Status Updates From Appalachian Odyssey: Walkin...

The day was perfect, the lesson familiar: a delight of long-distance hiking was that the days picked you instead of the reverse. The nights, too.

We were befriended by a junco or two. These birds have to be the hardiest mountaineers in the world. They are found at elevations of six thousand feet in weather conditions intolerable to man. They hop along the ground, plucking a seed from a crowberry here, eating a kernel of mountain sedge there. . .their bodies might be said to resemble the yin-yang circle, their white breasts looping around the slate gray body.

At the top of Lafayette the clouds suddenly cleared and the break filled with age-old crumbling mountains, stately and grand. The vision was unearthly. We were literally the only inhabitants of our earth.

The isolation of many parts of the Trail set a grim stage for broken arms, sprained ankles, concussions. All that was needed to trigger the danger was a misplaced step, a loose rock, the eating or drinking of contaminated water. The risks of being remote from expert medical help were none too slight.

Vermont represents freedom from congestion, a forested peace.

In the woods all you have to do is pick a spot and watch the world perform.

To connect means to join, and so Connecticut linked the Central and New England States. This linchpin of the Eastern Seaboard re-introduced us to the plentiful paper birch, the white courier of the northeast that stands in starched excellence.

We met several other loners on the Trail. One of them was an older man, tanned and trim. . . We discovered the reason he took solace in the woods. He had recently lost his wife and hiking companion to cancer. Now every Sunday afternoon he walked the AT through Harriman State Park. The woods gave him comfort, a time to be with himself. . . He was not a happy man, but the Trail helped him not to be a defeated one.

We did enjoy sections of the Harriman State Park in New York. One night the fireflies gave us a royal fireworks display before we went to bed. . . That night the twinkling in the glade offered us Christmas in July.

New Jersey conjures images of exhaust fumes, noisome oil fields, and littered highways.
We were mistaken. As we walked up into the Kittatinny Mountains of upper New Jersey, we realized this was a different song, and not a protest tune at all.

Mushrooms grew in numberless shapes, sizes and colors--vivid saffrons, powdery oranges, drab beiges. Some spread as wide as bread plates. . . others were scarcely more than umbrellas for ants. . we saw scarlet saucers nibbled at the edges with teeth marks at the top, as if a chipmunk had snitched the icing from a cake.

In the clearings, the wild roses, fragile whispers of pink, bloomed unintimidated by maples and oaks. So did the cheerful daisies, bull thistles, black-eyed susans, and yellow groundsel, humming with bees and smelling of summer.

Th wilderness aspect of the Appalachian Trail becomes increasingly important as the urban development of America expands.

We passed through knee-high glades of meadow rue. These dainty fringed flowers gave us the feeling we were walking through a Japanese tea garden hung with a thousand tasseled lanterns.

Of what use in the cycle of nature was a man's ego?

Twenty-three per cent of the Appalachian Trail [is] located in Virginia. The people of Virginia [are] indeed fortunate. Not only [do] they have the Trail, but also Mount Rogers State Park, Jefferson National Forest, Shenandoah National Park, George Washington National Forest, and the Blue Ridge Parkway, as well as many other parks not on the Trail.

We marveled at the gigantic culverts of earth filled with crawling mist. On one side was a vast boil of steam, on the other, an empty cauldron of durable rock, a vat of mountainside waiting for the next helping of cloud and fog. . . This misty, magical region changed face sometimes in a matter of minutes.

Congregations of bluets stared up bright-eyed as we passed.

Every two hours we stopped by a stream to wipe our faces with cool water. What a novelty not to have to turn a faucet. Water was everywhere, miniature waterfalls over rocks, thin rivulets meandering toward the valleys, hidden springs gushing as if from nowhere to form small clear pools in the moss-covered culverts.