Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 20:50:22 -0400 From: Daniel Eisenbud Subject: Delaware Water Gap, PA Dear All, At least one of you was mildly alarmed by my sending email so frequently and then suddenly stopping for a month and a half. Thankfully, there's no cause for alarm: I just got distracted by hiking and forgot about computers for a bit, which is altogether a good thing. Actually, I kept being in the towns with public libraries (the best bet for internet access) at odd hours or on Sundays or holiday weekends. I imagine I'll be able to send email once or twice more, but I'm not counting on it. At the latest, I'll send another email when I'm done. In terms of hiking, I'm in Delaware Water Gap, PA, but I'm actually writing this email from New York City, where I'm visiting relatives for the weekend. On Monday I'll hike over the the Delaware River into New Jersey. From there, it will be a seven or eight day hike to the New York-Connecticut border. I'll be happy indeed to be in New England at last. I'm still having a great time. All of Pennsylvania, and in particular the last 100 miles, is flat but extremely rocky, and my feet are pretty beat up, but otherwise I'm in good health. I saw what I think was a copperhead snake two days ago, saw and heard a three or four foot rattlesnake about two feet from me yesterday, and saw a large bear wander across the trail in front of me just this morning. All three bears I've seen so far have basically been heading away from me in the woods, which is good, since it demonstrates their natural, healthy, and comforting fear of humans, but I hope to get a good picture of at least one in New Jersey, which, surprisingly enough is one of the places people see the most bears. The wildlife I'm really the most afraid of, though, is the deer tick carrying the humble Lyme Disease spirochete (sp?) I've found a few dog ticks on me, but no deer ticks until yesterday. I think I got the one I found off of me soon enough to avoid any danger at all, and if you catch it early, which I will if I get it, Lyme disease is just a minor nuisance. Still, I'll be very glad to get far enough north (Vermont somewhere?) to not have to worry about ticks anymore. Boston folks: I'll probably be in town for a break and to see y'all in about two weeks. I'll try to somehow communicate more about this when I know more (which, realistically, will be in about two weeks once I actually get there.) Besides that, there are too many stories to tell to even know where to start right now, especially when a good game of Scrabble with my great-aunt (who, for those of you who don't know her, is, at 91, as formidable an opponent as ever.) There was the birthday cake that friends managed to make out of pancake mix, squeeze margarine, apple butter, instead oatmeal, and gummy-bear-like things, on the spur of the moment, in the woods. It made my day and was quite tasty. There was boiling snow to make coffee on Roan High Knob because there was no water source but lots of fresh snow. And those are both things before my last email from Damascus that I meant to mention but didn't have time. The weather has mostly been good, and I remain in good spirits. I've now come almost 1300 miles and have a few less than 900 to go (I've come more than 800 since my last email, for comparison's sake.) I hope you are all doing well as spring drifts into summer. Love, Dan(iel) -- Daniel E. Eisenbud eisenbud@cs.swarthmore.edu