Day 123
Start: Canopus Lake Beach Shelter
End: Old Route 55
Miles Hiked: 17.0
Miles on AT: 1446.5
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This morning started like any other. And that was amazing because that meant that I’d had a music free night! Yes, last night I slept peacefully through the night, no musical disturbances were heard.
As the sun rose, people were milling about, getting their things together and eating breakfast. I was in the first batch of hikers who left the shelter, but we were all pretty much doing our own thing. As I hiked, I noticed someone had hung a dreamcatcher on the trail. Where was that a couple of days ago when I needed it?
Eventually I climbed to a rocky summit where someone had painted a 9/11 memorial and planted some beautiful flowers. Comments in FarOut were mixed about this memorial because it came close to being graffiti, but I thought it had been tastefully done.
Despite all of us hikers from yesterday starting the day separately, we managed to congregate at the next water source to refill our bottles and eat a snack. On today’s agenda was another deli, which I would probably reach around noon. Everyone was looking forward to it and everyone was planning to stop there for lunch.
For the next few miles, all I could think of was the food. Not only was there a deli, but there was also a pizza place. Yum!
When I got close to the road where the deli was located, I ran into Stretch. Walking into the deli together, we decided to split a large pizza. I got pineapple on my side and he got Margherita. It was perfect!
As the afternoon wore on, more and more hikers trickled in. Before I knew it, the whole place was overrun with us (although I’m sure the owners didn’t mind.) I was able to charge a few electronics and dry my tent in the sun out back. This place was truly hiker friendly.
After at least an hour and a half, it was time to go. I didn’t want to get stuck there and I still had a number of miles to complete. I said my goodbyes and hit the trail.
But, soon after I started hiking, I started feeling the weird pains again. Like yesterday, the pin-prick sensations started out mildly. Every 10-30 seconds I would feel a little poke, like I was being poked with a needle, somewhere randomly on my body. I tried to ignore it, but the more I hiked, the more painful it became. It wasn’t something I could ignore and I hike with. The feeling made me jump and yell, “ouch!”
After a few miles, I decided I couldn’t hike like this. I was close to Pawling, NY, so I would take a zero there and see if whatever this mysterious pain was got better. I didn’t really have a better option.
By the time I hit Old Route 55, I wanted to cry. Why was this happening to me? I just wanted to hike the trail without pain. There was absolutely nothing I could do to make it better and I felt powerless. I didn’t want this to mean the end of my journey. What was most frustrating was that I was fully capable of physically hiking, it was just a small but powerful pain that made it uncomfortable to do so.
Despite my despair, the trail still provided. Just as I was getting ready to hitch, a man pulled up in a truck.
“Are you hiking the trail?”
He asked all of the typical questions and chatted with me a while about the sections he had hiked. He asked where I was going and if I needed a ride and of course I said yes. Turns out, he was a board member of a local organization that supported and maintained the trail and was a former elected official of Pawling, NY. This was the second time I’d had an elected official give me a ride while on my hikes. To me, this showed that he really cared about the people he served and the work he had done.
We arrived in Pawling outside of the hotel where I was going to stay and said our goodbyes. Once I got to my room, I sat down and took a breath. Well, all I could do was take it easy today and tomorrow and see how my body felt after my zero. I hated to be pushed off the trail for something so out of my control, but that was my reality now.
And that’s day 123.
A version of this post originally appeared on TheTrek.co.