lost or found.

Hi, Jim:

It's been too long and now is a shameful time to realize that; now that you've up and vanished, without a word as to where you've gone or whether you intend to return.  Sounds like you've had your legs kicked out from under you as of late and your spirits and resolve have fallen down too.

I feel you there.

You don't need me to tell you that life is hard.  You don't need me to tell you that sometimes it's too much.  Or seems so.

Man, do I ever feel you there.

I remember you joking on a run that "the struggle is real" and is....it...ever.  I am not immune to the darkness.  It's crept in, terrifyingly so, on two separate occasions in the last 9 months alone, and, as you and I both know, that despair is all too real.

So, it sounds like you and I both "get it" in terms of being out on that ledge and having to come to some conclusion as to what to do about it.  To stare into that darkness and wallow in it or take some action, some step back towards the light.  And it seems to me that this is something we probably would have benefited from commiserating over.  You know, like together, not separately and alone.  That's how commiseration works.

Because now I'm floundering blindly in the woods, day after day, calling out your name, calling out my own name so you know who is calling yours, and listening to both names dissolve into the canopy without a reply.

Which really, really, really sucks.

I don't mean to judge you, but I'm worried you made the wrong call on this one.  We all crave, no, we all need some time away.  Some solitude.  Some just-please-no-more-noise-just-this-one-time time to ourselves.  We deserve it.  We're entitled to it.  But the people we love, the people who love us, the people we've committed to and who have committed to us, they also deserve to be told, in some fashion, that we're taking some of that time away even if we can't say how much time that's going to be.

My heart breaks that your heart may have broken, that it may have been breaking or broken for quite some time. My heart breaks to think of how many other hearts are now breaking even as those...hearts...don't...know...exactly why they're breaking or if and how to move on.

You are loved, Jim.  By people that I know you love.  By people you might not even know love you.  And where there is love there is forgiveness even if it's a forgiveness hard won.

But not knowing is intolerable and unacceptable.

Which is why I'm pretty pissed at you.  And pissed at myself too.

In being stubbornly determined to be so damned strong, we men are preposterously weak.  Sorry, Jim, but you are weak.  Weak like me and weak like every other "him" out there trying to go it alone, muscle through, man up, only to crumble beneath the unrealistic weight.  Alone, only because we choose to go it that way or because we've bought into the myth that we need to be able to handle it without any cracks in the exterior, help from anyone else, or any show of vulnerability.

And that bullshit myth is all too often bolstered and braced by an utter lack of vulnerable hands or reassuring words being extended our way until it's too late and we've already cracked, already crumbled.  Sure, we're first in line for rescues and search parties, but there'll be no crying on these broad shoulders until then.

You've been radio silent on social media for weeks.  Truant from the trail.  I didn't call or text.  Honestly and embarrassingly, I didn't even notice.  But how could I, being so busy manning up myself?  Going it alone.  And failing.  Not calling, not texting, not picking up on a friend's cracking and crumbling.

Not calling until now.

Here.

In the middle of a seemingly endless sea of ferns, blowdowns, sunstreams, and birdsong.  And an absence of you.

I hope with every fiber of my being that you're ok, Jim.

I hope with every fiber of my being that if you're not ok, and you're out there, and you're needing to be found, that we find you.

I hope with every fiber of my being that if you've fallen and perished, that we find your body, and bring it and closure home to your distraught family.  I do.

And I also hope with every fiber of my being that if you are out there NOT wanting to be found and NOT needing to be found, that you formulate some way to convey that to the people who love you who can then help convey that to the multitude of acquaintances and well-wishers that want you found even if they barely know you or don't know you at all.

So we can all stop crying out in vain, stop leaning plaintively into the hollow sound of our own grieving voices, and can begin broken hearts healing and start learning from this day forward to be more open, vulnerable, perceptive, and proactive in reaching out to offer help and to ask for help when we need it.

I love you, Jimmy.

Leon

amos.

I'd been out all night.

Starting from the parking lot just off of Route 322 below the Clark's Ferry Bridge that crosses the Susquehanna at Duncannon, I had headed north on the Appalachian Trail right around dusk, climbing up Peters Mountain, continuing past the crossing of Route 325, making an abbreviated loop up Stony Mountain on a portion of the unofficial Buzzards Marathon course, before returning along the AT.

Pace be damned, I had clambered up any boulder that looked interesting, stopped as often and for as long as liked to snap photographs, chatted with the many deer crouching silently in the illumination of my headlamp with seeming conviction that so long as they didn't flinch I couldn't really see them, and even sleepily serenaded a porcupine with an infamous Sir Mix-a-Lot song when it would turn and offer only views of its rear end.  I had paused frequently to listen to the night sounds; the whoo-whooing of owls, the downward, downward, always downward rushing of water, the soft, nearly imperceptible sound of caterpillar droppings drizzling from the forest canopy (yes, that's a thing), and, in the deepest hours of the night, the elusive, mesmerizing sound of silence.

