It has been over 9 months since my teenager and I have been on the C&O Canal trail.  Last summer, we completed a 30+-mile multi-day backpacking trip.  Ever since, we (and by "we," I mostly mean my teenager) have been too busy to fit in even a day hike.  Also, a lot has happened in the past nine months.

This spring day was no exception.  It was Good Friday-- the day, as it happened, between NBC News' report that the U.S. was threatening a preemptive strike on North Korea, and the Day of the Sun, the Saturday when North Korea was expected to display the kind of provocation that could lead to that preemptive strike.  So I was walking with that "this could be our last hike before World War III starts" feeling.

It was a beautiful day.  It was sunny, the temperature in the 60s (the teenager took off their sweater and hat just after the above photo was taken), and spring wildflowers were everywhere.  The trees were leafing out and still that intense yellow-green.  Animals were sort of scarce, with the exception of birds and bugs-- no turtles this time-- but the flowers made up for it.  We talked a lot, about big stuff, but only a little bit about the potential end of the world.  

This stretch of the trail first crossed the restored Catoctin Aqueduct, then took us down 2-3 miles of pleasant, unassuming, flowery woodland path, before arriving unceremoniously at a 200-unit RV-friendly campground.  This campground, where we ate our lunch because we were hungry, also seemed to be undergoing serious construction, with ongoing loud machinery noises, trucks lumbering back and forth, and even a giant crane taking down tree limbs.  There were also Bobcats scooting ponderously about.  It was not even remotely peaceful, and I felt sorry for the people who were staying there anyway.

After lunch, we walked one more mile down a wide gravel road to reach the town of Brunswick.  This was not the nicest part of the walk.  There were cars.  Brunswick looked as though it might be worth exploring, but we did not explore it.​  We just turned around and went back down the gravel road.

I would be remiss at this point if I did not include this photo which my child insisted I take.  This architectural detail is part of a water treatment plant along the road just shy of Brunswick.  My child was greatly amused by the "doors-to-nowhere" effect.  Water treatment plant workers: be careful!  There were also some random wooden barn-door things (not shown) stuck on the sides of the building, again apparently just because they looked rustic, not for any actual purpose.

​So, anyway, back to the pleasant flowery path.  It looked like this and was, in the quiet parts, entirely lovely.

​We saw a pair of wood ducks, which hid
behind a tree after they noticed us noticing them.  As always on the canal towpath, we heard a ton of woodpeckers but could not see them.  And we got some photos of this egret:

There was also this, sticking out of a crevice in a tree, so high up neither of us could have reached it.  A very tall man might have been able to (and indeed must have?).  It was a very long, thin jawbone of something, with teeth, along with some other assorted sticks and stuff.  Very Blair Witch Project.

We weren't scared, though.

​Extra credit participation: what kind of animal is this??

Oh, yes, my friends, you read that title correctly.  31.3 miles.  We did it!

Even as we speak, three days after our return, Elsie the indoor cat is industriously sniffing all over my foam sleeping pad, which still smells, no doubt, of soil and the subtly different air of the Potomac riverbanks and bug repellent.  I would like the same aura to cling to me as long as possible, too.  Coming home is a shock, even after such a brief time.  My daily life seems like a thing of such infinite and overwhelming complexity compared to the simple, nomadic trudge forwards that is backpacking.  So I look with trepidation on my to-do list, assortment of creative endeavors, and complicated interpersonal relationships, and dream of the neat 3-oz. box that is my camp stove, the perfectly designed object that is my mini-lantern, and putting one foot in front of the other.

Our first day, we traveled 11.2 miles from Pennyfield Lock to the lockhouse at Edwards Ferry, which we had rented for the night.  The weather was lovely-- low 80s, dry-- and walking with our packs, though a little challenging on hips and feet and shoulders, was really not as difficult as I'd feared.  I folded some rags that I'd brought along under my shoulder straps as padding-- next time, I will buy some shoulder pads meant for seat belts.  I have a mean red bruise on one of my collarbones.  My kid got some incipient blisters right away, and treated them with a 2nd Skin blister kit that I'd had the foresight to pack.  There were some mosquitoes, not so many as to be unbearable, but enough to require application of bug dope (kid laughed hysterically whenever I used this term.  "Why do you call it bug dope?"  I dunno, I just do.  Perhaps it's regional?).

