6-19-82 1:07 p.m. Antietam Shelter, Pennsylvania Yankeeland at last. I crossed into Pa. about 9:45 this morning. I am now genuinely "up north," across the Mason-Dixon line.

The 6.1 miles of Pa. I've hiked so far are quite nice, and so are the people, evidently. I arrived at this shelter for lunch a little while ago. Found a middle-aged man and his daughter here. They gave me gorp and fig newtons. They are just day-hiking this area. They're from Pittsburgh. He told me this is their way of celebrating father's day.

Which reminds me I should call Dad tomorrow, collect, of course, to wish him a happy father's day.

It is summer now, or at least summer vacation, and the woods are getting crowded, especially on weekends. Today, of course, is Saturday.

A boy scout troop just went through here. I'm not complaining -- not yet. But there is a new character to the hike. Earlier on, 9 out of 10 people I met were through-hikers or segment hikers. Now the majority are weekenders, it seems. They can be good or bad. Some have no respect for the Trail, the shelters, other hikers. Others are friendly, even generous.

But, weekenders notwithstanding, I am hiking alone again. Charlie won't be back on the Trail 'til tomorrow. There are several people a day or two ahead, including Amy Watford and Tony McGuire. I was worried at first that without Charlie I might slow down, but I'm hiking just fine, now. I covered the 12 miles to here in good time, and I should be able to make a reasonably early arrival at Raccoon Run Shelters tonight -- 8.3 miles north of here.

I miss Charlie's knowledge and his easy-going company. I hope he will catch me before too long. Before I left yesterday, he told me he had enjoyed hiking with me more than with anyone else so far. I took that as a very high compliment.

But it's onward and northward for me now, through these old iron works hills of Pa. on the way to New England, with, I hope, a brief detour to Hilton Head.

It has not rained today, nor yesterday. 2 straight days without rain. I'd better check the map. I must be off the Trail.

 6-20 -- 8:37 p.m. In the tent near the summit of Piney Mtn. Another mega-day. I'm not real sure where I am, but I think I've hiked about 22-23 miles today. And what a day. Gypsy moths, Woody Rambo, the Pine Grove Store and the Half Gallon Club.

Not to mention that at approximately 4 p.m. I passed the exact 1/2 way point between Springer & Katahdin.

The day started uneventfully, but beautiful. I mean gorgeous. Not a cloud, bright sun, deep blue sky, and yet cool. I made incredibly good time, despite some steep climbing early on and some rocks and bogs often along the level areas.

I got to my lunch stop, Birch Run Shelters, about 11:15, ahead of schedule. That's where I met Woody, Georgia to Maine, Class of '81. Woody looks more like a football player than a hiker. Big, bearded, but too clean-cut to be a current hiker.

I spotted that right off, just as he pegged me instantly as a through-hiker. I didn't pump him for information. It's getting so I'd just as soon be surprised, and, besides, information about a trip like this is too subjective to be reliable. But he did give me some tips on the Duncannon to Dela. Water Gap section, and he told me some great stories about Maine.

The bears at Katahdin Stream Campground, for instance, are worse than the Smokies. "I saw one bear in the back of a pick-up handing coolers to another bear on the ground," he claimed. I asked about the porcupines, and he said one in Maine drove him out of a shelter. He camped out and nearly got trampled by a moose.

Woody hiked for a long time last year with the New Zealanders who did the Trail. Also with Mac the Black, the first black man ever to finish the AT. And for a few days with Bob Mountford, the hiker who was killed.

One disturbing thing about my talk with Woody was how he kept repeating how he envied me, how he wished he were doing the Trail again. He was just day hiking today, and when I found him he was just sitting quietly in the shelter reading the register. I was there an hour and a half, and he was still just sitting when I left.

I'm afraid that happens to some hikers. They get so high on this experience they have a hard time letting it go. I hope that doesn't happen to me, and for several reasons I doubt that it will. One is that I have an anchor at home in Kate. I am looking forward to going home as much as I'm looking forward to climbing Katahdin. In a way this is a journey home. In many ways this is a journey home.

