Hiking with a belly full of pizza was always comforting and this day was no exception. The early miles of Pennsylvania were largely similar to Maryland, so I made decent progress, reaching Tumbling Run Shelter soon after 6 o’clock. It was great to meet up with Tomahawk and Doc again, along with Lumberjack and Nobody, while a young married couple, Turbo and Poho, had also joined the group. I never had a problem interacting with the younger hikers on the trail, and I was always grateful that they were happy enough hanging around with the old guy. I’m guessing that I was a bit of an oddity to them and thus tolerable.

Tumbling Run was an interesting shelter because there were two small shelters, about 20 yards apart, linked by a pergola-type structure and two picnic tables. There were a lot of people camping in the woods nearby, including Hobo Nobo and Caddy, so we had our own small village once more. I heard over breakfast the following morning that one of the shelters had been considerably noisier than the other overnight. A couple of champion snorers seemed to have taken up residence side by side, though none of the hikers would either admit, or accuse, the culprits. I couldn’t have cared less, of course, for I had found a decent spot to tent about 50 yards away.

I set up camp about 15 yards from another older guy, probably in his early- to mid-50s. He was with his dog, Lucy, and, having briefly taken in that this man and dog were camping next to me, I noticed that he only had a right arm and a right eye. We struck up something of a desultory conversation, avoiding the obvious dearth of limb and eye, while chatting about everything else. Eventually, I asked him his name and he came up with the delightfully self-deprecating name of Lefty. I looked at him for an instant, before we both burst out laughing. Quite what I would have done if he’d said Cyclops, I really couldn’t tell.

The ice broken, he went on to tell me how he had lost both his arm and his eye, though he had clearly come to terms with his situation. We both cracked up from time to time as he described one disaster after another. Life had been hard on Lefty. He saw the woods as his safe place, where he felt the most comfortable.

While he was talking, he was doing what we all do at camp, including putting up his tent and filtering water. As had often happened before on this trip, I was struck at how some people were able to meet and overcome hardships. Lefty will stay in my memory, for he refused any help to put up his tent or hold his water bottle steady. He just got on with it, improvising his way through, and ending up with both a sturdy-looking tent and plenty of clean water.

Beyond this determination, he was also sad. He remarked that he would never find a woman, and that Lucy was really the only company he had. In my tent later, Lefty’s sadness played in my head, and I saw how tough his challenges must be every day. Even sadder was the fact that he was forced to face them alone. He remained an unhappy thought for several weeks after I met him. I hope he is well.

Caledonia State Park was my intended lunch spot the next day, with the promise of a burger uppermost in my mind. The park had its own public pool, so there was also the possibility of a swim. 

The day started warm and sunny and, with a ten-mile stint before lunchtime, I got out of camp fairly briskly. The ten miles were polished off in only four hours—the hike being fairly benign—though an early climb up Chimney Rocks exercised my sweat glands once more. At the park, the trail emerged into a clearing, with picnic tables all around, and I joined my younger, fitter friends. We based ourselves around those tables, under the shade of huge trees, and away from the public. It was as if we self-censored ourselves. We drifted in twos and threes to the concession stand, where calorific goodies were to be had. I ordered the mandatory burger, and asked the guy in the shop if I could charge my phone behind the counter. He took it from me, so I was grounded for a while. I went to lie on the grass, under a tree and away from everybody else.

I had jumped into rivers and ponds on the trail, but I felt dreadfully self-conscious about stripping down to my shorts and plunging into a public pool. Incidentally, the others felt much the same. Families were gathered together, and it didn’t seem right to interject ourselves into this morass of people who were clearly living differently from us. I fully recognize that this was my problem, not theirs, but I couldn’t help but feel the difference. So I lay there, sweltering in the grass, while the means to cool down glittered in the sunlight only 50 yards away.

With my phone and my stomach fully charged, I set out on my second ten-mile section of the day, across flat terrain, towards Birch Run Shelter.

I’d been making great progress, keeping up the pace from the morning, when, after an hour or two, I heard the ominous sound of thunder in the distance. The noise alone wouldn’t have normally concerned me too much, because it reverberated from a long way away. However, when the second clap came, I knew it was heading towards me.

