Posts Tagged ‘thru hike’

Night 44: Pink Wine At The End Of The Whites

Friday, March 25th, 2011

Pink wine at Jeffers Brook Shelter

Pink wine at Jeffers Brook Shelter

Sunday July 18, 2010

6.9 Miles, 1781.7 Miles to Springer, 397.4 Miles Hiked

Today’s hike would be my shortest in a while as my schedule was going to be dictated by the United States Postal service. My sister Caitlin had sent a package for me to the Glencliff post office which was just over seven miles away, unfortunately post offices aren’t open on Sundays so I would hike 6.9 miles to the shelter just before Glencliff and walk into Glencliff early tomorrow morning to get my package. Today would be  a relaxed day and I was looking forward to it.

I woke up as the sun rose, not because of the mileage I had for the day, but because I wanted to get over Moosilauke before it stormed again, if it was going to storm and I planned on taking a long afternoon nap at Jeffers Brook Shelter as soon as I got there. As I got my things together I talked with some of the weekend hikers who had shared the shelter with me. There was a man who looked almost exactly like a long haired Paulie Shore, which made me happy because Paulie Shore reminds me of being a kid. I was so distracted by his striking resemblance to Paulie Shore that I didn’t hear a word he said.

The other hikers I talked to were two girls who had attended Brown and Harvard and that was all they had to talk about. I lost interest in them immediately, and I got a very lesbian vibe from both of them, not that there was anything wrong with that. Believe me, I didn’t like them because they were elitists who loved to talk about how special and smart they were for attending an Ivy League school.

I kept the conversation brief, packed up my things and said goodbye to the Ivy League Lesbians and the Paulie Shore look alike and the other day hikers who I had shared the shelter with the previous night.

Before I left the Beaver Brook campsite and shelter area I stopped at the privy. A sign attached to it informed me that it was being maintained by the DOC (Dartmouth Outdoors Club). When I opened the privy door and stepped inside the odor was extra offensive. The door slammed behind me and it was like I was trapped in a four foot by four foot shit covered crime scene. It was terrible. What used to be the back window of the privy was now the toilet seat lid and was it was smeared with shit stains and crusted with dried urine and splashes of what I can only imagine was some poor hiker’s diarrhea.

After grabbing a corner of the plexiglass window pain that covered the toilet I lifted it up as though I was holding explosive material. With the dirty plexiglass removed I saw what was inside.

The toilet seat sat upon approximately a six foot high by four by four foot wooden box. We’re talking about 150 cubic feet ( maybe those calculations are wrong, but hey, math was never my strong suit)  for holding human waste.

Back to what was inside. The privy had been so heavily used and poorly maintained, cleaned, or composted that shit was literally beginning to overflow up and out of the toilet.

As I looked down at the rising, spiraling, tower of shit I knew it was decision time. I really had to poop and if I didn’t do it here I’d be squatting in the woods, potentially squatting above tree line trying to poop in the middle of an electrical storm.  I decided to chance it as I couldn’t hold it any longer and I sat down knowing full well that the poop tower could end up pushing up against me just from sitting or that whatever came out of me would be pushed up against me with nowhere to go down below. Yes, I had become a disgusting person. The decisions of my every day life were not what I had envisioned for myself when I set out on this Mecca-esque quest.

The privy incident left me unsmeared. I didn’t dare reach under myself to wipe for fear that my hand would make direct contact with the poop tower. I stood up with pants around my ankles and wiped while standing up. This is probably far too much to be sharing with the entire world, but this was the way I had to think now, these were my serious life problems.

Since it was a weekend the tent site was filled with weekenders, who had tents the size of Howard Johnson hotels, absolutely ridiculous luxuries that I was secretly jealous about. Just as I left camp I ran into a crazed looking Chihuahua that ran at me and tried to bite me several times. The dogs owners offered me some doughnut holes as a peace offering for the crazed dog nipping at my legs and I took them and gladly scarfed them down and headed to the trail away from the crazed Chihuahua.

The sunlight that greeted me at the shelter that morning was pretty much completely gone by the time I was getting close to breaking the treeline. It appeared I might just make it through the Whites without a single good view from any of the major peaks. The thing is that I didn’t care at all. I was just so excited to be out of the damn White mountains, and excited that I would never have to come back. These mountains as amazing as they were scare the fucking shit out of me.

As I reached the summit of Mount Moosilauke the large cairns came into view as white and misty clouds rolled past me with 20 mile per hour winds that blew and blew.

MVI_2165

When I reached the top I saw a tiny slit of blue between two massive dark clouds. I saw a young couple enjoying lunch behind a pile of rocks, protected from the wind. I sat down next to them and we talked. I wasn’t exactly in a rush with less than six miles to go to the next shelter and with no sound of thunder.

“I’m Lola.” The girl said.

“And I’m Sunrise.” The man said. They both wore copper wedding bands, something I’d never seen before and something about them seemed more free and wild then anyone I’d met so far, these people were travelers.

