Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail
Pennsylvania
May 2001
This is not an easy trail, stretching 70 miles over some fairly steep ridge and valley terrain. It is an excellent trail however, offering verdant hardwood forest, some comely views and a well-groomed footpath. In addition, every ten miles or so is an Adirondack-style shelter, a lean-to, where you may camp, saving you the weight of carrying a tent. And the rangers chop wood for you to use in your fire! Sounds like lots of good reasons to hike this thing end to end.
Six of us start our hike together. Well actually, five of us start at trailhead at about noon; our sixth, Mike, got stuck in some dumb work meeting and isn’t able to begin hiking until the evening. So he hikes in six miles, most of it in the dark, to our shelter. Mike is a very good outdoorsman and isn’t afraid of goblins. In fact, sometimes he himself hides under bridges to surprise unsuspecting hikers.
Darlene is one of our hikers. Darlene has many talents, one of which is the ability to look up at just the right moment and spot porcupines in the upper branches of trees. Sometimes she’ll see raccoons or even owls.
Tom, one of our regulars, is on this trip too. There are two outstanding things about Tom that I admire. First, he is always up to date on current and world affairs. Ask him anything.
The second thing about Tom that I rate highly is best appreciated at a distance. When we backpack, we carry little stoves that burn liquid fuel. In order to get this thing fired up, you need to prime it. You bleed a little gasoline into a cup built into the stove and set that ablaze with a match. It burns for a few moments heating the stove which draws fuel vapor through a hose from the gas can to the cook surface. You then have a beautiful blue ring of flame upon which you cook. When Tom primes his stove however, he always bleeds way too much gas and when he sets a match to it, a flame swooshes up to the sky. Very dramatic, with the swooshing noise and the unexpected pyro-dramatics. It’s like in the movies.
Joe is another of our group. Talk about outdoorsmen, Joe has accomplished some very impressive trips including a solo trip along — and in — the Escalante River in Utah. On his own, he rafted, bicycled and hiked for ten days.
But… Tom is struggling. He has not been out on the trail this year as much as he would have liked, so his training was scarce and his pack is weighing heavily on his hips. It is to the point where, in spite of the superior group of hikers he is with, he isn’t having much fun.
What we don’t know until Day 3 is that Joe has arranged for his wife to drive to a trailhead near where we will be camping. She brings beer to us and some other goodies that you simply don’t carry in a backpack. The weight-to-pleasure balance just doesn’t add up. But on the other hand, if someone else brings it in, there is nothing better than an unexpected brew at camp.
This is an opportunity. Tom has been asking himself, and the rest of us, “What should I do? Should I push on, in spite of my discomfort? Or should I quit? Should I quit or should I stay?” Here is his chance to cut short the hike, get a comfortable ride home and reduce his misery.
We don’t use the word quit on hikes. We tell each other that there is no shame in cutting short a hike, that bonking happens to all of us at one time or another. Yah, this is what we say.
More than once, Tom gazes off in the direction of the now available safety valve. He could simply walk off in the direction of Joe’s wife’s car, end the distress.
Should I stay? Should I go? It’s time to make a decision.
Tom concludes, “Either way, I’m a schmuck.”