Thursday, July 27, 2017 (Day 85)
The city is in a fog below. It is cool today. There is the breezy feel of rain.
Water is relatively scarce in Pennsylvania. I stopped to fill up at a spring downhill from the Peters Mountain Shelter. It was quite a steep climb down, but the source was glorious! I would certainly do it again. The water was gushing and clear and ice cold. I did not filter. I sat on a stone and drank deeply, with satisfaction. I drank two liters spring-side, before making the trek back up to the trail.
I stopped for a break slightly uphill from the shelter, and out of sight from passerby. It was a long break. Daylight was nearing resignation when I began hiking again.
After a few miles, I saw my first porcupine of the AT, lumbering down the trail. Oh, how splendid!
Not long after the sighting, I came to a tent-site. This would work just fine, I thought. Should it rain in the wee hours of the morning, I would have ample space to set up my tent.
My camp is silent; so silent. No breeze in the trees or chirping of crickets… just the buzzing of bugs, my breathing, and the occasional cracking of a stick or falling of a seed in the distance. This makes me happy. Somehow silence seems so infinite, so full of possibilities. It is like staring out in to a grand still lake. It looks like glass, so perfect and reflective and ripple free. It is almost unreal. Surreal; that is what the beautiful trance of silence is for me.
I reclined, satisfied, listening to the silent secrets of the night.