I told them about the Whites , the hut system, the insane weather, and I ate lunch with them.

Since I was in no rush I just waited at the summit even as Lola and Sunrise moved on. I envied them the fact that they had each other to hike with.

I met another couple a half hour later, Moose and Tetherball. They too were so full of life and positive energy they made me wish I was headed North with them. They gave me the boost I needed to keep on keeping on. They were accompanied by another young man named Chewy.

“The only animals I’ve seen so far are deers and bears.” Chewy said. “You get to Virginia and deers will be trying to get into the shelter to spoon with you.” Chewy said.

Moose gave me some of her swedish fish and then departed North. I ate them and then I too left the  and headed the just under five miles I had to hike to get to Jeffers Brook Shelter. I arrived around 2:00 P.M. with plenty of daylight left so I decided that after I finished what I had allotted for my lunch that I would take a well deserved nap. And I slept on the hard wooden shelter floor like it was a feather bed.

I woke up to a white trash looking couple named Tracy and Owen. They had two lab and pit bull mix puppies that were terribly disobedient.

They chatted with me and told me they had parked their car just a half mile away and were going to get their tent and food. Food that included hot dogs which they offered me, I was very excited.

When they headed back to their car to get their gear an older couple named Grace & Glory and Walking Man arrived. Both loved to complain and did plenty of it to anyone near enough that had functioning ears.

“As soon as I finish my hike I’m writing a letter to my senator about those huts.” Walking Man said.

Bishop arrived not too long after them and I was glad to see a familiar face who I knew I could talk to who I also knew was not crazy.

Turkey and Thrasher arrived shortly after Bishop and told me of the early troubles they faced in their hike.  They said Thrasher got hurt early on and they had a 1000 medical bill to pay and no insurance.

Tracy, the woman in the white trash couple walked back into the campsite dragging a giant cooler on wheels while Owen, her boyfriend carried more than the average camel could hull. Good thing their car was so close.  Tracey opened the cooler and pulled out two giant bottles of pink Sutter Home wine and poured us all very full glasses. One glass had me tipsy and the half bottle shared between Tracy and Owen had them talking about dropping everything and starting their own thru hike. They asked Bishop and I questions and said they were dead serious about hiking, I knew this was all bar talk and would amount to nothing, but bar talk with strangers is at least entertaining.

There was about two cups worth of wine left in one of the bottles as everyone headed to bed. Tracy and Owen offered it to Bishop and me to finish and we did. I poured half in my tin cup and Bishop drank the rest straight from the bottle.

Since Bishop was getting a new phone soon I gave him my number in case we got split up and so he could let me know how far ahead he was when we really got split up when I left Hanover and headed home for my two friends’ weddings.

I had pulled out the card Sarah had given me before I started my hike, the same card I read every night before I went to bed. The front had three pictures of her.  In the first she was pointing to herself, the second making a heart with her hands, and in the third pointing at me and on the inside was a picture of her blowing a kiss with the words ‘I love you’ underneath the picture.

“What are you looking at?” Bishop asked.

“A card my girlfriend made me before I left for my hike that she asked me to take with me the whole way.” I said.

“Can I see it?” Bishop asked.

“Yeah, but you can’t read what’s inside, that’s just between her and me,” I said as I handed him the card.

“She’s really pretty.” He said.

“Yeah, she’s gorgeous.” I said.

“How long you been together?” He asked.

“Just about two and a half years.” I said.

“That’s a really long time.” He said.

“It hasn’t seemed that long to me.” I said.

“Every girl I’ve ever been with has told me I have commitment issues, or maybe it was intimacy issues, I can’t remember.” Bishop said as he handed the card back to me.

“Maybe it was the girls that had the issues, and they just blamed them on you.” I said with a laugh as I tucked the card back in my journal and put it in my pack.

We turned our headlamps off and I felt so ready to be back home, back in the real world, back in the life I once inhabited even if it just was for a week.

We went to bed and I really hoped I’d see Bishop again, but I wasn’t sure if I could make up 10 days hiking on someone who hiked just as fast as I did. I’d really have to move fast if I was going to ever see him again. But people had told me you’d be surprised at what can happen that will bring hikers back together on the trail.

Rose – Glass of Wine.

Bud – Getting closer to Hanover.

Thorn – Only getting 6.9 miles hiked.

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Night 39: Thank God For Madison

Saturday, March 12th, 2011

Tuesday 7-13-2010
13.7 Miles Hiked, 1852.3 Miles To Springer

After the guests had been fed breakfast I got to eat the leftover cheesy scrambled eggs, cinnamon corn bread made in a cast iron skillet and oat meal with canned sliced peaches. Did I mention these hut people really knew how to fucking cook. When I finished I did all the dishes and then Mac, the man in charge of the hut handed me the bleach bucket, yes the one in which the mouse was killed the night before and the rag that had been in the bucket during the mouse murder and he told me to get to work wiping down the pantry shelves.

