Rocks. And more rocks.

On Friday morning at the crack of dawn, my husband dropped me off at the bridge at Swatara Gap (PA), the northernmost point (at that point) in my PA trek on the Appalachian Trail. I’ve hiked most of the AT in CT (save 6 miles) with my daughter Emma (a.k.a. “Fern”) and going southbound, I’ve covered the trail to the southern end of the Shenandoah National Park in VA. I have a mission to “connect the dots” of my hikes on the AT and have been chipping away at it in short 4 and 5 day outings for a couple of years, now. There’s plenty of trail yet to cover (about 1,500 miles of it, still…) and, if nothing else, this will keep me out of trouble when I retire.

Friday – Monday of the first week in August promised some beautiful weather with chilly nights and temperate days and high clouds. Perfect for hiking. The elevation for this section of the trail (Swatara Gap to Port Clinton, PA) is basically flat, once you’ve climbed out of the Gap and gotten up on the ridge. Shelters and campsites along the way offer places to gather at night with other hikers, and the water table has been so high this summer that the springs and brooks have been flowing well.

I’ve worked pretty hard to whittle down the weight of my pack. I still carry some “luxury items:” a slim literary magazine to read at night, an overly large battery pack to charge my phone, an inflatable pillow… but other than that, I’ve gone to measures to trim ounces off of items that I carry -like repackaging dehydrated meals into freezer ziplock bags, carrying the tiniest toothbrush, and committing to carrying only one pair of one nylon shorts and tee to sleep in, besides the clothes on my back. Even then, fully loaded with food and water, my pack weighs in at about 28 pounds.

On this trip, I spent four days hiking and three nights camping. I’m only good for about 10 miles per day and, as I discovered the terrain on this section of the hike, I was happy for having planned for these “short” days. (most thru-hikers will cover twice that distance in a day.)

Different states on the AT have earned nicknames because of specific characteristics that mark the trail in their location. Vermont is called “Ver-Mud.” Virginia (because the trail there goes on for 500 miles) has earned the named “Virginia Blues” because of the tedium of staying in one state for so long, New Jersey is called the “deli state” for its numerous opportunities to grab a sub sandwich near the trail, and Pennsylvania…wait for it… is called “Rocksylvania.”

I’ve heard about the rocks in Pennsylvania. I had a preview of them in Maryland (they have a few, too) and, hiking north of Duncannon, (PA) there is a section of the trail that is mostly rocks and home to many rattlesnake dens, but rocks upon rocks, for miles upon miles? This section beginning at Swatara Gap was my first taste of sustained rock hiking. (Apparently the last 50 miles before the Delaware Water Gap are the worst so…I’ve still got about 25 miles to go before I hit the prime time rocks.). These were bad enough.

Now, it’s not all rocks. Really. There are some lovely soft sections:

And there are forests filled with ferns.

But the rocks win the day for capturing one’s attention. Every step – whether hopping from one large rock to another, or stepping between “shark fins” (little rocks that point up from the ground, just waiting to twist your ankle)- demands unflagging concentration. Younger hikers dance across these rocks. It’s a beautiful thing to watch. Almost 67-year-old hikers who don’t want to break a leg are more measured in their approach and give thanks to God on a regular basis for the invention of hiking poles which add two more points of contact for the sake of balance and staying upright.

One of the best parts of backpacking is the sense of independence that one feels and the detachment that comes with worrying only about where to place each step, which shelter to aim towards for the evening’s rest, and which dehydrated meal to choose for dinner that night. (The backpacker’s diet deserves its own blog post, but suffice it to say that the focus is on calories and protein. This isn’t as essential for a section hiker like me who isn’t at risk of losing critical body mass in just 4 days… but pop tarts, peanut butter crackers and Snickers bars are among the most common of items in a backpacker’s food bag.)

I love sleeping in my tent. I love falling asleep to the song of cicadas, and the chill of the fresh morning air that makes you want to snuggle down in your sleeping bag for just a few more minutes. I love the sound of the early morning birds, and often, while hiking, I will just stop and listen- to nothing. The quiet of the deep forest is a gift.

On one morning I had a steep climb out of a holler where I had camped. Most campsites and shelters are located down in a gap (a low area between mountains or ridges) because that’s where the water is. And so it’s not unusual to be faced with a hike uphill, first thing. I like to get an early start (around 7:30 AM) and so I also spend this early morning climb thinking that I might encounter a bear at any turn. (In my mind, bears are mostly out and about in the night and early morning.) My “remedy” for this- to avoid surprising a bear- is to make myself known by singing, talking out loud, and reciting the canticles of Morning Prayer as I make my ascent. The “Venite,” in fact, is a glorious canticle to recite: ” The Lord is a great God, and a great king above all gods. In his hands are the caverns of the earth, and the heights of the hills are his, also. The sea is his for he made it, and his hands have molded the dry land.” (“But why did God have to mold this dry land into this never ending hill,” I wondered?). I encountered no bears in my climb. I sang “Oh what a beautiful morning” (from “Oklahoma”) to the mountain laurel, and the rocks were prayed over mightily with the General Thanksgiving, the Lord’s Prayer, the Prayer of St. Chrysostom and my favorite collect for “The Renewal of Life” that has this priceless line: “…guide our feet into the way of peace that, having done your will with cheerfulness during the day, we may, when night comes, rejoice to give you thanks.”

I met some lovely people along the way. Two dads and their three little boys who were on their first overnight in the woods. A “trail angel,” a retired guy who hikes back and forth on the same 20 miles of trail each week with a backpack full of cold beer to offer to hot hikers along with sage advice about “his” section of the trail. (I met him at 9 AM, a little early to take him up on his offer of a cold one.) I spent the night with two hikers in their mid 20s- one was a guy who works as an outdoor expedition leader in Yellowstone who was taking the summer off to hike the AT, and a woman who just finished her master’s in physics and was spending the summer hiking before taking a job as a research scientist. Mostly, I kept to myself, but it is nice, after a day of talking to the ferns and rocks to sit around a campfire and talk to others who find themselves drawn to the woods. One one occasion, when some hikers asked about my “day job,” we got into a tender conversation about salvation and redemption and hell (I was talking to two former catholics in their twenties who had some deep questions) and so, on that occasion we broke the unwritten rule of “no politics and no religion” on the AT and carried on for a few minutes.

“Hiker midnight” is about 7:30 PM. That’s when people clean up from dinner, hang their food bags high in the trees away from the bears, and get into their tents and sleeping bags. The sound of soft snoring is evident around the camp, we sleep like the dead, readying our bodies for another day of rock hopping.

Glenn picked me up on Monday afternoon in Port Clinton, PA. When I got home, I stood in a hot shower for a long time.

Here are a few more pics: