told him.
“The mice are going to get your food.”
“A mouse hasn’t gotten into my food so far. Plus, I move around a lot in my sleep and I don’t want to roll onto a trap. And I always have to pee in the middle of the night, so I’ll probably end up stepping on one too.”
Neon rearranged two traps to give me an aisle out of the shelter if I needed it. But I still wasn’t appeased.
“It’s not the mice’s fault, you know. It’s our fault. If we wouldn’t lure them here with our crumbs and dinner smells, then they would never be here. They’re just trying to survive.”
Despite my aversion to rodents at the beginning of my trip, they now seemed kind of cute. After all, I was in their world, and I had no more right to a shelter than they did. Perhaps in a house I would have felt differently, but after living and walking in these woods, I believed the trail was not a place to kill for convenience, but a place to respect life, to watch it and learn from it.
I had not quite fallen asleep before a trap snapped, and I heard a brief squeal.
“Gotcha,” Neon gloated.
The next morning, I awoke and left the shelter before 6:00 am to put distance between neon and me.
It was a beautiful, warm morning, one of the first days on the trail that I could hike in shorts instead of pants. The grass had changed from faint lime green sprouts to dark green clusters dotted with small purple flowers. The promise of new life abounded.
Becoming Odyssa Page 20