What a week it's been! I couldn't quite get my writing all the way caught up to Ellicottville, where I'm currently doing the final rushed edit before we run out the door, but this is pretty close.
Our nearo in Watkins Glen was perfectly timed, as the heat-powered thunderstorms chose that day to hit. Curled up in our hotel room, we watched with smug satisfaction as the rain and lightning lashed down.
The next day was absolutely beautiful - around 25°c, not humid, stirred by a whispering breeze. We set off with light packs, finally cured of our GDT over-resupply habit, and practically bounced uphill with a minimal four days of food. We were planning to hike all seven days to Ellicottville before we took a rest, but the trail took us through or near a couple of small towns, so we'd supplement our resupply en route. I was feeling strong, and our planned pace of 30 miles per day seemed easy, even a little indulgent. There was a race at Watkins International Speedway that week, and as we climbed the manicured tourist trail out of town, the sound of engines floated up with us through the gorge.
“What’s that noise?” Constantine asked.
“Formula cars! Sounds like they're running practice laps or time trials. If it was a race then you'd hear them all shifting at roughly the same time, but right now they're pretty evenly spaced.” The whine of racecar tires was the music of my childhood, and to me it was unmistakable. These were Formula IV or Formula V cars - it was tough to tell, as the gorge amplified only the high frequency tones. Still, I knew the sound of practice laps when I heard it, and I spent the next hour explaining the strategy and physics of high-speed driving to Constantine.
After a while, I fell silent and settled into the rhythm of things. The engine hum droned on and on, dim but constant, and became a sort of atonal accompaniment to the chaotic chiming of birds. I dreamed of French horns and bassoons and improvised percussion - with this as my formative soundscape, it was no surprise that I'd gone on to study experimental music at university. And really, was it any wonder I loved slow, droning metal? I'd been listening to the sonic equivalent of Sleep in the womb.
Around noon, we left Watkins Gorge and found ourselves skirting around the edges of farmer's fields. The engines were suddenly cut off, and in their absence, the silence of the woods felt shocking and profound. Shortly we came to a little waterfall in a pocket-sized state park, and I skipped over the rocks easily, keeping well clear of the lip. Constantine had been teasing me about jumping down a “waterslide” all morning, and he continued the joke with this one, enjoying the look on my face as he danced back and forth along the edge. I knew he actually wouldn't jump off a waterfall, even a five-foot one, but the rocks were slick with algae and I was starting to get sick of the joke. Even though I know he's just kidding, the idea of him stepping off a deadly falls makes my heart skip a beat, and I was having none of it. “Just hurry up, I want to have lunch at the shelter in a mile!” I shouted. But he insisted on drawing out the charade, and sure enough, he got his poetic justice. He slipped and then quick-stepped on the algae, and in the process was forced to let go of his phone to steady himself. Fortunately, the phone bounced across the shallow stream and didn't go over the falls, but unfortunately, it popped out of its case and landed smack on the rocks. “Oh shit!” He scrambled for it and lunged out of the water to the other bank, where I was trying not to smirk. “What's that we were saying on the PNT? Always listen to Magpie?” I said.
“Yeah,” he mumbled, shame-faced.
There was a picnic table nearby, so we stopped there for lunch a little earlier than planned. Poetic justice aside, Constantine's phone is the only one we have that gets consistent cell service, and we needed it working. He dried it out and assessed the damage, which was minimal - the glass backing had taken the brunt of the fall and shattered, but the aluminum body and screen were miraculously intact. We were in business! We both breathed a sigh of relief and set off as the distant engines resumed. Apparently, the racers had only taken a lunch break.
I couldn't tell you exactly when the drone faded out, only that it eventually did. It was a gradual thing, only observable in retrospect. The trail was changing too, and like the engines, I couldn't identify the moment of transition. The land was opening up into rolling country, the hills getting lower and father apart the further we travelled west. And we were actually travelling west now, not playing connect-the-dots between miniscule state parks and patches of forest land. Somehow, the trail had become sensible while I wasn't looking, and I was glad for it. As the day stretched on into evening, we found ourselves in a shady paradise of switchbacks, all deciduous trees and soft delicious air. It smelled so good. I really wish English had better words for smell; it was like the texture of fine chamois leather, buttery-soft and luxurious and intoxicating. The sun came slantwise over the hill and illuminated the translucent spring leaves from within. It was the very definition of the word “dappled”, and I was struck in equal measure by the romance and hilarity of it all. What was I doing? Just walking! I had all the freedom in the world and I was spending my time walking to nowhere, for no reason, just because someone before me had the idea to walk there too. How ridiculous! How sublime. The motion felt effortless, and I reveled in idiosyncratic joy. Why was I hiking? Just because I loved to, and what a pleasure it was to do something for the love of it.