I wiped the counter down, said goodbye to the hut crew and they sent me off to the next hut with a hut pass of sorts that was supposed to get me stay at any hut even if they already had their two allotted work for stays. The pass was written on the back of a torn off piece of a somoas girl scout cookie box and read, “Yo Homies, Triple P. is rad. Treat him with goodness & hospitality & good vibes will ensue. Much Love CATA.” and also a “Woah” was written arrowing to a $1.00 off coupon also on the back. I tucked my cool kid hut pass into my pack and started hiking with no worries about where I would be sleeping once I got above the treeline because I after all had a written note that would get me in anywhere.

By the time I had finally hit the trail again it was 8:33 A.M. and I was moving with the same intensity and purpose I had been the day before. I had good weather and I wasn’t going to wait around until it got bad with a 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. I tore across Wildcat Peaks A through D and on the peak of D there was a ski lift and several tourists. I was stopped by an older couple who asked if I was thru hiking.

” I thru hiked in 2003.” The white haired woman said proudly. “And I have the distinction of being one of the only thru hikers to have been attacked by a rabid animal.” She said even more proudly as she put her ankle toward me revealing the scars of an animal bite still there some seven years later. I was impressed that this woman had thru hiked as she was now I guessed in her late sixties at best which meant she was up there in years when she did it and she did it after being attacked by a rabid animal to boot.

“What happened?” I asked, genuinely interested.

“Well, I sat down at a picnic table at a shelter in New Jersey. The other hikers I was with were off getting water and while they were gone a raccoon strode up to the picnic table from behind me and first bit me in the butt. Then is went under the bench and bit into my ankle and kept biting. I tried to get it off and tried to get away, but it just kept on biting. I screamed and screamed for help but the other hikers were a ways away and didn’t get to me until it had bitten me all over. It got me on my hands too, when I tried to hit it off my legs.” She said and showed me some scars on her hands as well.

“How were you able to finish the trail if this all happened in New Jersey. Aren’t rabbie shots something you get over a long period of time?” I asked.

“Yeah they are. I went in and got the initial shots and then planned ahead. I called doctors offices in the states I was headed toward and once I got to them I’d go in for my shots and get back on the trail to hike to the next place I’d be getting my shots. I wasn’t going to let a rabid raccoon ruin my thru hike.” She said with a laugh.

She was a bad ass. I think if I got attacked by any sort of rabid animal I’d have called it a wash and tried again some other time or probably never. Who am I kidding, I’m the most stubborn and unreasonable person I know, I would have done exactly what she had. I was glad to meet her and I let her know that and kept on hiking toward Pinkham Notch visitor center.

The descent to the visitor center was steep as hell and I was suddenly aware that the Whites would not just be challenging, they’d be potentially deadly. When I did finally make it to the visitors center I called the White Birches to see if they could bring me my real pack so that I could get back to real hiking.

“No one’s here and I don’t think we’ll be able to bring your pack until around 10:00 P.M. If you really want your pack now you better try and get a hitch,” said the woman who dropped me off at the trail the day before.

I certainly wouldn’t have slack packed that section if I had known I would be held hostage by her schedule and I felt I should have told her that someone obviously was there if she was talking to me on the phone, but I decided to just get on the road and start hitching. N.H. 16 was a highly trafficked road and I figured a hitch would be easy. It was surprisingly not easy. I waited twenty five minutes before I finally got picked up and my arm was dead tired from being held out so long.

The man who picked me up was a balding Jewish man from New York who shared my last name and was the most negative and sad person I had met on my hike up to this point.

“Very odd Jewish name.” He said as he introduced himself.

“Yeah, you don’t meet to many Jewish Andersons.” I said.

He told me how he loved New Hampshire and how he comes here alot, alone, and just goes hiking for a few miles every day. He told me people will often make fun of him because he hikes in jeans and a leather jacket. I felt like telling him he deserved to be made fun of for his poor choice in hiking clothing, but he seemed so down on himself that all I could say was, “People can be jerks.”

After the fifteen minute ride back to the White Birches he said he would be glad to just wait in the parking lot for me to grab my pack and then he could take me right back to the Pinkham Notch visitors center. I paid up with the owners, bought an iced tea and some Doritos for the road and got back in the car and headed back to Pinkham.

Within the first minute of our drive back he asked me if I wanted to hike Mount Adams with him.

“Is it on the A.T. ?” I asked.

“No, but it’s one of the highest mountains in New Hampshire.” He said proudly as if the fact of it’s height would entice me.

“I’d love to, but I don’t have the energy to be hiking mountains that aren’t apart of the A.T.” I said.

“I understand.” He said with a shrug of his shoulders that implied that he was stupid for asking cause why would anyone want to do anything with him. His whole aura was so down, so self deprecating. Maybe people had turned this man down so many times he believed he deserved to be turned down, believed he deserved to be alone. I would have loved to throw him a bone of kindness, but I was on a schedule and raising a forty year old man’s self esteem was not in the cards today.

