NCT 8: Connections

Clarion, PA to Lisbon, OH

note: Substack crashed while I was trying to publish this, so if you receive a partial draft or a duplicate email, that's why!

Is this blog going to stay one section behind for the remainder of trail? Perhaps. Despite my best intentions, I have not managed to write very much on trail thus far, so some of what follows is less detailed than I'd like. Ohio is so different from PA that I can barely remember it, even though it was only a week ago. From now on, I'll spare you the disclaimers and just get on with things.

Clarion, Pennsylvania: Our best zero day ever quickly lost its shine. About four hours after receiving the vaccine, Constantine and I started to feel off. "It's not that I feel sick, it's just like... it's like someone turned up the the gravity by 10%," I said.

"It's like the air is made of Jello," said Constantine.

"It's like I'm hungover but I didn't even get to party."

By 4pm, both of us had ferocious headaches. By six, we were flushed and sweaty, chugging through cans of seltzer and barely able to focus on a TV movie. We made a valiant attempt at eating pizza, but we were both feeling so flu-ish and gross that we couldn't get much down. By eight o'clock we were as weak as newborn kittens, reduced to plaintive moans and feverish giggling fits. The night passed uncomfortably and mainly without sleep, one of us or the other always needing to get up to pee as our immune systems tried to flush the phantom enemy. "There's too much jello." Constantine mumbled blearily.

"What?" I said.

"Jello. There's too much jello in the air."

"Oh. Yeah. My gravity went up to 20% I think."

"Ughhhhh."

We woke up the next day feeling slightly less miserable, but there was no real possibility that we'd be able to hike. Just switching hotel rooms was a monumental effort. I ran down to the front desk hoping we'd be able to stay put, but the two-queen room we had was booked, so we had to move across the hall into a room with a king bed. Even though it was only ten feet away, cleaning up and putting our packs on left us exhausted, and we collapsed into bed as soon as the door swung shut. Hiking even one single mile was completely out of the question - I ran downstairs again for coffee and my legs felt as rubbery and sore as if I'd just hiked forty. We spent the rest of the day dozing and watching bad reality TV, and after a long afternoon nap our condition began to improve. I felt a little guilty about the double zero, but I was in no shape to worry about our pace. Getting vaccinated was more important than miles.

On the morning of the 10th, we finally felt well enough to go. The forecasted thunderstorms hadn't materialized, and the air felt hot and close, with humidity at 90% all day. We got a ride back to the trail with a guy we'd met on our way into town. His name was also Dana, and he'd thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail all the way back in 1988. When he saw us waiting for our taxi outside the post office, he pulled over and gave Constantine his number. He was an incredibly accommodating guy - we'd had to reschedule with him twice due to being too sick to move, but he was happy to give us a ride back to trail anyway. He even gave us mini-cheesecakes for breakfast!

At the trailhead, I stood around and signed the trail log while Constantine darted back across the road to connect the footsteps. Setting foot on trail was an instant relief. Two days in a hotel room gets boring, no matter how sick and exhausted you are. Our first few miles were shady and well-constructed, looked after by a local troop of Eagle Scouts as well as the trail association, and the tree cover combined with a breeze brought the temperature down to tolerable levels. I was happy to be stepping no matter how bad the trail was, but the cool shade made it especially welcome. It was still humid and sticky, but at least I wasn't going to overheat.

We wound through a state-managed game reserve through thick groves of flowering bushes and young leafy trees, then met up with an overgrown forest road. After about an hour, my joy at being back on trail began to fade. I wasn't feeling one hundred percent better yet, and perhaps the clinging humidity added to my sense of fatigue. There was nothing really wrong that I could pinpoint; I just felt "off" in some undefinable way. Irrelevant insecurities and memories of embarrassment began to nag at me, and I had to work hard to stay in the present. Breathe the scent of the flowers, listen to the songs of birds! I tried my best to focus on my senses and come alive to the animate world, but I lacked the energy to control my anxious thoughts. I popped in my headphones and zoned out, walking at a good pace but still feeling sluggish despite the easy miles.

We turned a corner to cross a creek, and lo and behold, there was a hiker on the other side. He was wearing an ultralight pack and holding a pair of Altras in his hand as he stepped across barefoot. Another thru-hiker for sure! We were so excited to meet him that we stopped to chat in the middle of the shallow stream, and he was happy to stop and talk too. His name was Hot Wheels and he'd hiked the PCT the same year I did, although we'd never met or heard of each other before now. He was just doing the Pennsylvania section of the NCT, but he had plans to finish his triple crown sometime soon. After our knee-deep conversation, we wished him a good hike and continued on our way.

What else is there to say about this day? We spent a while on the brushy forest service roads and old rail trails, which turned to open two-track as we made our way farther west. Around four we had a little roadwalk through the tiny village of Kossuth, which boasted about fifty houses and an ice cream shack. Obviously, we couldn't let the opportunity for on-trail ice cream pass us by, so we stopped and ate our treats in the shaded gazebo. The road took us back up through a sleepy hamlet called Kline, and then we took a pipeline access road to the start of the Sandy Creek Rail Trail.

