Across Garden and Empire.

For those of us who've only ever seen the industrial hinterland you drive through on the way to Newark airport, Jersey's tag line 'The Garden State', always seemed like a cruel joke. While gardens often need fertilizer, you don't generally put the factory by the roses.

Jersey is beautiful. Walking out of Delaware Water Gap, the path shadows a fresh stream before plunging into the woods, and then climbing to the tree line where a saddle of rock a few hundred feet across leaves you with a view east and west across the woods and pastoral lands. I was lucky enough to come on this as the sun set, gifted with good company. Glinting, shimmering, stunning.

New Jersey and New York are more densely populated than the south with more chances to spend money and higher prices to speed you on your way. I've found myself hiking from town to town, tying my mileage to the spaces between the towns. Some great dinners, story telling sessions in Irish bars, and Motels in infinite variety.

The 'Irish' thing is interesting. In NYC, foreign isn't special, the melting pot gives no stigma and imparts no free rides. In these small towns people are excited by my remote origins, or want to make sure I feel as welcome as the did in Blarney or Killarney on trips they took a decade ago. I've been offered beds, rides into town, all types of help and directions. I'm torn between a feeling of unearned privilege and pride in my home and culture. The connection that ethnic Irish in the US reach for makes more sense the longer I'm here.

Overall the weather's been good for the last few weeks, clear warm days punctuated with the occasional thunder storm and gradually ratcheting temperatures. One day, having pitched my tent late, but just in time to get me out of the rain, I found out that my tent had begun leaking and my air-mattress doubles as a Lilo.

As I closed in on my most recent home I got some welcome company. A friend drove out on his motorcycle to share some pizza and beer, evenings in the company of people who know you well are a rare pleasure out here, and I was glad of it.

As events transpired I ended up with more company than expected. Last Friday I hiked into Pawling, NY. The plan was simple enough, camp in town and the train would bring me some city-folk to hike with on the morrow. Sitting enjoying an espresso and a cocktail in a bar in town, the weather turned. Heavy rain, thunder, the usual summer storm. All of a sudden making my friends hike in that (or having me, in my leaky tent, camp in it), seemed like a bad idea. After a quick exchange of email, I traded my tent for a Brooklyn couch.

Another stealth NY weekend! Less alcohol sodden than the last one, but a nice taster of some of what I miss from the city; Great conversation, brunch, a couple of blues dances, time to peruse a comic store, and even an impulse gaming purchase. (Axis and Allies, for the two nerds that care.)

Like the last one it was too short, but left me off the trail for too long. I'll have to put up some miles in penance to pay for the downtime.

Last night I hiked into Kent, CT. Having eaten and slept well, I woke with a fairly severe pain in my right knee. I don't remember tweaking it yesterday, by there's no doubt that it's not quite right. Now, a couple of hours later, showered, stretched and high on ibuprofen I'm feeling a lot better. Today's plan was to hike the eleven miles to my new shoes, that should be waiting one town over, but as my knee is still shakey I may spend another night in this excruciatingly picturesque town.

Finally, in the week between my motorcycle visitor and the planned visit from NY I moved slower than planned. Heat, dead shoes, and very sore feet really slowed me down. As I had to be in Pawling on Friday night to make the weekend hike work for my new-yorkers, I cheated. I got a 30 mile ride in a cab. They're the first miles I've skipped and I feel fairly guilty about it, but sometimes scheduling forces your hand.

On that confession your diarist signs off. I hope all is well with you.
Talk soon.
T.

What state were you born in? Infancy.

On most days my logic goes, stay on the trail, don't do anything stupid, and you'll probably not die. This thinking is complicated when the thing most likely to kill you, is the trail.

Leaving a place called Lehigh Gap, between the towns of Slatington and Palmerston, you climb a little over 700 feet up from the river on the valley floor. After the southern portion of the trail 700 feet isn't a big number, however in this case the series of signs entreating you to not leave the trail lest you kill yourself or others, and the fact that the trail is a series of unevenly spaced white blazes painted on a field of boulders and skree, at times steep enough to have an overhang, and occasionally loose underfoot to make you feel like an extra in a platform based video game, ups the ante a little. I'm including some photos, and I've done my best to get the perspective right, but it's hard to get across the vertiginous effect of a slight change in the breeze, or a shift in how the pack sits on your back.

