Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail (28 page)

The bugs were hellish. I had left the body of my tent at my sister’s house to save two pounds. But without netting to protect me, I even had to fight them at night, and sleep became very difficult. And the rocks had me spooked and in excruciating pain. I began anxiously inquiring from every southbounder or experienced northbounder for details of the rocks that lay ahead.

Leroy Smith Shelter—mile 1,259

5-5-05
: Pennsylvania rocks.—
Paparazzi 5-5-05
:
I’d rather live on the dark side of the moon than in Pennsylvania.—
Hamburger

5-5-05
: First place: one trip to Pennsylvania. Second place: three trips to Pennsylvania.—
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

I decided at this campsite that I would do my best to make it 20.4 miles to Delaware Water Gap the following day, just to finish off Pennsylvania. The trail ran through Wind Gap for the seven-mile stretch that reputedly had the worst rocks in all of Pennsylvania. At one point in a particularly vicious section called “Wolf Rocks,” I became so tired and agitated that I lay down flat on my back in a rare island of rock-free dirt in the middle of the trail.

Finally, the green, soft valley of the Delaware River came into view way down below.

The Delaware Water Gap, where the Delaware River has cut through rock formations of the Appalachian Mountains, has geological significance as one of the best examples of a water gap in the United States. For AT hikers, it is your reward for having gutted it out through Pennsylvania. It lifted my spirits, although my screaming feet recoiled at the prospect of a steep descent. But soon we were at the Presbyterian Church Hostel in the little village of Delaware Water Gap, which marks the northern terminus of the AT in Pennsylvania.

Whitewater and Nurse Ratchet were there and all seemed forgotten after the snafu back in Port Clinton. The hostel was abuzz with hiker gossip. “Did you hear the news about the ‘hiker feed’ in Duncannon?” Nurse Ratchet asked.

“No.”

“A hiker got hit by a train and was killed.”

“Good God,” I exclaimed, “what are the odds of that happening.”

“Supposedly, he was drunk and had been kicked out of the Doyle Hotel,” she said.

“What was his trail name?” I asked.

“Packstock.”

“Packstock, huh,” I tried to think. “Haven’t heard that name.”

“And get this Skywalker,” Whitewater drawled. “A hiker in New Jersey was attacked in his sleeping bag by a bear a few days ago.”

“Get outta’ here,” I protested.

“The bear went into a packed shelter and drug him out, but it ran away when everybody started screaming and throwing things,” Whitewater reported.

Baltimore Jack, the eight-time thru-hiker (“a serial hiker”), arrived at the hostel the next morning. He was returning from the hiker-feed in Duncannon, shuttled by the trail angel Mary. He immediately revealed himself as a man of outsized reputation with an outsized ego. It was said that he often had a coterie of fifteen or twenty other hikers tagging along with him on the trail listening in rapt attention to his many tales at evening campsites, as he swigged Jack Daniels bourbon. But unlike some of the other big-name hikers, nobody had ever questioned that he had done all the miles attributed to him.

Nurse Ratchet and I listened respectfully as he gave monologues on several subjects. On New Jersey bears he related the story of a hiking companion asleep in a tent next to his own when a bear came and swatted the rain cover off his tent in one swipe. “It was pretty logical” he recounted—“like a human opening up a bag of Fritos.”

He also revealed himself as a man implacably opposed in every respect to Warren Doyle, his rival for most number of thru-hikes. “He’s just such a ridiculous character that I can’t get into the subject at such an early hour,” he said. But then he did.

“Did he ever mention that most of those twenty-seven thousand miles he likes to advertise he has done were mostly without a backpack (“slackpacking”),” he dug in. “My grandmother could do it without a backpack.”

Then he went off, Scout’s honor, and began planning a route for Mary the trail angel to slack pack
him
that afternoon.

Every state on the AT is known for one thing. Pennsylvania is known for its rocks, New Hampshire for being so difficult, and Maine for its beauty. New Jersey is known for its bears.

The reason is that New Jersey has been developed to the point that there is only a narrow sliver of wilderness still extant on the western side of the state, in the Kittaninny Mountains. It is now estimated that there is at least one bear for every square mile in this part of New Jersey. And it is through this narrow corridor that the AT runs.

Because human-bear encounters have risen so sharply in recent years the word on the trail was that the state of New Jersey for the first time in many years had a “controlled hunt.” The purpose was to teach bears some respect for humans.

I asked several people before getting to New Jersey just how the “controlled hunt” had gone. “They killed 844 bears in two weeks,” one person had said matter-of-factly. “Everybody said it was like shooting ducks in a barrel.”

But just as confidently a trail wag back in Duncannon had told me, “They called it off. The animal rights activists raised a big ruckus.”

An ATC employee at headquarters in Harper’s Ferry had told me that the previous year on the AT a female hiker had been in her tent when a bear grabbed the tent and dragged it and her screaming for thirty feet. And the bear attack of the previous week was the second on a hiker this year. Bears in New Jersey identify hikers with food, a New Jersey hiker had told me.

