I've been seriously lame about updating this; my apologies. I've been back for three weeks now, and have been ridiculously lazy about .
Photos are up at trailjournals: http://www.trailjournals.com/photos.cfm?id=395668
Journals entries from the last week of the hike follow below, and I'll have something up later about the re-adjustment to "real" life.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
September 20-30
9/20Spent most of the day in Monson, running a couple errands and watching some college football on the TV at Shaw's. Stopped in a little gallery for local artists and crafts-types. Sure sign you're in a small town: the key is still in the galley door as you walk in.
Finally got out of town around 5ish, and I just make about 2 miles into the 100-mile wilderness before setting up camp. It's really become noticeable how much earlier it's getting dark. It just seems like yesterday that I could put in full days hiking, going until 7 or 8 at night, with dark not falling until 9. Now, it's getting dark much earlier; really cutting into walking time. I packed a calzone out of town to eat for my first night's dinner. It was awesome ... except for the fact that since I'm now in the 100-mile wilderness, I'll be packing a wad of used tinfoil for the next 98 miles.
9/21
First full day in the 100-mile, and I see a moose! A huge bull about 20 yards away. An amazing sight; it's an absolute privilege to be in the presence of an animal like that. Unfortunately, he ran as soon as he saw me, so I didn't get a decent photo at all. Still, a huge thrill.Also unfortunately, I took a nasty fall late on in the afternoon. I'll blame my heavy pack (7 days' food) for throwing me my balance off. I have a really sore hip, from where I fell right onto a rock, which will no doubt be sporting a lovely bruise for several days. Sore, I stop after only doing 7 miles; this is not a good thing to be doing when I'm still 91 miles from resupply.
9/22
Lots of uphill today, about 3000 feet of climbing. some really beautiful country, though, and the weather has been perfect: sunny, highs of about 62, cold but not frigid nights. I'm loving Maine. Sorry, fuller description later.
9/23
In a lot of places up here, especially above about 1500-2,000 feet or so, you're walking through extremely dense and very mossy pine forest. Except for the trail itself, which is only about 3 or 4 feet wide in places, the moss just covers everything; the ground, the boulders, the dead trees lying on the ground. It's like someone dropped a green shag carpet over the whole mountain. just cutting holes where the trees stick through. And the trees are so thick in these sections of the forest that walking off the trail is impossible. I can't imagine how they got up here to make the trail; visibility looking into the woods is only about 20 feet, and you'd have to be cutting down a tree for every foot of new trail.
It's also remarkable in two other ways. First is the smell -- an overwhelming pine scent, combined with the earthy moss. It's pleasant, but very, very strong. Pour Pine-sol into a bag of peat, and stick your head inside to simulate it, I suppose. the other thing I notice is the sound, or lack thereof. Especially when there's no wind, it's just amazingly quiet. There are no leaves to rustle, on the trees or on the ground, and the moss seems to soak up all sound. You can yell, and it sounds like you're in a room covered with acoustical tile on the walls. It's actually kind of eerie.
Late in the day, I ford the Pleasant River. This is one of the other things about the AT in Maine; there is water everywhere. Ponds, creeks and rivers everywhere. In some places, you have no choice but to get wet fording across a stream/river. The Pleasant River is about 30 yards wide, and about 2-4 feet deep. That may not sound like much, but when you're already carrying a pack, when the rocks on the bottom are mossy and slippery, when the water is running fast, even a knee-high stream can be very dicey. Oh, and it's so cold that your feet will be nearly numb after just a couple of minutes. In some places, there's a rope strung across the river so you can hang on to it with one hand to get your balance; though truthfully, they don't help much. Just gotta go slow and be careful.
9/24Spent half a day on a side-trip to a place called Gulf Hagas. It's essentially a gorge (more accurately, a series of gorges) cut deep into a mountain of slate. In some places it's gotta be 150 feet deep or more. Very beautiful, though I'm not sure if it was worth the 5 miles of extra walking to see it, plus all the time taking photos.
After that, it's a long uphill slog. WhiteCap mountain at 3500 feet is the next-to-last mountain on the trail -- the last being Katahdin at the end. In between is about 70 miles of mostly flat ground (at least in terms of no major elevation gains; I'm sure it ain't no parking lot).
I camp a bit short of Whitecap tonight, with a crowd. This is the first time in a while I've camped with anyone -- I've basically been setting up by myself wherever I am when it starts getting towards dark. There's about ten people here at a campsite, several of them good friends that I haven't seen in awhile; Hoot and Sundance, Brahma and Sweet Potato, Gonzo and Mike. Guess that was the upside of taking the sidetrip -- all of these people caught up to me in the last hour of the day. We get a campfire going and hang out well after dark.
9/ 25Summit White Cap Mountain this morning, and on yet another gorgeous clear day I get my first view of Katahdin, resting 70 trail miles away (Maybe only 40 by air). It's an exhilarating moment. After that, the trail descends the rest of the day. As always, a change in altitude brings about a change in climate. Down under 3000 feet or so, the forest is not conifers, but beech, birch, oak, aspen and maple. And it has all gone to glory. The leaves have been turning slowly over the last few weeks, but it seems like this week nature has really hit her stride. The birch leaves are a dusky yellow when fully turned, but an ethereal chartreuse when still in the process. The oaks turn various shades of orange, from almost-yellow to almost-red. Other trees are maroon and brown. And then there are the sugar maples, the exhibitionists of the forest, who put on a bright red so shameless that if it were a lipstick no decent woman would wear it. All this is under a cloudless powder blue sky.
At night, the sky continues clear, and the stars are children hiding in a dark closet, their faces shining with joy when they are finally found. Miles and miles away from any road or human habitation, there is no background noise or light. even most of the birds have flown south for the winter. A jet flying by, tens of thousands of feet above, is clearly visible and audible. A loon calling across the lake sounds like a roaring lion.9/26
Alas, the perfect weather is coming to an end. Have heard word through the grapevine in the last couple of days that there is heavy rain a-comin', supposedly a hurricane or something. I'm pretty skeptical of weather warnings on the trail; you're usually getting someone telling you what someone else heard on the radio three days ago. But for what it's worth, this is supposed to be bad. More tellingly, the sky is clouded over this morning.
So I decide to head for White House Landing. WHL is the only bit of civilization near the trail in the 100 mile wilderness. It's a place that is mostly geared to the hunting & fishing types (some of whom will lay in here via floatplane), and has a bunkhouse, cabins, and best of all, food. They serve a one-pound cheeseburger that's supposed to be fantastic. It's over a mile off the trail to get to it, which is never fun, but after 5 days, with bad weather supposedly hitting tonight, I'm ready to walk an extra 1.2 for a warm bed and a cheeseburger.
Of course, that 1.2 comes at the end of 16 AT miles. Luckily, though, the terrain here is the easiest I've had since ... geez, Vermont, at least. It's rocky and rooty, but no big uphills or downhills, so I can really make time. Starting early, I kill the 17 miles by 5:30 in the afternoon. Had to make it early, because the only way to reach WHL is by boat, and the boat stops running at dark (which is bout 6:30). The way it works is that you follow the trail from the AT down to Pemadumcook Lake, across which you can see a few small buildings. There's an airhorn tied to a tree; you give it blast, and they come across in a boat to pick you up. Cool.
There are 4 hikers here. One of them is Ravon, who I first met right after the Smokies, way back in Tennessee, but who got ahead of me when I went off the trail for a week near Erwin, and who stayed ahead of me all the way until Monson. When I met her the first time, she was with her husband, who was hiking with her for a few days. Now she's with her daughter, who's along for the 100-mile wilderness. It's always cool to see how you never know who you're going to run into. Someone falls ahead or behind, and you say "see you up the trail." You might see them again tomorrow and every day for a week; or you might not see them for three months; or never again at all.
Within half an hour of reaching the Landing, I'm plowing into my one-pound burger. I also take care of the potato chips, plus two slices of pizza, two apples, and a full pint of Ben and Jerry's. I get the weather report; there is a hurricane coming through, and we're going to get at least some of it.
9/27
Get up this morning to rain. Not heavy, but cold drizzle most of last night, and low, heavy clouds. The forecast is for heavy rains starting this afternoon and continuing all night. So my choices are to hike out into what will soon by heavy rain, or stay here, in front of a woodburning stove on the shores of a lake, reading a paperback, eating apples picked straight from the orchard. Yeah, it's a zero day.
9/28Alas, I think I may have taken the wrong day to zero. After drizzling yesterday morning, it stopped raining in the afternoon and didn't start again until well after dark. It wouldn't have been a terrible day to hike at all. But this morning, it's raining steadily, and looks to keep doing so all day. Oh, well. There are five of us that take the boat back across the lake, and hike back to the trail.
It rains all day. Lets up a few times, but never really stops until very late in the day. By midafternoon, I'm pretty much soaked all the way through. Slippery going in all the mud and on the rocks, but fairly easy hiking nonetheless. Cover 17 miles before stopping at Rainbow Stream Lean-to. It's actually kind of cool, though, when you can be soaked to skin in your clothes, to the point where you can literally pour the water out of your shoes, but then go into your pack and find that you've succeeded in keeping your gear dry, and that you'll be be warm and snug all night. Makes you wanna look at the sky and taunt nature. "That all you got?"
9/29
Oooof course ... the next morning when you get up and realize that you gotta put on all the same wet clothes you took off yesterday. Nasty. But it's all ok, because this is the day I make it out of the wilderness. Pretty uneventful day, really. A little bit more rain in the morning, and cloudy all day, I still make great time, and by 4:30, I've done 16 miles, and I finally see the sign, facing north ... "you are now entering the 100-mile wilderness. There is no resupply until Monson..." Sweet.
From there it's a few hundred yards to Golden Road, and from there another few hundred yards to Abol Bridge. Golden Road which is just a dirt road running through the woods, mostly used by logging trucks, and Abol Bridge is nothing but a bridge and a campground -- the latter of which, though, has a camp store, and that's pretty damn golden right now. I spend an hour here, eating two sandwiches and a bag of doritos (a full-sized one, not one of those wimpy little things), and drinking soda, coffee and beer.
But I've gotta make a choice now. I get a weather forecast for the next few days, and I find out that tomorrow (Tuesday) is supposed to be partly sunny, but that they're calling for more rain Wednesday and Thursday. When it's raining, they can and often do close the trails up Katahdin. even when the trails aren't closed, rock climbing in the rain is dicey, and summitting of a big mountain with no view is anticlimactic, anyway. If I don't summit tomorrow, I might be stuck around here for two or three days waiting for the weather.
So, an hour before dark falls, I start walking towards Katahdin. Via the AT it's ten miles to the campground at the base of the mountain, but there's a shortcut that's only five. I've been blue-blazing since May, so why stop now. Unfortunately, the shortcut turns out to be pretty much all tangled roots. With everything still wet from three days of rain, and with almost no light (new moon + clouds), it's not fun hiking, and I wonder several times if the official route might not have been easier. In the end, I make it to the last shelter on the AT after 10 p.m. at night, having done 21 miles. I'm actually not very tired; it's all adrenaline, I guess. I summit tomorrow.
9/30
Slate gray cloudy this morning. Absolutely no view of the mountain from the bottom. But it's not raining, and it looks to be another cool-but-not cold day. I'll take it, and hope the clouds on the peak blow away.
There is a crowd here. Because of the rain the last few days, there are several people who were ahead of me who have been hanging around Millinocket (the nearest town) for a few days waiting to summit. Very cool to be around good friends on a day like this.
The hike up Katahdin is the hardest extended climb on the AT. Over five miles of trail, you go up 4000 feet; the better part of a vertical mile. Lots of steep rock climbs, hand-over-hand boulder scrambles. In several places, there's rebar drilled into the mountain to give you handholds; there probably could stand to be a few more. As always, the rock climbs are especially tough for shorter people. At one point, I come up on Vigil Auntie and Y, two women hikers, struggling up a smooth rock face. We make it up only when I provide them a foothold (my hand) to get ahead, and they return the favor by giving me a tug up. One nice thing that helps a lot, though is that I'm not carrying my full pack. The Ranger station at the base of the mountain very graciously offers loaner daypacks to thru-hikers. I leave my full pack at the station, and I'm just carrying lunch, water, and camera. 8 pounds instead of 30 sounds great when you're going straight up.
The weather never does turn. The sun peeks out a couple of times, but it's mostly just a long walk up into the clouds. Part of the effect of that is that I never really get a sense of how far I am from the top. On a couple of occasions, I think I've almost made it, only to realize I'm nowhere near. But close to noon, I start hearing whooping and shouting up ahead in the mist, and I know I've made it. It's a huge crowd up here; people who have been stuck waiting for the rain to stop, and several who have skipped ahead to get the summit in before the rain coming tomorrow.
It's a cool feeling to see the summit of the last mountain. It's cool to finally see that sign you've seen in so many other people's photos. When you get there and you've got two dozen people shouting your name as you walk the last few hundred yards ... well, that's pretty special.We all hang out for awhile, taking photos, exchanging email addresses, passing around scotch and champagne, talking about what we'll be doing next week, next month, next year.
Slowly, the crowd thins as people start heading down the mountain via different routes. I stay for awhile, and am rewarded by seeing more people come up. Ravon and her daughter make it up, as well as Bogey and Bacall, two sixty-somethings who are among the most popular hikers on the trail. True to personality and their trail names, they bring costumes to the summit for the photo -- he puts on a dinner jacket and fedora, she a purple dress and a boa. Alas, I am not nearly so creative. I just get a couple pictures leaning against the sign, and that's enough.
I walk down slowly; around 2:30, the sun finally comes out for a bit. The idea of running back to the peak comes to me, briefly, before I discard it. I'm done.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Monson, Maine
September 16 - 19
Last note from the trail. I ended up skipping about 130 miles of Maine, all the way to Monson. I feel kind of bad about this, for all the obvious reasons - namely that this means my hike will end up only being something like 1900 miles, and that I'm missing some of the most beautiful stuff. But the reasons for skipping are equally obvious - if I hiked all of Maine, I'd be getting home less than a week before I would need to get back to work, and that would have been really bad. Even with two weeks' R&R, I have a feeling it's going to be ugly. The consensus seems to be that it takes a few months after a thru-hike before you're back to whatever approaches normalcy.
