Over the weekend Scoob and I
headed up to Green Ridge State Forest in Western MD for a hike and an overnight
camp. We set off around 11 am on Friday
and had our hiking packs and gear in tow.
The weather called for some rainy weather which had us a little on edge
since temps would be in the low 40s at night.
The drive to the ranger station was about 90 mins where we needed to
check in. We got permission to camp and drove
near our hiking site. We probably drove
a half an hour on little to no maintenance roads. We had to drive across the river
to Paw Paw, West Virginia to get some beers for the camp since there was
nothing for miles in MD. The town had
that little old quaint feel to it I guess this picture pretty much sums it up.
We had parked the car and started our journey down the Canal towards Paw Paw Tunnel which was built in 1836 by pure man power. They carved this tunnel through a 1,000 ft ridge. We thought about how many people who were here chipping and blasting away at rock close to 200 years ago. Today there was absolutely nobody in sight. The tunnel was probably the highlight of the trip. The tunnel is over 3,000 feet long but felt like about a mile. It quickly became pitch black, cold, and wet. It was hard to find our footing walking in the pitch black with divots and puddles. At the other side it opened up to steep rocks with mini waterfalls pouring down them.
We hiked for miles just surveying the landscape of mountains and rock faces to our left and the river to our right. We saw and heard a lot of wildlife, climbed up and down ridges, and crossed streams. We began to lose track of time and realized that our daylight hours were running short. We thought we would need a solid hour to establish a camp site, set up camp, and get a fire going. We realized that all we had was sheer cliffs to our right and the river to our left. With no sign of a valley we began to wonder if we were gonna have to climb up one of these rock faces. With the threat of severe storms we did not want to be in low lying ground close to the river. We finally found some terrain that was bearable but we needed a way to cross the canal without getting wet. We spotted a log that laid across the canal and realized this was our only option. So we tight roped across it with our packs on our back making this slow and difficult but we both made it across. We scurried up the hill and found a spot in between two ridges and next to a abandoned railroad bridge. We started setting up camp and assembling our tent. We gathered wood and tinder and set up a fire ring. We finally got the fire going and then a downpour came and completely ruined our hopes of a bonfire to stay warm and a hot meal. We decided to cut our loses and get our tent up before dark. We decided to eat tomorrows breakfast tonight and cook the meat in the morning if the elements cooperate. We ate our hard boiled eggs and sipped on our Pabst Tallboys until we decided to turn in. The first two hours of sleep were not horrible until I was woken up by what seems to be a bear that was passing through our camp. I was kind of freaking out while something was walking by our tent and by the twigs breaking and the noise this thing was making it certainly wasn’t a possum. I remained quiet and thought about how we had food lying around. The animal eventually passed but sleep was going to be tough. Next the winds picked up and were roaring around 50 mph and was making it impossible to sleep almost knocking our tent over. We also heard plenty of coyotes yipping in the distance which was pretty cool as long as it was in the distance. I got about one more hour of sleep towards the break of dawn and we were up and out around 7 am.
This trip made me realize a great
deal of things in terms of nature and modern society. Many of us look at people who are always
camping and outdoors and think they are missing out on something or “why are
they doing that”. These people have
found true joy and nature provides it.
There’s something to this so-called “roughing it” in the elements. It exposes a lot of our weaknesses and shows
how domesticated we have become. For me
this was not something I was proud of. I
felt like a little bit of a “landy” out there as Scoob and I like to call it. There were many areas where I wasn’t as savvy
as I thought I was. This was a little
disappointing but also encouraging in attempt to re-wild myself. We had trouble starting a fire but it did
start to downpour. Also we didn’t take
care of our food and store it in a safe place.
I also took my boots and socks off to cross the log but left them off
for about an hour while trying to setup camp.
My feet became wet and cold and with no fire they were going to stay
that way. We also had too much gear in our packs and made hiking rather difficult. While all this may seem minor if we had been in stranded in an extremely remote
part of the wilderness or it had been the dead of winter these all could have been
the difference between surviving and not. We hiked a total of about twenty miles between the two days and my body was feeling it. All in all this trip was a starting point to see where my outdoor skills
are and let’s just say I’m going to need some work especially if I plan on hiking
the Appalachian Trail.
