I’ll Be Home for Christmas

I am bloging from Killington Vermont, at the Mountain Meadows Lodge which boasts an unbelievable thru-hiker package including Breakfast and Dinner. With almost 1700 miles completed I am staring up at the Whites with trepidation and excitement and though I have less than 500 miles left, I still have a long way to go.

Connecticut was beautiful which surprised me. Miles of river walks led to resepectable climbs over a well maintained trail. Clearly the state that spawned Martha Stewart was not going to let a dingy overgrown trail blemish its manicured landscape. Even the signage adhered to a strict color scheme: eggshell and fern. Complimenting the forest pallete, these signs were handcarved some in cursive which usually directed you to the toilete. Unfortunately the muted tones made reading the signs difficult. Even the  trails leading to the shelters were blazed by a gentle sky blue rather than the standard abrasive attention grabbing neon shade and therefore easily missed. 

In Massachusetts the trail goes through the Berkshires, which though beautiful were not as “dreamlike” as James Taylor would have believed in fact it was slightly nightmareish. Rundown motels get away with murder on the weekends, everything is overpriced and not many shops were happy to see a dirty hiker come through the door. The area even has its own currancy, the Berkshire, which cooincidentally is stronger than the US dollar. a thru-hiker named Durty Feet and I commiserated over the problem. Durty Feet is not a “purist” hiker determined to hike every mile and every white blaze but rather hiking, hitch-hiking and flip flopping her way to Maine, hopeful to complete 1500 miles for the season. She is from Orgeon and is taking time off from her job where she was hired becasue she was a Sagitarius. After consulting her astrological chart, her boss told her they needed a Sagitarius on staff and he liked what her chart said she would bring to the office. ”That’s Oregon” she told me.

I learned the hard way that Massachusetts mosquitos are immune to DEET, a toxic chemical that can eat through tent material but can’t adequately repel bugs. Sometimes I would glance over my shoulder to see a dark cloud of blood thirsty mosquittos in pursuit. Its too dangerous to stop so If you have to pee, you have to hike and pee, if you have to eat, its on the go.  But the climb up Mt. Everett and Mount Greylock was worth the inexorable itch.

In Mass I was reunited with Pokey Pokey who joined me for a couple days of hiking. Pokey made sure that there was ample space between us at all times. Apparently my stentch triggered her gag reflex. I was warned by a flailing arm and frantically waving hand that I was encroaching and contaminating her clean air supply. Boxed wine seemed to ameliorate the problem. Why I haven’t been able to find wine in juice boxes til now, I know not? I do know that it is a brilliant invention, a touchstone of human engineering equaled only by the invention of gore-tek. Unfortuantely true to form, it rained for 3 days straight. Seeing a pattern emerge Pokey Pokey and I snatched up a motel room in Williamstown, Mass. which plays host to the Williamstown theater festival every summer. The festival attracts actors from near and far using celebrities to headline shows and fill houses. Sure enough, walking into the Stop and Shop to resupply we ran into Kristen Johnston, the really tall actress from third rock from the sun talking really loudly into a cell phone and kind of making a scene. “Shes not even trying to be incognito,” I said to Pokey who responded, “I don’t think she’s famous enough.” There we were in line with Kristen Johnston at the great social equalizer- the Stop and Shop. I thought how wierd it was for this small town to host both celebrities and hikers, from people who won’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 to people who havent slept in a bed in weeks.

Before Pokey left, I checked the weather report which went something like this. “BUCKETS of rain, SOAKING New England, moving SLOWLY, advised to stay INDOORS,” voiced over a 7 day graphic forcast of nothing but angry frowning gray clouds with lightning bolts. I ended up hiking the first 20 miles of Vermont in Crocs unable to avoid the river of water rushing down the trail. This was not a light trickle of water but 4-6 inches of fast moving streams and waterfalls gushing down on me. Where the terrain was flat, the water pooled up to a foot deep. If the water managed to soak into the soil it simply converted the trail to a mud pit up to 8 inches that sucked both boots and crocs off hikers. Apparently this is one of the wettest Julys in Vermont record but Inspite of the trail itself the woods are beautiful and have seamlessly transitioned into tunnels of evergreens, leaving soft pine needle beds for camping. Moose have replaced bears and the smell of fir trees makes it impossible to resist singing christmas songs.

Blog of Myself

As I sit before this serene lake, drafting this post I am reminded of Walt Whitman who gazed over a similar pond though his of course wasn’t the site of a nuclear fuels processing plant lovingly called “Nuclear Lake” but the sentiment is the same. Old Walt is the inspiration for this post entitled “BLOG of Myself” as it tends to ramble on without direction or resolution in a transcendtental haze. Having cruised through 3 states now I am diving the stories by the states in which they occured. I am now 1,453.7miles into the trail leaving 722.5 and I am writing from Kent, Connecticut as I wait to see a doctor about Lymes Disease.