It took me two full days to hitchhike up to Monson, and the time has been a reminder that many of the best parts of this experience have come off the trail. Most of my hitches have been from one flyspeck town to the next, ten or so miles at a time, spending a few hours in little places with a store, a post office, and a population well short of four digits.
Monson is the last of these, and it's the last of the trail towns. It's got a main drag running through the center and just a few side streets. I count two small churches, and about a half-dozen businesses. There's an antique/gift shop with a sign that gives you a number to call "If we're closed and you want to come in." There's a gas station (one pump) which is also the convenience store, pizzeria and deli. There's a pub which is also the restaurant, laundromat, and guesthouse, and Shaw's boarding house, which is an AT institution. No crappy hostel linens here; the beds have clean, new sheets and thick comforters. Breakfast is all-you-can-eat eggs, home fries, bacon, sausage and blueberry pancakes. And then there's the Monson General Store, which is about twenty feet wide by sixty feet deep, and where you can pick up some Spaghetti-O's, a garden hose, a tube of toothpaste, a scoop of ice cream, and an egg salad sandwich, while also getting your keys duplicated and renting a DVD. It's sort of like a Wal-Mart supercenter, without all the big-city fuss and pretension.
If you come to Monson, do it on a Friday. The pub has a Fish Fry - all-you-can-eat, of course - and the General Store has bluegrass night. Actually, the music depends on who shows up to play any given Friday. Last night, it was several guitars, a banjo or two, three fiddlers, a dulcimer, and a harmonica, and the music ran from John Denver to Janis Joplin to Gospel to Irish Folk tunes. The audience was mostly seniors with more than a handful of hairy hiker types mixed in. (I'm told they get a lot of families with kids in the summer months). Folks join in singing or clapping along as the mood strikes - the chorus to "Country Roads" brought nearly everyone to full-voice. A glass jar of corn kernels made the rounds as a shaker percussion instrument, and I took a turn. Folks drifted out as the night went along, and things finally wound up around 10:30. I walked out into a cold, clear night, where a half-moon hung in the blackness and a breeze promised that winter was coming but not yet, not yet. And I thought that if someone came down from Pluto, and they wanted to know what human life was supposed to be about, you could do a hell of a lot worse than taking them to Monson, Maine on a Friday night.
But that was last night, and this is today. Today I'm back on the trail, and heading into the Hundred Mile Wilderness. It's a little bit of a misnomer, but north of Monson it's 100 miles to the nearest store; and after that it's only 14 miles to the summit of Mt. Katahdia, and the end of the trail, and the beginning of the trip home - which will take about 2 days, roughly 1/100th of what it took to get here.
Of course, "home" is always a loaded term. I've lived in Florida for eight years, but I still don't always really think of it as "home" in a sense deeper than "it's where I keep my other pair of shoes." I've lived so many places in my life, that it's been hard to ever get that feeling of homeness at any of them.
And now, I'm getting ready to leave another home. In a lot of ways, the trail - especially the trail when experienced along it's length during a season - has a lot in common with these little towns I enjoy so much. Everyone knows everyone else, mostly. Everyone shops at the same stores and drives the same roads and knows the punchlines to all the same jokes. Everyone trusts each other, and occasionally may even need to rely on each other. It's a 2000-mile long village, and I have lived there. When I come back to Monson - or Damascus, or Unionville or Max Patch or Mt. Washington or any of a hundred spots on the trail that I loved - these places won't feel like somewhere I've visited, but like a place I've lived in.
For the last month, as I've gotten more and more worn down by the trail, I've been thinking more and more that "I just want to go home." Only now am I starting to realize that once I'm safely on my couch in Florida, I'll be thinking of the woods and saying the same thing.
Last note from the trail. I ended up skipping about 130 miles of Maine, all the way to Monson. I feel kind of bad about this, for all the obvious reasons - namely that this means my hike will end up only being something like 1900 miles, and that I'm missing some of the most beautiful stuff. But the reasons for skipping are equally obvious - if I hiked all of Maine, I'd be getting home less than a week before I would need to get back to work, and that would have been really bad. Even with two weeks' R&R, I have a feeling it's going to be ugly. The consensus seems to be that it takes a few months after a thru-hike before you're back to whatever approaches normalcy.
It took me two full days to hitchhike up to Monson, and the time has been a reminder that many of the best parts of this experience have come off the trail. Most of my hitches have been from one flyspeck town to the next, ten or so miles at a time, spending a few hours in little places with a store, a post office, and a population well short of four digits.
Monson is the last of these, and it's the last of the trail towns. It's got a main drag running through the center and just a few side streets. I count two small churches, and about a half-dozen businesses. There's an antique/gift shop with a sign that gives you a number to call "If we're closed and you want to come in." There's a gas station (one pump) which is also the convenience store, pizzeria and deli. There's a pub which is also the restaurant, laundromat, and guesthouse, and Shaw's boarding house, which is an AT institution. No crappy hostel linens here; the beds have clean, new sheets and thick comforters. Breakfast is all-you-can-eat eggs, home fries, bacon, sausage and blueberry pancakes. And then there's the Monson General Store, which is about twenty feet wide by sixty feet deep, and where you can pick up some Spaghetti-O's, a garden hose, a tube of toothpaste, a scoop of ice cream, and an egg salad sandwich, while also getting your keys duplicated and renting a DVD. It's sort of like a Wal-Mart supercenter, without all the big-city fuss and pretension.
If you come to Monson, do it on a Friday. The pub has a Fish Fry - all-you-can-eat, of course - and the General Store has bluegrass night. Actually, the music depends on who shows up to play any given Friday. Last night, it was several guitars, a banjo or two, three fiddlers, a dulcimer, and a harmonica, and the music ran from John Denver to Janis Joplin to Gospel to Irish Folk tunes. The audience was mostly seniors with more than a handful of hairy hiker types mixed in. (I'm told they get a lot of families with kids in the summer months). Folks join in singing or clapping along as the mood strikes - the chorus to "Country Roads" brought nearly everyone to full-voice. A glass jar of corn kernels made the rounds as a shaker percussion instrument, and I took a turn. Folks drifted out as the night went along, and things finally wound up around 10:30. I walked out into a cold, clear night, where a half-moon hung in the blackness and a breeze promised that winter was coming but not yet, not yet. And I thought that if someone came down from Pluto, and they wanted to know what human life was supposed to be about, you could do a hell of a lot worse than taking them to Monson, Maine on a Friday night.
But that was last night, and this is today. Today I'm back on the trail, and heading into the Hundred Mile Wilderness. It's a little bit of a misnomer, but north of Monson it's 100 miles to the nearest store; and after that it's only 14 miles to the summit of Mt. Katahdia, and the end of the trail, and the beginning of the trip home - which will take about 2 days, roughly 1/100th of what it took to get here.
Of course, "home" is always a loaded term. I've lived in Florida for eight years, but I still don't always really think of it as "home" in a sense deeper than "it's where I keep my other pair of shoes." I've lived so many places in my life, that it's been hard to ever get that feeling of homeness at any of them.
And now, I'm getting ready to leave another home. In a lot of ways, the trail - especially the trail when experienced along it's length during a season - has a lot in common with these little towns I enjoy so much. Everyone knows everyone else, mostly. Everyone shops at the same stores and drives the same roads and knows the punchlines to all the same jokes. Everyone trusts each other, and occasionally may even need to rely on each other. It's a 2000-mile long village, and I have lived there. When I come back to Monson - or Damascus, or Unionville or Max Patch or Mt. Washington or any of a hundred spots on the trail that I loved - these places won't feel like somewhere I've visited, but like a place I've lived in.
For the last month, as I've gotten more and more worn down by the trail, I've been thinking more and more that "I just want to go home." Only now am I starting to realize that once I'm safely on my couch in Florida, I'll be thinking of the woods and saying the same thing.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Why I hike so slow:
I'm not the slowest hiker on the Appalachian Trail, but I'm definitely on the slow side of things. There's several reasons for this, starting with the fact that I'm still basically a lazy person who doesn't push himself to go longer or harder even when I could. Another reason is that when I am walking, I tend to amble or stroll more than really hike. Those aren't really good things, and I wish I had a bit more of an athlete's mentality. But part of why I'm slow is that I stop and sit still so much, and I don't regret that at all.
In the springtime, in Tennessee and Virginia, the woods were full of butterflies. I kept trying to get pictures of them, but they never were still enough, and they fly so elliptically that all I succeeded in doing was looking like an idiot as I chased them from down the trail, pack on, camera in hand, hoping to get one good picture. This went on for a couple of weeks. One day in May, I stopped at a shelter to take a break. I sat down on the picnic table, and laid my sweat-soaked yellow bandanna in the sun to dry, while I sat still, catching my breath. After a few minutes, a yellow butterfly came down and landed directly on the bandanna, yellow on yellow in a bright afternoon sun. He stayed there long enough for me to get a few pictures, but then I made a sudden move and he was gone.
Chipmunks are probably my favorite animal in the forest; I'd love to someday have a tame pet chipmunk. Unfortunately, they also are pretty hard to get a good look at, as they tend to suspect that anything larger than they wants to eat them. But are day in Vermont, as I sat still on a rock, a chipmunk started walking around my feet. Every time I moved so much as a muscle, he seemed disposed to run away, but so long as I was totally motionless, I could watch him.
In the White Mountains of New Hampshire, I summitted a mountain around noon only to find it soaked by the clouds, with absolutely no visibility at all. I started to go down, but something told me to stop. "Wait. Just wait," it seemed to say. I did. A minute or two later, I felt the wind from the west pick up. I set my face to it, and it blew stronger. Suddenly, the clouds opened (more accurately, the cloud moved off the mountain), and I was leaking down on the deep valleys and sister mountains, a choppy sea of granite and pine. I looked back east and for a few moments that direction was still in the clouds; but as the cloud kept moving, soon all was clear in that direction as well, and I had my first view of the summit of Mount Washington then still several days walk away. With the cloud gone, I found myself on top of a mountain and warm in the sun.
We are told that the shame we feel at our nakedness is a consequence of the fall from Eden. We are also told that when mankind fell, all of creation shared in that fall. Logic, then, seems to suggest that the rest of creation would feel some of the fear of nakedness that we do. And I think it does. It seems like nature is a shy bride, waiting for our patience and stillness before she will show herself.
September 8 - 15
Heading North from Gorham, NH is sort of a good-news/bad-news sort of deal.
The good news is that, especially now in the fall, it's beautiful. The woods are tremendously thick with close-growing trees and dense undergrowth of ferns making bushwhacking for off the trail impossible in most places. At the lower elevations, it's a mixed forest, and the leaves are starting to change, the birches turning yellow, the maples red. As you go higher, the forests are deep green, with moss covering nearly everything, and thick spruce and pine creating a heavy scent. Finally on the very high elevations - above 3800 or so, the trees are shrunken or non-existent, and alpine grasses and mosses dominate. It's not all ridge-walking, and when you get down to the notches, as often as not there's a stream or a creek running through the woods.
The bad news is, as beautiful as it is, it's also very tough walking. The trail is really rugged, with lots of places where you're using your hands to pull yourself up, or dropping to your butt to slide down on a smooth stone face, and others where you're climbing over, and around and occasionally even under huge boulders (I tore out the butt of my pants this week - have to find news ones). It's the hardest section of the entire trail.
The climax of this is Mahoosuc Notch, pretty much universally regarded as the toughest mile on the entire trail. It's got cliffs on both sides, so you're funnelled into this narrow gap in the mountains, where you climb across boulders ranging in size from refrigerators to mini-vans, to bedroom-sized. In a few places, you're obliged to crawl through openings so narrow you need to pull your pack off and push it ahead of you. It's especially dicey when you go through it as I did, on a rainy day. It's actually a lot of fun, but as you can imagine it kills your chances of making good time; really, you could say that about the whole stretch from Gorham, NH to Andover, Maine.
Which has left me with a real problem. As I write this I have 246 miles of trail left to go. Unfortunately, I'm due back at work in about a month. I'm definitely going to need at least a couple of weeks of R&R before I'm in shape to go back to work, so that really only leaves me about 2 weeks to cover the rest of the trail. That's not going to happen, especially given that conditions around Mt. Katahdin at the end make it necessary to allow several days in case of weather. So, I'm going to have to skip about 100 miles of trail. It kind of bothers me in that I can easily think of lots of places I'd rather skip than Maine in September. But it is what it is, and frankly, after 6 months, I'm very tired. I already knew that my hike would be short of the full 2,175; this just means I'll end up with something like 1900 miles instead of 2000. And it gives me a section to look forward to doing in the future. I'm not sure where, exactly, I'll be skipping to; at this point I'm guessing Manson, at the start of the "100 mile wilderness." After that Katahdin, and home.
UPDATE: I've been having camera problems, and the disposable I ended up having to use in Mahoosuc Notch got some water in it and was ruined. So unfortunately I have no pics of the Mahoosuc Notch. But I'm sure you can do a Google image search and find scads. (Actually I did a youtube search and found some interesting videos. - Dee)
I'm not the slowest hiker on the Appalachian Trail, but I'm definitely on the slow side of things. There's several reasons for this, starting with the fact that I'm still basically a lazy person who doesn't push himself to go longer or harder even when I could. Another reason is that when I am walking, I tend to amble or stroll more than really hike. Those aren't really good things, and I wish I had a bit more of an athlete's mentality. But part of why I'm slow is that I stop and sit still so much, and I don't regret that at all.