The threat remained for the next couple of hours, and I started to think that I might get away with it, since the storm appeared to have given me rather a wide berth. Suddenly, and with no clue that it was about to find me, I was hit by the full fury of the storm. The rain was torrential, utterly soaking me within seconds, while the lightning lit up the forest all about me. I trudged forward through the rapidly liquefying path, and arrived at the shelter completely drenched. I had to strip straightaway into my only remaining dry clothes—a pair of swimming trunks and my camp shirt. My temperature had plunged, and I badly needed to get out of every stitch of clothing I had on, just to warm up. It was a small shelter, with insufficient room for the ten-strong group of us.

I managed to hang all my clothes in a forlorn attempt to dry them, should drying conditions arise, but it was hopeless. I needed the rain to subside, because there was no room in the shelter for me. I started to contemplate a night on the picnic table as a last resort. After an hour, the rain slowed, then ceased entirely, and five or six of us hurriedly took advantage of the lull to set up our tents, and retire for the night. There had been a number of new faces at the shelter, and some of them were now alongside me in the woods. One of these was a very funny Irishman, uninspiringly named Ireland, who kept everybody’s spirits up. I ended a tricky day by laughing, which is never a bad way to drop off to sleep.

Just four miles into the following morning, and 74 miles after I’d passed Harpers Ferry—the traditional halfway point—I passed the true halfway point. It was at mile 1,092.6, and was adorned with an elaborate structure to commemorate the event. Sadly, for my picture, I had dressed that morning in the driest clothes I could find. This meant that I was wearing the sweaty ones of two days before, along with my natty swimming shorts. For such a major milestone, this wasn’t a good look. To be frank, it wasn’t a good look under any circumstances.

Knowing how long it had taken to get to this point, I stepped across the imaginary line. I was nearer to Katahdin than to Springer for the first time. I had an overwhelming feeling that I had to do the mileage again, and I harbored my usual doubts about my ability to do so. Would my feet hold up? Would I fall badly? What about my ankles? Did I have the strength? I was mildly impressed with myself that I didn’t include the prospect of ending up mauled by a bear. These doubts would flicker through my mind at various times in my journey, though I had always been able to talk myself out of them. On this occasion, I turned my attention to my upcoming halfway celebration at the Half Gallon Challenge in Pine Grove Furnace State Park—just five miles ahead. As a celebration it sucked, though I wasn’t going to discover that until early the following morning. Very early.

The Half Gallon Challenge is a silly rite of passage that some hikers put themselves through. The more sensible ones choose to duck out of the challenge, contenting themselves by watching their fellow hikers behave irrationally. I didn’t even contemplate rational behavior. 

I arrived at the scene of the crime—the General Store—before noon, laying out my soaked clothes across the various picnic tables. I thought I’d wait for them to dry out in the sun as I took on the Challenge. This was excellent marketing by the General Store, as hikers chose from a liberally stocked freezer containing only ice cream. We were then charged for the privilege of shoveling ungodly amounts of the gloopy stuff down our throats. The lilac-clad Lumberjack had already had his fill, taking about 50 minutes to get through it. He looked a bit green around the gills as he sat on the porch watching the spectacle.

I chose vanilla and mint chocolate chip in an attempt to shake it up a bit, starting with the larger tub of vanilla. Working my way through it without drama in about ten minutes, the vanilla went down easily. With just the smaller mint chocolate chip to go, I got a little cocky. I called out Lumberjack and a few others as pussies, yet the moment I opened that second tub, the wheels fell off. Suddenly, my vanilla confidence had evaporated into a minty mess, and I struggled through the smaller tub, eventually finishing in 27 minutes. My reward was a slightly disappointing wooden spoon from the shop. It was the type you get when you open an ice cream tub, with some sort of notation to the effect of your recent success in the Challenge. Despite my cynicism regarding this prize, I confess that I still own my hard-won trophy.

With a pack of dry clothes and a stomach full of gurgling ice cream, I decided to head on alone. I was hoping to make the next shelter, Tagg Run, less than eight miles away, with the weather closing in. My luck held, and I made it in plenty of time for dinner. Already at the shelter was a young guy I’d camped next to a few weeks before, Bilbo, as well as a group of four hikers—Big Sexy, J-Rex, and the Maine Sisters, otherwise known as Toots and Navigator.

Bilbo kept himself to himself and retired early. Big Sexy was a friendly, red-headed, smiling lad who, when I asked him why he was so named, just shrugged and laughed. I saw neither of these guys after that night, while the three girls were part of my hike for much of the next 600 miles. I grew to appreciate them more as time went on.