Constantine was high on endorphins too, and we both felt so good that we ended up camping a few miles farther than planned. We found the perfect spot on a softened old two-track in a state forest, and went to sleep feeling happy and well taken care of. At last, this trail was loving us back!
I’m struggling to recall the morning of the next day. Dawn was cool and shady, with a bit of a humid chill in the air, and I have the vague impression that we did a fair amount of climbing. I wasn't exactly tired, but I think I was somewhat sleepy. I certainly wasn't paying too much attention, and all I can pull from my memory is a fuzzy picture of maple trees and moderate hills. I was still in that flow-state I think, but my senses were not sharpened by hunger or beauty, and so the scenery vanished in a blur. We took lunch at Bird's-Eye picnic shelter in a state park of the same name, and lazed around in the shade for a while. It was by then quite hot outside, and I looked eagerly at the gathering clouds, hoping for a mild rain to cool things off.
After another sleepy, lazy hour of walking, my wish was granted. A gentle spattering of rain made freckles in the dust, but it was only partially overcast so we stayed nice and warm, and we didn't bother to pull out our rain coats. We were walking a road, a gently winding rural track through Amish country, and we stopped to admire a trio of especially gorgeous horses. They were glossy and dark bay, and the two geldings were imposingly large. The mare was slight and skittish, but the males looked down on us with a calm, steady curiosity and followed us along the fence-line hoping for treats. They were draft animals, working horses that their owners depended on and valued, and you could tell from the gleam of their coats and their soft, trusting eyes that they were well-loved. It made my heart happy to see it. Not even a mile down the road, we were greeted at the fence by a playful Jersey calf. She was frisky and overjoyed to see us, and was clearly an adored pet. When we walked past the farm without petting her, she stuck her head out over the corner post and lowed once, petulantly, then romped back over to her lean-to to eat some hay. These people loved their animals!
Many happy farms later, we left the road and walked back into the embrace of trail. The rain had washed away the humidity and left a lingering freshness. It was cool, the air silky and minty and floral with a hint of warm earth, and the colour of the evening was silver. The trail was level and flanked by firs and pines, occasionally nudging up over the shoulder of a hill to walk next to a freshly-mown hayfield. I was cheerful but moving slowly, a little tired at the end of a thirty-three mile day, so I gave Constantine my blessing to hike ahead. He was energized and crushing miles, so I'd hike at my own speed and meet him at the lean-to. And just like that, I was completely alone.
It's a strange thing, how alone you can be on a frontcountry hike. He was maybe five or ten minutes ahead of me, but once he was out of sight, that was it. You don't have cell service or internet on a thru-hike, and it makes you aware of the limitations of the human body. Every communication must be conducted face to face, or at least within shouting distance, and when you're alone, you are truly, totally alone. It was getting dark out, but I wasn't nervous or scared - it was just novel, and a little bit exciting. Last year, the conditions on trail had been far too dangerous to be out of one another's sight, so now I found myself luxuriating in the unfamiliar solitude. I was listening to an episode of Here Be Monsters that prominently featured Wagner's Parsifal, and I felt invincible as the heroic music swelled. I hiked quickly, but as I walked I started to dance with my arms, swooping them up in the air and around in arcs, back down in giant slow swimming motions, twisting and flowing my hands in complicated patterns with the violins and flutes, and then slowing and reaching up, up, up as the horns returned triumphant. It felt graceful, although I have no idea how it looked - it probably looked a little crazy. I didn't care, as there was absolutely nobody to see me. It was the unselfconcious dance of a young child, just a pure expression of feeling, and it felt indescribably good. Even after the music ended I kept dancing, gesturing out all my un-nameable animal happiness to the silent forest.
It was drawing near to nine o'clock, and the light was fading rapidly. I watched with interest as my vision slid into greyscale, first losing the browns and oranges, then the yellows and reds, and then I began to worry as the greens desaturated to an indistinct blue. I had to be close to the shelter by now, but I didn't want to look at my phone and ruin my night vision. I put my dancing arms away and hiked even faster, serious and focused as the last tinge of evening gave way to true night. It didn't take long - I exited the woods at precisely nine, and came upon the shelter in a magical moonlit clearing. It was bright with silver and grass, and filled to the brim with long-stemmed dandelions puffing out to seed. They looked like little moons themselves, round and white and glowing all around the dark shape of the shelter. I could see by their absence the path that Constantine had taken, and I followed his trace, calling out joyfully. We ate our dinners and set up on the nice clean shelter floor, just tired enough and supremely relaxed.
