![]() Everyone I met in the Shenandoahs is weeks behind me. Almost everyone I started out with in the deep south is weeks ahead of me. I guess I’ll be starting over with a new bubble of hikers. So, I walked on alone, with the morning trail all to myself as usual. Gus, the little traitor, didn’t even look back over his shoulder at me. Can’t wait! A New BubbleĪfter I walked across the border, Northstar and Gus turned to head back to the van. I’ve been told that the trails are all easy walking, I’ll probably need a sweater most of the time, and that there’ll be no more ticks or poison ivy. I’m really looking forward to the cool, crisp air and the soft, pleasant trails of the middle Atlantic states. Virginia was my favorite, though I somehow missed the “flatter” part of Virginia where everyone said I’d be able to easily knock out 20-mile days. ![]() Spring in North Carolina and the mythical “state” of Tennessee was so beautiful. Early spring in the southern AppaLATCHchuns was fantastic, even if the trail itself was a chore. And what the heck is it with seven different kinds of gizzard in the buffet line? However, I’ve had to work hard for the past three months to say Appa-LATCH-chun, and will be happy to revert back to the more natural and grammatically correct Appa-LAY-shun. NorthĪll of which is to say that I’m not highly invested in the whole North-South thing. My ancestors, however, were abolitionists and helped with underground railroad, or so I’ve been told by the family historian. Arizona had not yet become a state during the Civil War, though it was mostly populated at that time by former Texans and other Confederate sympathizers. I’m a Yankee by birth (not the baseball team, though…when the Brooklyn Dodgers went west, we were left only with our hatred of those pinstripes until the Mets showed up… but I digress), but I have lived more than twice as long in Arizona as New York. But when we crossed the line, I switched to The Battle Hymn of the Republic, a critical mistake, as that became my earworm for the next eight hours. The state line is also the Mason-Dixon Line, the unofficial boundary between the South and the North. Northstar drove me out to Pen Mar Park and decided to walk Gus and me up to the Pennsylvania Border. ![]()
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