Just before daybreak, the rain had begun to fall and over the next several hours it showed no signs of letting up.  As much as I had enjoyed myself, the piling up of miles, the early stage of sleep deprivation, the relentless rocks of Peters Mountain, and hours of being wet and chilled had caught up with me and found me picking my way along one of the last rocky outcrops with tired, sloppy feet, beginning to dread the final few miles of steep descent back to the trail head.

The clicking of trekking pole tips on rock announced that a hiker was approaching from just below my perch and immediately reminded me that I hadn't seen a single person actually hiking since I'd started.  During the night, I had passed the tents of many slumbering backpackers and in the morning I had waved and nodded at many of them as they peeked out of their sodden tents, huddled around smoky campfires, or went through the motions of breaking camp and packing for the day, but at no point had I truly come upon anyone hiking.

I stepped to one side of the trail to allow the ascending hiker clear passage.  He lifted his head, squinted his eyes slightly, and declared, "I know you" in an unmistakable Pennsylvania Dutch accent that was familiar and welcoming despite my never having met the man before.

"Backcountry Edge," he said, proudly gesturing at his pack and adding that it was the one I had "advertised on the Internet."

I formally introduced myself and asked him his name and where he was from, learning that Amos hailed from a small town located 4 miles west of the even smaller town that I had grown up in as a small child.

Amos in turn asked how long I'd been out and I shared my overnight adventure and admitted that I was feeling pretty done in.  I posed to him the same question and he told me that his "speed hike" had begun a short time earlier from the same parking lot I was headed toward and would end, he hoped, around midnight where the Appalachian Trail crosses over Route 645 just south of Pine Grove.

That's a 42 mile done-in-a-day hike.  I would finish my night/day at 37.

Noting how little gear he was carrying, I wondered aloud, "Will you camp when you get there? Will someone be meeting you?"

He grinned, shrugged, and replied almost sheepishly, "I have one of those push scooters, you know that the Amish people have."  It was stashed near the trail head and once he was done hiking, he would scoot himself the 15 road miles back home.

Smiling broadly, I said, "Amos, you've got a big day ahead of you. Don't let me hold you up."

"This is unbelievable, meeting you out here on the trail like this," Amos replied with a warm smile of his own and a "gee whiz" shaking of his head.

"It's been a pleasure," I agreed as Amos turned to go.

I watched him deftly navigate the ledge, slightly stunned that I had made his day.

He'd certainly made mine.

Those last few miles back to the car?

They weren't so bad after all.

you old buzzards, you.

Knowing full well what a cut engine in an unpaved lot at the end of a long car ride portends, Mamie had burst from the back of the car the second I popped open the rear window. Darting into and then immediately back out of the woods, she gave me a distrustful glance as she jogged to the other side of the lot to privately investigate the treasure she had excavated from the moldering leaves.

Following her and having a look myself, I couldn't decide if this skull and its Mamie-detached mandible were good or bad omens.

We were in Buzzards country after all.

Omens or not, dawn had broken, the sun was rising up off the eastern horizon, and all of Stony Valley invited adventuring from its roost just on the other side of Second Mountain at whose base we sat gawking from the valley of Fishing Creek.  It was time to lace up the shoes and get lost (or what felt like lost) for a few hours.

Neither Brian or I have ever run the full Buzzards Marathon course, weren't even sure we knew what trails or sequence of turns made up the course (which is to say, more truthfully, we were sure we didn't know), but we were certain that we were departing from the official, ahem, unofficial starting point of the infamous race that never was.

For those of you who are wondering what the hell I'm talking about, there isn't much I can tell you since the race really doesn't, perhaps never really did, exist.

Or did it?

Hard to say, but if you're curious (as I was and still am), here's a link that will let you draw your own conclusions:  Fact or Fiction? Lore of the Buzzards

As a quick aside, I believe I may have found the man who can tell me all there is to know (or not know), but my instincts suggest he may not give me straight answers, especially if I propose to write a definitive history of this near-mythical non-event.  Musings for another day and a different blog post.

Almost as soon as we stepped from the parking lot, our route began a steady climb of 700 some feet over about a mile and half.  The familiar yellow blazes of the Horse-Shoe Trail welcomed us early in the climb and I was reminded of coming the opposite direction on this same trail a few years ago when I had traveled the first 34+ miles of the trail on a long birthday run.  Going the opposite way and with the passing of even just a few years, I didn't recognize a thing, but that hardly mattered as we fell into a steady rhythm of movement and conversation.  We quickly reached the top of Second Mountain where the early morning sun cast long shadows and Brian and I gestured from one ridge to another, commenting on prior explorations.

