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There's a hiker rite of passage called the "four-state" challenge: In 24 hours or less, you hike 43 miles from the Pennsylvania/Maryland border, through West Virginia and just over the Virginia line. As you can probably guess, we did not attempt this rather dubious tradition. We did a "four-night challenge" instead. We are "thorough-hikers" and don't like to rush through things. I'm glad we didn't, or I wouldn't have gotten petted by the cashiers at the dollar store in Smithsburg, MD, or prayed for by a couple of evangelists in Boonsboro, or allowed into the Asaro's pizza parlor while my parents ate. I get away with a lot! By the way, Maryland is just as rocky as PA, but it has lots of hills, too. In Harpers Ferry, West Virginia we visited the Appalachian Trail Conference headquarters. They are the administrators of the A.T., but they are not bureaucratic or stuffy. They let me come inside and hang out, and I enthusiastically fulfilled my duties of greeting all visitors with a merry howl. We got our Polaroid photo taken, I signed the register and I got to meet "Towser," a carved wooden Scottie dog once owned by Benton MacKaye--the visionary who dreamed up the idea of a footpath from Maine to Georgia back in the 1920s. The only hiccup was that I munched a bird at Laurie Potteiger's house. She invited us over for lunch at her home instead of a restaurant so that I could come in, and I decided to show off by catching a titmouse. This mortified Momma because Laurie is the Information Services Coordinator for the ATC, and they frown on dogs hiking the A.T. for the very reason I demonstrated! But she didn't get mad at me, or at least she didn't show it. She told Momma, "That's Trudy's instinct. If she had killed a rat, you would have praised her." I couldn't have said it better myself. |
Katrina Aid
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Copyright 1996-2005 Jim Greenway Questions? Suggestions? Broken Links? Let me know. SARTECH I(tm), SARTECH II(tm) & SARTECH IiI(tm) are all trademarks of the National Association for Search and Rescue (NASAR)
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