Shelter in a Storm

Shelter in a Storm

Last week, I think it was on Wednesday (Sept. 30), Fr. Jim suggested we go hiking and camping on Friday and Saturday; he had his last class before lunch on Friday, and we could leave around 12:45, thus being pretty sure of getting one of the dozen hikers' shelters in Harriman State Park.

Each of us having secured the requisite permission from our superior, and I having arranged with someone to celebrate a Mass for the Ursulines on Saturday morning, we got our gear together and indeed were parked on Rte. 106 where the Ramapo-Dunderberg Trail crosses that road just west of Little Long Pond.

We passed a half dozen other cars closer to Rte. 17, but they weren't of much concern. There was one car parked where we parked, and Fr. Jim, at least, got nervous that our intended shelter, atop Tom Jones Mt., would be taken already. I figured (1) it's a small car, and thus only one or two hikers, and they'll likely be willing to share the shelter; (2) he/they could just as easily have gone north on the R-D as south. Fr. Jim added that he/they could just be day hiking. In any event, we never encountered anyone.

This weekend the fall colors are starting to come out nicely, but they haven't peaked yet. Last weekend there was very little color showing.
Here's Fr. Jim ascending Tom Jones Mt., southward on the R-D. At this point the worst of our climbing's done, and we're pretty near the top of the ridge. The ground shrubbery is colored, but not the trees, as you see.

Along the ridge, many of the trail blazes are on the rocks rather than on trees--rocks being abundant, and trees sometimes less so. The large white circle with the red dot in the middle is the blaze for the R-D, which starts at the parking lot of the Tuxedo railroad station and climbs northeastward over the hills and mountains of Harriman to Dunderberg Mt. along the Hudson, and then down to Rte. 9W at Jones Point. It's one of the longest trails in the park, maybe the longest (I don't have the trail guide at hand).

A hike of 45 minutes or so brought us to the Tom Jones shelter, built around 1930 and well maintained. Except that this Friday afternoon, Oct. 9, it looked more like a pig sty. There was lots of trash (Fr. Jim and I hauled out a couple of grocery bags of beer cans), and someone had ripped off the boards at the front of the sleeping platform (see below), probably to use as firewood.

We cleaned the place up and settled in (below). Some previous occupant(s) had done something nice and left two large foam sleeping pads. We shook them out and put them down, then put our own pads on top, which made for considerably more comfortable sleeping (until I tossed and turned so much overnite that somehow I maneuvered my air mattress out from under me and had only the foam mattress between me and the floor).

We don't burn down shelters. So in addition to a little bit of firewood that the last occupants had left (see above), we both went out and rounded up more. You have to roam a bit, of course, because anything close to the shelter gets grabbed and burned pretty quickly. Eventually we hauled in enuf stuff, large and small, to get up a fire that lasted for several hours.

A unique feature of the Tom Jones shelter is that it's open not only in the front, as are all the Harriman shelters, but also partly on one side (the east). This particular nite (Oct. 2-3) there was a ripping wind out of the east, so we had plenty of ventilation, shall we say? The couple of things we hung from the rafters swayed back and forth all nite.

There was rain in the forecast--and indeed, it rained very heavily for a couple of hours starting just before midnite--and we were afraid the wind might blow in thru that opening in the east wall, and we moved our gear to the west wall. But it didn't. We were nice and dry all nite.

We'd done our work of gathering wood. There's no water near Tom Jones shelter, so we'd brought in what we needed. After we'd prayed Evening Prayer, we had supper. Fr. Jim had brought soup, a sandwich, and cheese, and he shared the cheese with me. I had a can of beef stew, heated on a propane backpacking stove, and an apple. We drank Crystal Lite.

Then, with the wind up and the sun going down, it was getting a bit chilly. So it was campfire time. One reason for choosing the Tom Jones shelter as our destination was that it has an interior fireplace (two actually); with rain forecast, we didn't want only an outside firepit (which TJ has also).

A little newspaper, a small bit of firestarter, dry kindling wood, and one match!

Around 7:30 we had our only human contact of the day. A couple of guys (apparently) were up on the ridge making a din. If they had an idea of coming down to the shelter (which sits about 100 yards off the trail, and down quite a bit), they were discouraged by our lights and moved on.

Then some time to read a bit, converse, listen to WQXR on the tiny radio that I brought, before we both turned in around 9 o'clock.

By 9:05 he was snoring, which he did all nite. At least he sleeps well when he hikes!

We got up at 7:45 on Saturday. Heavy clouds covered the mountains, and loud recorded "music" blared up from somewhere down the mountain (Sebago Beach? Seven Lakes Drive?), quite disturbing the tranquility. Or maybe it was one of the other hiking groups we discovered up on the ridge when we hiked out later.

In any case, we had our breakfast, broke camp, prayed Readings and Morning Prayer, and hit the trail at 9:00. We hiked out with great care over the wet rocks and leaves.

About halfway along the ridge we came to a humongous tent pitched right on the trail--biggest I've ever seen in the woods (not counting "car campers")--with a big case of Bud Lite outside it. One guy was outside cleaning things up, and we greeted him as we passed. At least one person was inside the tent, but it'd easily have accomodated four or five with gear. I guess their tent stood up fine in the wind and rain because the guy said they'd had a good nite.

Up ahead of us we could here the same noisy characters who'd come by the shelter last nite, and we made no effort to overtake them.

And we returned to our van at 9:30 and soon were on our way home to New Rochelle. It poured again in the afternoon. So we counted ourselves blessed to have been dry while hiking in and out, and well sheltered in between.