"Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in place, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has a personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is like a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. In this a journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it."

-Steinbeck, Travels with Charley


July 28

Started my day by going up Bear Mountain, a really nice spot which overlooks the Hudson, then went down through the old park at the bottom of the mountain, through the zoo (where I was one of the species on display - "Look, there's one of those hiker guys"), then walked a mile to the nearest town, Ft. Montgomery to resupply. Except the "grocery" there is really just a mini-mart, so I had to head up two more miles to find a supermarket - walking the whole way because I couldn't get a hitch to save my soul.

I finally made it, got several day's worth of food, ate dinner in the market's deli, and hitched a ride back towards the bridge. My ride-givers turned out to be cadets at West Point; I had been only a few blocks away from the US Military Academy. I more or less knew this from the map, but it wasn't until they asked me if I'd been on campus and taken the tour that I realized the opportunity I'd missed.

When they dropped me off; I hiked up a few miles on the east bank of the Hudson, camped and decided two things. The first was to renew my commitment to hiking my own hike - I didn't want to miss out on any interesting opportunities that come up because I have to hurry up back to the woods. If that means I fall behind schedule - like I already am - and have to skip some portions to catch up, so be it.

The other thing I decided is that if I ever make it back to that supermarket deli, I am not ordering the seafood salad again. Hiking uphill after eating sketchy crab is not a pretty thing.


July 29

After a few miles, I reach Graymour Spiritual Life Center. This is an honest-to-goodness Franciscan Monastery and the AT more-or-less runs right through it. They have a tenting area with a pavilion, a cold shower and a water spigot for hikers. As I understand it, they used to offer meals to hikers, but alas, not anymore. I take an hour or so to walk around the grounds before pressing on.


July 30 - August 1

Finish off New York and enter Connecticut. Weather still hot and humid; terrain still rocky; not much else to say. Struggling a lot with motivation lately. From talking with others, a lot of people are. Everyone is anxious to get to the home stretch - Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine. Entering Connecticut, at least I'm in New England.

Have started to see south bound thru-hikers every day or two. They typically start in June or July, and finish up around Christmas. Many also run into some flip-floppers somewhere. A flip-flop is some sort of alternative itinerary. The most common is to hike north to Harper's Ferry, then get off, go to Maine, and hike south from there back to Harper's (thereby spending the worst of summer in Maine). It's interesting comparing notes with them and hearing what's ahead.


August 2

Today crossed a covered bridge over the Housatonic River. The bridge is over 100 years old, and there's been a river crossing of one kind or another in that spot since Colonial times - Washington's army used it on several occasions.

Spent most of the day in town at Kent, CT. It's one of the towns that, owing to the way the trail lays, pretty much everyone goes into for resupply. I hate to say it, but it's not a very hiker-friendly town. I hate saying it because I met several people in town that were all very nice, including one lady leading a group of kids who had been dayhiking. I got the full celebrity treatment, including the posed picture at the end. That's happened a couple of times now, and it's a fun, if odd, experience.

Still, Kent as a town, doesn't exactly throw wide it's welcoming arms. Several places have signs telling hikers to leave packs outside, don't wash your hair in the restrooms, etc. All of which is understandable and fair, but frustrating since there is nowhere in town to leave your stuff or wash up (the only lodging in town is over $100 a night). A couple people said they felt unwelcome or at least out of place, and one called it "the worst town on the trail."

But there comes a point where you have to step outside yourself a bit. The unbelievably generous hospitality we've gotten from so many people has a dark side: we come to expect it. We start thinking we are owed a hostel in every town, that we deserve trail magic, that we are entitled to a hiker discount, that an upscale Connecticut town somehow has an obligation to eagerly embrace us smelly, unshaven vagrants. There is among some hikers - especially some of the younger ones - an entitlement mentality.

It's a running joke among thru-hikers that there is a hierarchy on the trail, and that dayhikers and section hikers are "lower." We ignore the fact that the trail was never really meant to be thru-hiked. The people who created it did so with section-hikers in mind, and if anyone "deserves" anything, it's the volunteer trail maintainers, not the few weirdos who have six months to kill wandering in the woods.

Anyway, that's a rant. Resupplied, fed, heading on.


August 3 - August 5

Finished up Connecticut, which included a really nice waterfall (though "Great Falls" might be a bit of an overstatement as a name), then crossed into Massachusetts and went through the very beautiful Sage's Ravine. Spent a couple hours at the latter, feet in cold, cold mountain stream water, reading Last of the Mohicans.

Hit Mass Route 41, decided that three weeks without a hot shower was enough, and hitched a ride into the little town of South Egremont. My guidebook listed an inn built in 1780 that had rooms for $75; the second - most I've paid for a hotel room in my life, I think. But given that even budget motels run about $65 in this area, I figured I'd give it a shot. As it turns out, it's a beautiful old place, fixed up pretty nice with a whirlpool bathtub in every room and a big-screen TV in the common area (which I have to myself since most of the other guests are out antiquing). The usual rate here for a weekday? $165. That's $90 "hiker discount." Not bad at all, especially considering it includes free all-you-can-eat continental breakfast. (Well, it didn't actually say "all-you-can-eat," but they didn't tell me to stop either...

Another thing I should mention - lately I've been running into people I haven't seen for ages. Just this morning I ran into someone who asked "how's the foot" - he hadn't seen me since the Shenandoah's, when I was limping along with a burned foot. Last week, a guy saw me and called me "Nosebleed," my original trail name - I hadn't seen him since early in North Carolina.