The Hike to Dis-O

Just as I had to dedicate a little piece to my leaving Bellingham for Camden, so I have to dedicate a little piece to my exit from JVC and the journey home. Here is a short series about the past couple of weeks and the events that came to pass.

After we left Camden, we drove to Pine Grove Furnace State Park, about 30 miles north of the Maryland border. After celebrating Mass (fittingly enough, this was July 31st- the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola), we drove to the campsite and pitched our tents.

The Camden hikers (myself and three of my housemates) had made sure that we could all lie down to sleep in the tiny tent that we brought along with us, but we made one fatal error: when we checked, we just lay down on the floor of the tent. We didn’t use our sleeping bags. So, of course, there was not enough room for all of us. Worse, the humidity at that time made sleeping inside a nylon tent unbearably hot. (Being the resident Pacific Northwestern girl on the trail, I liked to think I was a pretty tough camper. Pacific Northwestern camper and hiker friends, ye be warned: we were neither born nor bred to camp and hike on the east coast. The heat alone could kill us, but the humidity could do it faster.) After the first night in a tent (I bunked with a lovely, obliging JV who had a two-person tent to herself), I just slept outdoors on picnic tables. (I don’t mean for that to sound whiney, because in fact I really liked it. The fresh, warm night air made for a much more comfortable night, and a solid wood table was a better sleeping surface than the lumpy ground.)

The morning that the hike began, all the hikers we out of bed, dressed, and had taken down all of the tents by 7am, when the JVC staff had said they would arrive and feed us. We waited. And wait. And then, we waited some more. Turns out, the JVC staff usually tells the hikers that breakfast begins at 7am, and purposefully shows up at 7:30, when most JVs are just beginning to stumble out of their tents. Evidently, we were the exception to the behavioral patterns of past JVs. (Now, I understand why they might do something like that, but I think I can speak for most of the other hikers when I say that we were a little offended. After we’ve put in a year of service and proven ourselves, we’d prefer to be treated like adults.)

The other thing that set our group of hikers apart from past years was this: Every year, we are given the option of tacking an extra ten miles onto the first leg of the hike. In past years, about five or six JVs have done this. This year, all but thirteen of us opted for the extra ten miles! (I was among the elite group of hikers who had more realistic expectations and stubbornly stuck to the original plan of hiking 13 miles. I realized at the end of the day that I would have been able to hike 23, but I didn’t know that in the beginning. Like I said—realistic expectations.)

We ate breakfast, packed lunches, stretched, prayed, and headed out through the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The Appalachian Trail is considered hallowed ground, even by the most secular of hikers. There is trail etiquette that we always respect the land, hike in relatively small groups, and pack in and pack out all of our things (read: no littering). The single, solitary navigational instruction we received was “Hike south. Follow the white blazes.” (I couldn’t resist the temptation to whisper to hikers, in my best Gollum voice, “Follow the white blazes. Don’t follow the lights!”)

The white blazes turned out to be simply white streaks of paint on the occasional tree, and thankfully it was all the instruction we needed. My favorite incident of having no idea of where to go is this: On the second day of the journey, after a fairly easy first half hour of hiking, my group reached what looked like a rock wall. It was probably at an 80-85 degree incline from the flat ground on which we stood. We walked right up to the wall, whereupon we turned right, looking for a white blaze on a tree. Nothing. We looked left. No white blaze. Confused, we stood around like the lost fools that we were, and then finally looked up at the wall again. Near the top, perhaps twenty feet overhead was a crooked little tree protruding from the rock face. And, wouldn’t you know it, there was a white blaze painted on it. Although the rocks were spaced out enough to use as stairs (in a sense), it was still quite an awakening to what lay in store for the rest of the day!

We didn’t know it then, but the first day was the easiest in terms of the type of terrain we crossed. I took quite a fall that day, as well; unused to how clumsy hiking boots can be, I stumbled over a tree root and didn’t regain my balance fast enough. (It would have looked like a cartoon character running in place, but in slow motion). I landed on a large, flat rock and slid along it, taking most of the impact in the forearm and elbow of my right arm. I initially fell to my left, but since I was falling so fast that I feared I would hit my head, I twisted midair and clenched my right arm to my body, hoping it would bear the full force of the fall. Better my arm than my head. Other than my arm, the water bottles strapped to my backpack bore the brunt of the impact. (The brand new aluminum one nearly bent in half!)

My trail buddies were very concerned—they heard the landing and got nervous. I lay for a second on the rock, momentarily concerned that I might have broken my arm. After wiggling my fingers, shimmying out of my backpack, and inspecting both the swelling and the wound, I stood back up, put on my backpack, and said, “Let’s keep going.” The swelling was pretty bad, so popped a lot of aspirin at lunch. I lost a layer of skin to the rock on which I landed, but it barely bled. (But, man, putting hydrogen peroxide on that puppy hurt like a son of a b*tch!) Later, in the campsite, I realized I couldn’t carry anything heavy with my right arm—that went away in a few days. To be honest, I’m happy that it became an interesting anecdote and not a medical emergency. Can you imagine breaking your arm in the middle of the woods and needing to go to the emergency room?

The best part of the hike, hands down, was the final day. We split into our normal groups (sans a few people who were too injured to finish the hike) and took off for the last six miles. Where Buena Vista Road intersects with the Appalachian Trail, each group stopped and waited for the rest of the hikers. After we all met up at that trailhead, we finished the journey together, as one group. We marched down Buena Vista Road toward the Blue Ridge retreat center, singing whatever we could think of. The JVC staff met us on the road (by then we were crooning “God Bless America” because it was the only thing we could think of that everyone knew all the words to!) and we all converged on Oregano Field, FINALLY having finished the journey back to whence we came!

After showering, first aid, and tending to our sore feet, the hikers hit the happening* town of Waynesboro, PA. (Any place that had burgers and beer looked good to us, though. I had a great time there!) Dis-Orientation itself began a few hours later with dinner and a prayer service. Thus, our last three days as Jesuit Volunteers began.

* Denotes sarcasm.