Leaving the summit, we began a brisk downhill plunge that followed the straight arrow of an aging pipeline before hanging a sharp right to follow the Horse-Shoe Trail as it descended the ridge in more rolling fashion for the next 3 miles.  I did recognize this section of the trail and, as was the case on my first visit, I couldn't get over how long it seemed to take to cover that distance despite the fact that we were actually chugging along at a pretty healthy pace.

We had noticed fairly fresh bear scat near the top of Second Mountain and when Mamie crouched down into a defensive position and raised hackles I'd never seen her raise before, I was pretty sure we were about to get an up-close look at an Ursus americanus.

I don't possess any inherent fear of Pennsylvania's black bears, but, all the same, encounters remain relatively rare and the possibility of one definitely arouses a little adrenaline.

No such encounter materialized, however, and the at-attention stance of the hackles relaxed, signalling an end of our immediate concerns and allowing the adrenaline to seep away.

Down, down, down we continued before finally crossing the bridge over Stony Creek and then banking left to log a mile or so of rail trail on our way to the Water Tank Trail.

I wrote about the Water Tank Trail less than a month ago and, as it turns out, it isn't any less punishing in broad daylight than it is at night.  It was nice, though, to get on it this time without having first beaten up the legs with miles of self-correcting demanding ice, as was the case back in March, so it actually was a bit more manageable this go round.

Manageable is certainly a relative term and the rocks, downed limbs and steep grade still made for slow going and the rushing water of natural springs and winter run-off made for nice photo ops/chances to slow the pulse along the way.  Brian and Mamie began putting some time on me, but both were kind and patient enough to wait on me every now and then.

Rather than making the entire climb up Stony Mountain on the Water Tank Trail, we took a right-hand turn about a third of the way up the slope, following a trail dubbed Marcia's Madness and its orange blazes the rest of the way up the ridge.  Rumors would have us believe that this was true to the Buzzards course, but who can say?

Together, those two trails took us from the valley floor at roughly 180 feet to 1266 feet on the plateaued top of Stony Mountain in about a mile and a half.  To keep even the finickiest of masochists happy, they also threw in a healthy dose of rocks and roots in case the severity of the slope wasn't enough to render actual running a near impossibility.

Making yet another right hand turn, this time on to the Rattling Run Trail, we settled into one of the few real breaks of the day, a grassy track running north and east across the ridge top for a mile to a mile-and-a-half.

Red blazes to our left announced that we'd reached the H. Knauber Trail, our shortcut down to the Appalachian Trail below on the northern side of Stony Mountain.  No more than 100 yards onto the trail, we crossed paths with a hiker just about to top out on his way up from where we were headed.  The temperatures were maybe in the mid-60's but, despite looking strong and moving solidly (maybe because of this), the guy was sweating like it was a mid-summer 90 degrees with humidity to match.  After we put a little distance between ourselves and the hiker, I made mention of this to Brian and silently felt fortunate that we were going down rather than up.

Suffice to say, every drop of sweat staining that adventurous soul's shirt was hard-earned.  The descent of the H. Knauber Trail was a full-on screamer with big, deep in-cut steps and technical terrain the entire way.  By my Suunto's account, it gave away almost exactly a 1000 feet of elevation in 8 tenths of a mile.  By the time we reached the trail marker at the junction of the A.T., we were 10.5 miles into our day and my quads were well aware of the work we'd already done (and trying to ignore what might be left).  All I could think of was what that other guy had tackled by traveling the opposite direction.

Sheesh.

We swung west (left) on the Appalachian Trail and continued to wind our way down into Clark's Valley, a section with which I was more familiar, having been on that stretch of trail several times before.  Once we reached the bottom of the valley, we peeled away from the A.T. on a blue-blazed, new-to-me trail and began slowly working our way back up the ridge we'd just descended.

The sun continued to inch higher in the sky and the temperatures climbed too, marking the first real warmth of Spring. Our gradual ascending wasn't too taxing but I was beginning to want for calories, actual food to accompany the electrolytes that I had been doing a decent job of consuming along the way.  We walked for a bit while I tried to choke down a Snickers but, finding my always cranky stomach to be rather disinterested, I put the half-eaten candy bar away, knocked back a couple of salt tabs, and returned to running.

Soon thereafter, our route, having grown impatient I guess with the slow climbing, turned sharply left and started beelining for the top of Stony.  And, just like that, we were off on another 1000-ish foot climb squished into just over a mile.  Brian machined his way up the ridge with Mamie in tow while I trudged from behind in not-so-hot pursuit.

