I thank my parents for kicking me outside as a child and refusing to let me waste perfectly beautiful days sitting in the house staring at the TV. I love being outside. I may not always love what mother nature decides to put on that day, but given the appropriate clothing and footwear I’ll probably make do. Part of why I like running so much is because I’m outside experiencing the world around me, everything looks so different on two feet than it does when driving by on four wheels and I savor those details. Life slows down while I’m running (it’s not all due to the fact that my pace is slow to start with…) and I’m given the opportunity to be alone with myself, my thoughts and the world around me. Long before I started running though I was always interested in hiking. I’ve gone hiking in states and parks all across the country and even if I may not run a race in every state I have no doubt I’ll go for a hike in every one someday before I die. Backpacking is a more recent expansion of my love for hiking and it is working its way into my heart as well.

Over the last weekend in March I backpacked some 20+miles of the Batona Trail through the heart of South Jersey’s Pine Barrens with some of my best friends from high school and had an amazing time. The weather was perfect (during the day at least, though a bit brisk at night), the sky was the most brilliant shade of blue and all around us were the first signs that spring was here and color was on its way back into the drab landscape of winter. We prepped hard by packing our packs and staying up until 2 in the morning despite our goal start time of 6am. Packing the night before was a must though, after picking up my pack I realized that I’d rather be hungry on the trail than carry 8 packages of tuna with me. Out came the tuna a few packages of oatmeal and an extra hat, the fleece pullover was going to have to stay behind as well. The pack was still a little heavy feeling but I figured once I started drinking my water the weight would decrease. 6am came early as it is wont to do and sure enough Ramsay and Spittle were soon knocking on the door. Soon enough we were on our way with a quick stop at DD for some pre-hike fuel. There was a bit of confusion over the exact starting spot as we bumped our way up and down dirt roads in the pine barrens searching for the trail. Spittle assured us he knew what he was doing and eventually we did find the campsite we were searching for and left Sara’s car behind as we all piled into Spittle’s truck and headed for the start which thankfully we had a better idea of where that was. Parked the car unloaded the packs and strapped them on our backs and off we went. Until we realized it was the wrong trail and we had to turn around and look around some more for the correct trail.

Pink blazes would be our friend for this whole journey. We found the trail and spirits were high as we set off, quickly shedding our outer layers and gloves through the first few miles as the sun rose high into the sky and warmed the world up a bit. I realized quickly that I would need a belt if I had any hope of keeping my pants around my waist while hiking and Ramsay, ever the resourceful one, just happened to have a chained rope with him that worked perfectly. We took our first brief rest on one of the bridges that we would be crossing and ate some crackers while I adjusted my new-found belt. We were all independent enough that we were comfortable walking at our own paces and being by ourselves for periods of time, knowing that whoever was ahead (Spittle mostly, he’s a speed demon) would stop for a rest and wait for the rest of us to catch up periodically. Sara and I have similar paces and we were able to walk and talk and catch up a good bit which was something that I had really needed as I sometimes feel a bit isolated from the people who know me best while I’m up here in NY. Sometime after noon we all stopped in a clear sandy area and decided that it was lunch time. Sara and David had brought mac and cheese with them and since no one really wanted to do dishes we all delved into the communal pot with our camping spoons and filled our stomachs. The boys were looking drowsy so Sara and I headed out on our own after lunch and were making pretty good time despite one wrong turn that we realized fairly quickly. We dragged a branch across the path to make the turn that we missed a little more obvious for the boys behind us and continued on our journey deep in conversation until Spittle nearly gave me a heart attack by choosing not to let us know he was behind us until he was about 6 inches from my back and then joining the conversation. Soon after he passed us the Daves caught up as well and we all met together again as we reached the road to Batsto at 3 pm-5 solid hours of hiking and I think 8 miles into the journey or so. The maps we had were all pretty unclear as to the landmarks and the mileage so a lot of it was guess work on our parts. We agreed that we should probably hike until close to 5 and then use the remaining few hours of daylight to set up camps and relax for the day. After we again split up into groups our feet started hurting a bit.

