So now Wayah rolled slowly along. He couldn't just stop and wait for the Vikings because he would run out of food. His mail drops were already sent and waiting in post offices ahead. All he could do was stretch his food and move slowly. He took his time, rarely hiking more than ten miles a day. Pennsylvania was, in the beginning, some of the easiest, most level trail so far, and hiking for only three or four hours a day, Wayah had a lot of spare time. The trail ran up onto low ridges and stayed on them for long stretches before dropping down to the dry valleys. Often the trail would run through and between fields of grain or corn. The hiking was cake, but the heat was coming on. He would check every side trail, stop at every view, climb any rocks, and nap in the sun. When it looked like rain he would sit under an out-cropping and read Siddhartha again. The days were lazy and lonely. There were other hikers, more in fact than usual, but most had started in Harpers Ferry, and the few thru-hikers to be found were strangers from behind going faster and disappearing quickly. They knew his name, but were surprised to hear that he was the Viking Lord, expecting to see him surrounded by dozens of Viking axemen. He was amused to find that many people were unclear on the size of the horde, but for now he was the Wolf, traveling alone until his fellows caught up.

    Wayah spent most of his time alone. He hiked with Kit Kat through open, flat fields during her last days on the trail before getting off in Duncannon. He spent a day with a guitar player who had isolated himself in the woods to quit smoking. Wayah would camp near the new hikers, talking and helping and laughing with them, but they didn't sit down to pot-luck, and it was at dinner that he felt alone.

     The Wolf strode serenely out of the wet trees into a moist clearing. The grass was still glistening from some light rain earlier in the day, and the toes of his boots were black from the water whipping off the grass. The leather all over the boots had once been black but now was a weathered, cracked gray. Squirrel's soles had come off just before he went home, and Wayah wondered how much longer his own boots would hold out. With over a thousand miles underfoot they were going strong, but the leather around the toe and sides had many little and a few large slashes from every rock he had kicked or tripped over, and the edges of the sole were threatening to separate.

     There were two small lean-to's that looked more like scale models than shelters. He walked to the first one and looked around the inside. It was a typical, if small, shelter. There were empty food bag hangars dangling from the overhanging roof, a pair of old socks someone had left in the comer, and nailed to the left wall was a metal box with a flap on it. He flipped open the lid and pulled out the tattered spiral notebook with "Birch Run Shelter Register" scrawled on the front with a magic marker. Leaning his pack against the lip of the sleeping platform, he sat down and read. The register belonged to someone he didn't know. Inside the front cover a message asked that the notebook be returned to the owner when it was full and offered a reward to the person who did (a common practice). It would be quite a souvenir to have one of these registers with the thoughts and comments of so many hikers known or otherwise. Some hikers carried a blank notebook with them in case they came to a shelter with no register or a full one so that they could leave their own.

     Wayah flipped through the book, stopping to read the entries of hikers he knew or who had written humorous entries in the past, and glanced over the rest since he had the time. This register was dominated by a discussion of what one did or didn't need on the trail. Such discussions were common, often arguments between the same groups of people who would likely never meet each other. Arguments over purist ideology, or what it meant to be a thru-hiker seemed to rage endlessly. They gave the Vikings a chuckle. "Hike your own hike." How many times had they heard it? It didn't matter to those arguing, though, so Wayah found it best to make fun of them. He remembered a time in Virginia when he and Squirrelfight were on a ridge and needed water. There was a path to a spring, but it went straight down the sheer wall of the ridge. They decided to leave their packs at the top, bringing only their water bottles. Squirrel had joked that if their packs were stolen they could continue hiking down the trail with their water bottles saying to everyone they met that anyone who needed more than a water bottle, a pair of boots, and a pair of shorts had no business being on the trail. Wayah took the chewed cap off the ball point pen that was hanging from the register and wrote his entry, wondering when Squirrel would read it.

     Squirrelfight read Wayah's register entry with a grin and then looked at the date. He was still eight days behind Wayah. The rain was pattering on the tin roof of the shelter and running in streams to the muddy plot just in front of the shelter, throwing little sprays of muck on anything near the ground. Squirrel loved reading the registers. While some people used them simply to record their passing and others felt the need to expound their political views, there was always an abundance of silliness. Right now he was constantly checking the dates of Wayah and Jones to see if he was gaining on them at all, and would do a small dance to celebrate whenever Wayah spoke of a zero mile day he was taking. But it was entries like this one at Birch Run Shelter that pleased him most. He got the joke and thought it was funny, but funnier still to Squirrel was the thought of those who would miss the joke.