That cool silver evening had been a warning, but we didn't know that until the next day. We woke up and it was… cold? I shivered reluctantly out of the quilt and munched down a Complete Cookie in my puffy, mock-scolding Constantine for getting up to pee and taking my heat away. What was this thing, this “being cold”? We were pretty close to the town of Bath, so once we gained a small ridge Constantine had service and was able to check the weather.
“Scattered thundershowers. First one starts at 3pm, it says.”
“Yep,” I replied. It was nice to have a precise time, but I didn't need a forecast to tell me it what was coming. The air felt heavy and thick, and I could see dark ridges forming in the skies. The morning warmed up quickly with all the moisture in the air, but the south wind was chill and smelled of ozone. Big storms on the way, no doubt about it. We discussed our options - since the FLTA maps are structured for dayhikers going eastbound, it's sometimes hard to know exactly where you are on the PDF maps when you're going westbound, and they don't completely line up with Gaia GPS. We thought we were maybe 20 miles away from the town of North Hornell, and we had about five hours before the storm hit. It's not impossible to hike four miles per hour if you're really motivated, but it was unlikely that we could do it in this hilly, muddy terrain. And it might have actually been 23 miles away, we couldn't tell. We decided to hike fast to the shelter at Burt Hill, eat lunch, and push on if the rain wasn't imminent.
We crush, crush, crushed, but we couldn't outrun it. The route was an even mix of trail and dirt road, alternating about every two miles, and it frequently had us skirting the edges of wheatfields through tall grass. Constantine kept checking the weather, and the storm kept moving faster - first it corrected to 2:30pm, then 2, then 1:30. We would be able to make it to the shelter if we kept going fast, but there was no way we would get all the way to Hornell. There was a black mass of clouds ahead of us and an equally threatening one behind, pressing us onwards as we pushed west and then cut south on the flank of a large hill. That southern turn slowed us just a little too much, and the edge of the rear-ward storm caught up. Within five minutes the temperature dropped ten degrees, and a ferocious blast of rain roared up out of nowhere. It was torrential and freezing cold, and I stumbled into the lee of a spreading oak to pull on my jacket. Hell! The storm was an hour early. We ran through the fields and crashed back into the brush, dashing as fast as we could through the poorly-blazed, overgrown windbreak to get to the road. We were only three miles from Burt Hill, and it was basically all roadwalk after this farm. A pair of thick-set Rottweilers barked furiously from behind a fence, but we paid them no mind - we just had to get to the shelter!
The road took us more or less directly west, and ten minutes after the downpour began, we were out of it. The humid heat was just as intense as the rain, but I kept my jacket on and resigned myself to sweating. Behind us, the long trailing finger of storm was gaining ground, and I stayed fast and tenacious as we climbed a steep gravel farm track. One more drop down and we'd be there, thank god.
At last, we entered the state park, and I felt safe enough to take off my jacket. The shelter was nestled into a little valley, and we couldn't see much of the sky. It was deceptively warm and sunny, just as it had been for the last forty-five minutes. Maybe that was it for the storm clouds? The trail here had been re-routed and the blazes were confusing, but eventually we found the shelter and grabbed some water for lunch. Of course, being tucked into a gorge, Constantine had no service, and my weather intuition was thrown by the lack of sight lines.
I sat down to filter my water in the shelter, but after a minute or two I was dive-bombed by a bird. I yelped, and the bird swooped away and sat chattering at me in a nearby bush. I stood up to move, and it swooped at my head again! “Okay! I'm leaving!” I told it, and relocated my stuff to the picnic table. It was a small thing, about the size of a robin and dusty brown with a creamy white breast. A similar bird was fidgeting anxiously in a tree, and as I pulled out my lunch they flew around the site in circles and fluffed their feathers. Looking into the shelter, I could just make out the contour of a nest in the rafters, and upon closer inspection, I saw half of a tiny eggshell on the floor. It was perfectly smooth and the same shade of cream as the parent birds’ breast feathers, no bigger than the tip of my thumb. Constantine seemed to be safe on the other side of the shelter, but as it was warm out, he came and sat on the bench with me as we ate. Eventually, the birds calmed down enough that one of them flew into the nest, and I considered the matter solved. I couldn't hear any baby birds, but I worried a little that we'd kept them away from their eggs for too long.