Hot Wheels had told us about the paved bike path in our future, so we weren't surprised to find ourselves treading asphalt. The shelter one mile into it was a surprise, but it was too early to camp, so we kept on hiking. It was still good to see the shelter there, though. It meant that camping was allowed on this rail trail, so we weren't limited to the tiny patch of state land that abutted the trail in four miles. I was still feeling fatigued, although I'd determined that it was more mental than physical exhaustion. My legs were strong and moving at their regular speed without a problem, and my body wasn't really hurting in a particular way. I just felt wiped out.

We decided to look for camp at the state game preserve anyhow, since it would give us a 27 mile day, but when we got there we could see that there was no suitable place to camp. The game preserve was bordered by a private fishing camp festooned with "No Trespassing" signs, and the only flat spot on public land was right next to their picnic shelter. It wouldn't have been illegal for us to set up there, but the owners probably wouldn't see it that way. We hiked on.

A mile later, we spotted a few nice flat spots set back into the trees, but it was really close to a public parking area. Though it was seven o'clock, the sky wasn't dark enough yet for us to feel comfortable in full view of people returning to their cars. We hiked on.

The topo lines up ahead showed a steep climb, with a perfect flat spot on top. Excellent! Nobody would want to climb a hill at the end of the day, and we'd be out of sight from the nearby road. When we got there, we laughed. It was a tunnel through the steep hillside! Of course it was - the GPS line went dead straight across the elevation, and this was a rail trail. A train couldn't climb that hill without switchbacks, so obviously it had to be a tunnel. It was damp and full of graffiti, and tunnels are creepy at night. We hiked on.

This game of “the next campsite will be better” is one I play with myself frequently. It's kind of a trick. I know that there probably won't be a perfect campsite in the next mile, but I tell myself there will be. Just past the next turn, just over the next hill, once you cross this road there will be an even better campsite than the one you're looking at now. And then of course there isn't, so I trick myself into hiking three or five or six more miles when I would rather just stop. When my legs have energy but my mind doesn't, it keeps me going. When my body is truly tired or the light starts to fail, any reasonably decent campsite will do, so the game naturally ends. I do this with break spots and lunch spots too. I usually have physical capacity long after my brain gets whiny and wants to stop, so I tell myself that I'll rest at the next perfect log, or the next spot without ticks, or the next excellent sitting rock, and then find reasons to disqualify any potential resting spot until I actually need a break and don't just want one.

On this night, we found our reasonably decent campsite just after the tunnel, and set up camp around 8pm. The Perfect Campsite Game had pushed us an extra three miles, a thirty mile day on the dot. I didn't think I had the energy for a full thirty that day, and trying to bully myself into it had just made me miserable. I was pretty pleased that I'd managed to trick myself into it anyhow. We ate our dinners and set up just in time - after a short debate about whether to set up the fly, we decided that the clouds looked just threatening enough that it was worth the extra stuffiness in the tent. Not even five minutes later, it poured. Another check in the win column!

The next day brought us yet more bike path. Getting up early to avoid the morning joggers, we broke camp at 6:30am. By ten, we'd already done a healthy fourteen miles. The bike path continued on in much the same way as the day before, a flat strip of pavement running along the river bank. It was a bit dull, but at least the easy walking made for fast miles. In fact, we were making such good time that we decided to hike all the way into Emlenton for a late lunch. It was 23 miles from camp, but I needed to stop there anyhow to supplement my resupply, and I had plenty of hipbelt snacks in the meantime.

By far the most interesting part of our day was the train tunnels. There were two of these en route to Emlenton, and they were both incredibly long. The first came around 11am, and was nearly a full mile. A bend in the tunnel meant that we couldn't see the other side - once we stepped away from the entrance, we were plunged into complete darkness. I took out my headlamp, but the distance was so great and the walls so wide that the narrow beam only illuminated the white reflectors lining the asphalt path. Our voices echoed oddly against the high, curved ceiling, but the sound of our footsteps was swallowed up in the vast cavern, whisked away by the wind that flowed from the invisible exit. It was trippy. I lost all sense of spatial awareness, of how my body was oriented or how fast I was moving. All I had to guide me were the white reflectors, which seemed to hover and dance in the enveloping black. It gave the illusion of walking through deep space. I couldn't judge how far away the reflectors were or how long the tunnel went on, and near the end, real fear began to intrude on my awe. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up; I had to force myself not to imagine all kinds of hideous creatures and malign forces gathering in the dark. I didn't run or look behind me. I knew that if I did, I'd reinforce the idea that there was something to be afraid of, and I absolutely did not want to have a panic attack in this lightless place. Time stretched and warped. It seemed I had been walking in this tunnel forever. I had the creepy thought that perhaps this is what death felt like: a tunnel of nothing that goes on and on to eternity. Maybe I really was dead. I thought of a sequence near the end of Miranda July's film Kajillionaire, where the characters take shelter from an earthquake in a blacked-out public restroom, and the screen slowly fades into the image of a galaxy. The characters' ultimate fate is left ambiguous in the movie, and I was feeling rather ambiguous myself. Don't panic, I scolded myself. You're almost there. I took a deep breath and called out to Constantine. “How you doing babe? You still good?”

