TRAIL DAY 135
Mon, July 4, 2016 The only place to get breakfast was 2½ long blocks up main street at the Convenient Food Mart. I had a couple egg sandwiches, juice and coffee. On the way back, I stopped at Dunkin Donuts to use the bathroom before going across the street to Country Harvest Family Market to resupply. At the market, I found some items I was interested in and wanted to read the labels but – Oooops! – where were my glasses? At the Food Mart? No. I remember reading something on the way out. Must be at Dunkin. They were there in the bathroom. I must have taken them off for something. All was well.
Sensitized by my wife’s concern for my health and sufficient calories to sustain my body, I read labels. High protein. Sugar. Fat. All OK.
It was here that I bought a bag of dried quinoa. Hard, tiny, white beads – a gzillion of them! I’d sprinkle them on other foods. Put ‘em in my peanut butter, my cereal, supper, what-evvv-eer. I read lots of labels at the Market trying to assimilate information my wife had given me and in need of clarification, I called her about something while sitting on a short concrete pillar in the sun outside the store.
Goods in hand, I returned to the garage, packed up, paid up and called Brenda for a shuttle drive back to the spot where she picked me up. The day was underway. Back on the trail heading to Lehigh Gap. This was not quite the iconic trail monster-mystery that some other landmarks were but it was significant. We were heading for a very steep and rocky climb.
Oh, I should tell you about Theo and a few other things before I leave Bert’s. I was back in the shower area, maybe getting water from the spigot nearby when Theo came looking for me. I called to him and probably because I was back in the narrow passageway to the shower it was hard for him to locate where my voice was coming from. He ran up the fire escape thinking I was up there and when I came out from hiding, he came running down the metal stairs and got his paw caught in an opening between the slats of a stair. He stopped. I climbed to him and with some difficulty managed to get his paw out. Thank God his body weight and momentum did not break his leg or paw.
The next thing before I leave Palmerton is to say that I took a few pictures in the early morning sun of the ridge I would soon be on. After the climb up from the Gap, a ridge would take us northbound with Palmerton in view to the west a good bit of the way. AWOL says this about leaving Palmerton:
Rocky, steep trail from Lehigh Gap. Deforested ridge due to zinc smelting from 1898-1980. Palmerton Superfund [Federal clean-up money] site.
We waited for Brenda in the alley behind the garage – she was not far away. She dropped us off and we made our way carefully across the busy street and then down to our left to a point where the trail headed up and away from the road. We came to an open parking area and at one end saw a Trail Angel. Down we went for food, drink and conversation. Another hiker came along. Soon we were off for the climb, passing still another Trail Angel. Surely they knew what we were in for and wanted us to have a good last meal before risking our lives.
Rocks. Piled high one upon the other. Up and up and up. It was steepest at the top and at one point I had to take Theo’s pack off to help him up a particularly difficult section. I tried with only modest success to heave his pack up after him. When I followed, I reached down with my trekking pole hoping to hook it but unfortunately, I nudged it off the small ledge that had held it in place and it fell just as a heavy-set guy and gal came along causing me to wonder at their vigor and bravery.
The guy retrieved Theo’s pack and hoisted it up to me. To my “Thank you” he responded with a theme for the trail which I will never forget.
Hey! All we have up here is each other.
We weren’t always on dangerous, steep terrain but his comment fits all parts of the trail and life. He gave me back Theo’s pack and a motto to live by.
We chatted a bit and I learned that he was carrying a fancy camera and a firearm. He said, “You never know what you might run into.” I let that go. He took my picture and my email and several days down the way, I received the photo.
The top was rugged and the rocks were unsteady. Over the summit, it was more of the same with a long way to go across a boulder field. In time we came to dirt!
My left foot was giving me trouble so I resisted the urge to just keep on keepin’ on and stopped, removed boot and socks to adjust spacers and moleskin and duct tape hoping to ease the pain going forward.
The trail on the ridge was long, straight and interesting. A gentle breeze was blowing, causing the vegetation to dance in the muted light of an early summer midafternoon, under a mildly overcast sky. There were little yellow flowers, Queen Anne’s Lace, thistles, purple and white flowers and large dandelions gone to seed but still intact. And all along the way, tall grasses. The hardiest of plants covering between 20%-40% of the earth – always beautiful, pervasive, short or tall and when tall flourishing with a crowning stalk of seeds. Giving, generous, essential, sturdy, nourishing. Grass. In Africa, tall enough to hide an elephant (David Attenborough’s Planet Earth!) or Theo.
I was now looking down on Palmerton – the town from which I had looked up in the morning.
I saw some trees that looked like Aspen trees and sent a picture to my oldest son who met his wife in Aspen and has a home there. He thought perhaps they could be a variety but not the same.
The long, straight trail kept going and going, sometimes up but, of course, always northward, Katahdin bound.
Around 5:00 p.m. rain was in the air and I found a flat spot off the trail in a small grove of birch trees to set up my tent. I pitched in a bed of ferns and crawled inside only to find out I was pitched also in a bed of thorns. They were tiny but not friendly. I reached under the tent floor and cut the branches with my Swiss Army Card scissors and my small half-serrated knife which I kept clipped to my right pant trash pocket. I got most of them. There may have been a mini-hole or two in the tent floor but we’d survive. We were in for the night and that was that.
Day #135 Bert’s (Palmerton) > Tent (thorns 1260) 2.8 miles