In the springtime, in Tennessee and Virginia, the woods were full of butterflies. I kept trying to get pictures of them, but they never were still enough, and they fly so elliptically that all I succeeded in doing was looking like an idiot as I chased them from down the trail, pack on, camera in hand, hoping to get one good picture. This went on for a couple of weeks. One day in May, I stopped at a shelter to take a break. I sat down on the picnic table, and laid my sweat-soaked yellow bandanna in the sun to dry, while I sat still, catching my breath. After a few minutes, a yellow butterfly came down and landed directly on the bandanna, yellow on yellow in a bright afternoon sun. He stayed there long enough for me to get a few pictures, but then I made a sudden move and he was gone.
Chipmunks are probably my favorite animal in the forest; I'd love to someday have a tame pet chipmunk. Unfortunately, they also are pretty hard to get a good look at, as they tend to suspect that anything larger than they wants to eat them. But are day in Vermont, as I sat still on a rock, a chipmunk started walking around my feet. Every time I moved so much as a muscle, he seemed disposed to run away, but so long as I was totally motionless, I could watch him.
In the White Mountains of New Hampshire, I summitted a mountain around noon only to find it soaked by the clouds, with absolutely no visibility at all. I started to go down, but something told me to stop. "Wait. Just wait," it seemed to say. I did. A minute or two later, I felt the wind from the west pick up. I set my face to it, and it blew stronger. Suddenly, the clouds opened (more accurately, the cloud moved off the mountain), and I was leaking down on the deep valleys and sister mountains, a choppy sea of granite and pine. I looked back east and for a few moments that direction was still in the clouds; but as the cloud kept moving, soon all was clear in that direction as well, and I had my first view of the summit of Mount Washington then still several days walk away. With the cloud gone, I found myself on top of a mountain and warm in the sun.
We are told that the shame we feel at our nakedness is a consequence of the fall from Eden. We are also told that when mankind fell, all of creation shared in that fall. Logic, then, seems to suggest that the rest of creation would feel some of the fear of nakedness that we do. And I think it does. It seems like nature is a shy bride, waiting for our patience and stillness before she will show herself.
September 8 - 15
Heading North from Gorham, NH is sort of a good-news/bad-news sort of deal.
The good news is that, especially now in the fall, it's beautiful. The woods are tremendously thick with close-growing trees and dense undergrowth of ferns making bushwhacking for off the trail impossible in most places. At the lower elevations, it's a mixed forest, and the leaves are starting to change, the birches turning yellow, the maples red. As you go higher, the forests are deep green, with moss covering nearly everything, and thick spruce and pine creating a heavy scent. Finally on the very high elevations - above 3800 or so, the trees are shrunken or non-existent, and alpine grasses and mosses dominate. It's not all ridge-walking, and when you get down to the notches, as often as not there's a stream or a creek running through the woods.
The bad news is, as beautiful as it is, it's also very tough walking. The trail is really rugged, with lots of places where you're using your hands to pull yourself up, or dropping to your butt to slide down on a smooth stone face, and others where you're climbing over, and around and occasionally even under huge boulders (I tore out the butt of my pants this week - have to find news ones). It's the hardest section of the entire trail.
The climax of this is Mahoosuc Notch, pretty much universally regarded as the toughest mile on the entire trail. It's got cliffs on both sides, so you're funnelled into this narrow gap in the mountains, where you climb across boulders ranging in size from refrigerators to mini-vans, to bedroom-sized. In a few places, you're obliged to crawl through openings so narrow you need to pull your pack off and push it ahead of you. It's especially dicey when you go through it as I did, on a rainy day. It's actually a lot of fun, but as you can imagine it kills your chances of making good time; really, you could say that about the whole stretch from Gorham, NH to Andover, Maine.
Which has left me with a real problem. As I write this I have 246 miles of trail left to go. Unfortunately, I'm due back at work in about a month. I'm definitely going to need at least a couple of weeks of R&R before I'm in shape to go back to work, so that really only leaves me about 2 weeks to cover the rest of the trail. That's not going to happen, especially given that conditions around Mt. Katahdin at the end make it necessary to allow several days in case of weather. So, I'm going to have to skip about 100 miles of trail. It kind of bothers me in that I can easily think of lots of places I'd rather skip than Maine in September. But it is what it is, and frankly, after 6 months, I'm very tired. I already knew that my hike would be short of the full 2,175; this just means I'll end up with something like 1900 miles instead of 2000. And it gives me a section to look forward to doing in the future. I'm not sure where, exactly, I'll be skipping to; at this point I'm guessing Manson, at the start of the "100 mile wilderness." After that Katahdin, and home.
UPDATE: I've been having camera problems, and the disposable I ended up having to use in Mahoosuc Notch got some water in it and was ruined. So unfortunately I have no pics of the Mahoosuc Notch. But I'm sure you can do a Google image search and find scads. (Actually I did a youtube search and found some interesting videos. - Dee)
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
New photos -
New photos up at trailjournals.com http://www.trailjournals.com/photos.cfm?id=387084 and keep clicking next. Some of 'em are messed up; been having camera problems. Also, they're out of order.
Mailed out journals today, you'll be reading about it in a few days.
In the meantime, check out the awsome blog of two freinds of mine at www.walkingtomaine.blogspot.com.
Be sure to tell them that Chainsaw's blog is way better.
New photos up at trailjournals.com http://www.trailjournals.com/photos.cfm?id=387084 and keep clicking next. Some of 'em are messed up; been having camera problems. Also, they're out of order.
Mailed out journals today, you'll be reading about it in a few days.
In the meantime, check out the awsome blog of two freinds of mine at www.walkingtomaine.blogspot.com.
Be sure to tell them that Chainsaw's blog is way better.
Friday, September 12, 2008
The Low and the High
August 24 - September 6
Obviously, I've been really late getting an update on here; what can I say, you get what you pay for. (Although I do especially apologize to those of you who have hit the "donate" button.)
To try to recap a very full 2 weeks; when last I left you, I was in Hanover, NH, waiting for my maildrop of my cold-weather gear so I could head up into the White Mountains. To make a long story short, it never arrived. It was mailed on time via Priority Mail, but where the USPS sent it, we have no idea. More frustrating as the gear not coming was the fact that I spent 5 days sitting on my butt doing nothing waiting for it to come.
There are certainly worse places than Hanover to be stuck - despite being a pretty upscale kind of town, it was very hiker-friendly, and the presence of Dartmouth U and it's library helped.
I finally gave up and decided I would need to buy new gear, so I hitched 10 miles to the nearest outfitter and got what I needed. Unfortunately, in the process I managed to make a bad situation worse by managing to lose my wallet about five minutes after buying all the gear. We looked all over the store, to no avail. Over $100 in cash, two credit cards, debit card, health insurance card, and driver's license, all gone. And no idea how to replace them.
Finally, after bumming a meal and hitching an hour to get back to Hanover, I realized that the store had given me mismatched shoe sizes.
Before I started, I knew there were going to be days I wanted to quit the trail; I envisioned sitting down in the middle of the trail, exhausted and just wanting to go home. I have had quite a few of these moments -- almost every day in Vermont, in fact. But I never guessed that my lowest point on the whole entire trail would be sitting on the sidewalk on Main Street in Hanover, NH, holding one size 11 and one size 12, and not wanting to have to hitch back to the store and try to exchange my shoes without having the credit card I used to buy them.
I've been tired, sore, depressed, and often lonely for several weeks; now I was broke, too. I didn't cry, but baby I was close. The worst part was knowing that if I really wanted to, I could be home and on my sofa in 48 hours. I could get my credit card numbers over the phone, and use them to book a bus and then a train or something and get the hell home. There was a miniature devil in my ear: The pain will stop. You will have hot coffee and cold beer and showers and television and a couch. All of this could be yours...
A week later, I don't know why I didn't quit. Maybe it was me being brave, maybe it was me being pigheaded, maybe it was some kind of Grace. Maybe it was a little bit of all those things.
But what I did was call my brother in Florida, with whom I'd left an "Emergency Box,"the contents of which I'd pretty much forgotten. A spare driver's license and a credit card, as it turned out, which he would send overnight mail. I called my other credit-card companies and got the cards cancelled or replaced. I hitched back to the store and got the shoe sizes sorted out.
And while waiting for all that, I did a dayhike up Mt. Moosilauke.
Moosilauke is the first mountain above treeline, and it is spectacular. I approached it from the North where the trail runs parallel to Beaver Brook for about a mile or so. But the trail is so steep here - rising something like 3000 feet in 2 miles, - so the brook is really a long series of waterfalls, all just a few yards from the trail. Actually "trail" is even a bit of misnomer; those 2 miles are so steep that it's really more like a staircase in most spots, occasionally broken up by hand-over-hand climbs. But you finally come to the end of that and at about 4500 feet, you're above treeline. It was a warm day in the valley - 80ish or so, but temperature drops about 5 degrees for every 1000 feet in altitude, and with the wind whipping over the peak, it was wonderfully cool up there. The clouds were high, so we had views forever, mountains surrounding on all sides, sitting in ranks like an audience, fading into blue with distance like they were old memories. Off in the distance, one peak was invisible - Mt. Washington, masked in clouds as it is some 300 days a year. But that was a week away; for the moment Moosilauke was more than enough. I stayed up there over 2 hours, enjoying the cold and the wind and the views and talking to various thru-hikers as well as the locals who had come up to the peak. The sun shone, white clouds pillowed the farther mountains, the chipmunks danced after the peanuts I threw to them, and it seemed I saw a smile and heard a laughing voice behind the wind. See? This is what was ahead; what you almost missed. This was always what was ahead of you.
Up above treeline, it can be easy to get lost if the clouds come down and reduce visibility, so the route is often marked by cairns, 4-or-5-foot-high piles of stones placed every 40 yards or so next to the trail. On a clear day, you can see them lining up ahead of you as far as the slope of the land will allow, but in the mist, you might only be able to see to the one immediately ahead.
In addition to the cairns put there by the trail maintainers, there are the smaller piles of rock put here by the people who travel through, often bringing up pebbles from the base of the mountain to place at the top, marking their passage. Both kinds of cairns make me think of the Israelites, wandering through the wilderness, constantly told by God to build altars. Manna falls, rain comes ... build an altar, they are told. So that when you come this way again, you will remember that something good happened here.
I sit on Moosilauke and think about this, and I realize that it is less than 48 hours since I thought about how I could be home on my sofa in less than 48 hours.
I did not take a stone from the bottom to the top; but I take a pebble from someone else's altar and dropped it in my pocket before I walked down. Mt. Moosilauke has been the high point of my trail.
After Moosilauke, the trail keeps going deeper into the White Mountains. This section is generally regarded as both the most difficult and the most beautiful part of the entire trail. Having just come through it, I can only agree. The climbs here are intense, repeatedly going up two or three thousand feet in the space of a few miles, then back down again. That's about a half-mile vertically. As a result, in a lot of places the trail is basically a rock scramble, and you're using your hands nearly as much as your feet, grabbing rocks, and roots to pull up or ease down. In many places, it's all over boulders, so your feet take the pounding that comes from walking on rock all day. (Bhrama describes it as "like Pennsylvania, but vertical") It's hard to make good time like this - impossible actually - but when you get to the top, it's all worth it. First, it's the Franconia Ridge, with a couple of miles of ridge walking at about 4800 feet, again above treeline, around Mt. Lafayette. Again, the views are tremendous and the cold, clear air exhilarating. After a steep downhill into Crawford Notch, it's then another steep climb, up up up into the Presidential range, where a section of something like 16 miles above treeline.
Camping up this high presents a number of problems. First off, a hammock hanger like me is pretty much out of luck above treeline. But even people with tents are pretty reluctant to try to pitch in an area that routinely gets winds of 30,40,50 mph. or more. Finally you're technically not allowed to camp in a lot of places. Part of the reason for this is that the Appalachian Mountain Club runs a series of "huts" up here, that are basically high-altitude hostels where tourists from the city spend $80-90 a night for dinner, a bunk, breakfast and a privy. (More crucially, I guess, they enable tourists to hike hut-to-hut without heaving to carry their shelter with them.) Thru-hikers generally have the option of doing a work-for-stay in the huts - do some sweeping or some dishes and they'll let you eat the paying guests' leftovers and sleep on the dining room floor. The pros and cons of this arrangement are all pretty complicated, but I think it's safe to say most of us are not fans.
At the end of the day, though, you put up with what you have to to hike the Presidential range. The mountains here get higher, the winds stronger, the views more spectacular. The weather up here is notoriously ugly - snow can fall in any month, and Mt. Washington is home to the highest wind speed ever recorded on earth, 231mph. But doing my time up here, it's just about perfect temperatures of about 55-60 degrees, with strong but not overwhelming winds most of the time (call me crazy, but I love being out in a 40 degree wind-chill). Best of all, the sky is crystal-clear on the day I summit Washington at 6,288 feet - a really rare thing. The weather is so good, and the forecast, that I do something a little crazy - I cowboy camp at 5500 feet. I'd previously worked out my emergency above-treeline plan - using my hiking poles as supports, I make my tarp into an improvised pop tent, and sleep on a bed of strawy high-altitude grass. During the night the winds picked up quite a lot, and I woke up inside a cloud, but all-in-all, it was a pretty awesome experience. After the Presidentials, it's another steep, brutal downhill, dropping almost a mile in half-a-day. I eventually make it into Gorham, NH, simultaneously re-energized and exhausted. The week of sitting in Hanover made me soft enough that the Whites really wore me out.
But Gorham's been good to me, and I've just spent the last few hours sitting in a bar, eating lunch, watching football, avoiding the remnants of a hurricane, and drinking beer bought for me by a pair of locals who tell me to call them Hammer and Slick.
Sun's coming out, though, and I need to get moving on. It's only a day's walk to Maine. 300 more miles to go, and then it really be time for the sofa...
Obviously, I've been really late getting an update on here; what can I say, you get what you pay for. (Although I do especially apologize to those of you who have hit the "donate" button.)