I may have imagined it, but I believe somewhere along that ascent, a small box was handed to me inside of which I found my own pathetic, beaten, scrawny ass, a humbling gift to receive, I'll have you know.

The top of the mountain did finally arrive, as it always does.  Or, to put it another way, I did finally arrive at the top of the mountain, as I sometimes do.  Even with beaten ass in hand, I was smiling.  My friends were waiting, the surroundings were beautiful, and the weather was absolutely perfect.  None of these things made me not-tired or any more filled with energy, but, all the same, they were there waiting and I was grateful.

We were back on the Rattling Run Trail, this time heading west instead of east but I was no longer cruising along the smooth, grassy double-track.  Not hardly.

I gulped down water, downed another salt tablet, and plugged away (this is an ego-protecting alternative phrase for walking) with knowledge of the long, gravity-promising descent of Rattling Run Road just a mile or two ahead.  That promise pulled me like a tractor beam.  Yep, like a slow, but persistent tractor...sputtering...in first gear...but, still, you know, persisting.

We made far better time on the meandering 3 mile drop that is Rattling Run Road and were rewarded with a view of the two miles of right-straight-up-the-mountain-and-damn-your-switchbacks pipeline that we'd need to cover to top out one last time on Second Mountain.

But not so fast.  The pipeline would disappear from view before we got started.  There was a creek that needed crossing and it was running high, knee-high at some parts, scrotum-high at others.  

Trust me.

Brian made quick work of the crossing, squealing and screeching, perhaps involuntarily from the effects of 50 degree water on vulnerable parts of the anatomy.  Or maybe he just likes to squeal and screech.  Again, who can say?

Mamie had a good long look at the situation and even without the same anatomical concerns as her companions, she still wanted no parts of our fording.  She doesn't mind water actually or mud or any type of questionable footing, but she is resolute in her wanting to be able to touch bottom and Stony Creek wasn't offering that luxury at the moment.

There's nothing quite like hucking a nervous 50-pound dog across a swollen creek on fatigued legs and a queasy stomach while your nuts shrivel up so tight they feel like they might burst.

Trust me.

We made it to the other side and I'm happy to report that Mamie couldn't have been any more dry.  Whew.

And then it was time for that pipeline.  I mean, then it was time for trudging through some of the thickest muck this side of the Everglades and THEN it was time for that pipeline.

Brian cheerfully said something about running up it and off he went.

What?

I watched him and Mamie go.  Watched them for a good 10 seconds.

Then I got down on all fours and vomited.

For real.

Once the spasms passed and I got back on two legs, I looked back the direction they'd gone and they were...um...gone.  Somehow I could see the whole way to the top of the mountain but couldn't see them.  I'd been man-downed for a few minutes, but they weren't that fast, not by that point in the day anyway.  A hundred yards away or half a mile, the point is they were long gone and I needed to start moving that way too.

Surprisingly, my legs weren't completely shot and I was still able to power hike which, while not as effective as running, is a whole lot faster in getting up a climb than walking, sitting or lying prone beside a puddle of your own puke.

Again, trust me.

It took a bit longer than I might have liked, but eventually I reached the intersection where earlier in the day the Horse-Shoe Trail had chosen a different compass setting.

I still had a good bit of ascending left to do, but I was getting there.  I vividly recalled the last time I'd come this direction and how brutal the climb had been from that point to the very top of the ridge.  I also, fortunately, remembered that there is one distinct false summit about 100-150 yards from the true top of Second Mountain.

Moments after mentally patting myself on the back for remembering that fact and avoiding the psychological letdown I might have experienced if I hadn't remembered, I found myself throwing up again.  True to my ridiculous form, it wasn't the kind of puking that produces any output, since my stomach had already been wrung dry.  Instead it was just a bout of spasms, a painful going-through-the-motions until my body accepted the fact that there wasn't anything else to evacuate.

Whether as a defense mechanism or some other character flaw, I always seem to find myself laughing after these episodes.  Perhaps it falls into the "might as well laugh about it" category and as stupid as that sounds as I type this, yes, you might as well.

So, topping out and discovering Brian and Mamie basking in the sun like two trail running pin-ups, I found myself laughing and happy, like always, to be out in the woods, among friends and still in possession of my flawed body and tenacious spirit.

"It's all downhill from here" is a dreaded cliche in ultrarunning, almost never true, but in this case it really was.  Less than 2 miles later, we were back in the parking lot, reflecting on the preceding hours.

Mamie humored me, as she always generously does, posing for an archival photo of the day's journey.

