Life in the Ball Pit

Close my eyes for a while

And force from the world a patient smile

And how can you say that your truth is better than ours?

But I gave you all, I gave you all

The more people get off the trail the fewer women are out here. In fact, it has thinned out so dramatically that many days will go by without seeing another lady, leaving me alone with the often vulgar, smelly mountain men. Not that I mind, particularly, though I fear that the constant exposure is doing terrible things for my sense of humor and tolerance for lewdness. The men, in fact, have begun to call themselves the "Ball Pit" so our hiking bubble has affectionately become "Tobie and the Ball Pit". I think I accidentally provided this name the other night at the monastery when I deliriously  commented, while camping in a pavilion with 8 gentlemen, that I wanted to be in a ball pit, à la Chuck-E-Cheezes. They noted that I kind of already was and thus, a name was born. 

After we returned from New York City we got a late start on the trail to cover 12 miles. The hiking was quick and relatively painless and was over in just a few hours when we arrived at the Ten Mile River campgrounds - finally a campsite with a water pump and a privy! 

That night I slept restlessly and awoke in a sour mood. Everything that everyone said pissed me off and my body was uncooperative. My pack felt unbearably heavy, my legs stiff, my arms unwilling to swing my poles forward, wanting to lie lifelessly by my sides. After a brief stop at a deli just outside of Kent, CT we tackled our first climb and I felt like it was my first day out in the woods. I could barely make my way up the unimpressive mountain and when I arrived at the top I was shaky, light-headed and nauseous. I thought back to the tick I had pulled off myself in the city - could this be Lyme Disease? According to Red Knees my face was pale and I looked particularly out of sorts. We were halfway between cities though so there was not much to do but press forward. 

A few miles from the road to Kent, CT we ran into a hiker named Tilt-a-Whirl who offered us a ride into Kent at the bottom of the hill where his car was parked. We took a few hours in town to wait out the heat, have a leisurely lunch and charge up our phones. 

The next 11 miles to the campsite were buggy and relatively easy with the exception of some painfully steep stone steps that forced you to sit on your butt and scoot down to the next foothold. My mind was elsewhere, however, as we trudged down the hill. At the top of the mountain we had run into some men from search and rescue - they were looking for a missing hiker whose belongings had been found abandoned and who had last been seen walking with a rope and a bucket (they believed he had intended to commit suicide). They asked us to keep our eyes peeled on our way down the mountain so I necessarily spent the entire descent scanning the woods, expecting at any point to see a lifeless naked body (they had found his clothing as well) strung from a tree limb at which point I figured I would either a) respond heroically and use my much outdated CPR training to save the day or b) scream like a banshee, faint, and tumble down the rocks to my own imminent demise. Thankfully neither happened and as we arrived at the bottom of the descent we found more search and rescue organizing to take another look. 

We finally arrived in camp late after a chance run-in with fellow hiker Bomber (who we hadn't seen since Damascus, where he got off trail to accept a job with the ATC) and flash downpour and set up quickly to avoid the bugs. I have been feeling much better so I am hopeful that I do not have lymes but instead have some thrilling combination of heat exhaustion, dehydration, fatigue and PMS. Tomorrow we press on another 19 miles and we will be officially under 700 miles to go by the time we reach camp for the night.