To try to recap a very full 2 weeks; when last I left you, I was in Hanover, NH, waiting for my maildrop of my cold-weather gear so I could head up into the White Mountains. To make a long story short, it never arrived. It was mailed on time via Priority Mail, but where the USPS sent it, we have no idea. More frustrating as the gear not coming was the fact that I spent 5 days sitting on my butt doing nothing waiting for it to come.
There are certainly worse places than Hanover to be stuck - despite being a pretty upscale kind of town, it was very hiker-friendly, and the presence of Dartmouth U and it's library helped.
I finally gave up and decided I would need to buy new gear, so I hitched 10 miles to the nearest outfitter and got what I needed. Unfortunately, in the process I managed to make a bad situation worse by managing to lose my wallet about five minutes after buying all the gear. We looked all over the store, to no avail. Over $100 in cash, two credit cards, debit card, health insurance card, and driver's license, all gone. And no idea how to replace them.
Finally, after bumming a meal and hitching an hour to get back to Hanover, I realized that the store had given me mismatched shoe sizes.
Before I started, I knew there were going to be days I wanted to quit the trail; I envisioned sitting down in the middle of the trail, exhausted and just wanting to go home. I have had quite a few of these moments -- almost every day in Vermont, in fact. But I never guessed that my lowest point on the whole entire trail would be sitting on the sidewalk on Main Street in Hanover, NH, holding one size 11 and one size 12, and not wanting to have to hitch back to the store and try to exchange my shoes without having the credit card I used to buy them.
I've been tired, sore, depressed, and often lonely for several weeks; now I was broke, too. I didn't cry, but baby I was close. The worst part was knowing that if I really wanted to, I could be home and on my sofa in 48 hours. I could get my credit card numbers over the phone, and use them to book a bus and then a train or something and get the hell home. There was a miniature devil in my ear: The pain will stop. You will have hot coffee and cold beer and showers and television and a couch. All of this could be yours...
A week later, I don't know why I didn't quit. Maybe it was me being brave, maybe it was me being pigheaded, maybe it was some kind of Grace. Maybe it was a little bit of all those things.
But what I did was call my brother in Florida, with whom I'd left an "Emergency Box,"the contents of which I'd pretty much forgotten. A spare driver's license and a credit card, as it turned out, which he would send overnight mail. I called my other credit-card companies and got the cards cancelled or replaced. I hitched back to the store and got the shoe sizes sorted out.
And while waiting for all that, I did a dayhike up Mt. Moosilauke.
Moosilauke is the first mountain above treeline, and it is spectacular. I approached it from the North where the trail runs parallel to Beaver Brook for about a mile or so. But the trail is so steep here - rising something like 3000 feet in 2 miles, - so the brook is really a long series of waterfalls, all just a few yards from the trail. Actually "trail" is even a bit of misnomer; those 2 miles are so steep that it's really more like a staircase in most spots, occasionally broken up by hand-over-hand climbs. But you finally come to the end of that and at about 4500 feet, you're above treeline. It was a warm day in the valley - 80ish or so, but temperature drops about 5 degrees for every 1000 feet in altitude, and with the wind whipping over the peak, it was wonderfully cool up there. The clouds were high, so we had views forever, mountains surrounding on all sides, sitting in ranks like an audience, fading into blue with distance like they were old memories. Off in the distance, one peak was invisible - Mt. Washington, masked in clouds as it is some 300 days a year. But that was a week away; for the moment Moosilauke was more than enough. I stayed up there over 2 hours, enjoying the cold and the wind and the views and talking to various thru-hikers as well as the locals who had come up to the peak. The sun shone, white clouds pillowed the farther mountains, the chipmunks danced after the peanuts I threw to them, and it seemed I saw a smile and heard a laughing voice behind the wind. See? This is what was ahead; what you almost missed. This was always what was ahead of you.
Up above treeline, it can be easy to get lost if the clouds come down and reduce visibility, so the route is often marked by cairns, 4-or-5-foot-high piles of stones placed every 40 yards or so next to the trail. On a clear day, you can see them lining up ahead of you as far as the slope of the land will allow, but in the mist, you might only be able to see to the one immediately ahead.
In addition to the cairns put there by the trail maintainers, there are the smaller piles of rock put here by the people who travel through, often bringing up pebbles from the base of the mountain to place at the top, marking their passage. Both kinds of cairns make me think of the Israelites, wandering through the wilderness, constantly told by God to build altars. Manna falls, rain comes ... build an altar, they are told. So that when you come this way again, you will remember that something good happened here.
I sit on Moosilauke and think about this, and I realize that it is less than 48 hours since I thought about how I could be home on my sofa in less than 48 hours.
I did not take a stone from the bottom to the top; but I take a pebble from someone else's altar and dropped it in my pocket before I walked down. Mt. Moosilauke has been the high point of my trail.
After Moosilauke, the trail keeps going deeper into the White Mountains. This section is generally regarded as both the most difficult and the most beautiful part of the entire trail. Having just come through it, I can only agree. The climbs here are intense, repeatedly going up two or three thousand feet in the space of a few miles, then back down again. That's about a half-mile vertically. As a result, in a lot of places the trail is basically a rock scramble, and you're using your hands nearly as much as your feet, grabbing rocks, and roots to pull up or ease down. In many places, it's all over boulders, so your feet take the pounding that comes from walking on rock all day. (Bhrama describes it as "like Pennsylvania, but vertical") It's hard to make good time like this - impossible actually - but when you get to the top, it's all worth it. First, it's the Franconia Ridge, with a couple of miles of ridge walking at about 4800 feet, again above treeline, around Mt. Lafayette. Again, the views are tremendous and the cold, clear air exhilarating. After a steep downhill into Crawford Notch, it's then another steep climb, up up up into the Presidential range, where a section of something like 16 miles above treeline.
Camping up this high presents a number of problems. First off, a hammock hanger like me is pretty much out of luck above treeline. But even people with tents are pretty reluctant to try to pitch in an area that routinely gets winds of 30,40,50 mph. or more. Finally you're technically not allowed to camp in a lot of places. Part of the reason for this is that the Appalachian Mountain Club runs a series of "huts" up here, that are basically high-altitude hostels where tourists from the city spend $80-90 a night for dinner, a bunk, breakfast and a privy. (More crucially, I guess, they enable tourists to hike hut-to-hut without heaving to carry their shelter with them.) Thru-hikers generally have the option of doing a work-for-stay in the huts - do some sweeping or some dishes and they'll let you eat the paying guests' leftovers and sleep on the dining room floor. The pros and cons of this arrangement are all pretty complicated, but I think it's safe to say most of us are not fans.
At the end of the day, though, you put up with what you have to to hike the Presidential range. The mountains here get higher, the winds stronger, the views more spectacular. The weather up here is notoriously ugly - snow can fall in any month, and Mt. Washington is home to the highest wind speed ever recorded on earth, 231mph. But doing my time up here, it's just about perfect temperatures of about 55-60 degrees, with strong but not overwhelming winds most of the time (call me crazy, but I love being out in a 40 degree wind-chill). Best of all, the sky is crystal-clear on the day I summit Washington at 6,288 feet - a really rare thing. The weather is so good, and the forecast, that I do something a little crazy - I cowboy camp at 5500 feet. I'd previously worked out my emergency above-treeline plan - using my hiking poles as supports, I make my tarp into an improvised pop tent, and sleep on a bed of strawy high-altitude grass. During the night the winds picked up quite a lot, and I woke up inside a cloud, but all-in-all, it was a pretty awesome experience. After the Presidentials, it's another steep, brutal downhill, dropping almost a mile in half-a-day. I eventually make it into Gorham, NH, simultaneously re-energized and exhausted. The week of sitting in Hanover made me soft enough that the Whites really wore me out.
But Gorham's been good to me, and I've just spent the last few hours sitting in a bar, eating lunch, watching football, avoiding the remnants of a hurricane, and drinking beer bought for me by a pair of locals who tell me to call them Hammer and Slick.
Sun's coming out, though, and I need to get moving on. It's only a day's walk to Maine. 300 more miles to go, and then it really be time for the sofa...
Friday, August 22, 2008
August 15-22
My arrival in Rutland came on a Friday; I didn't know until I got there was that it was also the first day of the Long Trail Festival. The Long Trail is a very old hiking trail -- older than the AT -- that runs the length of the state of Vermont, from Massachusetts to Canada. The festival is like a much smaller version of Trail Days, with workshops, films, vendor booths ... and for the several dozen AT hikers that were there, a lot of hanging around, chilling.
Also just like Trail Days, at the end there was a work project at the end of it, and I volunteered again. We went back to Clarendon Gorge, where the AT crosses the Mill River. The gorge is about 30 feet high, and is crossed by a suspension bridge. The bridge was paid for by the family of an AT thru-hiker who died trying to cross the river in 1973. The cables are metal, but the deck of the bridge is wood and has to be replaced about every 15 years; so about a dozen of us spent a day doing that. There is something deeply counterintuitive about standing on a bridge over a gorge and taking a saw to the wood underneath your feet (even if you're not afraid of heights, which I am) ...
-- Finished up Vermont, and made it to Hanover, NH. I've reeeally been looking forward to getting here. I've been really dragging with motivation, and I was looking forward to getting to New Hampshire and the White Mountains, which has some of the most spectacular scenery on the whole trail. Hanover itself is a cool town, basically an extension of Dartmouth U. Given the kind of students Dartmouth attracts, the town isn't exactly full of low-priced eateries, but I have managed to find both a Fajita buffet and a Thai buffet ... and eat at both in the same day. I think I put away 10,000 calories that day. It's also a very hiker-freindly place -- there's a pizza place that gives all hikers a free slice, a Ben and Jerry's that gives a hiker discount, and a used bookstore whose owner lets a few hikers stay at her house.
If it sounds like I've been here awhile, I have -- three days now. I was supposed to be getting a maildrop here, but the USPS has not delivered. This is a real problem as this maildrop had all my colder-weather gear that I need for hiking in the Whites (they've been to get snow 12 months a year). So I sit, hope it arrives tomorrow, and start wondering if I have to start looking for an outfitter that can sell me a pair of boots and some thermals ...
Also just like Trail Days, at the end there was a work project at the end of it, and I volunteered again. We went back to Clarendon Gorge, where the AT crosses the Mill River. The gorge is about 30 feet high, and is crossed by a suspension bridge. The bridge was paid for by the family of an AT thru-hiker who died trying to cross the river in 1973. The cables are metal, but the deck of the bridge is wood and has to be replaced about every 15 years; so about a dozen of us spent a day doing that. There is something deeply counterintuitive about standing on a bridge over a gorge and taking a saw to the wood underneath your feet (even if you're not afraid of heights, which I am) ...
-- Finished up Vermont, and made it to Hanover, NH. I've reeeally been looking forward to getting here. I've been really dragging with motivation, and I was looking forward to getting to New Hampshire and the White Mountains, which has some of the most spectacular scenery on the whole trail. Hanover itself is a cool town, basically an extension of Dartmouth U. Given the kind of students Dartmouth attracts, the town isn't exactly full of low-priced eateries, but I have managed to find both a Fajita buffet and a Thai buffet ... and eat at both in the same day. I think I put away 10,000 calories that day. It's also a very hiker-freindly place -- there's a pizza place that gives all hikers a free slice, a Ben and Jerry's that gives a hiker discount, and a used bookstore whose owner lets a few hikers stay at her house.
If it sounds like I've been here awhile, I have -- three days now. I was supposed to be getting a maildrop here, but the USPS has not delivered. This is a real problem as this maildrop had all my colder-weather gear that I need for hiking in the Whites (they've been to get snow 12 months a year). So I sit, hope it arrives tomorrow, and start wondering if I have to start looking for an outfitter that can sell me a pair of boots and some thermals ...
Photos
It's been awhile since I posted a link to my photo pages; since New York to be exact. Follow this link and just keep clicking "next" to see them all:
http://www.trailjournals.com/photos.cfm?id=369734
http://www.trailjournals.com/photos.cfm?id=369734
August 10 - August 15
--Rain, rain rain. Muddy mosquito damp with misty cloudy damp mud. Mud rain moss; bog swamp wet, damp. Mosquito muddy wring mossy, squishy mud rain cloud.
--No really. Vermont already had had a very rainy July before we arrived, and I've had at least some rain for nine out of eleven days in North Mass/Vermont. It's kept the temperature down, which is great, but it's still a nasty way to live. The trail is rock, or else thick, pull-your-shoe-off-your-foot mud, or else the trail is basically turned into a stream bed. As someone wrote in a shelter register: "Welcome to Vermont, where the sky is grey, the trees are green, and the trail doesn't take you to a water source because the trail IS the water source."
--Finally, August 13th (my 5 month mark) is cloudless. Of course, one doesn't actually see the sun since the forest here is so thick... (update: heavy rains starting at 7pm on the 13th)
--The rain adds to the mounting exhaustion. I have never felt so mentally and emotionally drained in my life. Physically I am pretty much fine. My feet ache, and I have a pulled muscle (from jumping rock-to-rock trying to avoid mud), but other than that I'm not bad. But between the ears, I'm wiped out.
--The calendar is running out. In order to have some recovery time before getting back to work, I need to finish sometime around October 1, giving me six weeks. Given that I'm averaging about 70-75 miles a week lately (those who care can look up my statistics on trailjournals.com), I'm pushing it awfully close.
--In light of all the above, I'm going to skip some 50 miles of trail from Manchester to Rutland, VT. I want to make sure my last few weeks on the trail are enjoyable, and they won't be if I'm having to constantly worry about making miles everyday. I feel a little bit bad about this; having skipped well over 100 miles of trail, at this point I probably don't even qualify as a thru-hiker anymore - just a 2,000 mile sectioner. But at this point, if it gets me done a few days faster, I'm for it.
--Rain, rain rain. Muddy mosquito damp with misty cloudy damp mud. Mud rain moss; bog swamp wet, damp. Mosquito muddy wring mossy, squishy mud rain cloud.
