Dispatch from Harper's Ferry, W. Va. -- August 31, 2004

Greetings from state #10.

Harper's Ferry, W. Va., though well past the numerical halfway point, is sort of a psychological halfway point for thru-hikers. For one thing it is the home of the Appalachian Trail Conference (ATC) headquarters, where hikers are greeted warmly, congratulated and photographed for the catalogs of hikers that they keep like a museum. It is the first official recognition of any sort of accomplishment the whole way, and validation always feels pretty nice. In this year's catalog I am southbounder number 12. I think my alonym trailname will be "Dirty Dozen" from now on.

Most recent noteworthy trail accomplishments include the Maryland Challenge which I may or may not have mentioned in my dispatch from Duncannon, PA. Just because I do have a bit of a masochistic side and because it would be a nice feather to have in my cap, I took on this challenge. It involves camping just over the border in Pennsylvania and hiking 41 miles through all of Maryland and ending up in West Virginia, thereby setting foot in three states in one day all under your own power. It is definitely the kind of challenge that appeals to me, mostly for its peculiarity among hiker challenges which tend to involve eating, not hiking. It really did not even come off as my most strenuous day of hiking. What sticks with me is more its almost surreal length, like two days that are linked by an all nighter kind of melt together into the same lumped experience. I was up by 2, hiking by 3 and had over half the miles done before noon. In all it took me 15 hours and 10 minutes, a long time to be on your feet even for a thru-hiker.

I am taking it rather easy though now. My glory was fleeting and cautioned when I strode into Harper's Ferry with George Thorogood's "Who Do You Love?" playing in my head. I felt like a badass, sure enough, and who are we kidding? I am a bit of a badass, but there is a degree of cautiousness and uncertainty that arises when your knee clicks ever time you bend it. It had begun hurting within the first 5 miles of the Challenge, before the sun had even risen, and the first thoughts of defeat I developed were quickly dismissed as unacceptable. A plan is a plan; a Challenge is a Challenge. One of the best things about my hike so far is it provides a perfect forum for doing what you set out to do, doing what months earlier would have seemed foolish or even impossible, and feeling great about it. I am taking my second day off as I type and have an appointment with a doctor this afternoon to have the thing diagnosed as hopefully still serviceable.

Taking days off does make me feel a bit shiftless and complacent. I thrive on moving so not moving means the torpor aspect is especially accentuated, but I keep telling myself what my parents told me on the phone. Something to the effect of there being no law against more than one zero in a row and I'm ahead of schedule so why not, and Harper's Ferry is the place to do it if any, and things along those lines. And it's true; I can sort of look at this now as two hikes, Harper's Ferry-south being the second of them.

Pennsylvania south of Duncannon turned out to be an astonishingly beautiful hike at times. The rocks, though never as much an issue as the weakling northbounders had made it out, lightened up greatly. The forest also metamorphosed almost overnight from northern forest into southern forest. One of the ways I chart my progress is by the character of the forest. I suppose it makes sense since I spend more time there than places made out of asphalt and drywall. The boreal forest of Maine gives way to more and more deciduous trees as the first major shift, and southern New England forest, though similarly deciduous-dominated like this southern forest, is comparatively chaste and simplistic. Just north of Boiling Springs, PA I announced to Gnome Sherpa and Flare, hiking buds for the day, that we had officially entered the south by my estimation. The forest was thick and green and soupy. Immense sweet gums and towering chestnut oaks and black walnut trees gave away the change. Also most trees were now thickly smothered in creeper and ivy and poison ivy. The crickets and cicadas are overwhelmingly loud from twilight almost to dawn. The moistest glens that mark the draw of the creeks and irrigation paths even by day have a Conradian darkness to them and are a full 10 or 20 degrees cooler than the soy and corn fields we often walk through.

Other indicators arrived as early as southern PA. Prices fell. People got nicer. Without any effort or compulsion on my end, women became Ma'am and men became Sir. Peaches arrived. And of course I'm no longer hiking the Appal-ay-shun Trail; I'm now on the Appal-atch-en Trail.

There have been rattlesnakes, copperheads, rat snakes (my favorite--one of North America's only constrictors), bear sightings -- even a family with four cubs, loads of new birds that I've never seen before. New warblers almost everyday. The ovenbirds and wood thrushes are already in migration so it's interesting (though sad) to see them but not hear them.

My best sighting though was during a night hike when I am 99% sure that this thing I saw was a flying squirrel. Though they live all up and down the eastern forests, they are strictly nocturnal and just otherwise secretive, and even the most patient and dedicated observers may never see one in their whole lives. Lady luck must have just passed through.

Lots of history lately too. I am passing Civil War monuments to different battles and regiments and soldiers. The Trail comes within 15 miles of Gettysburg and I seriously considered getting off and having a tour. One attraction is an old tree that "heard" Lincoln deliver his famous address. Ancient family cemeteries are often right off the Trail. I passed the first monument erected for George Washington. I stayed in a hostel that used to be a house on the Underground Railroad which incidentally sits precisely on this year's halfway point in Pine Grove Furnace State Park. This was also the site of the infamous half gallon challenge in which hikers commemorate their half-achievement by eating a half gallon of ice cream as fast as they can. I ate mine in a leisurely hour and still felt disgusting. Every bite past a quart is a lactose-bubbling chore. My buddy Gnome Sherpa, though, set the all time AT record for the half gallon, crushing the previous record and setting the bar at 4:14.3. Seriously take time and visualize this, folks. That's a lot of ice cream and I saw with my own eyes as he shovelled it down his gullet, rinsing with hot water to keep his esophagus from freezing. He hurriedly slurped up the melted fraction and threw up his arms, letting out a triumphant utterance/syllable/yawp with vanilla all over beard and chest. I felt in the presence of greatness. There are pictures of this that will be up soon.

I think I'm just about typed out.

Everybody concentrate and try to heal my knee by long distance telepathy.

Me, Bjorn the Windsock or "Dirty Dozen"