And that's the difference. There are some who hike to escape -- work, home, woman, whatever. I still think I'm out here on a quest, and every step I take brings me closer to whatever it is I'm looking for. I'm beginning to grasp just what that is, too, but I dare not try to articulate it yet.

Anyway, Woody and I also talked about how this is different from "normal" backpacking. It's more of an athletic event, a marathon. More on that another time.

Shortly before coming upon Woody I had come for a mile through a beautiful pine forest. Soon after leaving I went through an awesome example of the destructiveness of the gypsy moths. It was like being back in winter, but it was too hot. For a while there were a few mountain laurel still in bloom, and then nothing. I mean nothing green anywhere.

The area I'm camped in now isn't much better. A few mountain laurel, a few green leaves on the ground, shredded. The trees are bare. Coming up here I could see the moth larvae on the trees. They're everywhere. It's really quite frightening, and yet I feel helpless, like watching someone die and not being able to do anything about it.

Two days ago, down in Maryland, I could hear them getting started in the trees, actually hear them chewing. Here it's more the aftermath, I can hear leaves and worms falling, like the sound of water falling from leaves after a rain.

Well, I pushed on through and began to feel the pain in my feet of having done almost 80 miles in four days, but very soon I was at The Store, The Pine Grove Furnace Store in Pine Grove Furnace State Park, home of the famous, no, infamous, half gallon club. The store is run, this year, by John Parham and Dave Hammond, and one of the past partners in a past thru-hiker. Hikers are very welcome there. There's a register, and when John took the "OPEN" sign down and I got ready to leave, he said not to rush off, "Hikers are welcome anytime!"

I bought some groceries for the remaining hike to Duncannon, and they gave me a quart of strawberries, and then I applied for membership in the half gallon club. I wasn't going to at first, but when I saw that Andy Coone, that half-pint South Carolinian, had made it, I knew I could do it.

I picked out a half gallon of heavenly hash and took it out on the porch to let it soften up a bit. I put two quarters in the jukebox, hit the buttons for "You'll Accomp'ny Me" by Bob Seger and "The Long Run" and "Southern Skies" by the Eagles. At 4:45 I started eating and at 5:30 I finished. A whole half gallon of heavenly hash. My body temperature must have been down 10 degrees and my mouth was numb. It was too damn cold today to eat that much ice cream. I was shivering. But I felt fine otherwise, not over-stuffed.

For my feat I received a wooden ice cream spoon with my membership number (3019, which means third year of the club, 19th member this year) and I got to fill out a big card which will be on public display all summer proclaiming my feat. It's hanging there now among the cards of other successful ice cream eaters, who wrote things like, "I could puke," "Where's the bathroom?," etc. I wrote, "I did it. Am I crazy? Well, I'm a thru-hiker. Moose Power."

I hung around another hour talking with Dave and John, laughing like a hyena -- I think the sugar made me a little high -- and just generally enjoying myself. And then, my belly full enough that I didn't feel any need for dinner, and with six zillion grams of carbohydrates zapping me with energy, I hit the Trail and just kept hiking until I found this one-tent site up here, and here I'll stay.

Tomorrow it's on to Musser Farm, 17 or 18 miles, depending on how far I actually came today. Anyway, I'm having a great time, I feel good, strong, healthy and no less sane than ever before. But it's late, and time for sleep. If the gypsy moths don't make too much noise.

6-23 10:14 p.m. In the tent behind Earl Shaffer shelter on the crest of Peter Mountain, Pa. I'm feeling good. My morale is high. I'm hiking with people again, good people, and today's long-dreaded hike, while rugged, was less of a horror than imagined.

I spent the morning slowly doing chores. Not much to do, really. A few groceries, cash the money order -- the local bank wouldn't cash it because I didn't have an account! Unbelievable -- and re-pack.

The group from the Doyle Hotel drifted out in ones, twos and threes. There were seven of us there last night, all left today, all but one are here now. Greg Hickey of California, whom nobody seems to like, is up ahead somewhere.