“That’s okay. He said. “Are you married?” He asked.

“No.” I said with a laugh thinking what an absurd question to be asking someone my age.

“I wish more than anything that I could find someone to marry and have kids with and be happy with.” He said with an air of desperation. “But I don’t think that will ever happen.” He added.

I wanted to tell him it most certainly wouldn’t unless he changed his attitude or managed to find someone equally as miserable, but I said this instead, “Hang in there, you’ll find someone, you’re a nice guy, and you cared enough to help me, a complete stranger, so I’m sure karma will bring it back to you. You should try match.com or something.”

“No.” He said.

“You really should, one of our families good friends met his wife that way, and they already have a baby on the way.” I said.

“Maybe.” He said.

I got out of the car, said goodbye and told him I would send him a picture when I reached the finish to let him know he’d helped me achieve my dream.

Just as I got out of the car I ran into Bishop and Abraham who had just finished eating lunch at the visitors center cafeteria. They instantly became my motivation to blast up mount Madison. Even though I had the hall pass I didn’t want to take any chances so I decided I better make sure I got to Madison Hut before Abraham and Bishop did.

I sat on a rock just outside the visitors center and downed my Doritos and my raspberry Arizona iced tea. Abraham and Bishop had a five minute head start on me.

Within ten minutes I had overtaken them. The first couple miles were a breeze and I was feeling great before I hit Low Bald spot. I ran across the suspended bridge over the Peabody River and it swayed as I ran. I walked straight past Osgood tentsite and I was determined to get up to Madison Hut as quick as possible. I did not want to be on top of that mountain in the dark and though it was only 4:00 P.M. with a chance of showers and thunder storms it could get dark quick and early.

I developed a new method of hiking that I decided I would try up Mount Madison to make better pace. This method involved never letting both feet rest. If one foot was down the other was moving. It may sound simple and much like you would think any normal person would walk but it’s a difficult task when hiking and it kept me from taking rests, and I kept to it for twenty whole minutes and then had to stop for a fruit snack and water break. A side note, fruit snacks are my favorite and if I could survive on them they are all I would eat.

I broke the treeline around 5:00 P.M. and I was huffing and puffing, even though I now stood above treeline I still had 1.5 miles to go before I would be at the hut. And now that I was above treeline I could see that the ridge I would be walking on was just one endless heap of sharp boulders and rocks with nothing soft on which falling would not hurt. It became evident that if I did slip or fall I would very likely break something or be knocked unconscious and left for dead. As I began navigating my way over these jagged rocks that looked like the surface of some alien planet or a giant asteroid I could see dark heavy storm clouds looming over Mount Washington in the distance. Mount Washington was over ten miles away though and I would be safe and inside Madison Hut by the time those clouds got anywhere near where I was.

Just as this thought that I had ample time to do my last mile and a half the wind started gusting and was blowing at a sustained speed that had to be close to twenty five miles per hour. It got cold fast and I was still in my shorts and didn’t want to dig through my pack to get my warmer stuff because time was of the essence.

Within twenty minutes the dark clouds surrounded me. Literally they were surrounding me, I was walking through clouds and could only make out what was five feet in front of me. I couldn’t see the next carin that would mark where the trail headed so I stood still, not sure what to do. I felt lost even though I hadn’t moved anywhere that could have made me lost. My mind started racing and I started thinking about how people die in the White Mountains all the time, even in the summer, it almost always starts like this. Clouds close in, they become panicked, they become disoriented, and they just start moving, get off the trail and never get back to it and they die alone and cold and scared.

I did not want to die up on this mountain alone. I should have just stayed at the tentsite a few miles back and tackled Madison the next morning. There was even a sign at where I broke treeline warning of this exact scenario. If I did die up here maybe I deserved it. I wished more than anything that I could be at the hut.

There was a momentary clearing of the clouds and I started running across the rocks. I saw the next carin and ran towards it and right by it was a sign saying that I only had 0.5 miles to go to the hut. I started running recklessly down the jagged knife like rocks toward the hut. I wasn’t going to get stuck on this mountain less than a mile away and die of hypothermia just steps from safety. For the first time since I began my journey on my own I truly wished Mud was with me, wished anyone was with me. If I was going to potentially die in the whites, I didn’t want to die alone.

When I got to the hut the crew there was more than happy to take me in along with any other thru hiker that might come through. They took eight of us in that night. It was too dangerous for them to turn us out in the Whites especially at this elevation cause there was no where safe to camp and the weather could be extremely deadly even in summer.

My work for stay was pre rinse in the dish washing assembly line. This job was not disagreeable and since I was on pre rinse I got to pick off some of the still very appetizing food items that the guests barely touched. I did this even after I had eaten a ton of leftovers. I realized I no longer had standards, regarding just about anything.

