Dispatch from Duncannon, Pennsylvania -- August 21, 2004

A happy greeting from your wide-wandering friend.

I am currently in Duncannon, PA placing me at -- wait, before I mention the mileage -- let me request something. My readership at this time may wish to raise their eyebrows or drop their jaws or even just stand up and clap loudly at their deskchairs. And say: Bjorn, Happy 1,000 miles to you.

And I'd say "Thanks. Thanks very much. It feels great."

But Duncannon is at 1040 or so, putting me a bit past the much sought after point on the Trail. And the only reason I'm making such a big deal of it now is that I know I will not want to make such a big deal of the second millenium mark. By the time I reach 2000 I will likely be damn sad that I am only 174.1 miles away from losing this pristine lifestyle that I knew I would love so much and that's why I chose to live it and that's why it's going to be terrible to leave it behind.

The night before last I spent at William Penn shelter, which, according to this year's mileage, is 999.2 miles from Mt. Katahdin in Maine. Since I knew I wouldn't want to smoke anything 0.8 into the next morning, I smoked my kilo-cigar that night. I lay back with my still-stuffed sleeping bag as a pillow and blew one after another of my patented and still unrivalled smoke-rings into the cicada-smouldering night, remembering the Trail as it lay behind me, mindful of the Trail that lay before me. As my consciousness had it, the Trail receded behind me as a long red length of yarn over a relief map that exists only in my mind. Long past here back over the rocky flats of NJ, NY, and CT -- states that were so brief that I almost have to remind myself that I crossed them. And past that there was Mass -- my own homestate that amazed me over again with its beauty -- and past VT was NH and Maine that, with their long stretches of mountains and deep wet valleys left me with something that I knew I would never forget.

I'm taking a zero tomorrow; I'll write more then.


Me, Bjorn.