“This is awesome! I can't see anything!” came the response. Well, at least he hadn't been eaten by monsters.

The curve in the tunnel was quite sharp near the end, so the light was a suprise when it came. I saw green, and that was my cue to run and escape - I could make it, if I just made it back to the forest, then the demons couldn't get me. I bolted, and when I finally emerged into the daylight, the fear melted away. I felt a bit silly. It was a perfectly ordinary train tunnel, after all. A historical plaque detailed the process of its construction, and I stood and read it as I waited for Constantine. Just a tunnel. Just a tunnel. We had to walk through another one in a couple of miles, and I was already dreading it. It wasn't the darkness that scared me; I was anxious about the possibility of feeling afraid.

We sauntered on, headphones in ears. I wanted to stop and eat some hipbelt snacks at the next public shelter, but there was another hiker there and I didn't feel like conversation. I walked on, waving to the occasional flocks of cyclists as they passed and playing the Perfect Break Spot game to keep myself moving. We'd been hiking at a fast pace for about five hours now, and I was really starting to need a break when I spotted a picnic table. Finally! The tables and benches on this route were unpredictability spaced, sometimes very frequent and sometimes none at all. I'd pushed myself an extra three miles past the shelter, and I scarfed down two packs of Ritz crackers in record time. The second tunnel was only a mile away, and I procrastinated by checking maps and fussing over data for Ohio, which wasn't relevant for three more days.

We were both getting pretty hungry for lunch though, and we had an hour and a half of hiking before we got there. I couldn't avoid the tunnel forever. This one wasn't nearly as bad though - it was just over half a mile, and nearly straight. Two people with headlamps were coming from the opposite direction, and a cyclist with a powerful light rode past us just as we reached the deepest, darkest point. The presence of other people brought me back to earth, and I explored the sensation of being disembodied without the existential dread. It was still trippy and cool, but the perceptible halo of light at the other end kept me safe and in control. Constantine had loved the last tunnel experience, and this time he went even further by putting on his sunglasses. "I keep getting this crazy feeling that I'm about to walk into a wall! But I know I'm not! It's wild!" He was stoked on it, but his not being able to see made me nervous, especially once we got near a water leak that made a weird echo.

"That's just water, right? Baby? That's water dripping, yeah?"

"I don't hear anything. You're ahead of me though."

The 'I don't hear anything' made me think of every horror movie trailer in the history of the world, and once again I had to force myself not to run for it.

"Oh," he said, "I hear it now. Yeah, that's just water."

"Cool." I replied tersely. We were close enough to the exit that I picked up the pace and hustled for it, confirming as I passed the leak that it really was only water - it dripped directly on me.

"It's raining in here!" I said, with a note of false cheer. I reached the sunlight a little wet but undevoured. Another historical plaque graced the side of the tunnel, and I imagined the workers blasting and digging to calm myself down. Humans made this, with human hands and human tools. It was just a tunnel, just another human thing. I am never, ever going spelunking.

We we starving when we reached Emlenton, and our restaurant options were few. We could try Otto's Tavern, a ramshackle bar with great-looking burgers on their website, or Little It Cafe, which looked like it maybe only served ice cream and coffee. We tried Otto's first. As soon as we walked in, ten large men in Harley Davidson logos and bandannas turned to look at us, staring us down from the corners of their eyes as they pretended to go back to their beers. Um, okay. Not so friendly! It was clear we weren't welcome here. It was the kind of bar that had a cigarette vending machine right next to the entrance, and the entire place reeked of smoke and machismo. We turned right around and walked out the door.

Little It Cafe didn't seem promising either. All we could see at the front was an empty refrigerated counter and a few sad slices of pizza in a case behind the register. A woman in an apron came out, and I asked her if they served food. “We have a dining room through that door if you guys want to sit down,” she said. Oh yes we did! The restaurant was empty and had a general atmosphere of dust, but our server was friendly and brought us two giant glasses of ice water along with the menus. It was American Italian food, and after some hemming and hawing we both ordered enormous calzones. They were like entire pizzas folded in half, delicious homemade dough wrapped around fresh vegetables and mozzarella, then brushed with Parmesan and garlic butter. It was gloriously excessive and we ate every bite, dipping each piece in marinara sauce and washing it all down with Cherry Coke. It took us exactly seven minutes to demolish our meals, and afterwards we sat for half an hour in a nearby park, totally unable to move. I couldn't have imagined anything better.

We left the bike path for a few miles after Emlenton, as the Allegheny River Rail Trail was not yet complete. I'd been bored of walking the river bank, but I missed it immediately when I saw the roadwalk. It was a wildly dangerous stretch of road, a twisting narrow highway with no shoulder and the only route into or out of town. Tanker trucks came barreling over the hills as we crushed ourselves as tightly as possible to the barrier, their cargo coming within a few feet of our fragile squishy bodies. Yikes! No! I'll take the boring bike path any day. Thankfully, we left the scary highway after only a mile, and joined a gravel backroad to get through the town of Foxburg. Foxburg was the touristy cottage town I'd been expecting to find in Emlenton, and after a quick jaunt through the square we found the Allegheny Rail Trail again and followed it over a bridge to Parker.