The hut was crowded that night, well over forty guests. It was mostly kids, some sort of camp group. They were so damn obnoxious. They were the most unpleasant people I had encountered up to this point. They stayed up til well past midnight talking about their sexual escapades and it made me sick, 12 to 14 year old children should not have sexual escapades to be sharing, and I did not want to hear about them while I tried to fall asleep on a picnic table, make that the bench of a picnic table.

A NOBO hiker named Redman slept on the actual table while I was on the bench below since there wasn’t enough tables for each of us. I lifted my head to ask the kids talking just feet away if they would please be quiet and at the same time I raised my head Redman unzipped his sleeping bag to give himself more wiggle room and revealed unintentionally that he was sleeping naked as I got a full frontal view of his frotch. I was ready to be out of this hut and on to the next one.

The kids finally quieted down and dispersed to there bunks and as uncomfortable as I was on the bench I slept just fine.

Rose – Reaching Madison Hut Alive.

Bud – The view from Mt. Washington.

Thorn – Bratty kids at the hut.

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Night 38: Carter Hut Angels & Ghosts

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011

Monday 7-12-2010
15.2 Miles Hiked, 1866  Miles To Springer

I woke up early and ate a pop tart and some oat meal and watched an old episode of Boy Meets World. It was the one in which Corey and Topenga get married. In the wedding episode, Sean, Corey’s best friend and best man says in his toast that he knows he and Corey will never be best friends again and that’s the way it should be because from now on Topenga is Corey’s best friend. It made me think how once people get married all the friends and acquaintances that once meant so much kind of just fade into the background or fade out of your lives and are only heard from in Christmas cards, or birth announcements, and finally death notices. I wanted to keep my friends around when I got married, but is that really possible? I know for a fact that I don’t know any of my parents friends who they were friends with before they got married. Were all my friends just going to become a part of my past as soon as I said “I do?” That didn’t seem right, but it also seemed realistic, and maybe that’s just part of growing up.

I used the knock off icey hot on my ankle and knee and packed my stuff into the small day pack the hostel had loaned me to slack pack for the day. The small back pack was formerly the hostel owner’s daughter Ashleigh’s and her name was embroidered on the back pack. I put the small pack on and it, combined with my very short women’s dance shorts and with my bandanna on, it appeared that I may be a woman in transition to becoming a man or a man in transition to becoming a woman, either way the look wasn’t very flattering and I thought it might get me into trouble if I ran into any backwoods folks, but this was New Hampshire, liberal land, so I felt a little more at ease.

The woman who ran the hostel told me she was ready to go and could drive me back to where I got off the trail. She dropped me off and I walked down the road and across the street to where the trail disappeared back into the woods. Walking down the street I had to pass a crew of construction workers, and I was dreading the potential gay taunts or slurs, but was surprised that no one said anything and one of the workers even waved and said hello.

The two miles to that first shelter were a complete breeze. It was the flat mulch path I had always dreamed the whole trail would be. With my new short shorts and my ultralight back pack I felt like a completely new man/man wearing women’s shorts. My ankle and knee didn’t hurt in the slightest. Even the climb up Mt. Mariah wasn’t too bad, but right as I reached the summit it started thundering.

My mind went into instant panic mode and I pictured myself in one of those morgue drawers being pulled out so the family could identify me, but they can’t cause I’m charred to a crisp and I’m still smoking since this is my imagination. All my mom can say is, “Why was he so dumb to be hiking through an electrical storm,” and then the morgue guy makes some bad joke about whether anyone else smells chicken and my whole family starts laughing, it was a terrible vision and I needed to get off this exposed mountain top to at least put my mind at ease.

My descent was hurried and I was moving down this mountain as close to running pace as one can get without falling off the mountain. As I moved I heard a loud rustling in the trees to my right. I stopped in my tracks and the rustling grew louder and whatever it was in those pine trees was moving closer to the trail and closer to me. Whatever it was was now close enough that I could make out that it was massive and covered in black and brownish hair. It lifted it’s head up and I saw it’s glassy eyes through the branches.

“Shit, it’s thundering and now I’m going to get mauled by a bear.” I thought.

The rustling stopped.

I could still see it’s shining eyes through the thick pines. I decided to make a run for it. As I ran forward the rustling began again and what was rustling began running and broke the treeline out onto the trail in front of me. I stopped, and a very large mother moose with her baby calf at her side ran right in front of me. I was relieved it wasn’t a bear but I heard momma moose can be dangerous if they feel their calf is threatened. I stood very still, waited til both mother and calf were back into the woods on the other side of the trail and began running again.

I ran right until I found myself behind to older women.

“Are you running from that bear too?” They asked.

“No, I’m running from the thunder and some moose.” I said.

“Oh yeah we saw those moose too, but we’re moving to get away from that bear we just saw, you didn’t see him?” They asked.

“No.” I said.

Now I was running from the bear, and the thunder, and the moose. By the time I reached the next shelter the dark clouds had moved on and I no longer heard the rumblings of thunder. I decided at 1:30 P.M. that it was way too early to be stopping especially with how good I was feeling.