     When Squirrelfight had left the trail in Harpers Ferry he had expected to be gone for a week. Two weeks later he was back in West Virginia hiking alone for the first time since North Carolina. It was a bit of culture shock leaving the trail to see friends and family for so long knowing that his other family was leaving him behind, continuing without him. During his break he had not hiked one mile. He had celebrated his sister's wedding, gotten new soles on his boots, eaten lots of mom's home cooking, stayed up after dark watching movies, and had gone to see the Grateful Dead. He had a great time but was anxious to get back to his other world. At home he was not Squirrelfight or a Viking of any sort. He was also having trouble sleeping inside a building in a bed with lots of room to roll around.

     Traveling back to the trail he stopped in D.C. for a couple of days to visit friends. It was only an hour or two drive back to Harper's Ferry from there but with five of them in the car it had become a sort of short road trip. They walked with him along the trail for about a mile where they stopped for a swim in the Potomac until it was time to head back. They said farewell and were gone. Squirrelfight had some walking to do.

     Trying to catch someone on the trail is no easy task. If someone is chasing a person who is 50 miles ahead of them then they must hike seven miles more than that person is hiking every day for an entire week. Wayah and Jones were at least 100 miles ahead of Squirrelfight when he got back and he was in no shape to be doing extra miles during that first week. He had acquired a cold just before he returned and couldn't seem to shake it. His legs were still in working order but his feet were having toe and blister problems that were slowing him down. In addition, the late June heat was far from ideal for big mile days. Arriving at camp 37 miles from Boiling Springs on Thursday night, he realized how ridiculous it would be to run there before noon on Saturday in order to reach the post office before it closed for the weekend. Those miles would be much more enjoyable over three days than they would be over one and a half. Boiling Springs was the end of a 96 mile week. The 100 mile week was a respectable pace, but not one that would catch the Vikings any time soon.

     Squirrel knew that about now Wayah would be expecting him to catch up. It had been three weeks, which to Wayah's knowledge meant that Squirrel had been back on for two weeks after missing only one. Wayah didn't know that Squirrelfight was still 100 miles behind him in Boiling Springs. Squirrel gave himself a headache just thinking about it. He knew how far behind he was and he knew that Wayah didn't.

     It was so refreshing for Squirrel to be back in the woods. Back in the woods where he could run and jump and climb and play. Back in the woods listening to bugs and birds squeaking and singing and lighting up the time of day. Back in the woods where he could breath fresher air and drink cleaner water and hike every day. He was meeting new people all the time, but he missed his friends. When he introduced himself as Squirrelfight, hikers would inquire about the Vikings. To his astonishment many people wanted to hear the story about the Privy Dunker. He quickly realized that they had taken the register entry seriously, so rather than deny it, he perpetuated the myth by saying he didn't want to talk about it and quickly changed the subject. People would confide that they had laughed and laughed while reading about his misfortune, but they did not push him to discuss it. He wished he could go back and read the entries that followed his and Wayah's creation in that register, but the response he received was more than satisfying.

* * *

     cartons full of tap water that locals had provided since there was no water nearby except a river. A river flowing through a town is about the worst place to drink from, second only to standing pond water. The heat was picking up of late. He had sent his heavy rain gear home weeks earlier, and his mother had sent him his ultralight rain jacket which would collapse to the size of a fist. He also sent back his heavy fleece in exchange for a lighter fleece jacket. He had only been cold once in the past weeks. It had rained so hard for so long that day. He had thought it a godsend at first, taking off his shirt and letting the rain cool off his skin and run down his legs, but it kept raining and raining and he had turned very cold. He stood under a tree for a while hoping for the rain to stop, but it wouldn't, and his body cooled from standing still. Hypothermia was a very real danger, even in the summer, and he started hiking again, looking for shelter. Finally near a road he found an abandoned building full of broken glass and trash and spray painted graffiti, but out of the rain. He fired up his stove, cooked a hot lunch, and let himself warm and dry by the stove.