--No really. Vermont already had had a very rainy July before we arrived, and I've had at least some rain for nine out of eleven days in North Mass/Vermont. It's kept the temperature down, which is great, but it's still a nasty way to live. The trail is rock, or else thick, pull-your-shoe-off-your-foot mud, or else the trail is basically turned into a stream bed. As someone wrote in a shelter register: "Welcome to Vermont, where the sky is grey, the trees are green, and the trail doesn't take you to a water source because the trail IS the water source."
--Finally, August 13th (my 5 month mark) is cloudless. Of course, one doesn't actually see the sun since the forest here is so thick... (update: heavy rains starting at 7pm on the 13th)
--The rain adds to the mounting exhaustion. I have never felt so mentally and emotionally drained in my life. Physically I am pretty much fine. My feet ache, and I have a pulled muscle (from jumping rock-to-rock trying to avoid mud), but other than that I'm not bad. But between the ears, I'm wiped out.
--The calendar is running out. In order to have some recovery time before getting back to work, I need to finish sometime around October 1, giving me six weeks. Given that I'm averaging about 70-75 miles a week lately (those who care can look up my statistics on trailjournals.com), I'm pushing it awfully close.
--In light of all the above, I'm going to skip some 50 miles of trail from Manchester to Rutland, VT. I want to make sure my last few weeks on the trail are enjoyable, and they won't be if I'm having to constantly worry about making miles everyday. I feel a little bit bad about this; having skipped well over 100 miles of trail, at this point I probably don't even qualify as a thru-hiker anymore - just a 2,000 mile sectioner. But at this point, if it gets me done a few days faster, I'm for it.
Political Detox
One of the things I've had to do without while on the trail has been news. At home, I'm pretty much a news junkie; hitting news and political blogs nearly every day, listening to talk radio or NPR in the car, leaving cable news on while walking around the house. I've pretty much been in detox out here, catching a newspaper or getting online once a week or so just to see what I'm missing.
Except that I haven't really missed anything. When you're a news junkie, you follow every little "controversy," every back-and-forth, every point or two of "movement" in the incessant polls as if they actually meant something vitally important. In reality, most of what's happened in the last five months has been fairly predictable, and I don't think many people would change their votes according to all that stuff anyway.
But the thing that sticks out the most when you dip your toe back into the media after being away from it is how hysterical people get. You listen to the TV news or go online, and you get the impression that the election this November is between a socialist demagogue who wants to surrender to the UN on the one hand, and a fascist warmonger who wants to euthanize the poor on the other. It's really absurd, and it certainly drives home the point that the one bias pretty much all media have in common is the bias that whatever they are talking about is IMPORTANT. Not that any of this is new - American politics were rabidly partisan in 1790; in some ways political discourse is more restrained now than it's ever been. But that doesn't mean it's not still ridiculous.
Every election year since I've been teaching, I've told the same story to my students to try to give them perspective. I went to a very conservative College, where probably 80% of the student body were registered Republicans. On the night of the 1992 election, I was walking around campus, and as the results came in, there was a palpable sense of despair; so much so that the next day in chapel, the school president felt the need to reassure people that the election of Bill Clinton did not call into doubt the existence or omnipotence of God.
When I got into my dorm room, I found my roommate listening to George Bush's concession speech on the radio. My roommate was not a US citizen, but a Liberian who had escaped that country's civil war and enrolled in college in the US. Despite (or perhaps because of) that, he was very invested in the election and an ardent Bush supporter. But when I saw him, I was stunned to find him not at all depressed at the result of the election; normally very low-key, he was positively giddy as he listened to his candidate admit defeat and praise his opponent. I was thinking he was misunderstanding what was going on; until I realized that I was the one unclear on the concept.
John was thrilled just to see a peaceful change of power. Having lived his whole life in West Africa, he, like 99% of the people in the history of the planet, had never seen a person in political power willingly give it up. What I took as a given was to him a source of wonder.
The point I make with my students is that, as much as the politicians and the talking heads want to convince us that the apocalypse will come if we elect the wrong guy, the reality is that checks and balances, as well as politicians' desire for re-election, ensure that the vast majority of what happens will be things that the vast majority of us can go along with. No matter what happens in any American election, 99% of us will find our lives 99% unchanged. That's a good thing, one that's easy to forget when you watch TV more than once a month.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
8/6 – 8/9
I’m definitely in New England now. The woods are increasingly full of white-barked birch trees, along with lots of hemlock. The towns all have houses and churches that are a century or two old.
Lots of rain lately. Lots of walking in wet socks. In places, the Berkshires are almost more like a plateau than a mountain range. This leads to a lot of ponds, which are nice, but also to a lot of muddy, swampy spots. Mosquitoes have been pretty nasty.
Hitching back into town from a re-supply, I get picked up by none other that Lipstick, out once again playing taxi driver for her husband Raccoon. The AT continues to be a small world…
Before I left, I put virtually my entire CD collection onto a handful of memory cards that I could put into my MP3 player. The music has been a huge, huge, huge help in keeping myself motivated and staving off boredom from the last 1500 miles. But the last few days I’ve been listening to some audio books that I’d recorded instead. When I decided to go back to the music today, I realized that I lost the canister containing the memory cards. Considering that this is the one item in my pack that can’t possibly be replaced, this is pretty much a disaster. Since I could have lost them any number of places in the last week, there’s no chance of finding them (and, no, I didn’t put my name on the canister; that would have been intelligent of me.) This is a serious bummer going into the last 650 miles
Visited one of the trail institutions, “The cookie Lady.” For over twenty years, Roy and Marilyn Wiley have given free homemade cookies to hikers that stop by their blueberry farm a few hundred yards off the trail. Alas, the cookie Lady is out when I come by, but the Cookie Man hooks me up with some Raisin and Chocolate Chip cookies.
More ridiculous hospitality. Going into Dalton, MA, I’m told by some southbound thru-hikers (who I’ve been running into almost daily for the last 2 weeks.) to go to the Shell station and ask about “The Birdcage.” I do, and get directions to the house of Rob Bird. Rob is the manager of the couple gas stations, and in his spare time, he, like Mayor Dick Ludwick, has turned his house into hikers central. The front porch has several cats, and there’s about a dozen mattresses in the loft of the garage. Like the Mayor, Rob invites you to take a shower (actually, he requires it, which is pretty darn understandable), do your laundry, and hang out in his living room. By this point, it should make sense when I say that it’s both amazing and unsurprising. I probably shouldn’t, but I give into temptation and take a zero day in Dalton. (did I mention that the congregational church was having a $5 blueberry pancake breakfast? Well, they were.)
I’m definitely in New England now. The woods are increasingly full of white-barked birch trees, along with lots of hemlock. The towns all have houses and churches that are a century or two old.
Lots of rain lately. Lots of walking in wet socks. In places, the Berkshires are almost more like a plateau than a mountain range. This leads to a lot of ponds, which are nice, but also to a lot of muddy, swampy spots. Mosquitoes have been pretty nasty.
Hitching back into town from a re-supply, I get picked up by none other that Lipstick, out once again playing taxi driver for her husband Raccoon. The AT continues to be a small world…
Before I left, I put virtually my entire CD collection onto a handful of memory cards that I could put into my MP3 player. The music has been a huge, huge, huge help in keeping myself motivated and staving off boredom from the last 1500 miles. But the last few days I’ve been listening to some audio books that I’d recorded instead. When I decided to go back to the music today, I realized that I lost the canister containing the memory cards. Considering that this is the one item in my pack that can’t possibly be replaced, this is pretty much a disaster. Since I could have lost them any number of places in the last week, there’s no chance of finding them (and, no, I didn’t put my name on the canister; that would have been intelligent of me.) This is a serious bummer going into the last 650 miles
Visited one of the trail institutions, “The cookie Lady.” For over twenty years, Roy and Marilyn Wiley have given free homemade cookies to hikers that stop by their blueberry farm a few hundred yards off the trail. Alas, the cookie Lady is out when I come by, but the Cookie Man hooks me up with some Raisin and Chocolate Chip cookies.
More ridiculous hospitality. Going into Dalton, MA, I’m told by some southbound thru-hikers (who I’ve been running into almost daily for the last 2 weeks.) to go to the Shell station and ask about “The Birdcage.” I do, and get directions to the house of Rob Bird. Rob is the manager of the couple gas stations, and in his spare time, he, like Mayor Dick Ludwick, has turned his house into hikers central. The front porch has several cats, and there’s about a dozen mattresses in the loft of the garage. Like the Mayor, Rob invites you to take a shower (actually, he requires it, which is pretty darn understandable), do your laundry, and hang out in his living room. By this point, it should make sense when I say that it’s both amazing and unsurprising. I probably shouldn’t, but I give into temptation and take a zero day in Dalton. (did I mention that the congregational church was having a $5 blueberry pancake breakfast? Well, they were.)
Historian Rebecca Solnit, reflecting on the autobiographies of people kidnapped and raised among Indians in frontier America:
“Reading these stories, it’s tempting to think that the arts to be learned are those of tracking, hunting, navigating, skills of survival and escape… But the real difficulties, the real arts of survival, seem to lie in more subtle realms. There, what’s called for is a kind of resilience of the psyche; a readiness to deal with what comes next.
These captives lay out in a stark and dramatic way what goes on in every life: the transitions whereby you cease to be who you were. Seldom is it as dramatic, but nevertheless, something of this journey between the near and the far goes on in every life. Sometimes an old photograph, an old friend, an old letter will remind you that you are not who you once were, for the person who dwelt among them, valued this, chose that, wrote thus, no longer exists. Without noticing it, you have traversed a great distance; the strange has become familiar and the familiar if not strange at least awkward and uncomfortable, an outgrown garment. And some people travel for more than others. There are these who receive as birthright an adequate or at least unquestioned sense of self, and those who set out to reinvent themselves, for survival or satisfaction, and travel far. Some people inherit values and practices as a house they inhabit; some of us have to burn down that house, find our own ground, build from scratch.”
-Rebecca Solnit
"A Field Guide to Getting Lost"
“Reading these stories, it’s tempting to think that the arts to be learned are those of tracking, hunting, navigating, skills of survival and escape… But the real difficulties, the real arts of survival, seem to lie in more subtle realms. There, what’s called for is a kind of resilience of the psyche; a readiness to deal with what comes next.
These captives lay out in a stark and dramatic way what goes on in every life: the transitions whereby you cease to be who you were. Seldom is it as dramatic, but nevertheless, something of this journey between the near and the far goes on in every life. Sometimes an old photograph, an old friend, an old letter will remind you that you are not who you once were, for the person who dwelt among them, valued this, chose that, wrote thus, no longer exists. Without noticing it, you have traversed a great distance; the strange has become familiar and the familiar if not strange at least awkward and uncomfortable, an outgrown garment. And some people travel for more than others. There are these who receive as birthright an adequate or at least unquestioned sense of self, and those who set out to reinvent themselves, for survival or satisfaction, and travel far. Some people inherit values and practices as a house they inhabit; some of us have to burn down that house, find our own ground, build from scratch.”
-Rebecca Solnit
"A Field Guide to Getting Lost"
Monday, August 11, 2008
"Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in place, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has a personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is like a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. In this a journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it."
-Steinbeck, Travels with Charley
July 28
Started my day by going up Bear Mountain, a really nice spot which overlooks the Hudson, then went down through the old park at the bottom of the mountain, through the zoo (where I was one of the species on display - "Look, there's one of those hiker guys"), then walked a mile to the nearest town, Ft. Montgomery to resupply. Except the "grocery" there is really just a mini-mart, so I had to head up two more miles to find a supermarket - walking the whole way because I couldn't get a hitch to save my soul.
I finally made it, got several day's worth of food, ate dinner in the market's deli, and hitched a ride back towards the bridge. My ride-givers turned out to be cadets at West Point; I had been only a few blocks away from the US Military Academy. I more or less knew this from the map, but it wasn't until they asked me if I'd been on campus and taken the tour that I realized the opportunity I'd missed.
When they dropped me off; I hiked up a few miles on the east bank of the Hudson, camped and decided two things. The first was to renew my commitment to hiking my own hike - I didn't want to miss out on any interesting opportunities that come up because I have to hurry up back to the woods. If that means I fall behind schedule - like I already am - and have to skip some portions to catch up, so be it.
The other thing I decided is that if I ever make it back to that supermarket deli, I am not ordering the seafood salad again. Hiking uphill after eating sketchy crab is not a pretty thing.
July 29
After a few miles, I reach Graymour Spiritual Life Center. This is an honest-to-goodness Franciscan Monastery and the AT more-or-less runs right through it. They have a tenting area with a pavilion, a cold shower and a water spigot for hikers. As I understand it, they used to offer meals to hikers, but alas, not anymore. I take an hour or so to walk around the grounds before pressing on.
July 30 - August 1
Finish off New York and enter Connecticut. Weather still hot and humid; terrain still rocky; not much else to say. Struggling a lot with motivation lately. From talking with others, a lot of people are. Everyone is anxious to get to the home stretch - Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine. Entering Connecticut, at least I'm in New England.
Have started to see south bound thru-hikers every day or two. They typically start in June or July, and finish up around Christmas. Many also run into some flip-floppers somewhere. A flip-flop is some sort of alternative itinerary. The most common is to hike north to Harper's Ferry, then get off, go to Maine, and hike south from there back to Harper's (thereby spending the worst of summer in Maine). It's interesting comparing notes with them and hearing what's ahead.
August 2
Today crossed a covered bridge over the Housatonic River. The bridge is over 100 years old, and there's been a river crossing of one kind or another in that spot since Colonial times - Washington's army used it on several occasions.
Spent most of the day in town at Kent, CT. It's one of the towns that, owing to the way the trail lays, pretty much everyone goes into for resupply. I hate to say it, but it's not a very hiker-friendly town. I hate saying it because I met several people in town that were all very nice, including one lady leading a group of kids who had been dayhiking. I got the full celebrity treatment, including the posed picture at the end. That's happened a couple of times now, and it's a fun, if odd, experience.