​The hardships were minor, just enough to make us feel strong and brave, and for us to be happy to put down our packs periodically, and for the instant coffee I made at lunchtime to taste wonderful.  In other words, perfect.  And we saw lots of animals.  Here is a list I made, just from this first day:

• A lizard, about 8 in. long, reddish-brown, whitish longitudinal stripes (probably broad-headed skink)​
• blue heron
• many turtles
• many cardinals
• a raptor (osprey?) holding prey
• voices of many bullfrogs
• family of ducks
• guy on bike with "Jesus is my lifeguard" shirt (kid insisted I write this on the list)
• 2 barred owls, together (we surmised mother and child)
• egret
• lots of squirrels

In the "before" picture of me, you can see that I am wearing a gray fitness tracker on my wrist, a Garmin Vivofit to be exact.  I was very excited to log what I estimated would be about 30K steps per day on this trip.  In the mid-afternoon on this first day, I checked the Vivofit and saw that I had 25K steps already.  I explained with pleasure to my kid that I was bound to break my previous daily record of 29K steps, set in November of 2014.  Can you see the instant karma coming?  An hour or so later I looked at my wrist again.  The Vivofit was gone.

Not one step of my hike "counted."  My kid explained, with perfect rationality, that this made no difference to the actual amount of exercise we were getting.  Only someone who has not worn a fitness tracker would take this position.

​However, I had to try and move on.  We were, at that point, not far from our first night's rest:

Does that look creepy?  Not from the outside?  Oh, reader, you have no idea.  I wish I had taken some inside photographs (with flash; there was not enough light in that house, even in the morning, for daylight pictures).  Everything on the first story of this 1830 house was covered with a thick layer of dust, as though no one had entered for a hundred years.  No electricity or water, of course-- I expected that-- but I didn't expect the darkness, the dust, the many spiders, and the at-least-one-rat that rustled behind my cot just before bedtime, then proceeded downstairs and ripped into Saturday's breakfast bag of oatmeal and trail mix in my pack.  My kid loved it.  The repetitive, slightly irritating call of fledgling barred owls (which we recognized from our encounters earlier in the day) accompanied our lantern-lit evening card-playing-- until some guys setting off fireworks disturbed the creepy night peace, at least.  I did not get the best sleep on this trip.

We did have our own picnic table and fire pit (at left, beyond photo frame), and we had fun while it was still light, building a fire and toasting marshmallows (something kid desperately wanted to do), then going down to the boat launch to look at the sunset over the river.

Friday was another day.  As always, I felt better in the morning.  I was happy to get up in the early light and use my little camp stove to make coffee at the picnic table, leaving the kid to sleep for another half hour or so while I got things organized.  We were on the trail again by about 9:00.  By 9:30, kid had tried various blister treatments and ultimately decided to abandon their hiking boots in favor of the sneakers they had brought along as back-up (I was wearing sneakers in the first place, with flip-flops to wear "in camp").  The sneakers were better, despite the increased risk of a twisted ankle.  I was impressed with my kid; there was no whining or talk of quitting, only matter-of-fact measures taken to solve the problem and improve comfort.

By noontime, we were in White's Ferry, the only location along our hike that could be said to have "services" (beyond firepits, portapotties, and water pumps, all of which were available every few miles).  We'd planned to have lunch at the small store/restaurant there, and enjoyed a break to sit in the air conditioning and eat a hot, non-"trail" meal.  However, my kid-- who's been a pescatarian for the past several months, but decided to suspend their pescatarianism for the duration of the hike so that they could eat jerky-- ordered a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on a bagel, as well as what turned out to be a giant basket of cheese fries, and drank a cold bottled Starbucks mocha.  Once we got back on the road, kid was immediately hit by a wave of nausea.  They looked very green, and for a couple of hours we had to stop every so often so kid could sit or lie down, or perhaps stumble off the trail in hopes of throwing up (they found an egret that way that we would not otherwise have noticed).  Poor kid.  I was well-prepared for this trip with many first-aid and pharmaceutical supplies, but it did not occur to me to bring the anti-nausea medication, or the Tums.  

