Unionville to Waywayanda, small town to small shelter. No snacks all day due to poor planning on my part. Somewhere amid the fantasies of food, dominated this time by Swedish fish and a fried cheesecake I once ate at the NC state fair, I recall a boardwalk jaunt through some marshes, a steep trudge up…Read more May 21: Waywayanda (Neverland) and the Lost Boys from Lord of the Flies 

I was stuck behind 200 kids and their gossiping helio-parents for an hour today. Ran into the convoy about a mile into Highland's State Park. To say they were moving at a glacial pace would be drastic understatement.  As you'r probably expect I was hesitant to tack myself to the rear of the procession. My…Read more May 20: Traffic Jam

May 19 - Kingsnake on the trail. Golden eagle. 12 miles in 3 hours to get lunch at a lakeside tavern in a sequestered New Jersey town.  Stopping every few days in a different place has made me acutely aware of the fact that no two communities are quite the same. Back in Port Clinton…Read more May 19: Everyone Is Different But We’re All the Same

Today I crossed my 5th state line, this time into New Jersey. The change of terrain was abrupt. Again the trail led up, into big rounded hills that looked out over a sea of green canopy, and a smattering of insular, upscale rural homes with checkered, fairway lawns. Still hoping to lose sight of the…Read more May 18: New Jersey  

7 miles into Delaware Water Gap and the Church of the Mountain free hiker hostel with the works: shower, bunks, leather sofas, and a good old-fashioned bronze-bell alarm clock that wakes you up every hour of the day. Seems all the hikers I've met on the trail congregated here. It doesn't take us long to…Read more May 17: Delaware Water Gap

May 16 - Wind Gap. Walked a mile into town on sidewalks overgrown with weeds for a laundry stop and food. In the Monday lull most restaurants were closed, so we (Cosmo, WannaChair, just Wan for short, and I) settled for gas station snacks and pizza delivered to "the laundromat, the one with the tanning…Read more May 16: Escape Is No Good If You Don’t Come Back

Passed through Lehigh Gap and over the Palmerton Superfund site by mid-morning. Thanks to an industrial accident a few decades back the water sources here are periodically titrated with zinc, so I was humping three liters of water for the hike today. There was sun for a bit, then the clouds rolled in and with…Read more May 15: What’s The Worth of A Broken Car?

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."…Read more May 14: The Importance of Crossing Lines

Left Windsor Furnace this morning to head for Allentown Hiking Club shelter some 16 miles down the path. The skies were an ominous gray from the outset and at noon the rain started coming down. Cosmo and I ducked into Eckville shelter to dodge the rain. The place was fit for a king. It was fully…Read more May 13: 500 Miles and Friends From the Other Side of the Globe

May 12 - Made the five miles to Port Clinton by 11. On the fringe of town was a quiet railroad, the trains that once ran it forgotten and graffiti-emblazoned alongside the tracks.  Cosmo and I wandered behind an old couple for a while, wondering in an unworried sort of way if they were heading…Read more May 12: Class Versus Crass