Amy and I were the last to leave town, about 1:30 this afternoon, after a big lunch -- bacon burger, milk shake, 2 eclairs. Gary, Dave from Maine and Mike Curran (Red Man) all left earlier -- together. They and Tony McGuire are here. Tony left before everyone this morning without saying a word. He's like that, but everyone likes Tony. Maybe because he doesn't say much.

It was a long roadwalk out of town, across the Clark Ferry Bridge over the Susquehanna River. Then a steep climb and a roundabout route up to the crest of Peter Mountain, then a very rocky -- as promised -- trail, but with long stretches of nice dirt trail, too.Not all that bad, and not nearly as unreasonable as Virginia's hundred miles of hell, where they route you over every rock on the ridges. Here an effort is often made to minimize the rocks on the Trail. It's tolerable.

Good company here tonight. Dave and Mike are very funny. Mike's a mouse trapper. He's already got 2 tonight. Amy bought a couple of traps in town today. She hasn't had any luck tonight.

 July 4 6:17 p.m. The lunch counter at Duke's Shoppe, Unionville, N.Y. I don't know yet whether I'm going to stay here tonight or push on to the summit of Pochuck Mtn., back across the Jersey line. The problem is whether there is a place to stay here at all. If not, then it's four more hard miles of road walking, and I'm exhausted after over 18 miles today.

Indeed, I've probably walked a good 20 already today. It's a long story, but, what the hell, it's a long trail. I started out in a bad mood this morning. The rain had ended, but the leaves and grass were still soaked, and the first 3 miles of trail were badly overgrown and rocky. I stumbled over the rocks and got drenched by the wet foliage.

After Sunrise Mountain the Trail got better, but I was still depressed. I hadn't heard anything good from anyone at home during my calls from DWG, and I began to wonder if I really wanted to take the vacation.

The trail continued to be very rocky, much tougher than I expected. Finally I reached the visitor's center at High Point State Park where there was a phone and I called home. I had to ease my mind. Dad answered cheerfully. He told me Charles & Evelyn & kids had arrived and gone to see My Fair Lady and had met Katie. I was glad, of course, but I quickly asked about the check from C & S. Yes, it had come, and it was over $1,200. I said fine, and told him I'd see him next week.

I got back on the Trail in a much better mood, hiked quickly down to High Point Shelter for lunch, though it was really up and down, and steep at that, and rocky, but I got there, and I found a couple, Helmut and Elaine. They asked me a million questions, which didn't enable me to relax as I would have liked, but they had given me two apricot dumplings right off, so I felt the least I could do was play expert hiker for them. By the time they left the early morning clouds had all disappeared, and the sky was blue.

I figured I just had a 6 mile road walk to Unionville, so I relaxed and stayed at the shelter almost two hours.

 7-5 5:38 p.m. at Roger's Appalachian Cottage...Back to "things I've learned" on the AT: how to simplify.

Backpacking in general teaches you how much you can get along without. On a trip like this you learn even more things. Mom must be amazed at some of what I send back. I'm amazed at some of what I still have.

But I mean more than possessions as far as getting rid of things. I think I'm learning to do away with a lot of mental garbage, too. Not to lose it altogether, just to put it somewhere else, where I can get it when I need it but not be burdened by it other times.

What specifically? Well, my last column for the Packet was an example. After acknowledging the existence and possibility of violence on the Trail, I said, in effect, that I just wasn't interested, I'm going on to Maine with no change in plans or routines. It was a complex statement, in a way. I'm refusing to stoop to violence or even thoughts of violence in order to combat violence.

In effect, I'm also turning the other cheek. It's not quite the same -- almost, but not quite -- as saying, "ignore it, it'll go away." Because I'm not ignoring it, just pretending to.

Someone was telling me the other day that the way they deal with dogs barking at them on the Trail is to just keep walking. You're not ignoring the dog, because you're certainly aware he's there. But you are refusing to engage in a stupid, meaningless, pointless quarrel with a dumb animal. That's what I mean.

Basic.