But my kid, as before, kept on going.  It really blew me away.  We took a little extra time, but ultimately kid would stand back up, dust themselves off, and walk a bit more.  Again, there was no talk of quitting, or even quitting-for-the-day, even though it was hot, and humid, and kid felt queasy.

Mid-afternoon, we took a nice long break at a campsite to make peppermint tea and rest.  As luck would have it, the only rainstorm of the whole trip blew in while we were sitting there, and we were able to cover up all our gear with raincovers, sit calmly under a surprisingly-effective sheltering tree, and wait it out, while other hikers reported having gotten soaked.  Beautiful luck.  After the rain, the world was a hot fog, bright green and steaming.  Uncomfortable for humans, but it brought out the animals, especially the turtles and frogs, many of whom migrated from the safety of the canal onto the damp grassy verge of the trail, seizing the opportunity for travel.

Some additional animals we saw on this day:

• purple martin
• some kind of salamader (probably red-spotted newt)
• more barred owls
• a fox
• 2 large snapping turtles wrestling in the water (I took video, but my cheap website plan doesn't allow me to post it here)
• bluebird
• more great blue herons
• zillions more turtles
• many frogs (jumping, difficult to catch sight of)
• deer​

So, that night we camped at the Indian Flats campsite (mile 42.5).  When we arrived, there was a man there with his two sons-- a group we'd run into repeatedly on the trail, as they were hiking a similar hike to ours-- and he strongly advised me not to set up the tent in the spot I was eyeing.  It would heat up in the sun, he said, and then hold onto the heat for hours after sundown.  His voice dripped with amused condescension, as it had when I tried to share the news about our unique snapping turtle sighting and he said, "oh, yeah, we've seen lots of turtles too."  Either he didn't know the difference between types of turtles, or he assumed I didn't.  Kid and I went over to inspect an alternate, more shaded and indeed dank camping location.  The ground there was bare, and muddy from the rain a few hours before.  I did not have a groundcloth for the tent.  The sun was even then being eclipsed by hazy clouds.  Kid and I rested on our packs, trying to politely wait until the man and boys had left before we ignored their counsel and set up the tent in the spot, formerly in the sun, where for this very reason the ground had dried out.  But they took ages filling up their water bottles at the pump, and I do mean ages, as though they were challenging us to openly defy them.  My kid, in an undertone, identified the man's unsolicited advice to me as "mansplaining," indeed not the only time this happened on the trail.  Kid was right.  So I set up the tent exactly where I wanted, with the menfolk watching from the pump.  They didn't say anything.  My kid, on the other hand, was thrilled.

As it turned out, the only thing wrong with the location of the tent was that it was not very far from the picnic table (technically OUR picnic table, since it is a single campsite, but in practice these sites are often shared); and just after dark three young dudes arrived, sat down at the picnic table, and started drinking beer and hanging out.  They had no light sources except for cigarette lighters, so they sat in the dark and continued talking loudly until 2:30 am, at which point I awoke from my intermittent doze, exited the tent, and shouted something passive-aggressive and inarticulate like "Guys!  it's 2:30 am!  Do you think you might be quiet at some point?"  They grumbled into acquiescence and flicked their cigarette lighters for what seemed like half an hour straight while they attempted to arrange themselves for bed, then were finally quiet.  When I awoke again three hours later, ready to get up and make coffee, their beer cans and sweatshirts and lighters were still strewn all over the picnic table, their bodies (encased in sleeping bags) scattered nearby in seemingly random locations, curled pathetically here and there in the grass like slugs.  They'd brought a whole case of beer, I saw, but no tent or flashlights.  Morons.