Pennsylvania:

If anyone reading this blog is inspired to hike anypart of the Appalachian Trail I would strongly discourage you from hiking any of the state of Pennsylvania. It was here I almost quit, with phone in hand tried to arrange transportation home only then to spent a day resting and convincing myself to push onward. My father’s advice, “just assure us you will quit before you go nuts,” vieing with the platitude, “when the going gets rough…” you know the rest. The only redeeming aspect of Pennsylvania were the fields of wild blueberries swollen, sweet and falling off their stems that slowed me as much as the boulder fields.

I stayed in a hotel called the Doyle that is over 100 years old and is an original Annheuser Busch Hotel, a beautiful relic of a past era and still standing-ish. When I approached the entrance a group of ragedy men were filling in a ditch. “A Hiker!” one of the men announced, “We’re just burrying some of your friends” he said. I laughed but he didnt have any teeth so I did so only cautiously. The owner’s wife escourted me in and sat me at the bar. When I told her I wanted to stay the night her eyes lit up and told me, ” You can even take a shower because we finally have hot water!” she exclaimed with an enthusiastic fist pump. It was then I realized I probably wasnt going to get to watch LOST.

The next day I encountered a family of bears. As soon as I noticed the group, a cub broke free of its parents ran onto the trail spun in a confused circle and ran to the other side of the trail leaving its 500lb parents looking across. Now, I don’t know much about bears but am fairly sure the adivce, never come between a cub and its mother, isnt just superstition. But this dolt of a bear left me know choice. I stood there worried and perplexed and decided to try to scare the parents with a lot of noise and pole banging. This had no affect on the mamouth creatures who simply sat up, cocked their head to one side and continued stuffing their gaping jaws with blueberries. Ill just have to fight them I thought so I built up the courage started screaming and charged up the hill. It was truly a Rambo moment. The bears of course never flinched .

New Jersey.

When I reached my first campsite in the Garden State I was saurprised to find a group of 14 year old girls loitering around a couple tents in nothing but bras and panties. This is not something one often finds on the Appalachian Trail. Soon close to 15 girls piled out of two small tents and were flirting with a hunky ridge runner. As an observer I thought how courageous and at the same time how disturbing. The ridgrunner told me they were part of a YMCA camp and that these girls were struggling. When he left the girls turned their attention to me and I asked them “Where are your counselors?” Two of the most scantily clad young ladies raised their hands. “We are the counselors.” They announced. Uh Oh I thought, at which point one of the “counselors” rangled a group of girls to fetch water (a half mile away). They donned flip flops and headed north wearing nothing more than underwear. 3 hours later they returned escourted by the ridgerunner who had caught the counselor trying to catch fish with her bear hands in a protected glacial pond which was only slightly illegal. The next morning I overheard one of the girls complain how she didnt have any clean underwear for the day to whcih the counselor replied, “This is why I told you to bring at least 5 pairs.” “I did” she said, “but I hung them with the food bag last night so they all got wet.” Oddly enought this didnt provoke the question, why did you hang your underwear with the food bag?, as if this logic was intuitive. I didnt feel comfortable asking so I wished them luck on the next leg of their adventure- a canoe trip. Now how this group of girls will manage to stay dry and out of trouble on a fast river when they couldn’t accomplish as much stationary on land is beyond me- maybe something for a later post.

Unfortunately in NJ, I developed terrible blisters on the underside of my feet after a sudden rain storm. The blisters popped and opened soars that bled into my insoles with every step until the pain was so bad I collapsed on a flat part of trail and set up my tent by crawling on hands and knees. Since my NJ resupply went horribly awry I was forced to carry a 10 pack of hotdogs as my protein, praying that they wouldn’t go bad over 5 days of high heat and humidity . Unfortunately the resealable pouch failed and leaked hotdog juice into my food bag coating everything with a thick grime and even soaking into my paper oatmeal packets adding a sour aftertaste to breakfast.

New York:

Crossing the boarder into New York I felt on top of the world and for the first time accomplished, proud of what i had achieved. I don’t know why but I consider New York an important milestone. From the top of Bear Mountain I could see the Mahnattan skyline stretch out before me and I was filled with awe and excitement thinking of all of my friends running to and from auditions in midtown while I sat high above them basking in sun. New York is a notoriously dry section of trail in which water sources are few and far between sometimes upwards of 20 miles. Trail magic frequently takes the form of gallon jugs of water at road crossings that have saved numerous lives im sure. It was here i had my first dehydration scare. At the top of the mountain prior to Bear Mountain I realized I had run out of water knowing the nearest source would be 4 miels north. I knew I had to get there fast so I started running only to become extremely dehyrated 2 miles in. At that point my body’s natural reaction was to cry which was extremely counterproductive but I thought if im going to cry i need to fun even faster. At the top of the mountain, 4 long miles later, I found water and a thru-hiker who had suffered a similar fate the day before. We recounted our tales of tears. Hers being slightly scarrier when she followed what was supposed to be a quarter mile blue blaze trail to water that was actually a mile and half away.

New York hosted a couple treats inlcuding a dozen pink flamingos stuck into the ground at the top of a mountain, a metro north stop called the Appalachian Trail for thru-hikers who commute back to the city and a section of trail through a zoo that also marks the lowest elevation on the trail.

More to come

-Newt