On my way out of Imp shelter I ran into TLC and Piece of Work, a retired couple who were nearing the end of their northbound thru hike. They informed me that I had four SOBO hikers ahead of me, two were thirty minutes ahead and two were one hour ahead and they were all headed to the Carter Hut, the same place I was headed. This wouldn’t have been bad news except that the huts will only take two thru hikers in for work for stay a night and right now I was number five. For those who don’t know, the huts are cabins in the White Mountains, they have fully equipped kitchens and staff and running water, and bunk houses. Rich people or normal people too I guess, pay 90-100 dollars a night to stay in these huts and sleep on a wooden bunk bead, but thru hikers get to sleep on the floor or kitchen tables for free in exchange for doing dishes, mopping, cleaning the pantry, and other odd jobs, hence the term work-for-stay.

I got back on the trail and booked it into full gear hoping to pass all the SOBO’s in front of me so that I could get the work for stay. I knew Abraham was still feeling sick as of yesterday so I really hoped he’d be slowing Bishop down too. I had no idea who the other SOBO’s might be.

I ran up N. Carter, W. Carter, and S. Carter mountains. I began seeing wet footprints on the boards laid down in the boggy areas. I knew I was close to someone. Within five minutes I’d passed Abraham and Bishop. Two down.

I got to Carter Dome and ran into a SOBO sectioner with no one with him, he couldn’t have been the other pair ahead of me. I started sprinting with only a mile to go. I’m a damn idiot, my ankle is busted so is my knee and I’m sprinting down and up this rocky mountain. I didn’t care though, I needed to get to that hut cause I didn’t have my tent in the small pack on my back and weather reports were calling for rain tonight.

As I made my final descent after the dome I could see the green tin roofs of the Carter Hut complex. I heard voices just ahead of me and they weren’t from the hut they were much closer. Just 30 yards ahead I saw two people, it was Monkey and Giggles.

“Hey Monkey and Giggles!” I shouted, hoping they’d stop to talk to me and then I would run passed them to the hut. Does this make me a bad person? I wasn’t sure, I mean if I got there first was there any argument as to who deserved it or who was good or bad?

“Hey! You’re back on the trail and you’re flying!” They said as they saw me running toward them full speed.

“Yep, feeling great.” I said knowing that as I passed them the work for stay was mine.

I busted through the huts front door and was greeted by two girls named Mary Anne and Uli, who I kid you not could have been runway models, and it wasn’t just my trail eyes making me think this, these girls were beautiful and the fact that they were living out in the woods all summer long only made them more beautiful.

Uli was Amazonian, tall, toned, had dark brown short hair, and piercing blue eyes. Mary Anne would have made Mary Anne from Gilligan’s Island look like a walking turd. She was thin but not too thin, wore a vintage sweatshirt that hung off one shoulder and short Sophies. She had golden hair, naturally rosy cheeks, and beautiful smile.

“What the hell is going on?” I thought. Trail girls are supposed to be ugly, it’s what they do best.

These girls would have made most men leave wives, leave girlfriends, at least consider being unfaithful, but the one thing these girls had going against them for me was that they weren’t Sarah. They didn’t have her laugh, and it’s a unique one, her smile, her attitude, her ability to know just what to say to make me smile or want to pick a fight. They didn’t make me want to be a better version of myself, and they didn’t make me crazy like Sarah did. I admired their beauty, but that’s all they were to me, two very beautiful girls and I’ve become sure that in this life beauty will fade, and it fades fast, and it definitely won’t be enough to make someone worth spending forever with. Boy Meets World has really made today a day of serious thinking.

“Can I get work for stay?” I asked the two girls. “I really need it cause I’m slacking this section and don’t have my tent and this is my first day back on after spraining my ankle.” I fibbed the truth a little hoping some sympathy for an injured hiker would seal the deal.

“Yeah, I think that’ll work.” Uli said.

A wave of relief flushed over me.

“Just go put your stuff in that shed over there.” She said.

I thought about hiding in the shed so I wouldn’t have to see the disappointed and perhaps angry faces of Monkey, Giggles, Bishop, and Abraham when they found out there would be no work for stay for them. And hide was what I did. I hid for ten minutes in the pantry shed and then I remembered that I was 23 years old and I’d really done nothing wrong except hike faster so I came out of hiding and decided I would face them.

It helped ease my conscience that I was the last work for stay because it meant that they couldn’t have taken two people and both couples I passed would only have taken it if they could have both stayed.

Abraham and Bishop arrived about an hour after me and about thirty minutes after Monkey and Giggles had already left. They were very unhappy to be turned away. The racist I spent the night in The Barn with showed up an hour after Abraham and Bishop and so did a Frenchmen. I felt bad for them, but mostly I felt lucky and grateful as I watched each of them head back to the trail while I got to stay put.