Using the picnic table for breakfast was out of the question, so I gathered up everything I needed, stepped around one dude who was lying across the path down to the river, and took myself and my stove over to an immense hollow log near the riverbank.  I had already thought, the previous evening, that it would be a perfect spot to perch with my coffee and read in the early morning.  I was conscious of one wakeful but hung-over guy's eyes on me, perhaps envious as he watched me perform my neat morning routine, lighting the tiny stove, filling the pot, finding the instant coffee and oatmeal and trail mix in my food bag, sitting with my book.  I bet he would have liked some coffee.  But I did not offer him any.  My pleasant (now that it was morning) sense of superiority to these hapless young men confirmed my momentary sense of myself as a Backpacking Goddess.  Screw you, muscular and self-assured dad who thinks a woman and a teenager can't possibly choose a tent site for themselves.  He looked at me like I was stupid, I'm not stupid--

The rest of the day proceeded with surprising ease.  We had only left 8.4 miles to go on the final day, knowing we'd need to meet my husband at 5:00 for a ride home.  We were there by 3:00.  Lunch was eaten at Calico Rocks campsite, only 3.3 miles from our endpoint.  We took our time.  Also, after being not-so-hungry the first couple of days, I was by now starving, wanting and seemingly able to methodically consume everything in our pack.  This must have been the beginning of the distance-hiker hunger that is so legendary.

My kid continued to hike with a good will, even though their feet were full of blisters and they had cut their instep the previous evening on a tent stake in the dark, prompting short-term panic and distress.  In the daylight, it didn't matter: they said they had more energy, in fact, than they had on the previous days.  They are a Backpacking God/dess too.  

We saw fewer animals on the last day, perhaps because the weather was drier, or maybe because we were focused on the endgame and not paying as close attention.  We did see a long, slim, mostly-black snake on the path-- though we almost overlooked it in its perfect stillness-- I am not certain of the type, but am guessing it was a ribbon snake.  We also saw a pileated woodpecker, only the second time we have actually seen one along the C&O, though we have often heard their booming hammer.

The best part of the last day?  Kid said they'd like to do this again.

Some last day pics:​

​When we got to Lander's Lock, we felt like we could have hiked much farther; but once we'd flung our packs into the grass and settled down to snack (relentlessly) and read for the next two hours until my husband arrived, we didn't even want to get up and walk  down the boat ramp as far as the outhouse.

Fortunately for us clueless (biological) females, we were not allowed to simply enjoy the successful conclusion of our chosen hike in peace, but were in fact approached by an aggressively fit, spandex-wearing man on an expensive bicycle and enlightened by a short treatise on all the other area hikes which we should surely try and which were implicitly preferable to the one we were actually on.  He had, of course, done these hikes himself, including the 40-something-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail that passes through Maryland and which, he said, he had "day-hiked."  I hope he meant that he hiked it in day-long sections; but, even if he meant that he hiked the whole thing in one day, I basically do not care.  UNSOLICITED.  Do you understand, mansplainers?  Were we talking to you?  Do you know anything about us?  What gives you such confidence that the women of the world, even perfect strangers, are awaiting your precious information and insights?  I'LL PUT MY TENT WHERE I FUCKING WELL WANT TO, AND I'LL HIKE WHERE I WANT TO, AND IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.  WE ARE FINE.

Also, I don't want to hike the Maryland section of the Appalachian Trail.  I want to hike the whole thing.

Here is a link to the National Park Service map of the C&O Canal trail.

Nearly three weeks have passed since my last post full of angst and worry, and my kid and I are close to prepared for our backpacking trip.

Which is to say, we have our gear (see gear list below); we have practiced putting up our tent and lighting our miniscule stove; I have made a list of food to bring, though I haven't bought it yet; and we have packed a good bit of our gear into our new packs (not the food, but most of the rest) and hiked a couple of miles with them, just to see how it felt.

It felt good.

Without the food and last-minute items, the packs weigh only about 15 lbs.  I am estimating they will end up being about 25 lbs, give or take.  That is an ideal weight; conventional backpacking wisdom says we could carry up to 40, but I really wanted to keep it under 30 lbs.  I am mainly concerned about volume now.  Are the packs I bought (35 L) too small to fit everything?  We will see.