In any case, we didn't trust the weather, so after we ate Constantine set off up the hill to try to get service. It was about half a mile to get out of the gorge, and as he walked away I tidied up his stuff so I could grab both our bags if it started to rain. If it didn't seem bad in ten minutes, we'd hike on and try to make it to Hornell. Exactly ten minutes later, the wind picked up and came whooshing down the valley, and the smell of rain came with it. I didn't need to wait for Constantine's weather report - I hauled up the stuff and darted into the shelter on the opposite side from the birds. Just as the thunder cracked, Constantine came flying down the hill and jumped into the shelter next to me. “Weather forecast says: it's raining! I didn't get to the top before it started, so I couldn't get an updated forecast, but the last one said the storm should move on in an hour.” We settled in to wait.
The birds seemed to have accepted us as a non-threat and stayed cuddled in their nest, though I did sense them watching us. The cold rain poured down, the thunder boomed, and I laid on my back on the hard floor and stretched. Around 3pm it slackened off and stopped, and as we stood to leave I risked a closer peek at the nest. The parent bird stared back at me with a steely look in its eyes, but I could hear soft little cheeps coming from beneath its breast. There were baby birds after all! No wonder the parents were so anxious to get back there. “Thanks for sharing your house with us,” I told them.
The rest of the day was road, all the way to Hornell. We had planned to hike past the town and camp at Kanakadea Park, a developed campground with showers, but the storm had delayed us and now we wouldn't get there until well after 9pm. North Hornell was our best chance to re-up on food too, as the tiny town of Swain had nothing and the next option in Dalton required a detour off trail. I was sorely tempted by the prospect of a hotel stay, especially after a third stormburst rolled through and soaked us on the road, but I was too far ahead of Constantine to say so. And we were only three days off a nearo! What laziness.
Constantine caught me on an uphill as we got closer to Hornell and the weather turned foul once again. He was shouting something, and I took out my headphones to hear. “There's a severe thunderstorm warning!” he said. “I think we should stay in town.” I looked at the weather map on his phone and sure enough, there was a huge angry blob of storm hovering over Lake Kanakadea. We'd have to cross over a 2,000ft hill with a radio tower to get there, and I could see the lightning from here. “You're okay with staying at a motel tonight? That's only thirty miles,” I said.
“Yeah, are you not? I guess we don't have to, but thirty is still on schedule and the weather's miserable.”
I definitely wanted to, and I gave in to comfort with a minimum of guilt. Thunderstorms were no joke on an exposed hill like that, so I told myself it was in the name of safety and called it a smart decision. It was still pretty early when we got to the Econolodge, only seven o'clock, and we had time to run to the Dollar General and supplement our resupply before getting takeout hamburgers. It was a gritty industrial area, and the motel was so cheap and run down that the wifi didn't even work. The shower made a whistling noise and TV only had twelve channels, but it was warm and dry and sort of clean, so that was enough for me. I washed my socks in the sink, watched half of Tombstone on Turner Classic Movies, then abruptly fell asleep.
The next day was perfect weather again, and we set off in high spirits. We'd booked the motel in Ellicottville for the night of the 31st to avoid the long weekend pricing, so we had to cut miles somewhere if we didn't want to be a day early. Getting out of town at a leisurely hour, we set our sights on Bossard Cabin, only twenty-two miles away. It was almost all trail instead of road, and though we were headed primarily north instead of west, it still made sense for the trail to be routed this way. The parks were large enough to be chained together with a minimum of private land in between, and the FLT used long sections of pre-existing trail networks rather than sending us all over the place. It was flat and easy and gorgeous, and I was glad we'd waited to hike it on a nice day rather than struggling through it in the rain. Bossard Cabin was a hunting camp on private land, but a note on our PDFs said that hikers were welcome to use it if the landowner wasn't there. We bumped gently up and down the hills, squishing through the muddy spots and scaring the living daylights out of deer, which were everywhere. It was an actively hunted area, so they were clustered up for safety in the state parks and were plainly terrified of people. Every twenty minutes or so, we'd hear the CRASH-galumph-galumph of a cervid running for its life and catch a flash of white tail. It made me paranoid about ticks - white-tailed deer are a reservoir for Lyme disease, so more deer means a higher concentration of Lyme-infected ticks. There wasn't a lot of tall grass, but I checked at every break spot just to be sure and lamented my numerous freckles.
It had been a beautiful day, pleasant and peaceful and warm, but it grew overcast and chilly as we reached the cabin. It was unoccupied and unlocked, so we walked right in and made ourselves comfortable. The logbook inside made it plain that hikers were indeed welcome, and I settled into a rocking chair at the long hand-hewn table. It was a cosy little place, built for function and warmth rather than beauty, but it was made charming by the ornately moulded woodstove and homey furniture. There was a basin for washing up, a three-burner propane stove, and a set of homemade bunk beds against the wall. We used our own supplies and sleeping pad, naturally, but it was obvious that the landowner used the place often and kept it in good repair. With the temperature steadily dropping outside, I was grateful to be surrounded by four insulated walls.