I waited outside with a man named E****, a NOBO who got the other work for stay for the night. He told me he was married, which shocked me because he was a young man, thirty at the oldest and I wondered how his wife was okay with him being gone this long.

“You must have a pretty cool wife to have her be okay with you doing this.” I said.

“I was going no matter what, so it didn’t matter if she was cool with it.” He said.

While I thought his wife must have been cool I now thought he sounded like a dick.

He then started telling me about how he was planning on doing another long hike next year too. It sounded to me like he was a man in an unhappy marriage and things weren’t going to get better, more likely things were going to end or he’d just spend the rest of his life walking through the woods avoiding his marriage, is there a difference?

I didn’t understand why this man was married if all he wanted to do was hike through the woods away from his wife. If I was married my wife would be with me, we’d be doing these adventures together, but he made it clear he didn’t want his wife there even she had wanted to be there with him. He made me sad. I didn’t ever want my life to be like his was.

After the five guests of the hut finished eating me and E**** were called in to eat the scraps the guests hadn’t finished and they were damn good. These hut people knew how to cook.

After we ate E**** was put on dish duty and I was told I would be in charge of taking all the cans out of the pantry and wiping down the shelves the next morning. I looked at the can filled pantry I’d be tackling in the morning and a mouse ran out of the sea of cans and had jumped onto the spoon leading into the bowl of grits. Mac, the cook and the head caretaker at Carter Hut grabbed the mouse by the tail and took it over to a bucket of bleach and dropped it in.

“When I take him out tomorrow all his hair will be burned off. It kills them pretty much instantly.” He said.

I didn’t imagine it killing it instantly. I figured the bleach probably filled the mouses lungs and it would struggle to stay afloat as more bleach poured into lungs until it’s body was filled with bleach and it was drowned and then it’s fur and any other identifying features would be burned off as it sat in the bucket over night. I felt so bad for this mouse. We were in his environment after all.

One of the hut girls who was visiting from another hut, Ashley, was here just for the night to hang out and had some great stories about the huts.

“A few years ago they found the preseason caretaker for the Lakes of the Clouds hut underneath the sink in the kitchen, pale as a line, clutching an axe in his hands and shaking. He hadn’t eaten in days.” She said as she dumped the remaining food into the compost bucket.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“They didn’t get the story until a few days later when he was re hydrated and coherent.” She said.

“What did he say happened?” I asked.

“Well, it all started on the anniversary of the cog car crash. The cog is the train going up to Mount Washington and it got out of control and crashed killing everyone on board. It happened a long time ago, just around when the huts were being built. The night of the anniversary the caretaker, who was getting the hut ready for opening heard a knock at the front door right around sunset. He went to the front door and there was a man standing about ten feet from the door. ‘Come in.’ The caretaker said from the doorway. The man just stood there and said nothing but he stared directly at the Caretaker. The Caretaker walked back inside rightly spooked. About ten minutes later he heard another knock. This time when he went to check there was a woman standing next to the man, and again neither of them responded to the Caretaker when he asked them to come inside. He went back inside the hut and by now it was pitch black outside. Ten minutes later he heard another knock and went to check. This time no one was outside. The Caretaker was freaked out and barricaded the door shut. After the door was barricaded he heard another knock, this time it came from the window. He looked towards the window and saw a little boy starring through the window and pointing at him. He heard another knock at one of the other windows and there was a little girl doing the same. Every ten minutes or so there would be another knock and a new person standing in each of the windows until every window was occupied. That’s when he lost it and climbed into the cupboard under the sink. The spooky thing about Lakes of the Clouds is that the number of windows in the Lakes of the Clouds hut is the exact same as the number of people killed in the cog crash and that’s why each window was occupied by one of the victims of the crash.” She said.

“That’s too scary.” I said. “Next day at sunrise I would have booked it out of there.”

“I mean, it’s really not that big of a deal. All the huts have ghosts that haunt them, cause almost all the huts have had someone die near, in, or around them. Usually the ghost ends up being one of the longtime caretakers.” She said nonchalantly. “Carter hut is haunted by Red Mac. He’s got red hair and he usually only comes around if the hut isn’t clean or the site isn’t being maintained. He’ll swing the front doors open and stomp his boots on the wood floor.” She said.

“There’s a lot of ghosts in every hut and the dry river area of New Hampshire is mad haunted, there’s even an old Indian burial ground around there.” She said.

I decided the Northeast was too Stephen King kind of creepy for my liking.

After dinner E**** and I got settled on our respective kitchen tables and ready for bed. While we got in our sleeping bags Uli and Mary Ann got ready for a night raid on Mitzba Hut. The huts have different items in them that the other huts will try and steal from them and bring them back to their own huts. The most valuable hut item is a giant rowing oar. Other items that trade hands often are a butler named Jeeves who belongs technically to Carter Hut, a sword, and a painting at one of the huts. A night raid is simply where you sneak into one of the other huts at night and steal their stuff. Besides night raids their are also power raids which are done in broad day light. A power raid happens when an entire crew from one hut goes to another hut and binds them up with tape and rope and in a power raid you can take anything you want. In a night raid if you get caught it’s over. During night raids the raiders will often bring beer with them which they will give to the thru hikers who often wake first since they sleep on the floor and tables and the beer is a bribe to keep them from alerting the crew of the hut being raided.

