Allentown Hiking Club shelter to George W. Outerbridge shelter. Easy 16.5 miles. Breezy, blue-skied day, some solo rock hopping and mountaintop hiking.
Dipped into the shelter just in time to beat the four o’clock afternoon rain. Cosmo was already there and we were joined a minute later by two others, one a hiker named “Waterproof.” He was drenched. I didn’t ask.
The rain kept up until late, drumming a racket up on the tin roof, but all was well because Waterproof, a French Canadian, had a hearing problem, thought we did as well, and had plenty of stories to tell. Up to that point I thought the rain had been loud…
It was to be an evening of moose-stories orated in broken, but booming English.
There are all different types of comedic entertainment, from quick-witted standup to “Wanna watch me fit my fist in my mouth?” but foreign humor is the best. People from outside your bubble have a way of poking fun at things you would never notice. And when the punchlines to his jokes were delivered in Québécois, the French coming unexpectedly out of the blue, the other hikers and I just threw up our hands and made fun of him instead.
Nothing brings people together quite so quickly as humor. And, as with the Australians the day before, our differences all melted away as the rain came down on our little hut while we watched from inside, enjoying our prepackaged just-add-water dinners and arguing fair marginal ratios of Swedish Fish gummies to Snickers bars (believe it settled at 10:1).

By this point I’d crossed something like three state boundaries. I’ve gone from Virginia to West Virginia to Maryland to Pennsylvania. And while the land and the accents and the idiosyncrasies continue to change, it’s clear to me now that the people I’ve met have all shared a kind of sameness. Whether hiker or barber or gas station cashier or waitress or American or Australian, they’re all alike in that they’ll match kindness with kindness.

Look! A Canadian saluting Old Glory!

It’s refreshing, when you walk on your own all day, to find that there are always people willing to lend a helping hand or advice or a joke to make light of the struggles at hand. I think that seeing that kind of blind generosity is something that would do wonders to loosen a lot of people’s cynical world view. It’s a reassurance, in a sense, a gesture of good faith from a stranger turned friend that means something good that most people disbelieve. Namely this: if you open yourself up, expose yourself a little bit to a person you don’t know or even really understand, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be hurt in the end. They could just as easily help you. They may offer you something as simple as a bottle of water or they may teach you something you didn’t previously understand.
But you’ll never know if you set hard borders in your heart and mind, if you draw lines that you refuse to cross. Sometimes you have to put yourself at risk to catch a glimpse of what other people believe, how they understand.
No sense living if you refuse to confront the things that disturb you. Growth is only possible by stepping outside your own circle. You don’t do that, you may as well be made of stone.
Still alive, still animate, living like a marble sculpture in motion — Nomad