May 22 – Woke late today predisposed to take it easy for two reasons: first, there were only 13 miles to go before the next shelter and second, Bellvale Creamery was only 0.1 miles off the trail, which meant ice cream in the early afternoon.
Another thing of no small consequence: today was the day dad was coming to visit.
Jump to noon and the Creamery. Discovered that ice cream from New York’s inconspicuous rural fringes is the real tourist attraction.
Also learned that the north is not always inhospitable: a friendly karate teacher driving a z3 gave me a lift to town for some high-priced groceries.
The Bellvale Market however was clearly tailored for those in search of “authentic” organic produce and grass-fed beef cutlets. Suffice it to say their stock was slim when it came to hiker food. I walked out with a rice ball and a mozzarella wedge, ditched the nice protective plastic to-go box and unceremoniously crammed the delicate delectables into my pack.
Back on the trail I ran into none other than Dan Diehl doing laps without his pack. He’d gotten to the shelter early and had decided to walk an extra length of trail southbound to jumpstart the arrival of his hiker-legs.
I had to give him credit when we made it back to the shelter and I saw his gear, he definitely came prepared. Full 2 liter camelback, five lb domestic-style sleeping bag, 8 bags of mountain house easy prep backpacking food, waterproof matches – I had but to name a tool and he’d reach in his bag and produce it. Don’t know how he fit it all in there.
It was low grade magic though, and I only say that because his pack was obviously large.
Tomorrow we pull a 14 mile day. Should be interesting.
May 23 – Woke to a near empty shelter. Most of the other hikers had left while I was still asleep. A nostalgic sight unfolded at the foot of my sleeping bag: Dan Diehl was already fully packed and dressed waiting for his son to get out of bed.
And here I thought this would be the one morning I would get to wake him up for a change. Seems I’m a late-comer to the early bird crew and my dad, in this regard, will always be number one. As he limbered up and did some perfunctory stretches I inched painfully out of my sleeping bag like a snake shedding its skin.
We got on the trail pretty quick after that. And pops surprised me by keeping up pretty damn well. We had a stream of talk going at first, but that faded when we began to hit the first of the day’s hills.

I waited all day for a complaint or a whine or a demand that we halt, but — and this was characteristic of him — it never came. There were wheezes and grunts and other general exhortations of pain, but he pressed on. For 14 miles.
I’m loathe to flatter my dad, I’d been soundly beaten in ping pong by him too many times in my childhood (…and, if I were honest, into later years) to give him undue credit for anything. But today he got a clap on the back. He earned that.
The shelter we eventually stopped at was called Fingerboard shelter and was one of the oldest on the AT. The place had two stone fireplaces and the timber beams holding the roof up were etched with ninety years of hiker momentos. Some names were freshly carved, while others were faded. One in the top corner read JVA 1951. Its edges had been eroded by wear and the once clean white initials had darkened as the exposed wood oxidized.
At Fingerboard the trail saw fit to give my dad a taste of all the types you’re likely to run into out here: a corporate retiree with a braided rat tail who spoke with the rattle of a smoker and was, unsurprisingly, living out in the bohemian wonderland of Colorado, a skater-socialist-hipster with a bag of weed, a bow staff, and a pack full of real-handpicked organic potatoes, a gay composer with long-gray broom-bristle hair looking for a cigarette and light, and last but not least the warfarin’ trail-magic bearing bard of New York’s boulder-strewn slopes Patty-O.
There was some good talk that night. About everything. Trail midgets, wildlife, Buddhism and the structural integrity of the World Trade Center back in ’01. Things got wild. And pop got a front row seat.

So it goes.
May 24 – Woke early with dad and set out into the rain for a 15 mile day over Bear Mountain and into town along the Hudson.
Dan Diehl proved his grit for the second time. He pushed up hills and down hills all day, bulling through a good two hours of rubber legs. There was blood and sweat, but no tears.
He trudged to the top of Bear Mountain, one of New York’s highest peaks, and downed two gatorades from a mountaintop vending machine with the gusto of a dehydrated desert wanderer. It had been a tough climb, and he’d pushed his body to its farthest limits.
Then it was down the other side. 1000 steps…or something like that. A long way. Then along a lake, past an ice cream vending machine which was too good to pass up, through a small zoo with about five species of animal and littered with Robert Frost poetry, and to the foot of the Hudson River Bridge where we were picked up by an elderly man named Doug who took us to his three room motel.

After showering, eating dinner with Cosmo and Gary at the town’s barbecue joint, we called it a day. For dad it had been two days since a bed. For me about thirty eight. He was asleep long before me.
Today was the last of his three day “vacation” on the AT, and it had been a good one.
Gonna miss the old man — Nomad