     Now in the mountain town of Port Clinton, he couldn't figure out where the Vikings were. They should have caught up days ago. Wayah had been hiking very slowly trying to let them catch up for a long time now. He expected to see them coming up from behind every time he stopped. Now he was beginning to wonder if they had gotten off the trail for good. lt just didn't make sense. Jones had been in a foul mood the last time Wayah saw him, but quit the trail? And Squirrel. There was no reason in the world for him not to come back as soon as his sister said, "I do." So he sat in the pavilion all day and the next, reading and writing and going to the diner down the street for breakfast.

     Near the end of the second day he was walking down the long street that wound its way to the post office, and he could see two hikers walking towards him under the overcast sky. They were both shorter than him, one skinny and one stocky, but what he saw was the stockier one's bouncing swagger that screamed out "Jones!" Closer, he recognized that the other hiker was Jokers, but Squirrel was nowhere to be found. The two Vikings hadn't seen any sign of Squirrel since they hiked out of Harper's Ferry. Jones had been off for a week and Jokers had arrived in Harpers Ferry just in time to join him. If Squirrel was only a couple of days behind them, then he wasn't trying very hard to catch up. They figured he must have been delayed, and would catch them anytime. Jones and Jokers had been keeping a medium pace to catch up to Wayah but not get too far ahead of Squirrel.

     They all took another day in the pavilion at Port Clinton, eating well and trying to yogi a ride into a nearby town that had a movie theater. They weren't able to get all the way there, but they managed to get rides to various local landmarks and by a grocery store where they picked up some Ben & Jerry's. Jones had brought new friends with him from the trail behind. Among them was Sir Renity, whom Wayah hadn't seen since the first weeks on the trail. The bandy legged veteran stared at the Wolf, wondering who this stranger was who shouted his name before recognizing Wayah with hair on his head and face, his body lean and starved. Sir Renity had never known that the Viking Lord, who was always a week ahead of him, was the quiet lad with the shaved head he'd met that first day. Stepping Wolf and Blista were hiking with Sir Renity. These two friends from Massachusetts hiked near each other though often not together. They wore their athletic builds like warriors but had that trail worn wisdom in their eyes that spoke of laughter and adventure. They would make excellent Vikings. They brought news from far behind of friends who had left the trail through injury or weariness and told of many adventures of their own.

     Squirrel did not come the next day, and the Vikings left the Port Clinton camp, setting their sights on Delaware Water Gap which marked the end of Pennsylvania. They would make it there by the Fourth of July, and hopefully Squirrel would be with them.

Bake Oven Knob Shelter:
     "Pulled another long day with Leap Frog yesterday from Windsor Furnace. I can smell the Vikings. I can taste the goat's blood in my mouth. It's running down my chin and through my beard. Gotta go."

     Wayah shook off the discomfort that had settled into a gap in the back of his neck as he was thinking about the tension in camp. He filled his water bottle from the faucet and took a sip, grimacing. The water in towns always tasted like a warm, sour imitation of the mountain spring water he had become accustomed to, but water it was. He sat outside and cooked his supper alone on the concrete walkway in front of the motel as the sun sank deep red into the valley over the town. The soft bed and air conditioning would feel good that night.

     In the morning he felt restless. He had woken up later than he wanted to. The sun hadn't come in past the curtains, and the room was dark as night but for a few stale streaks of light at the corners of the curtains. He would reach Delaware Water Gap today, and Squirrel should be aiming for it about this time also. Could Squirrel have passed this little motel already this morning without knowing? He should have left Squirrel a note on the trail by the road. Stupid. Wayah pulled on his pack from where it had leaned on the wall all night. It was still packed since he hadn't had to make camp, and Wayah hefted the new food weight from his mail drop. The full pack was down to just over 50 pounds now that it was summer and he wasn't carrying his winter gear. When he started it had been over 60. They say not to carry more than one third of your body weight, but that allowed 70 pounds for Wayah.

