The days are piling up but I’m short on time so I’ll give you a drive-by look at what the past couple days have held.
May 5 – Cosmo returns. Stayed with his PA relatives, Uncle Lee and Aunt Jan that night because it’s near impossible to turn down a sponsored rest day. Egg salad was the main course for dinner and I scooped five full servings as Lee rattled off a never -ending stream of anecdotes. They gravitated mostly around the typical delights of the elderly, namely the activities of grandchildren, crossword puzzles, the old, golden days of American baseball, and how to keep the rabbits out of the garden in back.
May 6 – We stayed the next day as well. Cosmo’s phone had broken mysteriously. Other than wading through picketers in front of the Verizon store that day mirrored the one before.
We did go to the Apple Store at the mall. I was entranced by the tides of the crowd, the way it ebbed, flowed, stopped them moved. It was almost an art the way the shoppers moved mindlessly around one another, never touching, never making more than necessary eye contact, always judging the cleanest path, plotting a new course.
I was still in the woods, used to a rocky trail and no one to share it with. If the crowd was a river I was a rock. The detachment was reassuring in a way. I wasn’t a part of the crowd, just a watcher. The riptide couldn’t pull me into RadioShack because I wasn’t going with the flow.
May 7 – Onward to the Riverfront Campground in Duncannon, a 21 mile hike after two days of rest.

Duncannon was a beat up old town. Most houses were one step from being leveled by a big swinging ball and chain, forget renovation. It was the kind of place locals stare at strangers because if you’re not stuck there plying the taphouse floor with a mop for some extra snuff money, why come?
Hikers come for the Doyle, which lives up to it’s reputation as a rundown, sagging-roof hotel with a ground floor bar that serves cold beer and a mean burger.

Ran into Pineapple and Brisket, friends from the trail. Met another, trail name “Shadow” at the $5 campsite a mile down the main road.
May 8 – Left Duncannon on a bridge alive with traffic, a concrete aorta spewing out rundown cars from a rundown town like blood from a wound. I was happy to get back into the woods. A day of ridge line hiking helped to clear my head of fumes.

May 9 – Camped the night before near a Pennsylvania military training ground. Woke to staccato thump of helicopter blades ricocheting through the hills.
In my college townhouse, I dreaded Sunday mornings for fear of lawnmowers. This was much worse. I was thoroughly roused by 6, against my will.
During the day I met a few other hikers: K-Train, 38, and saw Booty (a hiker I met a while back) again. There were others too. Atticus (das machine), sonic and goose were an odd group. A very utilitarian German traveling with two carefree Tennesseans makes for great hilarity.
Left hip bothered me all day.
May 10 – 13 mile day to 501 Shelter, essentially a fully enclosed, on-trail hotel. It’s outdoor shower failed to deliver and left me in 40 degree weather lathered in soap with no running water. Got a shuttle in to Pine Grove, yet another forgotten old town for a resupply. Met Nibbles, the well-read truck driver. Tinder, fellow fantasy nerd. Al Dente who had listened to all 8 Harry Potter audiobooks between Georgia and Maryland. Ziptie who only talked in a timid hardly intelligible murmur. The aptly named Survivor sporting a reality new and massive purple facial bruise. Nera and others.
May 11 – Eventful, stealth camp the next night in the midst of the whipper wills — Long story short, I shouted into the darkness to warn potential turkey hunters that there were hikers camping in the vicinity.
There were no turkey hunters. Only loud, whooping birds.
I still feel pretty dumb about that one.

Onward, ever onward — Nomad