By a little after 4 we were about done for the day and we hadn’t seen Ramsay or Spittle who we knew were in front of us for quite some time. I said to Sara around 4:30 that I really hoped we were going to come across them already with a camp set up and a fire going and sure enough not to long after that we were greeted with that very site and not a moment too soon. My shoes were the first thing to come off as I reached camp and my toes were very happy for that fact. We put the tents up in no time and got right down to cooking up grub. Tuna steaks and Spanish rice were our entrees for the night and we again did the communal thing because our feet hurt and we were lazy. Mostly I was happy to get that weight out of my pack and into our bellies. Afterwards Spittle and Sara scouted some running water in a swamp not to far from our campsite and Ramsay, Spittle and I went down to filter the water and refill all of our packs. We were a little perilously perched around a tree in the swamp and I did get to find out that my boots were in fact really waterproof as advertised as I took a misstep and wound up in the water, thankfully my feet stayed perfectly dry and the boots were dry again in no time as well. Back to the camp site we went where we all enjoyed some tea and sat around the fire talking as the night grew dark and chilly around us. Not long after sunset we all decided to turn in for the night, I’m guessing we were all asleep by 9ish. Unfortunately it got cold that night and Sara and David had decided to forgo the weight of sleeping bags for their fleece liners. I was sharing a tent with them and was a little chilly but more uncomfortable than anything as I had a mummy bag with me that was rated down to 20 degrees. I do wish I had spent the extra 20 bucks and gotten the one that was good down to 0 but oh well, live and learn. Somewhere in the middle of the night all 5 of us wound up awake and cold. Dave started doing pushups to keep himself awake and Sara tried to crawl into him a la Luke Skywalker in the Vth episode when he uses the snow creature guts to warm himself. Unfortunately that didn’t work as well for her and she wound up staying up for most of the night and finally gave up and started a fire around 6 in the morning or so. The rest of us were up soon after and not moving so fast on this cold morning. After some oatmeal and tea we started striking camp and repacking our bags.

Sara and I again struck out first though the rest weren’t far behind this time as we knew we had at least 8 miles to go before we would see the car. Sunday was tough. My feet still hurt from the previous days hiking and I had definitely underestimated how tough the sand would be to hike on. I figured my boots hadn’t given me a blister yet on any of the mountains or such that I had hiked with them, but that was not to be true on the flat NJ ground. I had blisters under each of my 2nd toes (pointer toes?) toenails and Also on the ball of each of my feet. I had put blister bandaids on the bottoms of my feet but I probably should have just popped them before starting out that day because they just kept getting worse. We saw a lot more people this day and there was a motorcross running as well so we had to keep an eye out for bikers as well. Unfortunately most of the pine barrens all looks the same and with the terrain being primarily flat and straight it was very tough mentally to ever judge how far or how long we had hiked. We stopped a few times and had a few landmarks where we knew how far it was to the car. I felt good at the 5 mile mark but that feeling soon faded as my feet were killing me. Taking Ramsays advice Sara and I decided to dip our feet in the stream to cool them off and I switched socks. Sara decided to forgo her shoes and hike the rest of the trail in just her socks, which I suppose if you’re going to do that, this is the trail to do it on. When we all met up again we figured that there was about 3 miles to go thought about having lunch and then just decided we wanted to get it over with. This was the longest 3 miles of my life. I hiked most of it alone, Spittle was with me for a while but figuring that we were near the end he forged ahead of me after a bit. My feet hurt so badly that I kept wanting to stop but I knew that if I did it would turn out that the car was just around the corner and I would kick myself for stopping so on and on I kept pushing myself as I crossed unmarked dirt road after unmarked dirt road that weren’t on my map and just made me feel farther than ever from the end. I should point out that this was actually one of the prettier sections of the hike as it had been the victim of a forest fire last summer and the stark difference of the black charred burnt trees on one side of the trail and the green of the fresh grown on the other side was really quite stunning. However, all I could really think about was I want to be done. As I reached yet another dirt road that wasn’t on my map I was feeling quite frustrated and decided I was done for the time being, Spittle had been ahead of me and just slipped out of my view not long before this and I decided that I would take my shoes off put my pack down and wait for the other three to catch up. During this time I saw my first wildlife of the whole journey, a couple of goldfinches playing and flying in the air together, I was really surprised that I hadn’t seen more during the past two days hiking. After 5 or 10 minutes Ramsay showed up and plunked down beside me in the sand and decided to study his DEQ homework that he had been putting off until the other two showed up. Sara and David were along another 20 minutes or so after that and were really disappointed when I informed them that this still wasn’t the end. They sat down with us as well to eat an orange and relax for a minute while we pulled out our maps and stared at them again will the car to be closer to us. I was feeling pretty dejected right about then because I figured that as close to Spittle as I had been following him, if the car was nearby he would’ve made it there by now and turned around to meet us on the trail and let us know that it wasn’t far, yet it was definitely 40 minutes since the last time I had seen him. As we puzzled over the maps and tried to get ourselves moving again Spittle again answers my wishes and appears out of the path in front of us to let us know that it’s not that far, only another 15 minutes walking or so. That new put a definite spring in our steps and off we went. Finally we were crossing the train tracks that were our last landmark and ahead through the trees I could see the road! Exhausted but thoroughly satisfied we were at last at the car and had completed our journey. Not wanting to prolong going out to get some big plates of food to feast and rejoice we decided to pack all 5 of us and our 5 backpacks into Sara’s VW beetle (which was a feat in its own rite) and soon enough we were on our way and leaving the pine barrens behind us.