Do Monks Even Play Baseball?

Tonight (July 17), I’m at the Graymoor Spiritual Life Center, which I think is affiliated with some kind of Franciscan monastery, because the baseball field, where they allow thru-hikers to tent, is on Franciscan Way. Whoever owns or runs this place has generously permitted hikers to camp out in the ball field since the 1970s, which is really nice. [Wife note: It’s owned by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement.] Right now, I’m in my tent, and it is raining. I’m hoping I won’t get hit by lightning. It's almost like there’s a strobe light going on outside.

This morning, I woke up for the third day in a row at the Lost and Found Hostel. I slept fine in the bunk room and again had a lovely breakfast.

The guy who was in the private room last night is named Bouge — short for “bougie” — and he struck me as being wound pretty tight. Poles and I were talking to him and trying to convince him to do the same slack pack that we’d done two days prior, but he was hell bent on never slack packing. He's a bit of a tortured soul about hiking, and he was like, “I just want to get this over with,” which, to be honest, is totally relatable.

Once we had breakfast, Poles and I got a ride to where we’d started our slack pack and headed north from there this time instead of south. I was feeling a little nervous about how the hike would go today, since the slack pack we’d done had turned out to be incredibly difficult, and I had plans to go about 20 miles.

[Wife note: Oh, and I guess this happened? I mean, it’s just 1,400 miles. No big.]

The first few miles were fine. Very humid and sweaty. And then, about 5 miles into the day, I hit a detour. So the “new” route goes further out of the way than the original trail, so it can cross the Palisades Parkway at a bit of a safer location. Unfortunately, sometime in the not too distant past, a hiker was hit by a car on the Palisades Parkway, so the Appalachian Trail Conservancy wanted to reroute the trail in an effort to avoid that sort of thing happening again. However, the new route is longer and more difficult, doesn't have any water sources, and doesn't have any views. So on the Far Out app, there's a lot of chatter about sticking with the original route and just taking your time and being careful and you'll get a much better hike.

I opted to take the old route, then, and not the new detour. And crossing the Palisades Parkway proved to be very easy. I mean, there's plenty of visibility. You just have to wait until there's a good space. I was able to just walk across, no problem. And I’m glad that I chose to do that, because I was able to get some water and enjoy some very nice views. I also bumped into a guy named Detour —  which I thought was ironic, since he hadn’t taken the detour, either.

After I crossed the parkway, there was a decent climb, and then I could look across the valley and see Bear Mountain. The trail actually goes down Bear Mountain and then back up it. Bear Mountain is a very touristy area, and personally, I think it’s great whenever the trail goes through a touristy area. It tends to be wonderful for thru-hikers, because the trail is impeccably maintained and is usually a little wider. It’s just much more hiker friendly. So, even though the climb up was pretty steep and long, having the trail be so beautifully maintained definitely made it nicer than it would have been otherwise.  

But maybe the best part about reaching the peak of Bear Mountain is that there are vending machines up there. A bunch of us stopped and congregated around the vending machines to drink soda and eat ice cream and all that good stuff.

The trail then takes you a couple of miles down to the Bear Mountain Inn, which is right on a lake. And there's a nice park there and an old school hotel and resort, and at the very end, they also have a cafe. So, a bunch of us hikers stopped at the cafe to get a snack.

Next, the trail went directly through a zoo. I had been kind of dreading this part, because I wasn’t sure what kind of condition the animals would be in, and I didn’t want to see any that might not have been doing so well. But I learned that most of the animals at this zoo — or maybe all of them? — are undergoing rehabilitation of some kind. So it's more that the animals are there to be healed in some way than just kept captive for human entertainment.

But I still didn't spend a lot of time in there. I just wanted to get through. There was a big storm brewing, and I needed to get across the Bear Mountain Bridge and over the Hudson River before it moved in.

So I hustled across the bridge, and right on the other side, there was a bit of an awning or a little roof over the signage at the trailhead, so I hung out under there while the first storm of the day passed by.

I had another pretty steep ascent from there, and over the next couple of miles, the rains just moved in in earnest. There wasn’t really anything to be done about it except put your head down and keep moving forward. I was hiking within kind of a pack at that point, with Poles and Detour and a guy named Atlas, plus two other really nice guys who told me their trail names, but those basically went in one ear and out the other. So I need to learn them again.

Close to the end of the day, the trail crossed over Route 9, and right at that point, there’s a place called the Appalachian Market, which is a must stop for all hikers because it's literally on the trail, and they have a grill. I'd done about 19 miles by then, so I figured it was a good place to stop for dinner. I had a mushroom and Swiss cheeseburger with some onion rings, a Gatorade, and a Coke, and it was great.

By the time we’d all eaten and were heading out again, it was about 7:30. I took a look at the weather radar and saw that another huge storm was on the way, so we all hustled the half mile down the trail to the road walk that brings you here to the spiritual center.

We set up our tents on the baseball field, but there's also a pavilion here, and I put my backpack under the pavilion so it could be out of the elements a bit. All in all, it was a pretty long day, about 20 miles. I covered a lot of ground, but it was broken up nicely with the vending machines and the grill at the Bear Mountain Inn and the Appalachian Market. Fortunately, when this storm passes by, I think it’ll leave some cooler temperatures in its wake, which will be great. Just have to deal with a little bit of a soggy tent in the morning, but that's okay. I’m happy to make that trade-off to have the weather improve markedly over the next couple days.