I learned, from my two-miles-hike, that I need to be careful to wear a shirt with sleeves that come well down my arms, so the backpack straps do not chafe my shoulders and armpits.  Similarly, my socks need to come up past the tops of my new, unbroken-in sneakers.  Basic lessons, but important.  More important was the lesson in which we both realized that hiking with our backpacks was not so terribly hard.  The scene from Cheryl Strayed's Wild in which she, an inexperienced backpacker, packs all of her REI purchases into her new pack (or hangs them off the outside of her pack, because she has bought too much to fit)... right there in her motel room, on the very morning when she plans to leave on her thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail... and then goes to pick up the pack and finds she literally cannot lift it... this is the story which is stuck in my head forever.  I expect to be unable to carry my pack, to be stunned by its weight.  But no, having taken Strayed's book to heart, I have considered weight with every single one of my packing decisions, quite ruthlessly.  And the pack is beautifully manageable.

***
Between writing the above, and what is below, I finished the food shopping and we packed our packs.

Here's what, between us, we will be carrying: 

• about 4 liters of water, divided into 5 bottles
•  trail food: instant coffee, tea bags, instant cocoa packets, nuts, dried fruit, and trail mix, baby carrots (for the first 24 hours), 2 Cup-O'-Noodles, jerky, graham crackers, chocolate spread, and marshmallows, Ritz crackers, wasabi peas, Snapeas, and some chocolate snacks.
• a camp stove that is basically a metal box the size of a deck of cards, and fuel tablets for it.
• 2 tin cups
• 2 garbage bags to keep our clothing, etc. dry
• 1 extra pair shoes, 2 extra tshirts, extra socks and underwear, extra shorts, a sweater-- for each of us.
• rain jackets
• sheets and sleeping pads
• 2-person backpacking tent
• books and a deck of cards
• maps and notes
• sunscreen and bug spray, hats
• flashlight for each and extra batteries, plus a battery-operated mini-lantern that looks like a fat candle
• first aid supplies, tiny scissors, blister kit, prescription medication, allergy pills and ibuprofen
• pocketknife
• camera and notebook, 2 pens
• hand sanitizer, little bottle of camp soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste, hairbrush
• $60
• 2 hand towels
• lip balm, bank card, mints, phone (the essentials from my purse)
• tampons and pantiliners (unfortunate timing there)

That sounds like a lot, right?  But we fit everything in, just barely.  And the packs weigh precisely 25 lbs-- well, my kid's is 25.2.  Here they are, standing at the ready.

Tomorrow we go.

This is a post about fantasy becoming reality.  I have long been an avid consumer of the backpacking memoir-- Cheryl Strayed's Wild being the probably unsurpassable pinnacle of achievement in this genre*-- and, for close to twenty years, I have dreamed of doing a long-distance hike myself.  (I had a boyfriend once who promised to hike the Appalachian Trail with me.  He also promised to marry me; I think we broke up about three weeks later.  Somewhere in our couple of months of crazy romance, though, we did manage to take a 39-mile hike together over two days, in 95-degree heat, sleeping on top of a sheltered picnic table in a public park in a wild rainstorm.  The fact that this remains a happy memory, even though the young man in question is a very unhappy memory, should tell you something about my love affair with the idea of distance hikes.)

Anyhow.  While I dream of distance hikes, the reality remains very different.  The longest hikes I take, of late, are a) back and forth across the floor of a very small restaurant-- which can add up to four or five miles during the course of a shift-- or b) a few miles down the perfectly flat C&O Canal towpath, and back to the car.  Even the latter have been occurring only a  few times a year, at best, due to schedule limitations and the limits of my teenager's interest.  Several things are true that I don't want to be true.  I am out of shape.  I am getting older.  I am afraid to hike by myself (not afraid of injury or misfortune or of animals, but of men).  On the other hand, I rarely have anyone to hike with, and I am constitutionally much more suited for doing things on my own-- I hate having to talk all the time, and I like being able to make my own decisions.  I'm not the hiking club type.  So, except in my dreams, very little hiking, let alone backpacking, actually takes place.
    