Still, Kent as a town, doesn't exactly throw wide it's welcoming arms. Several places have signs telling hikers to leave packs outside, don't wash your hair in the restrooms, etc. All of which is understandable and fair, but frustrating since there is nowhere in town to leave your stuff or wash up (the only lodging in town is over $100 a night). A couple people said they felt unwelcome or at least out of place, and one called it "the worst town on the trail."
But there comes a point where you have to step outside yourself a bit. The unbelievably generous hospitality we've gotten from so many people has a dark side: we come to expect it. We start thinking we are owed a hostel in every town, that we deserve trail magic, that we are entitled to a hiker discount, that an upscale Connecticut town somehow has an obligation to eagerly embrace us smelly, unshaven vagrants. There is among some hikers - especially some of the younger ones - an entitlement mentality.
It's a running joke among thru-hikers that there is a hierarchy on the trail, and that dayhikers and section hikers are "lower." We ignore the fact that the trail was never really meant to be thru-hiked. The people who created it did so with section-hikers in mind, and if anyone "deserves" anything, it's the volunteer trail maintainers, not the few weirdos who have six months to kill wandering in the woods.
Anyway, that's a rant. Resupplied, fed, heading on.
August 3 - August 5
Finished up Connecticut, which included a really nice waterfall (though "Great Falls" might be a bit of an overstatement as a name), then crossed into Massachusetts and went through the very beautiful Sage's Ravine. Spent a couple hours at the latter, feet in cold, cold mountain stream water, reading Last of the Mohicans.
Hit Mass Route 41, decided that three weeks without a hot shower was enough, and hitched a ride into the little town of South Egremont. My guidebook listed an inn built in 1780 that had rooms for $75; the second - most I've paid for a hotel room in my life, I think. But given that even budget motels run about $65 in this area, I figured I'd give it a shot. As it turns out, it's a beautiful old place, fixed up pretty nice with a whirlpool bathtub in every room and a big-screen TV in the common area (which I have to myself since most of the other guests are out antiquing). The usual rate here for a weekday? $165. That's $90 "hiker discount." Not bad at all, especially considering it includes free all-you-can-eat continental breakfast. (Well, it didn't actually say "all-you-can-eat," but they didn't tell me to stop either...
Another thing I should mention - lately I've been running into people I haven't seen for ages. Just this morning I ran into someone who asked "how's the foot" - he hadn't seen me since the Shenandoah's, when I was limping along with a burned foot. Last week, a guy saw me and called me "Nosebleed," my original trail name - I hadn't seen him since early in North Carolina.
-Steinbeck, Travels with Charley
July 28
Started my day by going up Bear Mountain, a really nice spot which overlooks the Hudson, then went down through the old park at the bottom of the mountain, through the zoo (where I was one of the species on display - "Look, there's one of those hiker guys"), then walked a mile to the nearest town, Ft. Montgomery to resupply. Except the "grocery" there is really just a mini-mart, so I had to head up two more miles to find a supermarket - walking the whole way because I couldn't get a hitch to save my soul.
I finally made it, got several day's worth of food, ate dinner in the market's deli, and hitched a ride back towards the bridge. My ride-givers turned out to be cadets at West Point; I had been only a few blocks away from the US Military Academy. I more or less knew this from the map, but it wasn't until they asked me if I'd been on campus and taken the tour that I realized the opportunity I'd missed.
When they dropped me off; I hiked up a few miles on the east bank of the Hudson, camped and decided two things. The first was to renew my commitment to hiking my own hike - I didn't want to miss out on any interesting opportunities that come up because I have to hurry up back to the woods. If that means I fall behind schedule - like I already am - and have to skip some portions to catch up, so be it.
The other thing I decided is that if I ever make it back to that supermarket deli, I am not ordering the seafood salad again. Hiking uphill after eating sketchy crab is not a pretty thing.
July 29
After a few miles, I reach Graymour Spiritual Life Center. This is an honest-to-goodness Franciscan Monastery and the AT more-or-less runs right through it. They have a tenting area with a pavilion, a cold shower and a water spigot for hikers. As I understand it, they used to offer meals to hikers, but alas, not anymore. I take an hour or so to walk around the grounds before pressing on.
July 30 - August 1
Finish off New York and enter Connecticut. Weather still hot and humid; terrain still rocky; not much else to say. Struggling a lot with motivation lately. From talking with others, a lot of people are. Everyone is anxious to get to the home stretch - Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine. Entering Connecticut, at least I'm in New England.
Have started to see south bound thru-hikers every day or two. They typically start in June or July, and finish up around Christmas. Many also run into some flip-floppers somewhere. A flip-flop is some sort of alternative itinerary. The most common is to hike north to Harper's Ferry, then get off, go to Maine, and hike south from there back to Harper's (thereby spending the worst of summer in Maine). It's interesting comparing notes with them and hearing what's ahead.
August 2
Today crossed a covered bridge over the Housatonic River. The bridge is over 100 years old, and there's been a river crossing of one kind or another in that spot since Colonial times - Washington's army used it on several occasions.
Spent most of the day in town at Kent, CT. It's one of the towns that, owing to the way the trail lays, pretty much everyone goes into for resupply. I hate to say it, but it's not a very hiker-friendly town. I hate saying it because I met several people in town that were all very nice, including one lady leading a group of kids who had been dayhiking. I got the full celebrity treatment, including the posed picture at the end. That's happened a couple of times now, and it's a fun, if odd, experience.
Still, Kent as a town, doesn't exactly throw wide it's welcoming arms. Several places have signs telling hikers to leave packs outside, don't wash your hair in the restrooms, etc. All of which is understandable and fair, but frustrating since there is nowhere in town to leave your stuff or wash up (the only lodging in town is over $100 a night). A couple people said they felt unwelcome or at least out of place, and one called it "the worst town on the trail."
But there comes a point where you have to step outside yourself a bit. The unbelievably generous hospitality we've gotten from so many people has a dark side: we come to expect it. We start thinking we are owed a hostel in every town, that we deserve trail magic, that we are entitled to a hiker discount, that an upscale Connecticut town somehow has an obligation to eagerly embrace us smelly, unshaven vagrants. There is among some hikers - especially some of the younger ones - an entitlement mentality.
It's a running joke among thru-hikers that there is a hierarchy on the trail, and that dayhikers and section hikers are "lower." We ignore the fact that the trail was never really meant to be thru-hiked. The people who created it did so with section-hikers in mind, and if anyone "deserves" anything, it's the volunteer trail maintainers, not the few weirdos who have six months to kill wandering in the woods.
Anyway, that's a rant. Resupplied, fed, heading on.
August 3 - August 5
Finished up Connecticut, which included a really nice waterfall (though "Great Falls" might be a bit of an overstatement as a name), then crossed into Massachusetts and went through the very beautiful Sage's Ravine. Spent a couple hours at the latter, feet in cold, cold mountain stream water, reading Last of the Mohicans.
Hit Mass Route 41, decided that three weeks without a hot shower was enough, and hitched a ride into the little town of South Egremont. My guidebook listed an inn built in 1780 that had rooms for $75; the second - most I've paid for a hotel room in my life, I think. But given that even budget motels run about $65 in this area, I figured I'd give it a shot. As it turns out, it's a beautiful old place, fixed up pretty nice with a whirlpool bathtub in every room and a big-screen TV in the common area (which I have to myself since most of the other guests are out antiquing). The usual rate here for a weekday? $165. That's $90 "hiker discount." Not bad at all, especially considering it includes free all-you-can-eat continental breakfast. (Well, it didn't actually say "all-you-can-eat," but they didn't tell me to stop either...
Another thing I should mention - lately I've been running into people I haven't seen for ages. Just this morning I ran into someone who asked "how's the foot" - he hadn't seen me since the Shenandoah's, when I was limping along with a burned foot. Last week, a guy saw me and called me "Nosebleed," my original trail name - I hadn't seen him since early in North Carolina.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
July 24th - July 28th
Last full day in New Jersey featured, appropriately I guess, a mile-long boardwalk. It’s in a swampy area, and it was surprisingly gorgeous. I hit it on a sunny, warm-but-not-hot afternoon following a rainy morning. There were purple wildflowers in the high grasses, a breeze blowing over the meadows like wheat, cardinals building nests in the cattails. Building a boardwalk here was an enormous amount of work – thousands and thousands of volunteer hours over a period of years. I hope some of the volunteers got to come back on days like this.
A mile or so after the boardwalk, the trail cuts through a few fields before hitting a road just a few hundred yards away from a farmers’ market with fresh fruit and ice cream. From there, you can hitch 2 miles into Vernon, NJ, with a church hostel. Not a bad day at all . . . .
— The first few days in NY have been rock, rock, rock. It looks like it’s going to be this way more often than not from here on out. All of this area was covered in glaciers in the last ice age, and when they receded, they took all of the dirt with them, apparently. Went through something called “the Lemon Squeezer” – it’s a rock fissure that’s at most 3 feet wide. To get through you pretty much have to hold your pack over your head and try to get through it like that. Just beyond that is another ledge, about 6’ high, that requires you to throw your pack over and climb after. If this was my first day of the hike, I’m sure I’d find it all exciting; coming on trail day #135, some of the thrill is gone.
— Lots of rain the last few days. It’s been nice to have the temp kept down, but walking around wet isn’t much fun.
— Trail Magic has continued up north, despite the predictions and warnings we heard down south. Big thanks to Paddy-O, who parked his truck next to the trail and spend a day dispensing hot dogs, cookies, brownies, sodas, Gatorade, beer, moonshine and who knows what else.
— Spent this morning up on top of Bear Mountain, drying my gear out and singing Bob Dylan’s “Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre,” which has been in my head for 3 days now. It’s a great song; I think my favorite Dylan tune.
— A couple other important landmarks today: the oldest sections of trail, unchanged since the trail was started in 1923, as well as the lowest point on the trail, on the west end of the Bear Mountain Bridge (just 120 feet above sea level). The trail also goes through a crappy little zoo here – it’s kind of depressing after seeing bears in the wild, to see them penned up in a concrete enclosure.
— Dropping this in the mail from Fort Montgomery; with a little bit of luck, I can get resupplied and get over to a monastery on the east side tonight.
Last full day in New Jersey featured, appropriately I guess, a mile-long boardwalk. It’s in a swampy area, and it was surprisingly gorgeous. I hit it on a sunny, warm-but-not-hot afternoon following a rainy morning. There were purple wildflowers in the high grasses, a breeze blowing over the meadows like wheat, cardinals building nests in the cattails. Building a boardwalk here was an enormous amount of work – thousands and thousands of volunteer hours over a period of years. I hope some of the volunteers got to come back on days like this.
A mile or so after the boardwalk, the trail cuts through a few fields before hitting a road just a few hundred yards away from a farmers’ market with fresh fruit and ice cream. From there, you can hitch 2 miles into Vernon, NJ, with a church hostel. Not a bad day at all . . . .
— The first few days in NY have been rock, rock, rock. It looks like it’s going to be this way more often than not from here on out. All of this area was covered in glaciers in the last ice age, and when they receded, they took all of the dirt with them, apparently. Went through something called “the Lemon Squeezer” – it’s a rock fissure that’s at most 3 feet wide. To get through you pretty much have to hold your pack over your head and try to get through it like that. Just beyond that is another ledge, about 6’ high, that requires you to throw your pack over and climb after. If this was my first day of the hike, I’m sure I’d find it all exciting; coming on trail day #135, some of the thrill is gone.
— Lots of rain the last few days. It’s been nice to have the temp kept down, but walking around wet isn’t much fun.
— Trail Magic has continued up north, despite the predictions and warnings we heard down south. Big thanks to Paddy-O, who parked his truck next to the trail and spend a day dispensing hot dogs, cookies, brownies, sodas, Gatorade, beer, moonshine and who knows what else.
— Spent this morning up on top of Bear Mountain, drying my gear out and singing Bob Dylan’s “Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre,” which has been in my head for 3 days now. It’s a great song; I think my favorite Dylan tune.
— A couple other important landmarks today: the oldest sections of trail, unchanged since the trail was started in 1923, as well as the lowest point on the trail, on the west end of the Bear Mountain Bridge (just 120 feet above sea level). The trail also goes through a crappy little zoo here – it’s kind of depressing after seeing bears in the wild, to see them penned up in a concrete enclosure.
— Dropping this in the mail from Fort Montgomery; with a little bit of luck, I can get resupplied and get over to a monastery on the east side tonight.
Monday, July 28, 2008
July 14 - July 17
Finished off Pennsylvania, and good riddance. Visiting with family and spending a whole week slackpacking was great, but walking on sharp rocks every day sucked. I turned an ankle multiple times each day, and the pointy rocks jabbed at the bottom of my feet. (Did you know that Northeastern PA was once known as "the slate belt?" I didn't but I'll never forget it.) Some highlights of the last few days:
--Finally saw my first rattlesnake. Disappointingly, he didn't rattle at me. He was sunning himself in the center of the trail, and I threw rocks at him to get him to move. I thought about using my poles to pick him up, all Steve Irwin-style, but then I remembered that Steve Irwin was killed by an animal.
--The Lehigh Gap was a pretty depressing place. Decades of zinc smelting in the town of Palmerton led to the mountains above the town being completely devoid of vegetation. Pollution killed everything, leaving a moonscape of barren rock. Years of cleanup has improved it, I'm told, but vegetation is still sparse and patchy, and even the good spots look more like Mexico than Pennsylvania. The 1000 foot climb out of the gap - on bare, shadeless rock on a 90 degree day - was as hard a climb as any on the trail so far.
--My last night in Pennsylvania, I had a view across the river into New Jersey. A rain shower ended my day earlier than I was planning, but then rewarded me with a rainbow pretty much directly over the Delaware River with Jersey as my pot of gold. I'll take it.
