Blistered Kind Of Love Read Online Free Page B

might hear. “You might not like it,” he added.
    I was floored. Duffy never talked about his fears, especially if they had to do with me—or us. I’d figured he must be nervous about embarking on a three-state hike with someone who was even more of a novice than himself, but if he was nervous enough to mention it, we could be in big trouble. Duffy was having doubts; obviously he wasn’t sufficiently impressed by my conquest of Turkey Mountain.
    Somehow, I’d have to prove to him that I could hack it.
    It was autumn, just seven months before we were due to depart for the West Coast and the start of our long summer’s walk. Duffy had created a spreadsheet detailing the miles we’d need to cover between water sources in the desert.
    â€œSome days,” he said, “we’ll have to walk more than twenty miles in the sun to get from one soggy creek bed to another.” There was an expectant pause as he tried to gauge my reaction. I shrugged my shoulders and feigned indifference.
    I’d read just about every Pacific Crest Trail and backpacking-related book I could get my hands on, including
The Complete Book of Outdoor Lore
by Clyde Ormond,
The Pacific Crest Trail: A Hiker’s Companion
by Karen Berger, and
Soul, Sweat and Survival on the Pacific Crest Trail
by Bob Holtel. But Duffy wasn’t sold. “Sure you read the manual,” I could almost hear him thinking, “but can you drive the car?” It was time for a trial run.
    Living in Pennsylvania, the natural choice was a weekend on the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest’s older, eastern sister. On one of our many tripsto the outdoor gear store, I found a book that listed all the best Appalachian Trail hikes in our area and picked a route along Blue Mountain Ridge, past Bear Rocks and Bake Oven Knob to Lehigh Gap.
    A few days later, after hours of loading, unloading, and reloading our rented backpacks, my first overnight outdoor experience started with a spurt and sputter. It took us about two hours to drive to the trailhead, where we parked and then made it as far as the edge of the woods before being greeted by signs saying “Beware of Hunters” and “Hikers advised to wear fluorescent orange.” None of our new moisture-wicking hiking clothing was remotely orange. Soon we were back in the car headed to Wal-Mart.
    It was a Friday afternoon around three o’clock, and Wal-Mart’s parking lot was packed. It was as if the only people working in town were the half a dozen Wal-Mart cashiers. Morbidly captivated, we took in all the mega store had to offer—including a high-tech video surveillance system with four cameras in the women’s bathroom alone.
    With a gasp of simultaneous relief and surprise, we found an entire aisle dedicated to florescent orange clothing. We tried on hats, shirts, jackets, even socks, but settled on three-dollar plastic vests. By the time we got back to the trail and started hiking it was 4:30 in the afternoon. The light would soon be fading.
    Near Blue Mountain Ridge, the Appalachian Trail climbs a rocky knife-edge and weaves in and out of boulders piled high by glaciers. Actually, I don’t think the word
trail
applies to the route we stumbled along. Imagine a wall about five feet high, pieced together with rocks about the size of pumpkins but not nearly so smooth. Now picture someone tipping over that rock wall and making you walk over the resulting mess.
    â€œDuring the last ice age,” Duffy read from photocopied pages of a guidebook, “Pennsylvania experienced a climate that frequently froze and thawed layers of rock. This periglacial cycle caused immense slabs of stone to fracture, leaving a ‘sea of rocks,’ or felsenmeer.”
    Occasionally Duffy would shift his glance from the rocks underfoot to the meaty packet in his hands in order to give such tutorials, but mostly we just hiked—and hiked quickly. We were determined to