Caleb and the Connecticliffs
From our New York City adventure we continued east into Harriman State Park on a weekend, where droves of day hikers interviewed us about thru hiking. It's nice to feel like a celebrity now and then. We told our stories, answered the usual questions, and made our way to the lowest elevation point on the Appalachian Trail: the bear cage in a zoo on the west bank of the Hudson River.
On the other side of the river we camped at the baseball field at Graymoor Spiritual Life Center, where they provide water, port-o-potties and some basic supplies for hikers. They also had softball equipment, so we played some ball.
That night we also camped with Ketchup, a banjo-playing hiker I had met at Trail Days in Damascus months ago. I accompanied his banjo using my bear canister as a drum. I was happy for the rare opportunity to play with another experienced musician on trail.
A few days later we walked into Kent, CT where the town maintains a welcome center complete with restrooms and coin-operated showers. We cleaned ourselves up, including a visit to the laundromat, then continued into what I call the Connecticliffs. This is where the trail traverses up, down, or across the side of a rocky cliff. It's more climbing than hiking.
The night of Kent day we camped at Stewart Hollow Brook Shelter. Here we met an unnamed hiker who appeared to be traveling with nothing but a tote bag full of food. As I talked with him, it became apparent that he was having some trouble discerning fiction from reality. He smoked some resin out of an empty marijuana pipe and then wandered off. Feeling like I should contribute to the group's safety around an unpredictable individual, I sat up in the door of my tent for a while to watch.
Some time after I laid down, I felt something wet land on my cheek. As soon as I sat up to figure out what was going on, it jumped away. It turned out that a medium sized frog had infiltrated my tent. I was happy to let it stay and eat bugs all night, and I named it Caleb after the peak we had just come down from.
Caleb is a Pickerel Frog, one of the only venomous frogs found in North America. They release a very mild irritant when threatened. After the morning eviction, I rinsed off my hands just to be sure.
That morning we discovered that tote bag guy had slept on the floor of the privy. I needed the privy, so I woke him up and he moved to the now vacant shelter. We never saw him again.
Our next stop was my hardest night on trail. We decided to camp on the summit of Tyringham Cobble, a nice vista without established tent sites. My tent is large so I decided to try sleeping without it, using a bug net to protect my head. Soon the mosquitoes were swarming my and biting anything they could reach, mostly my shoulders through my shirt. I crawled into my tent, using it like a bivy sack, but they could still bite me through it and it felt suffocating. The inside of the tent was still wet from the previous night, so it stuck to me. There's something about being stuck in a bad situation, unable to sleep, just waiting for the morning.
In the morning we got to pick up sodas from a unique trail stand, a refrigerator in a tiny shed by the road. A nice start after a rough night.
