I woke up to the sound of the Uber-Bot packing up her tent. I’ve never been a morning person. I hurried to get myself packed up before she was pacing around ready to go. I fired up my campstove to have a quick breakfast and some coffee. The coffee was great and the clearing we were camped in was beautiful. I think I would have been content to just sit there all day. But we had 10 miles to cover, so i tossed the dregs of my coffee into the underbrush and packed up the rest of my gear as my partner filled her bottles from the spring.

Soon we walk along the AT again. The trail was a little rockier than the night before, I was grateful that I hadn’t had to walk on this trail the night before. The air was cool, but the walking kept us warm. The gray skies were uninspiring, but at least it didn’t look like rain.

Each State has it’s own ‘personality’ on the trail. The personality of Pennsylvania can summed in one word. Rocks. Thousands of them. Large boulders that must be climb over. Stretches of trail that run over boulder fields, where you have to step from boulder to boulder. And miles of trail with sharp pointy rocks coming out the dirt with such frequency that you cannot avoid them. I’ve kicked, tripped over, slipped on, fell on, scraped against and banged into more rocks than I can enumerate.

We hadn’t walked long when the trail turn up on to a pile of boulders that led to the crest of the ridge known as the ‘Knife’s Edge.’ The ridge literally narrows to a point only a few feet wide, and the trail ran right along it. We stopped at the highest point and looked out over the patchwork fields that spread out below us under the cold gray sky.

The day went by easily, we came to the view at Bake Oven Knob we took it in for a few moments, but the wind blowing on us forced the break short. We scrambled down a rock descent and before long arrived at a shelter. We stopped and had lunch. After cleaning up from lunch, we went to the spring and refilled our bottles. Then we were back on the trail.

The afternoon continued smoothly. The ridge broadened and the trail was level and easy to walk on. Eventually the trail began to descend marking the end of the day’s walk. We came to the shelter after a short descent. There was a lone hiker already camped out there. I scanned the area, but saw no where to pitch a tent. I approached the hiker.

“Good afternoon.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
“Is there a tenting area around here any where?”
“Well… there is one a little bit back the way you came…”
“We saw that one.”
“… or you could go down that trail, ” he pointed to an unblazed trail to the right, “and there is a nice little field down there. at least there was. I haven’t been down there in a while. I guess some one could have trashed it.”
“Cool, we’ll check it out. It’s not to far down, I hope…”
“No about Five Minutes form here.”

Five Minutes?

We walked down the trail, no more than a quarter of a mile, an came to a nice little clearing with a fire ring. We started pitching the tents and getting our equipment set up. We were hassled the entire time by nasty little biting gnats. I would have thought that there wouldn’t have been any insects to speak of this time of year. Once my tent was pitched, I headed back up the trail to the shelter to locate the spring. The Uber-Bot retreated to her tent to escape the gnats.

As I approached the shelter I was greeted by the hiker.

“Find what you needed?”
“Yeah…”
“Nobody’s trashed it?”
“No, it’s good. Perfect actually.”
“Good.”
“Is there a spring?”
“Yep. Just down the trail. About Three Minutes from here.”

Three Minutes?

I headed down the trail assuming that the spring couldn’t be far off, if this hiker’s standard of measurement was consistent. And it was. I filled my bottles, drank one of them and filled it again. And then headed back to our campsite again.

We built a campfire to drive of the gnats. It worked like a charm. We spent the evening lounging by the fire. Relaxing. Sometimes in silence. Sometimes we talked. We watched the moon make it’s way over the trees. So bright that the trees cast shadows under its glow.

Something rustled in the brush not to far off from the campfire. We peered into shadows trying to make it what it could be.

“What do you think?”
“Probably a deer.”
“Yeah.”
“They’re nocturnal…”
“Or a raccoon.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad our food is already hung.”
“Yeah…”
“Besides, there aren’t any bears around here.”
“Should we shine our lights over there?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Cause, I could be wrong about the bears.”

After a while, we hadn’t heard any more noises so we shone our lights at the brambles, but we couldn’t see anything.

The fire had died down, so we to our respective tents, and laid down for the night. And with no concern for what was crawling around out there, I went right sleep.