It's probably not that dangerous and, probably, almost no one ever dies, but at the time you'd be hard pressed to convince me of that.

In related news, when, under a period of stress is it ever good that your palms become sweaty and slippery? What evolutionary terror were we saved from by being able to say, "Well that was close but at least my hands were too slick to grip".

Pennsylvania is done. I'm .2 miles from Jersey and I'm betting I can walk that after I finally post this. PA's been mostly OK, beautiful views of pastoral valleys, nice ridge walks, and enough sharpend stones to leave your feet battered and broken. The average piece of trail in PA is full of sharp of rocks, protruding about the length of your finger, but large and immobile below the surface. Walking, even on the relative flat, is exhausting, and I won't regret leaving it behind.

It's interesting to watch the small changes happen as you come north. Somewhere along the way they stop leaving the Bible open at a particular section in the hotel room, and start leaving out an envelope to tip the hotel staff. The first Obama bumper sticker you see is somewhere mid-Jersey, and it's at least 100 miles north of the Mason-Dixon line before it's legal to show anything other than NASCAR in a building with beer for sale.

Then there are the things that don't change. If you say you live on Manhattan, they ask the same question.

Me : I'm an Axe-Murderer in New York.
Everyone : Really? What do you pay in rent?

As of tomorrow I'll be out here 3 months, and while I'm less plugged in to the tech world than I usually would be, here's what's happened, to just my phone, since I went on the road:

The Blogger app added rich text editing.
The following things launched:
-Video/Voice chat.
-Netflix (Movies on demand).
-Latitude (location) history.

Lots of other things have improved too, these are just the things that make my life better at least once a week.

I'm glad I've moved back just far enough that I can have a little perspective on the change, but stayed close enough for the slipstream to pull me along.

Talk soon.
T.

One night in Lickdale.

What do you do when you're writing something and fate gives you these:

I slept in Lickdale last night.
And...
There's a place called "McQueen's Knob"

Do you keep it quiet? Yes they are jokes, but if you can't keep up with 18th century geographers do you really have a place being funny on the internet?

I have decided that I don't have the right to keep this gold from you, even if the rest of this post lives far from the center of Lickdale, forever in the shadow of McQueen's promontory, the jokes must flow.

The couple of days in NY took their toll.

If you don't train, you atrophy. There were times where, with only eight drunkards shouting at each other, I had to concentrate to force a fifteen minute anecdote into conversation.

I've lost a step.

You close a couple bars, a small house party, 11 hours driving, and you're not even fit to hike.

The two days out of New York left me emotionally refreshed, if slightly physically drained. I took it easy, slowly returning to my previous pace.

The sudden withdrawal of stimulus was a bit of a shock, to go from sitting in a circle of almost 40 years of friendship to sitting alone on a cliff face, sun setting, miles from the nearest mind was an adjustment, and not an easy one.

As if to emphasize the difference between NY and the trail I've dropped into a less populated bubble as I go along. I've camped alone a couple of nightsand the silence and space, particularly after the city, swings from boring to exhilarating and back again, like my adrenal system doesn't know what to do with it.

I'm keeping good pace since Harper's Ferry, West Virginia and Maryland have been dealt with and I'm more than halfway through Pennsylvania.

Someone said to me today we've less than 999 miles to go, the odometer rolled ovee a few miles back and I didn't notice.

When you pass halfway you've less to do than you've already done, I realize that's excruciatingly prosaic, but until our destination was only three digits away it hadn't registered.

I should say more about the traditions that accompany getting past halfway, or the changes in gear that happen when summer, and the bugs, arrive. But if I try and write all that, this'll never be sent and you'll think I'm still lost somewhere off Broadway.

While the trail's end is not yet in sight, I'm beginning to believe it exists.

Finally, to those I missed in NY. I was there to celebrate someone else, my attendance was the gift, not the point, staying below radar was the thing to do. I'll be back when I walk a little closer to the city and you better believe it will be heralded, and there will be a party!

Goodnight my friends, I miss you all.
T.