That is about to change, just a little bit.  And I am suddenly scared out of my wits.

So, sometime when we were still living in fantasy-land, my kid and I agreed that it would be fun to do a multiday hike along the C&O Canal towpath.  We have a fantasy of someday walking the entire trail (184.5 miles), and so far we have accomplished... 20 miles.  In about 2 years.  Of course, we've actually walked twice that, because each time we've parked our car, walked a few miles, and then retraced our steps.  Still.  Progress is slow.  So... wouldn't it be fun if we could get a good chunk done all at once, and NOT have to retrace our steps?  My kid enjoys camping, and we have never camped together (WHAT?? this just illustrates how distorted my self-image is).  So I suggested a backpacking trip.  To my surprise, kid embraced the idea.

So excited!!  I lived with this vague fantasy excitement for months.  And then, it hit me that this venture is actually supposed to happen in just a few weeks.  And I realized that I have absolutely no idea what the fuck I am doing.  Somehow I imagined kid and I walking along in the usual way with our daypacks full of small lunches and water bottles, maybe a book or two for rest stops, but with the luxury of days ahead of us and one night reserved in a real lockhouse!  Um, the lockhouse part is real.  Other than that: I think we might need a few more supplies.  Like enough food for three days and more water (although thankfully there is some water availability along the trail).  Like a tent and sleeping pads and light sources and raingear and ways to deal with inevitable blisters.  Pocketknives and sunscreen.  All the stuff you need to have with you when you are fucking camping.  And, surely, we will need proper packs to carry all this stuff in, which we do not have: either the backpacks, or quite a few of the other items.  And also.  Kid and I are not in great shape, we have not practiced carrying loaded packs, and I have perhaps hugely overestimated how far we can walk given the heavier load.  10 miles a day, give or take, doesn't sound like much under normal circumstances-- but the thing is, every time I have tried to go this far with kid, there has been much complaining, about feet and back and hips and knees.  This is without loaded packs.  Do I really expect the greater romance of a backpacking trip to entirely overcome kid's achy feet and intolerance for pain?  And why am I blaming kid?-- I am the blister queen.  In fact, I have one right now, just from wearing a particular pair of sandals on a walk of about a mile and a half.

What if we only last for 3 miles and then need to call someone to pick us up, and our cell phones don't work out there?  My cell phone doesn't work fucking anywhere.

This could be really, really bad.
​
So, the up side here, for those of you unfamiliar with the towpath, is that we will be quite close to civilization.  The trail, for the most part, runs between the Potomac River and various access roads.  We will probably not die out there of dehydration, and there aren't any cliffs to fall off of.  (Well, there are, but they are not on the trail and we will be careful not to fall off them.)  If we can't cut it, we will probably be able to figure out how to bail.

But I don't want to bail.  And I don't want my kid to bail.  I want to do this.  I want to push through hardship-- and, yes, I know I have set us up for hardship-- and succeed, and meet whatever we encounter, which hopefully will not include men bent on violence, but I digress.  Another reason to bring a pocketknife, though. 

This afternoon I am going to REI to check out their backpack rentals, and maybe take advantage of their equipment expertise in general.  I say "take advantage" because I know I do not want to pay REI prices for most things, and feel vaguely guilty about browsing without much intent to buy.  But maybe I can get a better sense of what I need and want, how much it weighs(!), and whether it makes more sense to rent or to purchase outright.  I'm doing this preliminary scouting without kid, so that I can't be talked into any impulse purchases.

Really, though, the rentals and purchases should probably be made by next week.  That gives us two weeks to do things like practice putting up our tent, and try walking around with the loaded packs, and think of all the small items we need that we almost forgot to bring.  June 30 is the day of reckoning.  In my heart, I know that I am going to love this.
​

*But, also, Bill Bryson!  Jennifer Pharr Davis.  Leslie Mass, who somehow managed to irritate and bore me (along with, it seemed, many of her hiking companions), and yet stick in my memory like no one else.