As planned, I hiked about 23 miles on the Appalachian Trail this weekend. My father, my brother, his dog and I got on the trail at Shippensberg Rd (about 20 miles North of the Pennsylvania Line) around 9:00 AM. We hadn’t walked a mile before the rain started pouring down on us. No problems though, we’ve walked in the rain before and certainly will again. Once you get soaked it sort of doesn’t matter any more. We walked 8 miles to Pine Grove Furnace just in time for lunch. We had tasty hot sausages from the General Store. I read through the register at the store and was pleased to see that many of Thru-Hikers I had met in June, down in Shenadoah National Park, were still on the trail and had made this far: Puck Finn, Saffron, Chuggs, T-Bot, Goose, Rider and Buckeye, to name a few.

If you are not familiar with the Trail, you may find the list of names I just rattled off a bit odd. Obviously, those are not their given names, they are their “trail names.” And, of course, we have trail names, too. I christened my father, “Short Term,” on account of his tendency to block the negative parts of walk out after a couple of days. As a matter of fact, if he remembered how much its wears him out, he’d probably stop walking with us. My brother goes by “Death March.” It’s not as ominous as it sounds. It’s just that when he gets worn out he starts stomping in this determined way, and he doesn’t want stop for anything. He refers to this behavior as the Death March, so it makes a fitting trail name. My trail name has been Hawkeye, for no good reason actually. Since I was off on yet another trip in the rain, they decided to rename me the Rain King. Like its actually my fault it rains when I hike.

After Pine Grove Furnace, we passed the Official Halfway Point on the trail. 1069 miles to Springer Mountain in Georgia, 1069 miles to Mount Katahdin in Maine. (Not really, due to trail relocation and maintenance the exact distances change, but close enough.) Pretty cool, even though I haven’t walked anywhere near that far (only about 240 miles total on the trail including this weekend.)

We usually don’t walk more 13 miles in any one day, but on Saturday we went 16 miles. By the end i was ready to crawl. I was exhausted and hungry. My soaked socks had rubbed a couple of blisters in me feet and those annoying rocks in the trail had jumped up and collided with toes several times.

We finally did arrive at the Tagg Run shelter, which was very nice. No one showed up so we had the place to ourselves. After getting some food and some coffee in me, I did start to feel better, but the feet were still in rough shape, had walk gingerly around the camp.

The next day started great! After, a nice hot breakfast and some coffee we got on our way. The sun was shining, the trail wasn’t bad and everything seemed to going smoothly. As we walked further the pain in my feet got worse. After 5 miles or so we ascending a pretty good climb … about 700 feet. It was pretty steep but I pushed to top pretty quickly. Only a mile to go till our pick up point. Only one mile… It was terrible. The trail looped through and over boulder after boulder on top this ridge. At one point I slipped and fell hard catching myself with hand. It hurt bad. I do not really like complaining about it but I mean for a minute or two I was truly concern it was broken. At any rate, I got off the trail in a pretty foul mood. Which is a shame cause usually I feel better, emotionally anyhow.

If you are reading this and you have never done anything like it, you may be saying to yourself, “that doesn’t sound like much fun.” And you would be correct, it doesn’t sound like it, but there is some satisfaction to it that is more difficult to explain. Some of it has to do with the beauty of the outdoors, some of has to do with a feeling of accomplishment. That alone, however, would not be enough. I think the most compelling reason for is this. In my day to day life, I have a fair amount stress, work, kids and home, the usual. It’s not overwhelming or terrible, but it’s there. Day after day: what about the bills, is the lawn mowed, do the kids need new clothes, will the project at work be on schedule.

I can tell you this with certainty, after walking 15 miles on Saturday, I had only one thing on my mind: get me to the shelter and get these boots off. That’s it, that’s all. And there is a certain Zen simplicity to it that makes all of the negatives worth while. It’s a reminder, that most of our concerns are artificial, a product of society. And for two days my concerns were much more primitive, just food and shelter. I need that every once in while, even if it does beat me up a bit. So it won’t be long before I’m outfitting myself for my next stretch of trail.