Parker was a milltown, its primary aromas being sawdust and hot dirt. We trudged uphill through steamy evening heat, making for the state game lands just outside of town. As we passed the VFW hall, a beefy older man and his wife asked where we were hiking to, and to my great surprise they knew exactly what I was talking about when I answered "North Dakota".

"Oh, the NCT!" said Beefy. "I guess you're camping on the game lands? I used to do search and rescue back there, and in Moraine State Park when I was a firefighter."

We chatted with him for a minute or two, but the evening was getting on and I was eager to get to camp. We'd done about 34 miles at this point, and I was ready to lie down. We climbed the road onto the main thoroughfare and found that the NCT had installed giant maps and signs declaring Parker a trail town. Our last mile was weirdly suburban. I couldn't quite believe that we could be so close to state land, but as we passed the last house, the road abruptly turned into a dirt two-track and we were surrounded by trees once more.

About that last house though - they had a huge, tree-lined property with the building set way back from the road, and behind the house we could see a complex of large enclosures. "Did you see that?!" Constantine was pointing at the cages.

"No? What is it?" All I could see inside the fencing was something like a large doghouse.

"Those people have WOLVES in their backyard."

"No way!" I squinted through the trees at the enclosure and made out a canine form, but I didn't trust my observation until we saw the number-plate on the driveway. Stenciled on a rock above the surname and house number was the figure of a wolf. From this angle, we could see into the cages better, and there was no doubt about it - these people had at least two actual wolves! Even at a distance, we could tell that they were glowering at us. Wolves do not move or stand like dogs - their posture is unmistakably that of a wild animal. What kind of person owns a goddamn wolf? What kind of person owns TWO WOLVES?!

Apex predators aside, we picked up the trail just inside the state land boundary and made it to camp without incident. A small tributary stream gave us water for the night, and the sky was so clear that we judged it safe to leave the fly off for a breeze. Still full from our gargantuan lunch, we opted not to cook dinner and instead sat and ate candy next to the tent, listening to hoots and laughter from a redneck ATV party somewhere below. As the sun set and the air began to cool, we slid underneath our quilt and slept, tired and satisfied after a 35 mile day.

The next day started pleasantly enough. The trails and ATV roads through Pennsylvania's State Game Lands are generally well-maintained, and our morning miles were no exception. After forty minutes of pretty forest walking, we popped out of the bush to join our first roadwalk. It was just after 7am and the heavy heat of the day had yet to descend, though I could tell it was on the way. A warm mist smeared the landscape into grey haze, and I was already drinking the air more than breathing it. Right now it was tolerable, but I knew I'd be drenched in sweat by noon.

I binge-listened to an entire podcast series about the 2001 Dot Com bubble as the road wound through the farming communities, growing narrower as it neared the trail. It was a nice roadwalk, not too busy with a lot of pastoral views. A hunter's parking area marked our turnoff to the second section of trail, and we were pleased to find it was a good two-track road. This alternated with short spurts of singletrack, some of them somewhat muddy and squishy, but overall in excellent shape. The trail took us past bogs and through large open fields, but the grass was recently cut and there was boardwalk bridging the swampy parts. We only had to do thirty miles today, and we'd made such good time in the morning that we'd make it to camp by 6pm, even with an hour long lunch break and plenty of lazy moments. I didn't really feel like hiking today - I wasn't sure why, but I was a little sleepy and bored. I was glad we could just loaf our way down the trail. We stopped for lunch in the middle of a shady wooden bridge to avoid the ticks and laid out the tent fly to dry out. I'd managed to score some mayo packets at the Wal-Mart in Clarion, so my bacon sandwich was much improved.

But the trail didn't stay good, not at all. We walked past Glade Dam Lake on a trail so wide and well-mowed you could practically play croquet on it, and then started down a section of private land. The trail didn't deteriorate immediately. Instead, it devolved by degrees, first narrowing, then losing its lawn-quality grass, then growing rocky and broken up until we were just walking a skid track through vacant, logged-out land. It didn't inspire confidence for Ohio. The trail's routing was ridiculous too - we zigged half a mile out of our way just so we could look at two rancid, swampy ponds. That was the only reason I could figure for the detour, anyway. The sharp turn looked like a switchback, but it was on totally flat land. The NCT works in mysterious ways.

I was aching for the second roadwalk, but first we had to find water. The sources in the forest had all been stagnant and rotten, and the heat was now bearing down with force. As predicted, I was soaking in sweat, and I was down to just a couple of sips in my water bottle when we came to a flowing creek before the road. It wasn't great. The rocks were bright orange with rust, and there were puffs of white bacterial foam anywhere the water slowed. Still, it was the best we'd seen since we left camp, so we didn't really have a choice. We sat and filtered, and I was so thirsty that I didn't notice the metallic taste until I'd chugged half a litre. The water was so extremely ferric that it was almost like drinking blood.