So it was bears that were primarily on my mind as 49er and I crossed the mile-long bridge that the trail follows over the historic Delaware River. Whether he noticed it or not, I had assiduously stuck with 49er that morning as he had gone about making rounds to the post office, food mart, etc. And while I usually hiked faster than 49er, in New Jersey I stayed planted right on his heels. The huge bear the Trolls and I had seen had moved away from us a lot faster than the two bears I had lone encounters with in Shenandoah National Park.

The trail took a turn for the better in New Jersey. The Sahara desert feel of Pennsylvania was gone as the hillsides became fresher and greener, compared to the scraggly, worn forests of Pennsylvania. Nurse Ratchet taught me just which berries were suitable for eating and adding valuable anti-oxidants to my diet. There were even mountain ponds that afforded ample opportunity for hydration. In short, New Jersey was a pleasant surprise.

We made it through the state bear-free in four and a half days. Just before crossing out of the state, Whitewater, Nurse Ratchet, and I ran into Knees, whom we hadn’t seen since Virginia. Whitewater and Nurse Ratchet didn’t want to hike with him back then because they said he bragged too much about how many miles he habitually hiked. But I was glad to see him, and we walked along chatting until his legs suddenly came out from under him and he landed on some sharp rocks.

“Can I give you a hand?’ I asked.

“No, no,” he said quickly. “But I’ve marked my legs up a bit and need to apply some first aid.”

So I stayed with Whitewater and Nurse Ratchet as we crossed into New York at twilight. The terrain was proving rockier and more difficult than expected, so when we crossed a stream of dubious quality we dutifully pulled out our water filters to start pumping. Whitewater saw that an item from his backpack was missing and he hurried to go back and look for it. I sat down with Nurse Ratchet and enjoyed a Snickers Bar. Fortunately, she had retired her occasional towel-snapping manner towards me and our relationship seemed repaired.

I heard a heavy pounding sound on the other side of the ridge and flippantly remarked, “That was a bear.”

“It better not be,” she said in almost a reprimanding tone. But there were more heavy thuds and I said, “No hiker takes steps that sound like that.” A bear strode confidently onto the AT thirty yards in front of us. “I see it now,” I reported. “Keep the conversation going.”

“Oh no,” Nurse Ratchet said alarmed, “it has
another
bear with it.” “Where?” I asked. And a minor panic set in with the possibility of two bears (do the math). I also noticed my food bag was out and quickly stuffed it in my backpack.

It just stared at us and Nurse Ratchet sternly shouted, “Go away, go away. No, go away now!”

I picked up a rock and began softly saying, “Can’t we live together.” And to Nurse Ratchet I said, “Keep talking.” Finally, it moved slowly up a hill in the direction it had been going.

When it was out of sight she said, “That bear was not afraid of us.”

“Wow, you scared the hell out of me when you said there was another one,” I said.

“Well, the way it looked over its shoulder…” she reminded me.

“You were giving it commands like a dog,” I said in admiration.

“You were talking to it like a person,” she laughed. Whitewater appeared over the hill empty-handed.

“We saw a bear,” Nurse Ratchet reported to him. Whitewater walked defiantly right to where we pointed out on the trail and began examining the footprints. Nurse Ratchet and I followed behind. Thirty seconds later we heard an animal tearing down a hill and looked over to our right and saw a cub, perhaps a year old, fleeing in the direction of the adult bear we had seen.

“I guess Mama just rang the dinner bell,” Nurse Ratchet said. “Maybe a deer.”

“Maybe a hiker,” I responded.

“Hopefully, not Knees,” Whitewater drawled delightedly.

Chapter 16

I
f Pennsylvania is not an AT hiker’s least-favorite state then, chances are, New York is. The trail is not as well-blazed in the Empire State as in other states, and there seems to be a lower general level of awareness about the AT. Hikers with the theretofore “magic thumb” showed great consternation at their sudden inability to hitchhike into towns to resupply. Of course, female hikers reported no such problem. This led to improvisation. Male hikers would hide in the woods while a lone female would stick her thumb out for a ride. Everyone got great joy recounting how quickly the driver’s face would change from expectant to grim when the grisly, bearded male hikers poured out of the woods asking if they could pile in along with the female.

Hiker behavior also trended downward from the etiquette displayed in the initial phases in Georgia. Peter Pan, an agreeable thirtyish female from Ohio who always seemed to be in the midst of male hikers noted, “In Georgia I got a kick out of watching guys walk deep into the woods to urinate. By the time everybody was in Virginia they would only walk about ten yards away to do it. And now, I’ll be talking to a guy, and next thing you know he just turns around and takes a piss.”

Morale is often low when thru-hikers arrive in New York, as completion is still way off. And any AT thru-hiker faces a basic incongruity. The first and last five hundred miles are where the trail passes through its highest elevations. But these are usually done in spring and fall, when the weather up in the mountains is cold. Meanwhile, the trail passes through its lowest elevations in the mid-Atlantic states. And this stretch is traversed in high summer, when the bugs and heat are the worst. Not coincidentally, an epidemic of “yellow-blazing”—taking highways and skipping sections—broke out in these parts.