     He dropped off his key and walked down the road to the trail and up into the woods. He stepped solidly from rock to rock, hounded by the feeling that Squirrel had already passed him. The rocks of Pennsylvania were trying at times, grueling at others, but now he waded among the endless, fist sized rocks with little effort. Down the trail about a mile he ran into a couple of hikers coming the other way. They were clean and smelled like shampoo. Day hikers for sure. Wayah asked them if they had passed any other hikers that morning.
     "Sure. There was a pair of them we passed about an hour ago," said the stocky man in front. His dark hair was neatly combed.
     "Did you catch their names?" Wayah probed, hoping for evidence of his friends passing.
     "No, they just humped past us."
     "Did one of them have crazy hair like a mop?" Wayah asked, knowing that everyone Squirrelfight met remembered his hair if not his name.
     "Sure," said the day hiker smiling.

     Wayah moved on possessed. He glided over the rocks and along the bumpy trail. Crazy hair could mean almost anyone on the trail, but Wayah could feel his friend nearby, and he strode over the rocks as fast as his body could navigate the rolling, sharp boulders. He had been half walking, half jogging for two hours when he came to the first shelter. If Squirrel had passed him he would surely have signed in at the shelter. Wayah wound his way up the short path from the trail to where the shelter sat above a dry clearing beaten down in most places to bare dirt. In the shelter a gaggle of what could only be college kids sat snickering and playing with a stove, dressed like they were headed to a frat party. From the edge of the woods came a hiker with the swagger of a newly emptied bladder, but more than that, it was a familiar swagger. The hiker wore unfamiliar purple jean cut-offs and a white tank top, browning with layers of sweat, but the heavy boots, dreaded hair, and clear eyes could be none other than the Viking Hero.

     "Squirrelfight-snakebite-bobcat-wrestlin'-Viking-Hero!" Wayah yelled from under his uncontrollable grin, "How you doin'?" Squirrelfight looked up in shocked recognition. The last thing he had expected after his weeks of trying to catch up to the Vikings was to have the Viking Lord come up behind him. Squirrelfight took a second lunch while Wayah rested and they told each other of their time apart. Wayah could tell Squirrel had been off the trail for a while. There was something from off of the trail that lingered around him like a secret. Seeing him in different clothes continued to be distracting also. They had seen each other in the same hiking shirt and the same pair of shorts for months. They hiked and talked that day, only having to go another six miles to reach the Water Gap, and by the time they reached the summit of the ridge, looking down where the stone layers of the earth had been shattered making way for the small town and road, the Viking Hero was back.

     They made their way down into town, hoping to catch Jones unawares and surprise him. They headed first to the hiker hostel, nestled behind the church, and on the way ran into Leap Frog, waiting on a bench for Squirrel. Leap Frog was very introverted, but became less so on being introduced to another thru-hiker. He seemed to have a mild disdain for non-hikers. He had seen Jones go to the diner down the street with some other hikers earlier and expected him back any time. Squirrel and Wayah took to the street to hunt Jones down. Upon reaching the road they immediately saw a group of hikers coming back up the hill from the direction of the diner. Jones and Jokers were among them and Wayah and Squirrel quickly ducked off the street into the cover of trees and houses.
     "Did he see us?" Squirrel grinned at Wayah, excitement playing across his face.
     "I don't know. Let's circle around behind the houses and get behind them," said the Wolf, ready for a good hunt. They leaped over a low fence and ran behind the house into the yard. They ran from back yard to back yard leaping over rails and shrubs until the Wolf stopped at the back corner of an old house, looking toward the street where the unsuspecting group of hikers limped by, talking among themselves. The Viking Lord and Hero jogged to the sidewalk after they passed and then charged up behind them, pouncing on Jones. The Viking Destroyer twirled around, a bewildered look on his face, and they were together again.

     They stayed the Fourth, eating ice cream and getting a ride into town to see a movie. Jones was eager to get going, but Squirrel and Wayah convinced him to stay even another day waiting for Thursday night when every week the church that maintained the hostel brought dishes for a potluck feast fit for a mob of ravished thru-hikers. Many others had similar plans, and still more hurried in over the two days to reach the Water Gap in time for the feast. By Thursday night the tiny parking lot by the church was covered with a long table surrounded by dozens of hikers. They feasted and laughed and met new faces that had come from behind, but come the rainy morning they were gone. Pennsylvania was behind them, and they were a horde again.