While I don't always bother to summon all the powers of my GPS, I decided to see what its charts had to report on our wandering and learned that we'd put in nearly 4400 feet of climbing and almost 21 miles.  My legs, like their owner, aren't very good at math, but they definitely concurred that work had been done.

Seems a full-blown Buzzards might have added my sun-bleached bones to those that Mamie had scrounged up earlier in the day.

Only one way to find out.

I can't wait.

constantly bee.

"Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are."

-Gretel Ehrlich

----------------------

Work, even work that you love, has a curious way of graduating from task to taskmaster, pushing us in whatever direction it chooses, sometimes by wheedling us with little victories to make it feel as though something is actually being accomplished and hence one MUST keep striving even harder.  Other times it simply tightens the figurative screws with deadlines and unspoken threats of the consequence of not plodding on.

My work screws get tightened every January.  No getting around it as competing priorities bottleneck.  Throughout most of the year which chore comes next is normally obvious and while they may not assemble in agreeable single file, my various duties, for the most part, do align in at least semi-orderly fashion.

But not in January.

I equate the first month of the year with regards to my work schedule to my driveway,  my family's two cars and the two cars owned by the tenants to whom we rent out our second floor.  Most days, the individual automobiles come and go freely without any obstacle, but every now and again, there's a car parked in the lane while its driver unloads groceries, a car idling in the road waiting to deliver its impatient, worn-out inhabitant from a day punching the cliche out of some clock, and another car waiting in the back with a passenger eager to escape to anywhere else but there.

Gridlock.

January.

The year wasn't even a week old and that old familiar weight was back.  Adding to the heaviness, there was snow and ice on the ground and temperatures were holding well below freezing with sustained winds that made it feel even colder.

I'm oddly fond of the cold anyway, but, regardless, the weekend would find me out of doors no matter the conditions as I desperately needed to expose my senses to something other than a monitor's glow, the obnoxious ring of a telephone, the bland scent of instant coffee being reheated (yet again) and the smooth, texture-less touch of keyboard keys.

My name had been added to the roster of a nearby trail race, but, not longing for only-talking-about-running company, directive flagging or stocked aid-stations, that entry was spurned for the lure of the percussive crunching of two and only two feet punching through crusted over snow, an unaccompanied, taxing uphill clamber and the nothingness-and-allness-all-at-once of a forest trail barren of billboards, traffic, machinery and chatter.

Early Friday evening I drove Lily, Piper Bea and their (and my) beloved Aunt Nancy north to Juniata for a weekend with my mother and stepfather at their cozy, forested retreat.  Peeling myself away from the no-don't-go charm of the cabin and its wood stove, I trudged back to the car, steered it home to Manheim and wedged in one final four-hour session at my desk before retiring to bed.

The scarce treasure of sleeping in found me rising refreshed at 8:00 and a couple more hours in the office ensured that I could wander away the afternoon in the woods unencumbered by obligation and spend all day Sunday sledding and playing in the snow with the kids.

The winds were howling along the Susquehanna River as I stepped out of the car in the lot that sits just beneath Route 322 at the eastern side of the Clark's Ferry bridge.  The southbound Appalachian Trail practically falls off of Peters Mountain and into that lot before crossing the bridge on a pedestrian walkway, hanging a hard left after departing the bridge, only to cross another bridge, this time over the Juniata River, before arriving in the community of Duncannon.

In order to reach Cove Mountain and leave humanity behind, you need to navigate the entire length of town.  The Appalachian Trail avoids the main drag by stepping one block further away from the river and following High Street to its end.  Perhaps it was the knowing that this was all just leading up to the elevation gain and quiet I was craving or an embracing of the simple act of movement after a week of too many sedentary hours, but, whatever the reason, this mile or two of sidewalk and concrete proved more enjoyable than I would have predicted.  Most of the inhabitants of Duncannon seemed content to spend the day indoors, protected from the biting wind coming up off of the icy river, and with rare exception the only faces I saw were hunkered down behind glass, staring obliviously at television screens, peering out the windows of their homes at the odd passerby (me) or fixed on the road ahead from behind-the-wheel perches.

Crossing the old, crumbling bridge over Sherman's Creek, I glanced to my left and caught sight of Peters Mountain in profile above the far riverbank from where I'd started.

A few hundred yards later, the AT left the road at last and, as though it was eager to lose itself as quickly as possible, it climbed 750 feet over the next mile and, not surprisingly, hadn't seen much traffic in the frigid conditions.  The grade was significant enough all on its own, but a couple of inches of snow and any icy sheath over every exposed rock, root and branch made me relieved to have lugged along Microspikes on the paved portion of the run that now emerged from my pack to provide traction.  Alternating between running and hiking, I inched my way around the ridge as it remained parallel to Sherman's Creek while climbing higher and higher above it.

