Read Part 1
After the incident with the horses we were pretty energized. But it did not last long. The sky turned to an ugly kind of grey. And the mist that had been falling turned to a steady rain. That combined with the distance we had walked and the distance we had yet to go, put a damper on my mood. I slogged onwards.
Every hike I’ve ever walked seems to breakdown the same way. It doesn’t seem to matter whether its 2 miles or 20. First you walk, excited to be on the trail again, full of energy. After a while you settle in, find your pace, resigned to be walking for a while. Eventually, the walking becomes monotonous and you begin “slog.” Slogging is just like walking, but you’re no longer looking around at scenery, you simply put one foot in front of the other, determined to make it to you destination. After you body starts to get tired the slogging is reduced to “trudging.” It’s at this point that your stride shortens and you slow down. I usually don’t lift my feet very well during the trudging. I end up kicking a lot of rocks and roots that way. There is one more stage that can happen in longer hikes, but I will get to that later.
We slogged through fields and pastures in the rain for the next hour or two. We were very conscious of how late it was getting. It would be completely dark by six, maybe earlier with the clouds. We had read a notice in Boiling Springs, that said the shelter at Darlington had been torn down in June, and a new one would not be built until late in the season 2005. At the time, we didn’t worry about it too much, but as the day wore on and the rain showed no signs of letting up, the reality of having to set up a tent in the dark and the rain was weighing down on us too. Although it felt like we making good time, it seemed very unlikely we would reach the sight of the former Darlington shelter before dark.
We made it to the Scott Work Farm around 4. I’m not sure what all goes on there, but they are somehow associated with the ATC. There was a rickety picnic table set up under an overhang next to the barn. We took off our packs and sat down there for a break. I snacked a bit and read through the Trail Log that was there. Many hikers had signed in since June, but there no information in there about the what we might find at the Darlington “shelter.” I saw that someone was sitting on the porch of the farmhouse, so I wandered over to see if I could gather some information about this shelter. As I walked over, a very old German Sheppard hobbled towards me and barked a bit, the lady, sitting on a rocker on the porch, with an overflowing ashtray on the table next to her, yelled to me, “Don’t worry about him, he’s my aardvark alarm. Must be working too. I don’t have any aadvarks in my yard. As a matter of fact, I hear that there aren’t any aardvarks in all of Pennsylvania.”
I asked about the Darlington shelter, and she told me, as she chain smoked, that she hadn’t been up there since they tore it down, but she knew that they had taken a bunch of lumber up there for the new shelter. I thanked her for the information, and we headed out with a glimmer of hope that we would find a shelter or at least maybe a pavilion at our destination.
Even though I was rested and had snacked plenty, I quickly went from slogging to trudging. It was almost 5 o’clock, so we’d been walking for over 8 hours. As the sky got darker, the terrain became more hilly. As we walked up and down small hills, we knew we coming to the end of the Cumberland Valley. All that stood in between us and our destination was a 1500 foot climb. By the time we got to the rigdeline we needed to ascend, it was as dark as midnight. The rain had slowed, but a fog was building in its absence. We walked for a while in the darkness, until it became almost impossible to make out the trail or the white blazes that mark it. We turned on our headlamps, sacrificing our ability to see around in the darkness, for the ability to see what was in front of us. With the fog growing thicker as we walked, and steam rising of our faces, we climbed up the mountain.
I mentioned earlier that there can be one more stage in the progression of a hike. I reached that final stage somewhere while walking on the trail up the mountain. We call that phase the “deathmarch.” It like trudging, but you no longer even think about your destination, you set short goals and you achieve them. “I’ll just make to that rock. I’ll make to the next turn. I’ll get to that tree over there.” On and on it goes. Needless to say, it took a long time to make it to the top of the ridge. Not long after that, we found the trail to the Darlington shelter. As we feared, there was nothing there but some new lumber stacked underneath a tarp and a stack of boards from what apparently used to be the Shelter. Mercifully it stopped raining long enough for us to pitch our tents and cook some dinner. Even though it was only around 7 o’clock I climbed into my tent and went to sleep.
It rained through the night, and while my sleeping bag kept me dry, most every thing else was damp at best. We got up and didn’t really feel like cooking breakfast, so we set about packing our wet gear back into our packs. While we working, two different groups of dayhikers stopped by, to check on the progress of the shelter. We chatted with them and then we were off. It was a decent morning, but we were impatient to get back to our cars and work on drying off. The two and a half mile walk went by quickly and without incident, and I was relieved when we crested the last hill and saw my brother’s SUV.
I know that this trip didn’t sound like much fun. And honestly, it wasn’t one of the best trips we’ve had, but now that I’ve written this, I’m already itching to go hiking again. There is just something about backpacking that calls me back. I think maybe it’s the way everything gets boiled down to what really matters. Food and Shelter. No deadlines, no keeping appearances, no right way or wrong way. As long as you’ve got food and shelter, it will all work out.