"Bleh! Do you think this tastes like chemicals, or just iron?" I asked Constantine. I was worried it was farm run-off, or leachate from a nearby coalmine. "I hope we're not in a Superfund site or something."

"What's a Superfund site?" He asked. "Anyway, I put drink mix in mine already, so I can't tell you."

I couldn't believe he'd never heard of a Superfund site! "You know, like on the CDT near Anaconda. You're not supposed to drink the surface water there, it's all contaminated with arsenic from the iron smelter." He blanched. Turns out, he somehow missed the gigantic warning signs around Anaconda and drank from the streams without noticing anything wrong.

"Anyway," I said, "Superfund sites are like, industrial pollution zones that the government's trying to clean up." I gave him a sip of my water to try. "Does that taste like cancer to you?"

"Just tastes like iron. I've drank lots of water like that, and I'm fine." Given that he'd just confessed to drinking arsenic-water, I wasn't entirely reassured, but I tried to put the possible carcinogens out my mind. It was the only water I had, and I was thirsty.

Constantine had been in contact with Apple Pie, a seriously accomplished hiker who was also about to complete her eleventh National Scenic Trail. She was section hiking the NCT eastbound, and today was the day we'd cross paths. When Constantine got cell service at the road, he checked in with her, and found out that she and her partner Greenleaf were planning to camp at Arthur Family Campground. It would add three miles to our day, but she'd be able to give us the data on Ohio, so it was worth it. Still, I'd been pacing myself for an easy thirty, and the idea of hiking three extra miles on top of it made my mood collapse. I was so hot, so sweaty, so tired, and my hiking boner was already limp. Three more miles?? Nooooo.

The roadwalk into Moraine State Park was blazing hot, a completely exposed stretch of pavement with wheat fields to either side. I suffered through it, slurping a melted Snickers in a vain attempt to cheer up. It didn't help much. I was trying to drink as little of the questionable water as possible, so I was only taking small sips when I couldn't tolerate my thirst. And I was so, so thirsty. It felt like my shoes were going to melt into the asphalt, and the wet air clung to my lungs and skin. It was so thick with humidity that I felt like I could choke.

A few miles from the entrance to the park, a silver pickup truck slowed and rolled down the window. “Magpie and Constantine?” It was Greenleaf, running support for Apple Pie. She was just ahead, so we made our hellos quick and hustled down trail to meet Apple Pie. A scant moment later, she appeared at the side of the road, and the three of us stopped right there in the shoulder to exchange greetings. Constantine had been texting with her on and off all trail, but she and I had never interacted before. It didn't matter. In true thru-hiker style, we were instantly comfortable with each other, as only like-minded weirdos can be. I'd missed the camraderie of thru-hikers over the past two years, and we happily confirmed our plans to camp together after spending a few minutes swapping stories. Ohio was bad, she said. There were aggressive dogs, endless roadwalks, rough overgrown trails and difficult resupply. I was not looking forward to Ohio before this, but now I was downright dreading it. I was glad we could give her good news. Pennsylvania is great, we told her. It only gets better from here! After a few minutes, we said a temporary goodbye and hiked off in opposite directions. She would get a ride with Greenleaf back to their camp, and we would meet them there.

At the entrance to Moraine State Park, we passed a little information kiosk. It was titled “Wetlands Restoration Project”, and detailed all the volunteer efforts that went into remediating old coal mines. The pictures of polluted coal water looked exactly like the stream we'd had to drink from. Fabulous. I vowed not to touch one more sip of that water, no matter how parched I got.

I was utterly exhausted when we reached the turnoff to the campsite road. I was whining miserably to Constantine about the extra miles, when we came around a corner and were greeted by a cheerful Apple Pie. Oops! I didn't want to seem unfriendly, so I mustered up a smile and hoped she hadn't heard me bitching about how much I hate trying to meet up with people. I do actually like meeting other hikers, I just don't like surprise bonus miles when I've been pacing myself for an easy day. I shouldn't have worried though. Greenleaf met us with the truck at the trail crossing and drove us to their spot at a developed campsite, and both he and Apple Pie were fabulous hosts. It was just like being on a popular trail again, if only for an evening; both parties gave enough space and silence for all the chores to get done, and we swapped trail data and stories around the picnic table as we ate our dehydrated dinners. It just felt so normal, so much like trail. I was physically and mentally sore, and retreated to bed as soon my social batteries were drained, but that choice didn't feel weird at all.

Thunder was our alarm clock the next morning. We awoke to a rumbling grey sky, and hastened to pack up before the rain hit. We just about made it too - I was tying my shoes when the first fat drops splattered down. Hurriedly shoving the last miscellaneous items into my pack, I raced from the campsite and threw myself into the truck with the others as the drizzle turned into a downpour. Greenleaf drove us the mile back to the trailhead and we sat for a while until the rain eased, then said reluctant goodbyes and headed out in opposite directions, Apple Pie going east and the two of us heading west.

