It wasn’t an emergency. It was just inconvenient

New Jersey Appalachian Trail, Part Three

This is the third installment in a series about section hiking the AT. The previous installment is here, and the fun begins here.

Day Five: High Point Shelter to Pochuck Mountain Shelter (~12.4 trail miles)

I woke refreshed from an amazing night of rest. E had brought the inflatable double wide sleeping mat, which offered many times more cushion than the slim, foam egg crate I had been using. And even though it’s a tight squeeze for two in our 1.5 person tent, once I was snuggled up against him, I was finally able to push fears of bears out of mind and sleep as the dead do.

We left late—by my current standards—a little after nine. The trail tilted further down into the valley and then settled into a series of gentle ups and downs through the woods, occasionally passing through bright open meadows with views of the mountains. The wildflowers were out of control. I’m not sure I’ve ever hiked so much in the spring, so I’m more used to uninterrupted greenery, or pops of fall foliage.

There were frequent road crossings, and at one of these a trail angel had left a cooler of drinks and an assortment of Knorr Rice & Pasta Sides (a thru-hiker staple). Trail magic is still a novel experience for us. Most of our long hikes have been on shorter, less popular trails where thru-hikers are few and far between, and they don’t have the same kind of trail community that the AT has. And when I hiked the Long Trail, which overlapped with the “bubble” of AT thru-hikers, most of the trail magic was gone by the time I got to it. We each took a drink—I took a V8, which I hadn’t known I wanted until that moment, and E a mini Gatorade. Again, I had qualms about taking advantage of the magic as a section hiker, but there was so much, and I resolved to pay it forward when I could.

As we walked away, E marveled at this culture of generosity, and how starkly it contrasted with the prevailing sentiment where he grew up. There, he said, people looked askance at itinerants and wanderers, with suspicion and mistrust. “Hiking the AT? What are you running from?” That kind of thing.

Having grown up traveling with my glassblowing parents to different art festivals around the country, I have always felt a kinship with wandering itinerants, so maybe that’s why I don’t find it quite as surprising. Or perhaps I’ve read so many other trail journals and other hiking memoirs that it just seems normal.

I had instructed E to only pack food for himself for four days, because I knew we would pass a town where I could resupply and I wasn’t quite sure how much food I would need. So when we came to the first road crossing that would take us to Unionville we took it.

Now...a confession...we did not plan on returning to this section of trail. We would walk through Unionville and then take a different crossroad on the other side of town (it was a one-Main Street kind of village, population 592) to pick up the trail there. This probably cut out less than a mile of plain Jane woods walking. I am a completionist at heart so I had some qualms about this. If, for example, I ever decide I want to finish section hiking the Appalachian Trail, I will probably feel honor-bound to go back and walk this mile. But, I currently don’t have plans to hike the entire AT, and E and I were on vacation and it was hot and we didn’t feel like coming back to this part of the trail and ‘hike your own hike’ as they say.

And, it all worked out for the best, because the road took us past a lovely pond covered in plants and algae, and we saw a couple big turtles and a muskrat, which was probably three times as much wildlife as we would have seen in the woods. This pleased me. But oh, was it hot out there on the asphalt without any tree cover.

The town was decorated for the Memorial Day parade later that weekend. We passed a flamboyantly pro-Trump residence, and a man sitting on a porch across the street hailed us in welcome, and gave us directions to the market and tavern (which were just further down the road we were already on). He also said a relative (I think it was his father?) had owned a previous iteration of the tavern, and he could’ve taken it over, but it was a good thing he didn’t because he had a problem. I don’t recall prying into his history with alcohol—he was just friendly. And maybe lonely.

The market was clearly stocked as much or more for hikers than it was for locals, with an ample selection of ramen, the ubiquitous Knorr packets, Hostess cakes, and other delicacies favored by folks prioritizing high calorie-to-weight ratios. The woman behind the counter was also quick to tell us we could take our items out of the packaging and return it to her to be recycled or thrown away, which also demonstrated her keen knowledge of hiker wants and needs.

(Fun fact: There is a Hostess bakery in my hometown, which my mom briefly worked at, back when it was the Dolly Madison bakery, while she and my dad were getting their glassblowing business up and running. One day, she was on call, near the top of the list, and knew she would be asked to come in, but she and my dad had an art fair to attend, and so she planned on just ‘accidentally’ missing the call. Unfortunately, my grandmother was living with them at the time, and had early-stage Alzheimer’s, and she picked up the phone and cheerfully told my mom’s boss “Oh Lisa? She’s at the art fair!” My mom was fired. “I was planning to quit soon anyways, but we could’ve used a little more money at the time,” is how she always ends the tale—which I’ve heard often. With origin stories like this, it’s little wonder I went and became a journalist.)

After stocking up on six days of food—including a pack of Strawberry Hostess cakes—we continued on to the bar. I felt bad about taking E into civilization so soon after joining me on trail, but he figured it was Memorial Day weekend and he was ready to celebrate. We ordered spicy cheese curds and a giant salad, and I had two pints of the Catskill Brewery Devil’s Path IPA. This was probably stronger than I needed but the only thing better than a cold beer is a local brew named after a hiking trail—bonus points if I’ve hiked the trail. But we were so excited about the beer, we forgot to ask for waters. This was poor planning on our part.

