I was planning to go hiking this weekend, but some snow and a lack of snowshoes has changed my plans. If I can’t go backpacking, at least I can write about it. I will tell you about the first backpacking trip I went on, well the first one of my trips on the AT. Remind me to tell you about my first real backpacking excursion another time.

This story will take some telling, so I will break it up into 2 or 3 parts.

My brother and my dad starting hiking stretches of the Appalachian trail about three years ago. They had invited me to go with them,, but I wasn’t able to go. I was working two jobs at the time and I just couldn’t make it work. As my schedule freed up I started planning to go on trip with them. 20 miles from Northern Maryland to Caledonia State Park in Pennsylvania. I was extremely excited about the trip. I went and bout myself a pack, some cheap trekking poles, new boots, and some other smaller necessities. My brother had decided to bring his dog with him. He’d never taken Dirka hiking before, but he decided to see if he would be a good trail dog. As the day we were to go hiking approached, the weather forecast became bleaker and bleaker (or wetter and wetter.) It looked like rain and lots of it. We were determined to go anyway.

We were dropped off at the trailhead at High Rock, MD. We put our packs and set out under hard cold rain. The trail from High Rock descended over slick wet boulders. Those trekking sticks came in real handy… but I still found myself flat on my back before we got to the bottom. As we walked a the rain kept coming dowin and the trail was beginning to get sloppy. As we got close to the Pennsylvania Line, the trail transformed it self into a fasting moving stream. Already thoroughly soaked, I plunged forwarded stepping in this stream that used to be a trail (and probably is again.) The water was over 6 inches deep, it flowed right into my boots giving me a new definition of cold feet. Onward we went until the trail opened up and we had arrived at PenMar State Park at the Mason Dixon line.

We stopped for a break under a pavilion. As we stood there dripping, a ranger came up to inform us that dogs were not allowed in the park. My brother explained that we just passing through and we would only be here for a few minutes. This ranger guy decided that he would let it slide, this time. Even the dog rolled his eyes as the ranger walked away. I took off my boots, wrung out my socks, and feasted on jerky and trail mix. I looked around. It was a pretty park even in all of that rain or maybe because of it. In another pavilion they seemed to be setting up for a wedding. Someone was probably regretting the decision to have an outdoor wedding at that point. There were some other hikers in the pavilion we were dripping in, but there really wasn’t much to say. The amount of rain that was falling was overwhelming. There was no point in talking about it, it spoke with its own voice as it beat on the roof of the pavilion and splashed in the water pooling up in the grass.

I do not think I have ever been as wet as I was at that moment. But I was happy, and I didn’t yet understand the different stages of hiking. I was still in that in euphoric first stage. I didn’t know about the others yet, but my dad and my brother did. When we started out of Penn Mar, they walked at an even pace, knowing we still had several miles to go. I figured that they were just out of shape, so I pushed ahead and left them behind. I was having a blast. I steamed ahead, and didn’t even think about slowing as the trail starting climbing up a mountain. As I climbed the energy drained out of me, but I pushed on. Finally I was beat, I found a nice wet rock to lean against and snacked on jerky and some cheese. After a while my companions arrived and joined me in my lunch break. I felt better after eating but I never got all of my energy back. We started climbing again and after a while I realized that it wasn’t raining, or at least it wasn’t raining very hard. It was hard to tell with every thing as wet as it was.

Continued in Part II