July 18
I wake up at 5 am, and I'm hiking by 6. Early stop the day before means I have to get going today as I have an appointment - a couple of old college friends are coming up to meet me on the trail. So I hurry out of camp, knock off a fairly easy 6 miles before 10 am, then finish a few town errands in Delaware Water Gap, PA, before walking another mile over to the Jersey side.
A dozen years out of college, my friend Rachel is one of the very few people I've kept up more than cursory contact with. I don't think I'd have expected that, but I'm very glad for it. She's one of the very few friends I've ever had willing to engage in the sort of rambling, contentious philosophical and theological conversations/arguments I enjoy. To my chagrin, I must confess that over time, I've moved in her direction more than she's moved in mine. I suppose I'm asking for it when I debate an Ivy League Seminary graduate. (And as she reads this, she's no doubt rolling her eyes and saying, "It's not a contest with winners and losers." She's right there, too, so score another for her.)
Anyway, I have a great afternoon picnicking and catching up with Rachel and Andrew, and meeting their two adorable daughters, Heather and Hannah. They graciously invite me to go down the shore with them for a day or so, and I am enormously tempted; but I've just barely begun to get my rhythm back after my Pennsylvania break, and more time off would just make it that much harder.
By early evening, they drop me off where we met, just on the Jersey side of the river. I walk about a mile before making camp.
From Harper's Ferry to the Delaware Water Gap, this hike's been about meeting up with family and friends; now it's back to the grind. I still have 900 miles to go, including the hardest sections of the entire trail, in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. At one time, I imangined that the trail got easier as you went along, but that isn't true. At best, you just become used to it being hard; at worst, it's like being in a sports playoff, where winning one match up only means you move on to play someone even tougher.
I am already more tired, in more ways, than I have ever been in my life. And now I have to walk the last 900 miles in 2/3 the time it took me to walk the first 900, and over tougher terrain, and likely in worse weather.
July 19 - 21
First three days in New Jersey are hot, humid and very rocky. Altogether unpleasant, really. The humidity just sucks the life right out of you; I've been trying to get up early in the mornings to avoid the worst of the heat, but the humidity is such that I'm still dripping sweat at 9 am. Adding to that has been loneliness - for three days, I've been almost always alone, occasionally meeting section-hikers and only seeing a couple thru-hikers. I can read the registers and see a whole bunch of people just a few days ahead, but in the heat and humidity, still getting back in shape after so much taking it easy in Pennsylvania, I have no chance of catching up.
There have been a few highlights. My first night camping in Jersey was at an absolutely beautiful, and sort of illegal spot right next to a creek. I woke up the next morning at about 6:30, rolled out of the hammock, and began to stretch out. I'd only gone a few paces when I found myself about fifteen feet away from an adult male bear. He was big - 6 feet tall and 250 pounds. We scared the snot out of each other - each of us running about 20 yards back before stopping to eye one another, and slowly regaining our nerve. He walked back down to the creek, finished his drink, then walked off, clearly not happy with my campsite.
July 22
The day started as another grim slog in miserable conditions - once more hitting 90+ degrees, once more smotheringly humid the same miserable conditions I've been in for what seems like forever. But around noon, things start to change.
First, I run in to Brahma Bull and Sweet Potato, a couple that I've met several times along the trail, starting waaaay back near Damascus. With them is The Thinker, who I've met as well as Cayenne and Tailgate, two women who have been ahead of me for months and who somehow I passed in the last few days. (These kind of encounters happen a lot; if you read the hiker registers in the shelters, hostels and so on, you see the same names again and again, until you finally meet them after weeks or months.) Soon, I'm walking in one of the biggest groups I've been in.
Second, we hit the ironically-famous "Secret Shelter." It has the name because it does not appear on any maps; it is not an officially-sanctioned AT shelter. Instead, it is on private property, owned by a farmer AT thru-hiker who makes it available to hikers. There's not much of a sign, but it's mentioned in the guidebooks long-distance hikers use, so you have to be in the know. You get there, and it's a cabin with electricity (and a fan) hot running water (and a shower). Definitely a great place to spend the night, if I'd gotten here later than 2:30. Even so, it was a nice place to take a break before heading on, and wonderful to see someone opening up their private property this way.
Which leads me to the Mayor of the village of Unionville, NY, population 500 and change (the trail here is still in NJ, but essentially runs parallel and just over the border for some thirty miles or so; Unionville is only .4 off the trail, but across the state line). What the Mayor does is another sort of mystery. As far back as Tennessee, I was told to get here and look up the Mayor. The last couple shelter registers have included notes from southbounders praising the Mayor, but not saying exactly what for. My guidebook only says that Unionville allows hikers to camp on the town park.
So the seven of us roll into Unionville not really knowing what to expect. We reach the general store, and shortly afterwards an SUV arrives. (I'm guessing someone had a number and called it, but I really don't know.) Is this the Mayor?
"No, I'm Butch. I got room for five, and I'll come back for the rest of youse. Put your packs in the back."
This is the sort of thing you really get used to on the trail. You have no real idea where you're going or what's going to happen; you just go with it.
As it happens, we're taken to the house of Dick Ludwick. Dick's been the village Mayor for the last 12 years (he says it's his last term), after careers in insurance and as a teacher. He's a widower, his wife having passed several years ago. One son lives upstate, the other in London. As Mayor, he's always been hiker-friendly, but in the last two years, he's taken things to a whole new level. He started offering showers and laundry; then it was letting people camp in his yard; this year he's turned his basement into a bunkhouse and is serving up dinner every night to however many hikers show up. So far the high night has been 26.
This is not a hostel; this is Dick's home. He's cooking you dinner in his kitchen, doing your laundry in his washer and dryer, inviting you to sit around his dining room table. When the bunkroom downstairs fills up, you can sleep on his living room floor.
Of course, this is New York, so the hospitality isn't sugar-coated; Dick, his housemate Bill, Ralph (a village employee; maybe THE village employee) and whatever other locals he's corralled into helping out will welcome you with sarcasm and put-downs. But it is unmistakably a welcome nonetheless. Dick makes a point to show an inspirational video to every single hiker that comes through (Google the name "Paul Potts") and offer up heartfelt encouragement. He's done this for several hundred hikers this year.
I wrote a long entry before I left where I explained Trail Magic. That's a shame as I now do not think I understood it at the time. The physical gifts that Trail Angels provide are terrific - the drinks, the rides, the hospitality - but for me at least, they pale next to the spiritual sustenance.
One of my two favorite moments from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings comes right at the very end. Sam Gamgee has journeyed a thousand miles, crossed mountains and rivers and endured epic hardships. In the last chapter of the book, he must say goodbye to Frodo. But the last paragraph of the last chapter finds him alone, at the end of all his adventures, walking to his house his wife and daughter await. The sentence reads something to the effect of "...and there was a fire, and light in the windows, and he was expected." That sentence, the last four words especially, has always crushed me. It is one thing to be welcomed upon one's arrival; it's something else to know you were expected, your arrival prepared for.
I have not slain any dragons on this trip, and yet again and again I have found myself expected, not by anyone with any obligation to me, but by complete strangers. When I look back on this trip, I will remember the mountaintops and the rivers and the bears. But more than any of that, I will remember the human experiences. Foremost among those will be what's happened so much now, in ten states, that it becomes a commonplace: You arrive at a place you've never been, tired, hungry and filthy, only to find that you have been expected, and a place saved for you in the Mayor's house.
I take a zero day in Unionville, on the 23rd, partly just to enjoy the crowd here, partly to catch up on journaling, partly because a forecast of heavy rains, that naturally, end up not arriving until late in the day. Rains continue into the morning of the 24th, and I hike out into the wet.
Finished off Pennsylvania, and good riddance. Visiting with family and spending a whole week slackpacking was great, but walking on sharp rocks every day sucked. I turned an ankle multiple times each day, and the pointy rocks jabbed at the bottom of my feet. (Did you know that Northeastern PA was once known as "the slate belt?" I didn't but I'll never forget it.) Some highlights of the last few days:
--Finally saw my first rattlesnake. Disappointingly, he didn't rattle at me. He was sunning himself in the center of the trail, and I threw rocks at him to get him to move. I thought about using my poles to pick him up, all Steve Irwin-style, but then I remembered that Steve Irwin was killed by an animal.
--The Lehigh Gap was a pretty depressing place. Decades of zinc smelting in the town of Palmerton led to the mountains above the town being completely devoid of vegetation. Pollution killed everything, leaving a moonscape of barren rock. Years of cleanup has improved it, I'm told, but vegetation is still sparse and patchy, and even the good spots look more like Mexico than Pennsylvania. The 1000 foot climb out of the gap - on bare, shadeless rock on a 90 degree day - was as hard a climb as any on the trail so far.
--My last night in Pennsylvania, I had a view across the river into New Jersey. A rain shower ended my day earlier than I was planning, but then rewarded me with a rainbow pretty much directly over the Delaware River with Jersey as my pot of gold. I'll take it.
July 18
I wake up at 5 am, and I'm hiking by 6. Early stop the day before means I have to get going today as I have an appointment - a couple of old college friends are coming up to meet me on the trail. So I hurry out of camp, knock off a fairly easy 6 miles before 10 am, then finish a few town errands in Delaware Water Gap, PA, before walking another mile over to the Jersey side.
A dozen years out of college, my friend Rachel is one of the very few people I've kept up more than cursory contact with. I don't think I'd have expected that, but I'm very glad for it. She's one of the very few friends I've ever had willing to engage in the sort of rambling, contentious philosophical and theological conversations/arguments I enjoy. To my chagrin, I must confess that over time, I've moved in her direction more than she's moved in mine. I suppose I'm asking for it when I debate an Ivy League Seminary graduate. (And as she reads this, she's no doubt rolling her eyes and saying, "It's not a contest with winners and losers." She's right there, too, so score another for her.)
Anyway, I have a great afternoon picnicking and catching up with Rachel and Andrew, and meeting their two adorable daughters, Heather and Hannah. They graciously invite me to go down the shore with them for a day or so, and I am enormously tempted; but I've just barely begun to get my rhythm back after my Pennsylvania break, and more time off would just make it that much harder.
By early evening, they drop me off where we met, just on the Jersey side of the river. I walk about a mile before making camp.
From Harper's Ferry to the Delaware Water Gap, this hike's been about meeting up with family and friends; now it's back to the grind. I still have 900 miles to go, including the hardest sections of the entire trail, in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. At one time, I imangined that the trail got easier as you went along, but that isn't true. At best, you just become used to it being hard; at worst, it's like being in a sports playoff, where winning one match up only means you move on to play someone even tougher.
I am already more tired, in more ways, than I have ever been in my life. And now I have to walk the last 900 miles in 2/3 the time it took me to walk the first 900, and over tougher terrain, and likely in worse weather.
July 19 - 21
First three days in New Jersey are hot, humid and very rocky. Altogether unpleasant, really. The humidity just sucks the life right out of you; I've been trying to get up early in the mornings to avoid the worst of the heat, but the humidity is such that I'm still dripping sweat at 9 am. Adding to that has been loneliness - for three days, I've been almost always alone, occasionally meeting section-hikers and only seeing a couple thru-hikers. I can read the registers and see a whole bunch of people just a few days ahead, but in the heat and humidity, still getting back in shape after so much taking it easy in Pennsylvania, I have no chance of catching up.
There have been a few highlights. My first night camping in Jersey was at an absolutely beautiful, and sort of illegal spot right next to a creek. I woke up the next morning at about 6:30, rolled out of the hammock, and began to stretch out. I'd only gone a few paces when I found myself about fifteen feet away from an adult male bear. He was big - 6 feet tall and 250 pounds. We scared the snot out of each other - each of us running about 20 yards back before stopping to eye one another, and slowly regaining our nerve. He walked back down to the creek, finished his drink, then walked off, clearly not happy with my campsite.
July 22
The day started as another grim slog in miserable conditions - once more hitting 90+ degrees, once more smotheringly humid the same miserable conditions I've been in for what seems like forever. But around noon, things start to change.
First, I run in to Brahma Bull and Sweet Potato, a couple that I've met several times along the trail, starting waaaay back near Damascus. With them is The Thinker, who I've met as well as Cayenne and Tailgate, two women who have been ahead of me for months and who somehow I passed in the last few days. (These kind of encounters happen a lot; if you read the hiker registers in the shelters, hostels and so on, you see the same names again and again, until you finally meet them after weeks or months.) Soon, I'm walking in one of the biggest groups I've been in.
Second, we hit the ironically-famous "Secret Shelter." It has the name because it does not appear on any maps; it is not an officially-sanctioned AT shelter. Instead, it is on private property, owned by a farmer AT thru-hiker who makes it available to hikers. There's not much of a sign, but it's mentioned in the guidebooks long-distance hikers use, so you have to be in the know. You get there, and it's a cabin with electricity (and a fan) hot running water (and a shower). Definitely a great place to spend the night, if I'd gotten here later than 2:30. Even so, it was a nice place to take a break before heading on, and wonderful to see someone opening up their private property this way.
Which leads me to the Mayor of the village of Unionville, NY, population 500 and change (the trail here is still in NJ, but essentially runs parallel and just over the border for some thirty miles or so; Unionville is only .4 off the trail, but across the state line). What the Mayor does is another sort of mystery. As far back as Tennessee, I was told to get here and look up the Mayor. The last couple shelter registers have included notes from southbounders praising the Mayor, but not saying exactly what for. My guidebook only says that Unionville allows hikers to camp on the town park.
So the seven of us roll into Unionville not really knowing what to expect. We reach the general store, and shortly afterwards an SUV arrives. (I'm guessing someone had a number and called it, but I really don't know.) Is this the Mayor?
"No, I'm Butch. I got room for five, and I'll come back for the rest of youse. Put your packs in the back."
This is the sort of thing you really get used to on the trail. You have no real idea where you're going or what's going to happen; you just go with it.
