[at-l] Part 3 - First Times

[cballs@mindspring.com (cballs@mindspring.com)]

Part III - My Night in The New York Woods with an Appalachian Elephant


The day that was promised from The National Weather Service, was a day to make them proud.  Sunny, low humidity, long – a fine champagne of a day.  The birds were loud.  It seemed they were trying to alert the forest about a creature with an odd smell in a white and blue Sierra Design Orion CD three season two person tent with brass colored spring action poles being in their midst.  Their voices had a kind of deep-throated kick with a finely nuanced country squeak at the end, just like Patsy Cline’s.  The reverb was awesome.  There were other birds with smaller, fainter voices doing backup, a little tweet here and there and then a chirp and a squawk or two.  It was one musical morning.  I ached all over like the Dover Oak had fallen on me.  It was chilly.  I didn’t want to get up but I didn’t want to lie there anymore either.  I wanted to be back in my apartment because I was going to have to face the morning with no coffee.  I had a dirty saucepan without water to spare to cl!
ean it, and no sugar to sweeten the coffee even if I could find something clean to heat water in.  I ate the rest of the chocolate cookies.  Once the sugar kicked in, I was feeling like moving on.  I retrieved my pack from the tree and started breaking camp.  I put on a fresh T-shirt, one of those textured looking light gray things that I don’t remember where I got it, and some fresh socks.  Same black synthetic shorts though.  I packed away my white and blue Sierra Design Orion CD three season two person tent with the brass colored spring action poles that I think is too heavy and probably won’t go with me next year and the outfitters won’t take it back so that’s some more bloody money blown; my Swedish-made MFS stove with the instructions in all the major European languages that I will take with me everywhere, even when I go to the moon; my Primaloft synthetic down, red, rectangular, roomy sleeping bag that was okay, pretty good, not bad; my yellow multi-functional K-mart AA!
 flashlight that is so clever and multi-functional but probably impractical for a thru-hike since it’s kind of bulky; the other odds & ends; the rest of the food and what little water was left; my garbage; my long-handled too heavy saucepan, now dirty; the all-cotton Calvin Klein white briefs; the dirty socks; and my Oregon Coast Aquarium T-shirt that I bought last year while visiting my sweet musical old college pal from North Carolina who now lives in Portland.  I laced up my all-leather Fabiano Rios that love my feet and make me feel like I could walk over the top of the world; strapped on my apologetic Fossil watch with the leather band, which is all wrong for the woods, just like the person who gave it to me; harnessed up my rented blue EMS 4500 backpack to my back, and I was transformed from a camper to a hiker.  Sort of.

I went back the way I came.  I wanted to see what was on the other side of the railroad tracks.  Besides, I knew that until I got to the other side of the train tracks, it was all down  It was around 9:00am when I stepped on the Trail again.  I was beginning to get a little worried about the lack of water I had.  I had no iodine tablets and no purifier so even when I did come to the one stream of water that I knew was between where I was and where I was going, it would be useless.  Despite that concern, and the low-grade headache I was developing from either the root pillow, the amount of MSG I had ingested the night before or the rented blue EMS 4500 cubic inch pack that I didn’t think fit my frame right, I was having a very, very pleasant morning.  I swallowed some Vitamin-I and kept moving.  The mosses and the lichen that carpeted the rock and the ground through the bogs I’d passed through yesterday seemed more brilliant, more lush, more exquisitely colored in the clear mor!
ning forest light than they had yesterday.  I would stop occasionally and examine them close up.  I ran my hands over the mosses to get a feel for their texture.   I bent down to pick up a small lichen covered rock to see what their structure was and to admire the soft pastel greens and grays.  I turned the rock over and there, stamped on the bottom, was Martha Stewart’s logo.  That woman is tireless.  

About an hour into my morning stroll I met my first fellow hiker of the day.  There were to be several more before the day was over.  He came toward me stepping mindlessly over the brush, making a broad sweep away from the Trail in an effort to avoid me. Although I said good morning to him, he didn’t look at me or acknowledge my presence.  He passed, nearly breaking into a trot.  He was carrying a stick, wearing sneakers, no pack, and smelled like a hen house.  He had a desperate look in his eyes, deranged even.  I looked back a little later only to ensure he wasn’t following me.  I thought once about going back and asking him to holler once real loud for me just to see if he made a screeching, honking sound.  It’s best to let sleeping elephants alone I concluded, so I moved on.  

There are three other Trails that intersect the AT between Wiley Shelter and the railroad tracks.  I believe they are the Pawling Nature Trails.  The first time I came on them I had the idea that some New York prankster had been out in the woods trying to confuse and mislead woebegone hikers because they’re blazed red, yellow and green.  Then I found the map board tacked to a tree at the intersection where they crisscross the AT, all within about 40 feet of each other.  I guess it must get really busy up there sometimes at that intersection so the traffic light colors made some kind of sense.   I looked over the map and considered following the green trail for awhile, especially since Quaker Lake looked so enticing, and then thought better of it because the notice doesn’t have one of those YOU ARE HERE arrows like you see next to elevators in high-rise buildings showing you how to find the stairs in case there’s a fire.   I wasn’t sure which side of the Green Trail I should ta!
ke.  I didn’t have any other maps with me, so I kissed Quaker Lake goodbye and continue back to the railroad tracks.