Moraine State Park was well maintained and cruisey, and the rainburst didn't last long. After an hour, we sat down at a bench to shed our rain jackets and ate a snack on the banks of a sparkling lake. The storm had relieved the humidity, and now the weather was fine and clear. We bounced along on excellent singletrack all morning, aiming for Duck Point in Sharwood Park for lunch.

It was a little bit of an awkward lunch spot. Sharwood Park is within driving distance of Pittsburgh, and this was a weekend afternoon. Pounding down a gravel bike path into the recreation area, we pushed past many slow-riding weekenders as we made our way to the picnic shelter. This proved to be full, booked by an organized learn-to-kayak group, so we kept on going until we came to a seemingly unoccupied bench next to the lake. Just as we scoped it out, a kayaker pulled up on the bank, arriving seconds before we could claim the sunny spot. He was friendly enough, and his first question, “Where are you guys hiking to?” gave me enough of an opening to pull rank with the answer of, “North Dakota. We've hiked about a thousand miles from Vermont. You don't mind if we eat lunch here, do you?”

He might have minded a little, but he wasn't going to say so after that. Our lunch break became a game of chicken - he was waiting for his wife to catch up in her kayak and clearly wanted the break spot for himself, but we were hungry and had claimed the bench before he got out of his boat. He was friendly enough and asked a few questions, but he was really just waiting for us to leave. We were waiting for him to leave so we could actually relax instead of being Thru-Hike Ambassadors. It was all extremely polite and civilised, but the tension was there. After half an hour, we were done eating and let him and his wife have the bench, and I was mildly amused by my own irritation. Non-thru-hikers should bow to my superiority, obviously! How many miles had they hiked this month? Very silly and entitled of me, and I could only laugh. Talking to a normie for half an hour wasn't the worst price to pay for a place to sit.

We left the recreation area and embarked on a short roadwalk into the next state park, McConnell Mills. It was a long, narrow path through a gorge, and Apple Pie had nothing but good things to say about it. We availed ourselves of the parking area privies, disappointed that they did not have indoor plumbing, and dropped down into the park in search of water. The steep, shady trail was deliciously cool, though clogged with meandering dayhikers, and Constantine decided to go fill his bottles from a tributary stream. “You're going no filter, no problem on that? The parking area is right above us.” I said, with a skeptical eyebrow raise.

“I'm pretty sure it's a spring. It's fine. Stomach of iron!”

I was positive that it wasn't a spring, and declined to drink it. Five minutes later, we came across a shallow cave echoing with trickles. Now that was definitely a spring! I pulled out my headlamp and dropped my pack to search for the source, finding it all the way at the back in a narrow cavern. “I can fit through there for sure,” I said. “Hand me the bottles, I'm going to have to crawl.”

It was spidery and dank, but I could just barely squeeze through the tiny gap. Constantine definitely wouldn't have been able to fit. With my headlamp on, it wasn't at all scary. Daylight peeked through a hand-size opening at the top, and I managed to obtain three litres of fresh spring water by contorting myself around the rocks. The water was delicious, and it was well worth the effort. I crawled out muddy and giggling with glee, having gotten an up-close look as some very cool amblypygids. I don't know exactly when I got over my fear of them, but in the last few years I've gotten really interested in rare arachnids, and whip-spiders are the most mysterious and ugly of them all.

McConnell Mills State Park was excellent. The trail was rocky and rooty and full of adventure, demanding our attention as we scrambled up and around and leaped over mud puddles, pulling ourselves up with the trunks of small trees. Colourful kayaks graced the rapids, and we passed many groups of picnickers lounging on sand bars. Once past the tourist area, a large sign warned us that the trail to Hell's Hollow Trailhead was 6.5 miles one way, and we should give ourselves at least eleven hours round trip. We laughed at this. How irritating it must be to be a ranger our here! There were no side trails or bail points once you got into the section, so I suppose it made sense to dissuade overconfident dayhikers, but the trail past the sign was actually better and easier than the rocky steeps next to the beaches. The trail ascended the ridge with long, lazy switchbacks, and I found myself in the rarest of trail moods: euphoria. The birds were singing, the weather was perfect, the trail was kind and interesting in equal measure. My body felt strong and in sync with the environment, and I just felt so good. It was beautiful out here in Pennsylvania! Who knew? I sang and whistled along with the birds, and after the trail descended we stopped for a snack break at Walnut Flats.

Another good surprise: just as we were getting ready to go, a hiker ambled past in short-shorts and Altras. Her daypack was tiny, but I know a thru-hiker's gait when I see it. She recognized us too and stopped to chat. Her name was Black Widow, and she’d completed her AT thru-hike in 2019. She sorely missed the companionship of thru-hikers in her urban Pittsburgh life, and we cast around to see if we knew anyone in common that we could connect her with. “Who do we know who did the AT in ‘19?” I said. We spent a few minutes rattling off names before I realized. “Oh wait! I did Maine southbound in 2019. I knew you looked familiar! When did you finish?” Based on the dates, I had definitely met Black Widow before, but I'd been pushing so hard that I'd barely even said hi. We exchanged information before setting off. Thunder was beginning to rumble overhead, cutting the interaction short, but it was still awesome to meet another thru-hiker on this lonely trail. Two hiker friends in two days! Was this even the NCT?