As it happens, we're taken to the house of Dick Ludwick. Dick's been the village Mayor for the last 12 years (he says it's his last term), after careers in insurance and as a teacher. He's a widower, his wife having passed several years ago. One son lives upstate, the other in London. As Mayor, he's always been hiker-friendly, but in the last two years, he's taken things to a whole new level. He started offering showers and laundry; then it was letting people camp in his yard; this year he's turned his basement into a bunkhouse and is serving up dinner every night to however many hikers show up. So far the high night has been 26.
This is not a hostel; this is Dick's home. He's cooking you dinner in his kitchen, doing your laundry in his washer and dryer, inviting you to sit around his dining room table. When the bunkroom downstairs fills up, you can sleep on his living room floor.
Of course, this is New York, so the hospitality isn't sugar-coated; Dick, his housemate Bill, Ralph (a village employee; maybe THE village employee) and whatever other locals he's corralled into helping out will welcome you with sarcasm and put-downs. But it is unmistakably a welcome nonetheless. Dick makes a point to show an inspirational video to every single hiker that comes through (Google the name "Paul Potts") and offer up heartfelt encouragement. He's done this for several hundred hikers this year.
I wrote a long entry before I left where I explained Trail Magic. That's a shame as I now do not think I understood it at the time. The physical gifts that Trail Angels provide are terrific - the drinks, the rides, the hospitality - but for me at least, they pale next to the spiritual sustenance.
One of my two favorite moments from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings comes right at the very end. Sam Gamgee has journeyed a thousand miles, crossed mountains and rivers and endured epic hardships. In the last chapter of the book, he must say goodbye to Frodo. But the last paragraph of the last chapter finds him alone, at the end of all his adventures, walking to his house his wife and daughter await. The sentence reads something to the effect of "...and there was a fire, and light in the windows, and he was expected." That sentence, the last four words especially, has always crushed me. It is one thing to be welcomed upon one's arrival; it's something else to know you were expected, your arrival prepared for.
I have not slain any dragons on this trip, and yet again and again I have found myself expected, not by anyone with any obligation to me, but by complete strangers. When I look back on this trip, I will remember the mountaintops and the rivers and the bears. But more than any of that, I will remember the human experiences. Foremost among those will be what's happened so much now, in ten states, that it becomes a commonplace: You arrive at a place you've never been, tired, hungry and filthy, only to find that you have been expected, and a place saved for you in the Mayor's house.
I take a zero day in Unionville, on the 23rd, partly just to enjoy the crowd here, partly to catch up on journaling, partly because a forecast of heavy rains, that naturally, end up not arriving until late in the day. Rains continue into the morning of the 24th, and I hike out into the wet.
Monday, July 14, 2008
July 10-14
Well, after a full nine days staying at my brother's, I'm finally heading out. I've hiked about 85 miles this week, which is probably about the same as I would have done had I been carrying the pack. But it was a wonderful break to spend every night sleeping in air-conditioning, eating real meals (we went out for sushi last night!), showering, etc. Most importantly, I got a lot of chores done getting set up for the second half of the hike.
The hiking up here has been fairly level, but very, very rocky. I'll be glad to reach New Jersey.
People keep asking about my foot; I forgot to mention it, but it's pretty much totally healed, and has been for a couple of weeks now. I didn't post any photos of it when it happened, because I didn't want to freak my mom out. But since it's healed now, I'll post a photo of what it did look like after about 6 days. (warning, gross picture)
http://www.trailjournals.com/photos.cfm?id=361041
The hiking up here has been fairly level, but very, very rocky. I'll be glad to reach New Jersey.
People keep asking about my foot; I forgot to mention it, but it's pretty much totally healed, and has been for a couple of weeks now. I didn't post any photos of it when it happened, because I didn't want to freak my mom out. But since it's healed now, I'll post a photo of what it did look like after about 6 days. (warning, gross picture)
http://www.trailjournals.com/photos.cfm?id=361041
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
June 30 - July 9
Sorry I've been slow getting this updated; hopefully I will have a bunch of stuff to put up here soon.
-- The Angels dropped me off at Harper's Ferry on the 30th. Wish I could have taken more time to walk around town and see all the historical stuff; the trail runs right through the town, past ruins, etc, but I couldn't stay too long; just waited for the outfitter to open up to buy stove fuel and by 11 am I crossed the bridge (an old RR bridge) into Maryland; 5 states down, 9 more to go.
-- The trail in Maryland and the first part of Pennsylvania was really, really nice and very easy. The Potomac Appalachian Trail Club really does a fantastic job maintaining the trail, and keeping the shelters really nice. Maryland even has a free little campground, just for hikers, that features hot showers; wish they had more than 40 miles of trail.
-- Crossed the Mason-Dixon line, but I really knew I was out of the south when I crossed US Route 30; take a right hand turn, and that would take me all the way to my hometown on the Jersey Shore.
-- Finally did my first 20 mile day, on July 3rd. Yay me.
-- On July 4th, I reached Pine Grove Furnace state park in Pennsylvania. This is significant, because it's the half-way point of the trail (actually, with various relocations over the years, the mathematical halfway point is now something like 3 miles before the park; since trail work and minor relocations happen all the time, nobody ever knows exactly where). I marked the event with, as is AT tradition, a half-gallon of ice cream. 3000 calories of peanut butter ripple in just under an hour wasn't that hard, but I won't be doing it again anytime soon.
-- My parents, brother and sister-in-law all met me at Pine Grove Furnace on the 4th and took me up to the brother's house in Hershey. Took a couple of days off, and then started using that as a base of operations to do dayhikes all this week, what my mother calls "commuting" to the trail. Get dropped off in the morning, hike all day carrying just a daypack, get picked up in the evening to go home to a shower and dinner. Sweet. I'd hoped I could do big miles this way, but it isn't working out so much; I am enjoying the rest and relaxation, as well as doing a lot of chores to set up the second half of the hike. (I also feel kind of bad about the fact that my sister-in-law has loaned me her lavender-and-pink Disney Princess bookbag to use on these dayhikes, and by the end of the week I'm going to return it reeking of sweat.)
I'll be here a couple more days and then put on the big pack this weekend, heading for New Jersey.
-- The terrain this week has been really odd. There was a beautiful flat walk across the rolling farmland of the Cumberland Valley, but there has also been plenty of indications of why they call this "Rocksylvania" or "The place where boots go to die." Lots of rocky ridge walking with anklebreakers galore, and they say it gets worse as you head farther east...
Thursday, July 3, 2008
June 20, 2008
Cool day. Still in kind of a bad mood all morning as I did the 7 miles to reach US 33 and hitch a ride into Elkton. I'm in there by 1, and decide to eat at Dairy Queen. I order the large milkshake, and they bring me a bucket of dairy product of a size and viscosity well-suited to firefighting. Unwisely I drink the whole thing, and I'm queasy all afternoon.
I get to the Post Office and my repaired hammock is there, thankfully, so I pick that up, mail back the loaner I've been using, send off journals and postcards, and head back to the highway to wait for a hitch back ... and wait, and wait. 45 minutes go by before a white Sedan finally pulls over. I run up, open the door and hear "Chainsaw!"
I've not mentioned Raffle Queen before, which is an oversight. I first met her some 600 miles ago, way back at Overmountain Shelter on the TN/NC border. She was out doing a section hike then and we chatted over trail magic. What I didn't know then was that she was a trail angel herself (trail angels being the people who provide the trail magic; the exact theology of it is a big confusing).
I ran into her again at Daleville a few weeks ago when she was riding around with Lipstick, my other recurring Trail Angel. She actually participated in returning to me a shirt that I had left in Catawba three days earlier - someone recognized it as mine, and it changed hands a couple times before finding its way to me 50 miles up the trail.
And now I run into her again, as she is on her way up the road to the trail to provide trail magic. She's got a WWJD bracelet and a case of free beer, which makes her pretty much my kind of gal; too bad she's married ... (RQ: How old is your daughter? Can you set me up?)
June 21 - 30, 2008
Okay, so things here are going to change. Without my really planning on it, this journal has become pretty much exactly what I wanted to avoid - a daily weather report & mileage log. Frankly, writing that stuff has become boring for me, which means it has to be deadly tedious to you. So instead of trying to write daily entries, I'm just going to write every few days about what's happened lately. So, for instance, in the last few days, I have:
-Finished the Shenandoahs. A lot of people hated them, because the views are surprisingly, not all that good. My solution - spend part of every day walking the Skyline Drive, which runs parallel to the AT for 100 miles...
- Saw my first three full-sized bears of the entire trip on three different occasions over 5 days. Two ran away as soon as they saw me, but another was directly on the trail, and he just sort of kept meandering ahead of me for 15 minutes. I don't think he grasped that he was in my way. I'd close to about 30 yards, and he'd move up the trail, stop for a spell, then look surprised when I followed him.
- Hitched a ride into Front Royal with a guy named Larry who was going into town to buy a new car. We stopped at 7-11, and he bought me coffee and a donut. In the afternoon, after I resupplied on food, ate lunch, did laundry and checked my email, I hitched a ride back out of town - and got picked up by Larry, in his new car.
- With summer arriving, there are a lot more people out here doing section hikes, and thru-hikers continue to drop out. One night, I camped with four other hikers - I was the only one doing a thru.
- There is an infamous section north of the Shenandoah called "The Roller Coaster." It's a 13.5 mile stretch with 10 ups and downs. None of them are more than 500 feet or so, so I thought must be overrated. I was wrong - very rocky and with summer heat and humidity, it was as tough as anything I've done anywhere on the trail.
- After spending parts of 2 days in the Roller Coaster, and some poor water management leading to semi-dehydration, my last day heading into Harper's Ferry was brutal. When I reached the Shenandoah River, I took a soak for the better part of an hour. I checked into ATC headquarters as thru-hiker #488 for the year. That's about average for this time of year, they tell me.
- For the first time since visiting my parents two months ago, I spend a night in a house. I'm met in Harper's Ferry by the Angel family, old family friends from back when I was a kid. They've been following the hike closely, and graciously offer to drive out to HF, pick me up and host me for a much-needed zero day, my first in almost 2 weeks. After a Saturday dinner where I drink ridiculous amounts of iced tea, I spend a Sunday stuffing myself, resupplying and napping. Monday it's back to the trail.
Cool day. Still in kind of a bad mood all morning as I did the 7 miles to reach US 33 and hitch a ride into Elkton. I'm in there by 1, and decide to eat at Dairy Queen. I order the large milkshake, and they bring me a bucket of dairy product of a size and viscosity well-suited to firefighting. Unwisely I drink the whole thing, and I'm queasy all afternoon.
I get to the Post Office and my repaired hammock is there, thankfully, so I pick that up, mail back the loaner I've been using, send off journals and postcards, and head back to the highway to wait for a hitch back ... and wait, and wait. 45 minutes go by before a white Sedan finally pulls over. I run up, open the door and hear "Chainsaw!"
I've not mentioned Raffle Queen before, which is an oversight. I first met her some 600 miles ago, way back at Overmountain Shelter on the TN/NC border. She was out doing a section hike then and we chatted over trail magic. What I didn't know then was that she was a trail angel herself (trail angels being the people who provide the trail magic; the exact theology of it is a big confusing).
I ran into her again at Daleville a few weeks ago when she was riding around with Lipstick, my other recurring Trail Angel. She actually participated in returning to me a shirt that I had left in Catawba three days earlier - someone recognized it as mine, and it changed hands a couple times before finding its way to me 50 miles up the trail.
And now I run into her again, as she is on her way up the road to the trail to provide trail magic. She's got a WWJD bracelet and a case of free beer, which makes her pretty much my kind of gal; too bad she's married ... (RQ: How old is your daughter? Can you set me up?)
June 21 - 30, 2008
Okay, so things here are going to change. Without my really planning on it, this journal has become pretty much exactly what I wanted to avoid - a daily weather report & mileage log. Frankly, writing that stuff has become boring for me, which means it has to be deadly tedious to you. So instead of trying to write daily entries, I'm just going to write every few days about what's happened lately. So, for instance, in the last few days, I have:
-Finished the Shenandoahs. A lot of people hated them, because the views are surprisingly, not all that good. My solution - spend part of every day walking the Skyline Drive, which runs parallel to the AT for 100 miles...
- Saw my first three full-sized bears of the entire trip on three different occasions over 5 days. Two ran away as soon as they saw me, but another was directly on the trail, and he just sort of kept meandering ahead of me for 15 minutes. I don't think he grasped that he was in my way. I'd close to about 30 yards, and he'd move up the trail, stop for a spell, then look surprised when I followed him.
- Hitched a ride into Front Royal with a guy named Larry who was going into town to buy a new car. We stopped at 7-11, and he bought me coffee and a donut. In the afternoon, after I resupplied on food, ate lunch, did laundry and checked my email, I hitched a ride back out of town - and got picked up by Larry, in his new car.
- With summer arriving, there are a lot more people out here doing section hikes, and thru-hikers continue to drop out. One night, I camped with four other hikers - I was the only one doing a thru.
- There is an infamous section north of the Shenandoah called "The Roller Coaster." It's a 13.5 mile stretch with 10 ups and downs. None of them are more than 500 feet or so, so I thought must be overrated. I was wrong - very rocky and with summer heat and humidity, it was as tough as anything I've done anywhere on the trail.
- After spending parts of 2 days in the Roller Coaster, and some poor water management leading to semi-dehydration, my last day heading into Harper's Ferry was brutal. When I reached the Shenandoah River, I took a soak for the better part of an hour. I checked into ATC headquarters as thru-hiker #488 for the year. That's about average for this time of year, they tell me.
- For the first time since visiting my parents two months ago, I spend a night in a house. I'm met in Harper's Ferry by the Angel family, old family friends from back when I was a kid. They've been following the hike closely, and graciously offer to drive out to HF, pick me up and host me for a much-needed zero day, my first in almost 2 weeks. After a Saturday dinner where I drink ridiculous amounts of iced tea, I spend a Sunday stuffing myself, resupplying and napping. Monday it's back to the trail.
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