I think it was a male and female pair. The male, the bigger one I presume, was a big guy. I clicked along the trail with my trekking poles, a thrilled energy going through me as I watched them pick at the grass, and they didn't even look at me. In fact, the male lay down to rest.
The terrain on the trail early in NJ closely resembles that of upper Pa.: rocky and narrow, so I got into autopilot pretty easily.
This snapped me back to the moment:
If there's any signal in nature that says "Back the [f--k] up right now!!!" more forcefully than a rattlesnake coiled up and rattling in your face, I can't imagine what it would be. I would pay $100 to see the reaction on my face when this snake wound up is rattle. I probably looked like I was about to barf.
Needless to say, I backed up. The snake, still rattling, didn't have any plans to the trail, so I gave it a wide berth and detoured around it.
When I arrived at the Brink Road shelter after hiking 24.7 miles [my biggest haul yet], it was almost dark.
The shelter sleeps five. There must have been at least 35 people camping there for the night. The number of tents was mind boggling.
When I went down to the creek to filter water, I found the key difference between New Jersey and the previous states I've hiked in: It's one giant mosquito farm! I looked down and saw about seven of them sucking on my right foot alone.
Luckily, I had my new tent to set up, and I bothered some people sleeping early by going around and around my tent, setting it up a bit at a time while reading the instructions. A thunderstorm woke me up at 2:30 a.m. and I felt quite peaceful in my own private chamber.
All my food, crockery and food trash meanwhile were in a big metal "bear box" near the shelter, along with everyone else's stuff. The first paragraph about New Jersey in my guide book says, "Bear boxes are provided at several New Jersey shelters; please use them! Bears are extremely active in this area...New Jersey has the highest population of bears per square mile..."
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