Little Papers Big Country

I have been slogging through southern Ohio for a while now. If it seems like I've been stuck here for an unreasonably long time, it's because I have found every possible excuse to come home and avoid walking. Not surprisingly, I have discovered I enjoy the company of my wife, air conditioning, proximity to a full refrigerator and the rest of the luxuries of home far more than I enjoy walking in summer heat and sleeping on the ground at night. And wimp that I am, I have seized upon every opportunity to get out of the woods and return to my nice life at home.

But now it's time to make tracks. I have spent hours studying the route through Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, and I'm ready to walk purposefully to this year's finish line with no more malingering.

Got a new pair of boots over the weekend. The last pair was starting to give me blisters. And I bought some bad tasting, heavy-as-lead energy bars to eat on the trail. I am as prepared to march as money can make me. I just need to start walking, which I will do this morning.

A couple of notes from the past two weeks:

Stayed in the campgrounds of two different state parks, and have discovered a whole culture I never knew existed. People lug astounding quantities of stuff to campgrounds in an apparent effort to recreate their home-life out in the woods. One day I staggered into Hocking Hills State Park and was assigned a campsite next to a family who had brought two tents, a gazebo, three dogs, four bicycles and a forest of tiki torches to make their campsite cozy. My little backpacker tent next door looked puny and pitiful by comparison. And the guy next to me on the other side brought his own firewood and started his logs a-burning with a blowtorch. Looks like camping and roughing it are not synonymous.

Beer and heat injury are a toxic combination. One day Julie was to pick me up at a little store in Tar Hollow and bring me home for a visit from our New York son. I walked about 18 miles in high heat and
humidity and got to the store a couple of hours before Julie's scheduled arrival. I was elated to see that the store sold sandwiches and beer! Bought a gigantic ham sandwich and a can of beer and sat at a picnic table outside to consume them. Heaven on earth! Next thing I knew I was nauseated and so dizzy and disoriented that I couldn't even sit up, let alone stand or walk around. I crawled on my hands and knees to a patch of shade and lay there for an hour, until my head cleared enough that I could at least stagger to my feet. And I was shaky for the next 24 hours. A little computer research revealed that I had the classic symptoms of heat exhaustion, and that drinking beer was guaranteed to produce the effects that I experienced. I stand now as living proof that temperance is not only virtuous, but also by far the safer alternative to consuming alcohol. Too bad!

I have now figured out how to avoid the Buckeye Trail, or at least follow it only when it suits me to do so. By walking on roads, I can steer around difficult terrain and make considerably greater progress than if I followed the fiendish trail through the woods and brambles. Some days I started and ended at points on the trail, but walked on roads in between, and shaved ten or 12 miles and hours off the prescribed Buckeye Trail route. The only exceptions I make  to my new commitment to Buckeye Trail avoidance are in cases when the trail is the best route, or the trail follows roads, or the trail passes through territory worth visiting. I stayed on the trail through the spectacular rock formations and gorges of the Hocking Hills, and was glad I did. The rest of the time I opted for faster walking and greater progress on roads.

Last week I looked so scruffy and pitiful that a guy in a pickup truck pulled up alongside me and offered me a five dollar bill. I laughed and thanked him for his kindness, but passed.

I'll start up today in Sinking Springs, where I stopped last week, and will drive relentlessly to Cincinatti and entrry into Indiana, the next state on the trip.