There is basically only one switchback on the entire climb and a motionless runoff stood sentinel at that very bend in the trail.  Why I can't say, but the sound of water trickling covertly between rock and ice never ceases to give me thrills.  Pausing there for several minutes, drinking in the music, I did not fail to notice that it was THE only sound to be heard and for that I silently rejoiced.

After another short but steep slope, the trail passed right by Hawk Rock which offered a dizzying view of the valley below and, to the east, full visibility of Duncannon and the confluence of the Juniata and the Susquehanna.  If this vista could be accessed by car, complete with neat rows of vehicular parking spots and maintained bathrooms, it would no doubt be frequented by every inhabitant of this part of the state as well as anyone passing through.

Call me spiteful and selfish, but I'm glad it's harder to reach, its natural beauty already tainted by the spray paint and scrawling of disappointing (though enterprising) taggers.

There had been a couple of sets of aged footprints that had joined the AT from a bisecting trail a half mile or so before the overlook, but feet had gone no further and the track afterwards was completely devoid of any sign of recent ambulation.  Admittedly, Hawk Rock alone more than justified the effort but those other visitor had missed out on the easygoing miles that followed, as the singletrack ran the top of the ridge, slaloming gracefully through the trees while serving up just the slightest of undulations.  Even in the snow, I was able to move along at a brisk pace and my thoughts drifted for just a moment to the speed at which one could travel this section on surer footing.  No need to follow that thread as the day was too beautiful to waste wondering at others.

Because of my midday start and having taken many minutes decompressing at Hawk Rock, I gently reminded myself that I wouldn't be logging the miles my body wanted to as my heart and mind adamantly wanted to end the day in my children's presence.

I decided that reaching the Cove Mountain shelter would be goal enough.  It came up faster than expected, announced as all AT shelters seem to be with a proper wooden sign and indicators of the distance to the next opportunity for rustic lodging.

A spur trail to the left dropped down a 200 yard incline and led right to the open face of the shelter.  Two stacked bunks lined both of the interior side walls of the structure and hooks aplenty stood ready to hoist packs, clothes, gear and food out of harm's way or at least the reach of mice (or so the hooks would have you believe).

I lounged for a moment in one of the lower bunks and tried to determine which roost I would choose if I were to stay the night, on one of the upper bunks that were tucked slightly beneath the eaves or right where I was, closer to the floor and more exposed to the outside but with less room for cold air to swirl under me.  A matter to be decided some other evening with the proper gear in tow.

Having documented my stopping by, stating publicly my intent to return, and feeling refuled by some crackers, Gummi Bears and not-surprisingly-ice cold water, I was ready to be on my way when something pinned to the wall caught my eye.

Corny perhaps, but the sentiment made me smile and I hoped all at once to run into the WoodSpirit and to BE the WoodSpirit.  Maybe I would cross paths with another hiker making her or his way to that very shelter and he or she (or they) might look at that very sign and wonder, "could it have been?".

Who knows.

I hadn't seen another person since leaving Duncannon behind and I wouldn't see anybody until  getting back off of the mountain.  Did get another peek at Peters on the descent and the way it was framed so beautifully through a break in the trees seemed like all the luck I could have asked for.

The sun was slipping and sliding out of the sky, descending toward the river and casting Duncannon in shadows intermingled with hues of purple and orange.

Crossing back over the Susquehanna, the wind that had seemed subdued while in the forest reestablished its dominance in an intensity of sound and strength.  Hearing the whizzing of automobiles on the other side of the barrier on my left while gaping to my right at the current below, choked with creaking and colliding sheets of river ice, I shuddered at the thought of freefalling from the bridge into the dark water and  succumbing to its relentlessness.  I couldn't decide if the stark, miraculous beauty of the sunset was complement or contrast to the inhospitable cold and unapologetic gale.

It is what it is, as they say.

We are what we are.

As I always try to remember to do, I thanked nature for letting me be whatever it is I am.

January, do your worst.  February will be here soon enough.

general specific.

A number of want-to-go-heres and got-to-go-theres have been taking shape in this rattletrap of a head of mine, but holiday bustle and proper priorities have the fruition of those schemings waiting on another day.

Opportunistically (always), I have continued in the meantime to explore bite-sized adventures more easily digested in the snack-length windows of time available in late December/early January.  Sticking with the introduced theme and accepting the gift of mild post-Christmas weather, I went to visit a real-life rattletrap that lies mouldering a few hundred yards off of the Appalachian Trail in the St. Anthony's Wilderness east of Harrisburg.

But I'll get to that in a bit.