“Ohhh, fuck. Oh no.” Constantine had service and was looking at his phone.
“What is it? What's wrong?”
“The forecast. Oh, shit.”
“What?!”
It was rain. It was 24 hours of solid, soaking, pressurized-garden-hose levels of rain. Starting at 8am tomorrow and continuing until 7am the day after, it was set to pour bucket after bucket of freezing cold water on our heads, and the high would be 6°c. Good god, no. Oh dear. Oh, shit. “What do we do? I guess we have to walk through it, to make our miles.” I was determined to be tough about it, but ohhhh god, I so did not want to.
“Well, we might be able to call a taxi from Swain. There's nothing there, but there should at least be an awning or a porch to sit under. It's like a ski resort or something.” Constantine is never worried about being tough, as he'd much rather be happy. A wise man.
“What, and go back to Hornell? Again?” Two unplanned stops in the same town felt like a lot. It felt lazy. And we were only four miles away from Swain! And we'd lose time getting out of town, we always did. What about our miles? What about our motel reservation?
We went back and forth on this for a little while, but deep down I really did not want to walk in that rain, at all, so it didn't take much for Constantine to convince me. If we hiked two thirty-fives and nearoed in with twelve, we could still make it to Ellicottville on the 31st, and our camping options would be much better. We'd just have to wake up super early to beat the rain, and cross our fingers that the cabs would come get us.
The dust in the cabin drove my allergies nuts, and around midnight I resorted to taking a Benadryl to get to sleep. When Constantine smooched me awake at 4:45am, my nose was still totally clogged and I flailed him away groggily so I could breathe. A lovely start to the day! It was GDT-cold even inside the cabin, and the outside world promised to be worse. A layer of frost had accreted onto the windows overnight, and I grumbled mightily when Constantine put the quilt away. “No! Too cold. I don't want to go to school today!” But you can't play hooky from the rain, so I gathered my stuff up quickly and we ran out into the cold.
It was freezing. The sun wasn't yet awake, but it wouldn't have made much difference. The sky was a solid mass of dark grey overcast, and at 5:30am the first fat, cold drops were already spitting down. The trail wove us through cow pastures and fields, then pulled us up a ridge to follow an old rail grade all the way into town. We hustled, we pushed, we shivered and cursed in our puffies and rain jackets, and finally we clanged up and over a cattle gate and into Swain. It was just about 7am and the first drops had turned into a consistent drizzle, but the forecast said there was worse to come.
Swain was indeed a ski town, and everything, but everything, was closed for the season. We took shelter on the porch of the Sierra Inn (which is actually a restaurant) and I snuggled down into my puffy to wait. It was so cold! Constantine had to wait until 7:30 to call for a cab, and finally got through to a company from Hornell that could pick us up. They wouldn't be able to come get us until 10, but that was ok. We were dry.
At 8:30, they called back to cancel. It was a busy long weekend day, and one of their drivers had called in sick. They wouldn't make it. No! He started looking for cabs in Bath, and ended up calling Village Taxi for a second time. They were listed in two cities. The dispatcher laughed kindly, and sympathized with our situation. “I'll call around and see what I can do for you,” she said. “If nobody else can come get you, I'll drive out there myself. We're not too busy today.” Our hero! Ten minutes later, she called back to say she was on her way. By 9:45am we were warming up in the lobby of the Days Inn in North Hornell (neither of us wanted to stay at the Econolodge again!). I only had seven dollars to tip her with, which felt horribly rude and inadequate, but we made a reservation with her for the next day and promised to leave them glowing reviews.
Constantine worked his charm on the suspicious front desk lady, and after a short interval we were given a freshly-cleaned room. I think she thought we were drifters, but he has a way of indirectly telling hotel staff about hikers without seeming to ask for special treatment. Once she figured out we weren't on drugs, she was much friendlier and even gave us an upgrade to a queen room. Our unexpected nearo day began, and we did absolutely, totally nothing for the whole day. It was glorious!
The next day out of Hornell, the weather broke, and our cab driver showed up right on time. That's a story for another day though - right now I've got to get going!
We've got seven days to Clarion, PA through Allegheny State Park. That's right, we're almost out of New York! There's no cell service at all in this massive wilderness area, so it will be about another week before you hear from me. Fingers crossed that our current weather holds.
Later!
-Magpie