Even though I visited the bathroom twice before leaving, I needed to pee again almost as soon as we were back on trail. I was also a little bit tipsy—a happy-content-elated kind of tipsy. A beer-without-water kind of tipsy. We followed a stray cat down the trail for a bit, although it ran when it saw us and disappeared into the brush.

I waded in a shallow brown stream, the last water source of the day, while E sat on the bridge and filled most of our bottles. We reached for them often over the next few miles, which were flat but exposed. It was so hot. It felt more like the Fourth of July than Memorial Day weekend. There was a sign for trail magic in someone’s front yard, promising cold water and drinks, but having already availed ourselves of the trail magic earlier, and having just come from a tavern in town, we felt obliged to skip it. We paused instead at a large bench in the shade to lie down for a bit and guzzle our water. We walked around three sides of a rectangular wildlife preserve, where long-legged birds waded among the reeds. E pointed out that it would have made much more sense to walk along just the one side. After one last water break in the shade, we began the steep slog up to the shelter.

There was no water at the shelter. We knew this, and thought we had been prepared, but somehow we found our bottles were suddenly quite empty. Like, so very empty. This was the most crowded shelter I had seen yet (it was a holiday weekend, after all). There were two people in the shelter and at least four tents. And I knew some of these people—Fenix was already in his sleeping bag in the shelter and I recognized Lady Slipper’s tent. If it had been an emergency, I knew someone would share water with us. But lord, that would be embarrassing. And it wasn’t an emergency. It was just inconvenient, and oh so uncomfortable.

We used most of what we had left to make dinner, leaving maybe five ounces between us, which we savored and rationed like liquid gold.

Much later that night, after our headlamps were off and we were nestled in our sleeping bags, we shared the last tiny sips from my bottle, although I reserved a single swallow for the morning.

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Reading list

Doomsday scenarios: My latest big feature over at my day job is this story about solar geoengineering—the one technology that could “make the catastrophe of climate change as much of a mega-death/almost-instant-catastrophe as nuclear war”—and why the University of Chicago is starting a new initiative dedicated to researching this and other Earth system interventions aimed at reversing or reducing the impacts of climate change. It’s an important story because there is a lot of tech-bro hype about geoengineering right now, a lot of new money flowing to it, and the potential risks and benefits are still hotly contested. Plus, I worked super hard on it! [Jessica McKenzie for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists]

The Heat Will Kill You First: If I’m reading this article correctly (I think I am, but I’m writing this at 1am right now), at least six people have died and six people are missing in Greece (one of the unidentified victims could be one of the missing men). Most of these tourists are believed to have succumbed to the heat while out hiking. These are truly harrowing stories. One missing woman texted the owner of the room where she was staying, “I’ve fallen. I don’t feel well.” This was at 8:24 in the morning! That is not when one expects someone to become disoriented and die from heat! Not to go all “climate emergency” on you, but what else is this?

The deceased include:

• the body of a 55-year-old from Floral Park, N.Y., who had been missing on the small island of Mathraki near Corfu since Tuesday, was found on a beach on Sunday (1)

• That followed the discovery of a man’s body on the island of Samos the day before (1)

• The remains of Michael Mosley, a British medical journalist and documentary maker, were found on the island of Symi after he failed to return from a walk (1)

• On Friday, an 80-year-old Belgian man who had been walking with a group died near the ancient site of Lato in eastern Crete (1)

• Two other tourists — a 70-year-old Frenchwoman and a Dutch man, also 70 — also died early this month during treks in different parts of Crete (2)

The missing include:

• A 74-year-old Dutch hiker has been missing there for a week, but the body had not yet been identified…according to the man’s wife, he had only a small bottle of water when setting out for his walk. (1)

• Albert Calibet, 59, a retired police officer who is a dual citizen of France and the United States, on the Aegean island of Amorgos. Mr. Calibet had set out on a trek alone on Tuesday morning (1)

• Also missing were two Frenchwomen, aged 73 and 64, on another Aegean island, Sikinos (2)

• and an Israeli couple in the area of Vytina in the Peloponnese peninsula (2)

The heat is no joke; please don’t go hiking without enough water, and if it’s dangerously hot, don’t go hiking at all. (This is somewhat ironic given the trail journal entry above, but as I wrote, that was not an emergency. Don’t come for me.) [Niki Kitsantonis for the New York Times, h/t Ethan Davison]

There’s some meth in the water: Here’s another wild one for you, about how drug and pharmaceutical pollution is changing animal behavior. This includes “brown trout becoming “addicted” to methamphetamine to European perch losing their fear of predators due to depression medication”; “Female starlings dosed with antidepressants such as Prozac at concentrations found in sewage waterways becom[ing] less attractive to potential mates, with male birds behaving more aggressively and singing less to entice them than undosed counterparts.”; and the “contraceptive pill [causing] sex reversal in some fish populations – leading to a collapse in numbers and local extinction events as male fish reverted to female organs.” I just—I am sorry this issue has been such a downer. [Patrick Greenfield for The Guardian]

Quick hits:

• RIP Nakoda [Sara Ruberg for the New York Times]

• A community ponders ebikes on trails [Seth Boster for the Denver Gazette]

• A riveting tail of tree murder in Maine [The AP]

Your author in print: Finally, if you happen to be in the Adirondack region this summer, you might try to pick up a copy of Adirondack Life’s 2024 Guide to the Great Outdoors, which features an essay I wrote about our thru-hike of the Northville-Placid Trail in 2020.

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