December had ushered in snow, melted it off, brought a bit more and then turned around and jacked up the temperatures.  On the morning of the 28th, the sun was beaming and the prognosticators were calling for the mercury to top out well over 50 degrees.  The only acceptable reason for not being out in it was putting in a few fun hours of indoor rock climbing with my wife and daughters.

While the girls headed from the gym to the movie theater for a viewing of the latest Pixar film, Mamie (a/k/a Sugar Pie) accompanied me to Clark's Valley between Peters and Stoney Mountains about 10 miles east of the Susquehanna River.  I didn't have any specific mileage in mind, but our intent was to point ourselves east, following the Appalachian Trail northbound toward and perhaps past Rausch Gap.  A couple years ago, I had come the opposite direction, starting in Swatara Gap and turning around just 4 or 5 miles shy of the parking lot from which the dog and I would be departing.  The first few miles would be a retracing of the route Jefferson and I had followed the day I ran the Horseshoe Trail from its start/finish on the top of Stoney Mountain to Campbelltown to mark my 37th birthday.  Many more miles had been logged on the AT since then, but it had continued to bug me, pettily I suppose, that those few miles in between had remained unexplored.

Mamie couldn't have cared less about what had or had not yet been covered, but she was ready to go wherever it was we were going. In the rush to get started, I had forgotten to fill the hydration bladder in my pack before leaving home, but the stream at the trailhead just off of Route 325 was running high and graciously lent a few liters of water to which I added a purification tablet before uttering the "go get 'em, girl" the dog had been patiently awaiting. 

The first 3.2 miles came and went quickly, as Sugar Pie set a brisk pace climbing the 1,000+ feet to the summit of Stoney and the intersection with the Horseshoe Trail.  Curiosity coaxed me to peek at the HT trail registry and, remembering how fun the initial descent is from there down to Rattling Run, I nearly modified our plans but shook off the temptation, nodded toward the monument that marks the terminus of the trail in a vague manner meant to indicate that I would return soon, and then jumped back on the AT for the first true ground-breaking mileage of the day.

The next section proved wonderfully runnable, tracking mostly along the top of the ridge and eventually downwards, all with little rock, comparatively, to the terrain with which I was more familiar in the miles that would come later.  There were a couple of melt-fed streams to cross and passageways of rhododendron to glide through, but, except for a few slushy footprints, we had the trail to ourselves.

We clambered over the rocky gouge where an old incline used to once reside, shuttling coal from the mined shafts higher on the ridge to the waiting-to-whisk-away rail lines in the valley below.  Soon we reached the ruins of Yellow Springs Village which was abandoned in 1859 after what coal could be harvested had been depleted.  Except for some diminishing foundations and crumbling stonework, little remains besides the mailbox that has since been erected to house an AT trail registry.*

Another 5 miles would deposit us in Rausch Gap but, having heard many tales of an old stranded steam shovel (my research revealed that it's actually an early gasoline-powered shovel, but that's not nearly as aesthetically pleasing to the ear/eye) on a spur trail somewhere in between, I was strongly entertaining the idea of a side trip.  After tiptoeing through a minefield of good old Pennsylvania rocks for the next 2 miles, Mamie and I were staring at the sign that signaled the arrival of our detour.

I wasn't entirely certain how far we'd need to travel along the Sand Spring Trail to lay eyes on the General, but with only 1.7 miles from where we stood to Route 325, I figured we couldn't be looking at more than a 3 mile diversion.

The trail descended from the AT and required a rock hopping across Rausch Creek.  A two-foot-long panel of rusty metal wedged in a notch of a tree confirmed that we were still on the right track.  I was surprised to see that the trail climbed steeply soon after and it was nearly an all-fours endeavor to gain the top of the slope.  It was apparent that there hadn't been much recent foot traffic and between the severity of the grade and the leaf litter, my climbing was a pretty sloppy showing.  Reaching the high point, I expected to see this rumored shovel greeting our (my) huffing and puffing arrival.

No such luck.

Faded blue blazes announced that we hadn't managed to lose the trail but there was no sign of any ancient machinery.  Before we'd gone more than 100-200 yards, yellow blazes advertised a side trail heading in an easterly direction and I was sure that the General was waiting just around the bend.  The trail dead-ended at a Jenga-worthy stack of conglomerate rock that provided a breathtaking overlook of Second and Blue Mountains to the south.  It was a vantage point well worth reaching, but offered no sign of our quarry.

We backtracked to where we had left the Sand Spring Trail and hung a quick right to continue on our hunt.  Almost immediately, the trail aggressively gave ground, heading down into Clark's Valley quite steeply.  A few inches of snow and even ice on rocks and downed trees clung to this, the leeward side of the ridge. Sugar Pie vanished from sight while I struggled to keep feet beneath me.  The sun had fallen low in the sky over the last half hour, but it was significantly darker with the shadows cast by the ridge now rising behind us.  It didn't seem like there could be much more trail remaining before we would hit 325 and that either meant that we'd passed the General or that it rested much closer to the road than I had first believed.