The next person I met on the trail, about another 20 minutes, was a genuine thru-hiker.  He was a small, middle-aged man with thinning gray hair, carrying an orange external frame pack.  He was dressed in a synthetic red pullover, synthetic blue shorts and wore gaiters over his boots and a white bandana.  He had the most fantastic blue eyes I’ve ever seen on a human being.  China, and I mean China blue eyes.  He seemed gentle and sweet-natured.  We spoke about how beautiful the morning was and I asked him where he was coming from.  “Well...uh, Georgia,” he said quetly, “I started April 7,”  seeming not to want to brag about it or anything.  I could hardly contain my glee!  I wanted to set down right there on the Trail and make up some finger sandwiches and start up the old MFS stove and cook and ham and a pie, boil water for tea and get him to tell me all about it.  
“How has it been?, I asked.  
“Well....okay, rough sometimes,” he answered.  
“I guess it’s been really wet this year, no?,” I asked.  
“Oh yes, earlier it was.  Getting through the Smokies was really hard .  It rained everyday I was in the Smokies.  The mud was very bad.  And they allow horses on the Trail in the Smokies, you know.  So you had to walk in nine inches of mud sometimes,” he explained. He held his hands about nine inches apart so that I could see just how much mud that was.  
“Oh no, that’s awful,” I agreed.  
“But there’s been some fairly rough hiking here in New York too.  Especially around Bear Mountain.  I was really surprised.  So, where are you from?” he asked.  After I told him I lived in the City, he said he’d spent the night in the Telephone Pioneers Shelter with a couple from Brooklyn and the woman was wearing a dress, the man wore kind of regular hiking gear, he said, but the woman had on a dress.  He said it twice, astonished at the very idea of it.  He chuckled.  I rolled my eyes toward the blue heavens and shook my head as if to say....”Brooklynites! What could they possibly know about the woods?”  Obviously not enough to know it’s inadvisable to wear a dress while walking through them.  He looked like he wanted to go so I didn’t keep him any longer.  I wished him luck and we parted.  

I walked on through another boggy area, and up and around to the top of the ridge and then started my descent down.  I really wanted to see some wildlife.  I was aching to see something.  I saw a few chipmunks.  No deer.  No turkey.  No bear.  No snakes.  It was beautiful and peaceful and I was disappointed.  I got back to the trail register booth after about another hour or so.  I took off my pack and drank all the remaining water I had and then flipped through the register again.  Someone had written something new but I couldn’t make it out.  I sat down and rested for awhile.  I walked out to the edge of the woods and looked over the meadows I’d traveled yesterday.  I walked back into the woods and just sat and listened.  Suddenly I heard heavy breathing and the sound of feet pushing through grass.  Two hikers appeared over the knoll and walked into the woods going about 40 miles an hour.  I was surprised they didn’t topple over on that turn into the woods.  “Good morning,” !
I said.  “Mornin’.“ they  grunted at me, their minds on fire with Katahdin.  No eye contact.  It was almost as if I wasn’t there.  They whizzed right past me, kicking up dust, ran up to the register booth, jerked open the drawer and flipped through some pages, hurriedly.  Too fast to read much I suspected.  They seemed to be looking for something specific in the register.  They were young fellows, around college age and stood with their backs to me.  They were grungy looking so I assumed they were thru-hiking.  “Y’all comin’ from Georgia? I quizzed.  “Yeah, yeah,” they answered, like gunfire, without turning around.  There seemed such an air of “rush, rush, rush” to them.  Then suddenly another young fellow appeared out of the pasture.  He was much taller than the other two.  He ran up behind them, jerked the trail register out of the hands of one of the others, flipped some pages, tossed it hurriedly back into the drawer, slammed it shut, and then suddenly they were gone.   T!
he whole encounter took about 20 seconds.  Well of all the rudeness, I thought.  They must be from New Jersey.  Or young gonnabes - executives, no doubt.  Or doctors.  I hope they make it.

I strapped on my rented blue EMS 4500 cubic inch backpack with all my heavy, pricey gear in it, and took off back across the meadows.  Just outside the woods, I passed a woman hiker, looked like thru-hiker.  I was getting pretty good at spotting them at this point.  She must of been trying to catch the fellows whom I’d just spent a few seconds with back at the register booth.  She did say good morning though and smiled.  Women are usually nicer about that stuff, even if they are in a hurry.  Between the woods and the first road (old NY22) I met a man and his son out for a morning constitution walking toward the ridge I’d just come from.  He said he was getting his exercise.  Crossing the second fence I met a tall, dark, very handsome young man with his two very young twin sons also out for their Sunday morning walk. He was helping his children cross the fence when I got to it, so I waited for them.  Once they were all across, just as we began to speak, one of the boys asked hi!
s father why he didn’t have on shorts.  The boys had on shorts, I had on shorts, why didn’t daddy have on shorts?  Kids are great like that.  They ask the obvious, important questions.  His father explained that they weren’t going to be out long enough for him to have on shorts.  They were local residents and he often brought his sons out to the Trail on a Sunday morning for a stroll up to the forest.  I have no doubt that this man’s children will remember those Sunday morning jaunts with Dad for the rest of their lives.