The thunder intensified as we pushed past another group of dayhikers. They were wearing trendy sneakers with barely any traction and were really struggling in the mud, but of course after we passed them, they picked up the pace. For whatever reason, dayhikers really hate it when they're outpaced by hikers with loaded packs, and we had to jog to stay ahead. There's nothing worse than leapfrogging people who slow down as soon as they're ten feet away from you, and it feels rude to repeatedly ask to pass. It was starting to spit, and the sky was a threatening grey as we raced down the slippery trail. Branches creaked in the wind, and in the distance we heard the echoing boom of a falling tree. Oh, shit. We were about three miles from the trailhead when the heavens opened. Within seconds, we were soaked to the skin, the rain lashing down so hard that my contacts were swimming around in my eyes. Then the downpour turned to hail, and the wind was quickly becoming dangerous. Acorn-sized chunks of ice pelted my head and raised bruises on my arms, and a gigantic branch crashed down mere inches from face. Another dayhiker was cowering under a big rock, and he yelled at us to take shelter as the sky turned black and lightning flashed overhead. We did not heed his warning, but at least we knew we didn't have to worry about the annoyed slow dayhikers behind us anymore. Still we were running, jumping over swollen creeks and pushing hard for the trailhead. A gigantic branch crashed down mere inches from my face, and all of a sudden I was laughing hysterically, fight-or-flight pushing my euphoria to giddy heights. The thing was, it was warm rain. Warm rain! Whoever heard of such a thing? It was exactly the temperature you'd want for a shower after a sunburn, and I was struck by the sheer novelty of it. The hail stopped and the wind lessened just after the branch came down, and so my adrenaline had nowhere to go. “This is awesome!” I yelled at Constantine. “Woohoo! Yes! Thunder!!!” I was totally high on endorphins, and when we finally got to the sunny trailhead, I was still whooping and hollering. “Wow! The ground is steaming! That was amazing.”

My South Carolina boy had of course experienced warm rain before, so he was less than enthusiastic about it, but I was stoked all the way down our roadwalk, marvelling as the sun raised puffs of vapour from my clothes. As we got close to our destination that day, a semi-secret shelter called Sankey Hill, Constantine got a text from none other than Munch. She was out hiking for the weekend with Davy, and was planning to camp at the very same shelter. Looking at our tracker, she’d seen that we were nearby, so did we want salad and sodas? Yes!

It turns out, we'd just barely missed each other at Hell's Hollow Trailhead, so we ended up getting to the shelter first. We'd expended so much energy during the storm that we cooked and ate a trail dinner before they arrived, then lazed around in the shelter drying out. Forty-five minutes later, Munch and Davy showed up with coolers and big smiles. It was another massive feast. Munch is a trail mom extraordinaire and always travels well-supplied, so we were treated to a huge spread with every salad ingredient we could possibly want, and then fresh blueberries, watermelon, cold drinks, and coffee cake. It was nice to relax without the whole crew, just one-on-one with the most dedicated and keen hikers of the Munch family. Davy, also known as Hank the Mountain Man, is a seasoned traveller himself, and his low-key outdoorsy energy was perfectly suited to thru-hiking. We invited Munch to stay with us in the shelter for the night, which she excitedly accepted after making absolutely sure she wouldn't intrude, and we settled down for the night with trail stories and good feelings all around. She would hike five miles with us to Wampum in the morning, then get picked up by Davy after breakfast in town. We drifted off to sleep in the firefly glow, thrilled to have the company of a new friend.

As it turns out, Munch can really move! She's a fair few inches shorter than me, but I didn't have to pull back my pace at all on the roadwalk the next day. I don't know how she kept up with my long legs, but we left Constantine in the dust as we chatted and laughed down the trail, only letting him catch up when we paused to sign the trail logs. We got to Wampum in the blink of an eye, and sat with Davy and Munch over coffee and breakfast sandwiches. I wanted to get going, but I also wanted to stay. The tension between needing to do miles and wanting to spend time with generous friends had never been sharper, and I felt badly as I fretted over maps and looked constantly at my watch.

The problem was Ohio. The maps we'd been able to find didn't have half-mile markers, so we didn't know precisely how far it was to Lisbon. We also didn't know how far it would be until we hit public land again, so today we were playing it safe and camping at a shelter four miles short of the PA/OH border. I also had to make sure to get to Darlington before the post office closed to pick up Constantine's birthday presents, and there was a brand-new trail section south of Wampum that added unexpected miles to our day.

We bid Munch and Davy goodbye around ten o'clock, and I found myself anxious about the post office. I couldn't stop checking my phone every half-mile, obsessing about our pace and feeling behind schedule. The trail was well-maintained and cruisey in this section, weaving as it did past ATV trails and forest service roads, and I wanted to relax and enjoy it. It was probably our last taste of decent trail for a while, so I finally forced myself to put the maps away. Fifteen miles was going to pass whether I worried about it or not.