A good spill was followed moments later by a second fall.  I decided that pushing on and losing any more light would likely mean having to follow the road back to where we'd parked the car as clawing our way back up this side of the ridge and then picking our way down the Sand Spring Trail again on the other side was going to be some difficult navigation after the sun had set even with the headlamp that I'd brought along.

With a whistle to cue Mamie back my direction, I began the climb back the way we had come.  The ascent worked out better than expected, mostly because I was guided by the holes I'd just punched in the snow moments before.  The amount of sunlight still available when we topped out was a pleasant surprise and the differences between either side of the ridge due solely to their positioning to sun and wind was a marvel.

Still, more light didn't mean much light and I hurried to get back down to Rausch Creek before darkness arrived.  As the hunk of metal in the tree came back into view, it became apparent where I'd made my mistake.  That metal was actually the indicator of where to turn to find the decrepit shovel.  Though there was nobody there to appreciate the gesture, I rolled my eyes at my "duh" and hustled to find what we'd come seeking.  The trail was faint and grown nearly shut with rhododendron but after following it for no more than 50 yards, I discovered the path widened considerably and soon the old machine materialized.

In the low light, the dog cowered at the sight of the once-mighty General.  The moniker, I've since learned, comes from the word now just barely visible on a rusty rear panel and the last visible remnant of the namesake General Excavator Company that manufactured the shovel.  As noted, it isn't an actual steam shovel, but considering that GEC is said to have gone out of business in the 1920's, it is a pretty impressive example of an early gasoline-powered shovel.  It rests in a slight depression and the surrounding area bears signs of the excavating that the General at one time must have been capable.  Even with evidence that it was once fully functional and put in work right where it still sits, it is hard to figure out how the General ever arrived in its perch and at least as strange to understand why it was left there.

I nosed around a bit longer and, yes, in a fit of childhood imagining, I even pictured myself operating the old shovel.  Not for long, though, as I decided to take advantage of the final moments of light to hop dryly back across Rausch Creek and return to the AT.

I checked the GPS.  We'd covered just under 10 miles and had to be another 3 miles from Rausch Gap.  My legs still felt great and Suge, no doubt, had plenty of gas in her tank, but I had been guilty on other occasions of pushing on because of feeling fine only to discover shortly thereafter that I didn't feel fine anymore and had that much more ground to cover in returning to the trailhead.  I chuckled over the fact that due to my out-and-back modus operandi, the day I can say I've traveled every inch of the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania is the day that I can also say that I've traveled every inch of the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania twice (at least).

Fifteen to twenty minutes later we were back at Yellow Springs and the sun was gone.  Mamie and I stopped to enjoy a makeshift in-the-dark dinner of water, crackers, cheese, Honey Stinger waffles and dog kibble (we both had some of everything, though I did pass on the kibble).  I took advantage of the darkness to strip down and slip on a pair of tights under my shorts (don't be fooled, I am, to the world's chagrin, not so modest as to wait on the cover of darkness...consider yourself warned).  Other than donning a pair of lightweight gloves and turning on my headlamp, I didn't need any other bolstering, as temperatures still hovered in the low-to-mid 40's.

The rest of the return trip to the car was lovely though uneventful.  My fitness held up, but we did slow the pace considerably on the the final descent off of Stoney due to a thin and initially deceptive layer of ice that had begun building up on the rocks and logs that had been merely wet during the daylight hours.  Not being careful in those last couple of miles would have definitely made for a tale full of events, but I was much happier (and healthier) for having nothing to report.

We got back to the car just under 5 hours after we'd left, having whiled away 19.5 miles.

An ever present grin kept me company the whole way home as Mamie snored loudly and contentedly from her backseat roost.  Who knows if we'll be back specifically to visit the General, but we will definitely return to St. Anthony's Wilderness as there is much more exploring still to be done.

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*Over the years I've found little snippets of information here and there on Rausch Gap, Yellow Springs and the surrounding area.  The first half of my childhood was spent in nearby western Berks County and my father and uncle spoke reverently about this part of the state and I always hoped to do my own exploring one day.  After we moved to Lancaster County, I spent much time adventuring closer to home and didn't actually get up to Raush until many, many years later.  While doing a bit more digging in the days before and after this outing, I stumbled on the following page, compiled by J.W. Via, that included several photos, maps and illustrations that I hadn't before seen:  St. Anthony's Wilderness

I'm grateful to have found it and encourage you to check it if you're interested in far more detailed information on the area and its history.