I chose pasta for dinner that night. I had totally forgotten that the combination of pasta and ice cream, in my past, had often produced fairly dire consequences. I didn’t even consider it while boiling my pot.

In the early hours of the following morning, in my tent, I realized for the first time that I may have made an error by eating so much pasta on top of my ridiculous amount of ice cream. The feeling was exacerbated when I turned on my side, and my stomach let out an audible, and painful, groan. Hmmm, I thought, more out of curiosity than anything else. This quickly turned to Oh, my God, as the inevitable conclusion became apparent. Suddenly, I was scrambling to leave my tent, because everything wanted to exit my body as soon as possible from every available orifice. Outside, it was pitch dark, I was barefoot, virtually naked, and desperate. Nature isn’t to be ignored, so two dramatic evacuations took place: the first, by me, from my tent, and the second, by everything else, from my body. While I am aware of the importance to hikers of the concept of “Leave No Trace,” I confess to an epic fail on this particular occasion. I suppose I can only plead mitigating circumstances. 

Restored once more to my tent and to the warmth of my quilt, I breathed again and mistakenly relaxed for a moment. The warning that I had 20 minutes later was both more sudden and more urgent. I had barely poked my head out of my tent while retching, and only managed to hold everything in before eventually diving into the bushes for an even more intense purging. It was dreadful. I spent the remainder of the night on alert for another episode but, thankfully, I was done, and daylight came without further incident.

There really is no fool like an old fool, is there?

I was physically and, quite literally, drained, and felt completely incapable of hiking anywhere.

From my guidebook I recalled that I’d be crossing a road within half a mile, and that there was a relatively nearby inn, at Mount Holly Springs, that provided shuttles for hikers. A quick phone call established a rendezvous point, and I staggered the half-mile to the road, before sitting in a heap and waiting for my shuttle.

As I sat there, exhausted by the night, I had another internal battle over how stupid I’d been. Several of the youngsters had passed on the ice cream, but I, believing myself to be insulated from the laws of gastrointestinal science, had acted like a preening fool. I had tried to prove myself capable of keeping up with my peers, though had failed miserably when I ladled pasta on top of lactose. Not for the first time in my life—nor even the first time on this hike—I berated myself for this need to do or try things that were clearly not good for me. I’d had a few low points and this was another.

Consequently, less than an hour into my day, I pitched up at Holly Inn and Restaurant in a pitiful state. I was completely unable to eat or drink, despite being severely dehydrated. I was miserable to my core.

Then my luck turned.

As so often happened on this magical trail, aid came to me. This time, the aid came in the form of the wonderful Fran and Steve Davis, friends who had been following my blog, and who happened to live in Pennsylvania. I had only met Fran once and had never met Steve. They were the parents of a young woman—Alicia—who is one of my wife’s dearest friends. Apparently, they had been reading my blog and had bought into the magic of the A.T., even providing Trail Magic on occasion, where the trail came close to their home. 

They had intended to see me a little further up the trail, and, when Fran called, I told her of my predicament. They drove for more than an hour to not only help me with my laundry but also to drive me around and try to find gas for my stove. They brought a bunch of supplies with them and were, frankly, just the tonic that I needed at that time. I’d had Trail Magic through my hike, but this brand of Trail Magic was so personal and so heartfelt that it touched me and sustained me for a very long time. When Fran and Steve left, I still felt far too weak to hike, so I decided to stay another night to allow myself the chance to replenish my body. Fran and Steve had replenished my soul.

To this point, I had reached the stage that sleeping in my tent allowed me a better night’s sleep than sleeping in a hotel or motel bed. However, that night I slept for a solid nine hours. I woke feeling so much better that it was startling, though I stuck with my intention of the previous night. I took the opportunity to relax and update my blog, spending the afternoon in the bar at the Inn. I watched a couple of World Cup matches, and resumed my assault on yet another menu.

I’d learned another lesson, which you may think that I should have learned by the age of seven. Ice cream and pasta, in combination, would never be part of my diet again. I’m pleased to report that I’ve stuck with this one.

The day had also shown me that, in your darkest times, there is always a way forward, albeit one which may not be immediately apparent. There would be more dark days, yet I always knew I could overcome them. That realization became another breakthrough in my growing skills as a hiker.