Last week my son Gre­go­ry’s scout troop head­ed to south­ern Penn­syl­va­nia to start a 50-mile back­pack­ing trip south, to cov­er all of Mary­land’s por­tion of the Appalachi­an Trail and end up in Harper’s Fer­ry, West Vir­ginia. I was asked to dri­ve them, and as it seemed a lit­tle too far to com­mute back to South Jer­sey I spent four days by myself down there and had a great time. I thought I’d share var­i­ous thoughts:

Hos­tels are great. I haven’t stayed in a hos­tel in for­ev­er but at $35/night, the price was right. I’m so glad I did. Every night was a new cast of peo­ple to get to meet, quirky and fun and delight­ful­ly weird. This was the week­end of the Flip-Flop Kick­off fes­ti­val put on by the Appalachi­an Trail Con­ser­van­cy. As I under­stand it, the “flip flop” is an alter­nate way of doing a through-hike on the Appalachi­an Trail (“the AT”). Instead of start­ing in Geor­gia and head­ing north along with hun­dreds of oth­ers, you start in Harper’s Fer­ry (the hon­orary halfway point) and go south, then find a ride back to Harper’s Fer­ry and go north. The fes­ti­val brought a lot of hik­ers to Cross Trails hos­tel, where I stayed, and I even par­tic­i­pat­ed in a few events; I felt myself an hon­orary AT hiker!

I love my bike. I put my bike rack on my old econobox car and used it every day to com­mute the five miles or so from the hos­tel to Harper’s Fer­ry. The C&O Canal Tow­path is a most­ly flat, beau­ti­ful trail that winds 180 miles along­side the Potomac Riv­er. One day I con­tin­ued north from Harper’s Fer­ry and rode it to Shep­ard­stown: a beau­ti­ful ride apart from the calf-breaking bluffs on either side of the trip.¹ Also a lot of out­door fun is white­wa­ter raft­ing. There’s three com­pa­nies in the area offer­ing it and I had a good time with Harper’s Fer­ry Adven­ture Cen­ter.

Don’t for­get the non-vegan restau­rants. I was excit­ed by a veg­an option in Harper’s Fer­ry but my favorite meal by far was at a reg­u­lar cafe in Shep­herd­stown. I had an amaz­ing home­made black bean veg­gie burg­er, a sesame noo­dles appe­tiz­er, decent fries, and a tall cold glass of hard apple cider. Five stars to the Blue Moon Cafe. Extra bonus: there’s an actu­al creek flow­ing through the back patio.

There is so much his­to­ry atop itself in Harper’s Fer­ry. It’s a tiny town and yet every time you turn around there’s some­thing mon­u­men­tal going on. John’s Brown raid is per­haps the most famous but it was also the site of mul­ti­ple Civ­il War engage­ments, a pro­vi­sion­ing stop for Meri­wether Lewis, and a place where Thomas Jef­fer­son waxed poet­ic.

Don’t defend Harper’s Fer­ry. There’s much one could say about John Brown’s moti­va­tions, tac­tics, etc., but real­ly dude, how dumb do you have to be to try to force-start the Civ­il War there of all places? As soon as word got out about what was hap­pen­ing, mili­tias from three states and fed­er­al troops poured in from the hills on all sides of the town and trapped him. It was over almost as soon as it began. The Civ­il War engage­ments were like that too. It’s a fish­bowl with moun­tain ridges on all sides: you just set up your muni­tions on Mary­land or Loudoun Heights and lob can­non balls down on the town until you get a sur­ren­der. A quote attrib­uted to a Union lieu­tenant in an exhib­it real­ly summed it up for me: “Gen. Jack­son and Gen. Hill told me per­son­al­ly, they had rather take it [Harper’s Fer­ry] forty times than to under­take to defend it once.”

Vis­it­ing new meet­ings is great. On Sun­day morn­ing I had church time so I motored south to vis­it Goose Creek Meet­ing in Lin­coln, Vir­ginia. ² It’s an old meet­ing, steeped in its own his­to­ry. It’s aways fun to see a new meet­ing. They have honest-to-God pews with hym­nal racks along the back, each care­ful­ly stocked with a Bible, an FGC hym­nal, and Bal­ti­more’s Faith and Prac­tice. They have a loud clock, which I’ve always heard was a Hick­site mark­er and indeed I lat­er learned the Hick­sites held the meet­ing­house in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry schisms.³ There were only two mes­sages and one was a fake Gand­hi quote (you all will be hap­py that I did­n’t fact-check it in real time and just let the sen­ti­ment behind it stand for itself). It seemed like a real­ly ground­ed meet­ing. I was impressed that peo­ple got there ear­ly and sat qui­et­ly prepar­ing for wor­ship. Every­one was very friend­ly for the few min­utes of cof­fee hour I could squeeze out before head­ing back north to pick up scouts.

And a big thanks to Troop 48 Berlin NJ for get­ting me out of the house. Scout­mas­ter Mike has a post about their trip up on the web­site. It’s a great troop and Gre­go­ry’s real­ly thriv­ing there.

1. I had this idea of going to the Anti­etam bat­tle­field but as soon as I got off the trail real­ized it would be half an hour of bik­ing up a long hill, which my calves vetoed.
2. Lin­coln as in Abe, yes. The res­i­dents of the Quak­er town were so elat­ed by his elec­tion that on the eve of the Civ­il War they renamed their Vir­ginia vil­lage after him. Accord­ing the his­tor­i­cal mark­er across the street, it did­n’t help them when Union troops lat­er came slash­ing and burn­ing, alas.
3. I know some­one will ask: I’ve been told that East Coast Hick­site meet­ings had wall clocks and Ortho­dox ones did­n’t and a clock is the first thing I look for in an old meet­ing­house I’m vis­it­ing for the first time. The expla­na­tion I’ve heard is that Ortho­dox Friends were on God’s time and did­n’t want any­one clock watch­ing, while the Hick­sites were work­ing farm­ers who actu­al­ly had to get back to their farms by a cer­tain time to tend to the ani­mals, thank you very much.