It all turned out just fine in the end. We made it to Darlington around 2:30, and Constantine was thrilled with his presents. In addition to a new, more functional food bag, I replaced his broken shoulder pocket so he wouldn't need hold four different things while trying to film. “But baby! What am I gonna complain about now?” he joked.

“Oh, I know you'll find something. I believe in you!” And I gave him a kiss.

After a few more easy miles, we arrived at the shelter around five o'clock. It was nice to get to the shelter early, and we'd even packed out some cold pizza from Wampum. While paging through the Ohio maps and worrying, I discovered that the long, featureless GPX line was actually made up of smaller segments. By using the edit function of Gaia and doing a little math, I could figure out the exact mileage to Lisbon and even drop some waypoints. Referencing this against the resupply data we'd gotten from our friend Buck-30, I verified that we had only about thirty-two miles to Lisbon from this camp, and eighty-three miles to the start of the Buckeye Trail. The Buckeye Trail is covered by a Guthook map, so once we got there, we'd have accurate mileage again.

This was great news. We'd been conservative with our mile planning, intending to camp early in Ohio's Beaver Creek State Park and nearo into Lisbon the next day. After my Gaia math, we could see that it would only be a twenty-two mile day to Beaver Creek, so we decided to push all the way into Lisbon and turn our nearo into a zero. We wouldn't even lose any time! Munch and company live near Lisbon and had offered to help us with errands when we got to town, and now we would be able to spend a whole morning with them without feeling rushed.

We woke early the next day, eager for town. The difference between Pennsylvania and Ohio could not have been more stark. Even on our maps, it was obvious. We had four miles of trail through the game lands, then abruptly switched to highway as soon as we hit the border. I was going to miss Pennsylvania! I hadn't really known what to expect, but I'd unexpectedly fallen in love with the place, and now I was sad to see it go. The last four miles of PA were excellent and cruisey as always, though somewhat bittersweet. Just as soon as we were getting into the groove, we were unceremoniously dumped into a busy highway, greeted by a great big OHIO sign. So this was how it was going to be, huh? We signed the trail log and set off again into blazing heat, holding our noses as we stepped past rotting roadkill.

The first day in Ohio wasn't actually so bad. After that first carcass-strewn highway, we popped onto a quick stretch of rail trail, then followed sleepy rural roads into Beaver Creek State Park. Beaver Creek was another irritation - the NCT took us ten miles out of our way just to route us through this patch of public land, only to drop us off on the exact same highway. The trails through the state park were fine, even pleasant, but it wasn't ten-mile-detour good. Our maps for it weren't even accurate, so we muddled our way through by following blazes and eventually got back to the highway.

After that it was just roadwalk. Narrow shoulder, blazing heat, bloated roadkill, empty pack. We roadwalked past barking farmhouse dogs and bemused porch-drinking people, past truck scales and pipeline valves and industrial-scale feedlots. It was loud and stinking and not at all designed for humans, just a hot pavement habitat for cars. We roadwalked past the cute touristy town of Elkton and half-heartedly snapped a photo at “The Shortest Covered Bridge in the United States”, then roadwalked on past the dead possums and decaying deer right into the Days Inn parking lot. I cannot possibly overstate the amount of roadkill on this highway. It was such a busy route, I worried I might become roadkill myself.

After dinner at the motel restaurant, I ran across the parking lot to the world's saddest convenience store for snacks. It was a concrete gas station kiosk that mainly sold beer and cigarettes, but I was able to scrape up a few dusty candy bars and some bottled sports drinks. Constantine wasn't doing too well. He was coming down with a fever, and had barely managed to eat a few bites of burger before retreating to shiver in our room. When his fever swung hot, I checked his entire body for Lyme rash and persuaded him to drink a litre of Gatorade. We eventually chalked it up to a waterborne illness from his no-filter escapade at McConnell Mills, but on this first night I was quite concerned. This is how we ended up taking a double zero in Lisbon - though he woke up the next morning feeling better, he had a milder run of fever that afternoon, and we decided to play it safe and rest for an extra day.

We spent our first zero with Munch and SOS, and though I had be mindful of time to get my writing done, I actually managed to relax and enjoy myself for an hour or two. After an enormous buffet breakfast and resupply chores, they took us out to an ice cream store with a giant chess set out front. SOS and I had been having a great time talking all day, so after we got our ice cream I challenged her to a game. The first game, I won with checkmate in five, but after a little coaching from Constantine, she totally kicked my ass in the second. It took us nearly an hour of tight play, but she doggedly forced me into sacrifice after sacrifice, until I was down to two pawns and king and had to resign the game. It wasn't the most productive hour of my day, but it was very well spent - SOS is an awesome teenager.

So that's the end of Pennsylvania, and the beginning of Ohio. You already know how our second zero day went, because I spent the entire day doing internet chores. We're now about to start the Buckeye wilderness loop, so I'll talk to you again next week. I hope this was worth the wait!

-Magpie