Mary Ann and Uli leave around 10:30 just moments before I pass out.

“Raid the shit out of that hut.” I say with a laugh and fall asleep before the door can swing shut behind them.

They returned from their hut raid around 3:00 A.M. and they were successful in their efforts. They carried Jeeves in and set him on the kitchen counter.

E**** and I congratulated them and they both headed off to their bunks.

I went back to sleep and rose about thirty minutes later having to pee. I headed out towards the shed just twenty yards from the hut, unzipped and peed for what felt like five minutes straight. Just as I zipped up I heard something coming from behind me.

“Hello.” I said shakily.

I didn’t have my headlamp on but I could make out that it was a figure that was walking toward me. All the ghost stories of the night came rushing through my mind.

“Hello.” I said even more shakily and more quietly. Still no response.

The figure stood directly in ten feet in front of me now.

It was Uli dripping wet with a small towel wrapped around her waist. It was just long enough to cover anything that might have changed a movies rating from PG-13 to R.

“Oh hey.” She said. “Just takin’ a shower, felt so gross after the raid, ha.”

“Oh, ha, I thought you were Red Mac.” I said.

“Oh no, no, don’t worry, he won’t bother you.” She said.

We both walked back into the hut and I fell back asleep.

Rose – 1st Hut Experience

Bud – Getting Closer to being over Mount Washington and done with the White Mountains.

Thorn – Seeing my SOBO friends turned away.

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Night 37: Did I Piss The Bed?

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Sunday 7-11-2010
0 Miles Hiked, 1881.2 Miles To Springer

Before I went to bed last night I searched through the junk in the lower level of the barn to try and find something I could soak my ankle in. I found an old styrofoam cooler filled with dead bugs and cob webs. I rinsed it out and filled it with the ice I bought from the gas station across the street and soaked my foot in it. It was so cold it hurt to keep my ankle submerged. After about a half hour of soaking I pulled it out and my ankle no longer throbbed or looked as swollen, but it felt like a joint in my knee had been tightened or displaced and it now hurt to bend my knee. I need to catch a break.

While I iced my foot I worked on a surprise that I was going to send to Sarah. A bunch of pictures that I had written letters on the back of. The letters and pictures I had written and would be sending were heavy though and I had no idea how many stamps to put on the envelop and the post office was closed the next day so I knew I wouldn’t be able to ask them. I figured I’d poll a few people in town the next morning.

When I finally went up into the dark attic to go to bed I sat down on my mattress and one sheet barrier and spread my sleeping bag across the bed. I had filled a zip lock bag with ice and wrapped it around my knee with the ace bandage I had from my ankle. I stared up at the barn ceiling and at the wall at the other end and watched as the moonlight crept through the spaces between the boards that made up the walls. As I gazed at the rays of moonlight I wondered where my life was headed and was unsure, and I fell asleep thinking about who I was supposed to be in the post college adult world I was entering.

I woke up in the middle of the night and was soaking wet from my waste down.

“Shit, I pissed myself in a hostel bed. I’m fucking 23 years old, how am I pissing myself.” I thought.

I reached my hand down, touched the wet sheet beneath me, brought my hand to my face and smelled it. (Please no judgment, I don’t know why I would have wanted to smell my piss covered hand when I assumed I had wet the bed but I felt it was the only way to know for sure.)

I qiuckly realized I had not pissed the bed, but had in fact rolled over onto the ice filled ziplock bag on my knee, which had melted and popped. The melted ice left both my legs, and the sheet covering the mattress soaked.

I got my headlamp on to see just how wet the mattress had become and I saw a big orange yellow stain on the white sheet.

“Had I actually pissed the bed?” I thought again. “It didn’t smell like urine?”

I got completely out of the bed and took my sleeping bag off the sheet, and lifted up the sheet exposing the bare mattress and what was on it. I had not pissed the bed. The mattress was in fact covered in dark yellow, orange, red, and brown stains and the water from my ice pack mixing with the mattress had brought all those stains to the surface and allowed them to be absorbed by the white sheet.

“Ghhh….uggh.” My gag reflex activated as I thought about the fact that I had touched that with my hands and brought it to my face.

I spread my sleeping bag back over the mattress and laid on top of it for the remainder of the night. I had no intention of sleeping on those sheets now that they were covered in who knows what. I imagined what those stains could have been caused from a variety of gross things: period blood, sex juices, urine, poop, throw up, dirt, and sweat. I was ready to be out of this barn attic with the odd racist man who was currently my only companion.

I woke up early that morning wanting to get packed up, and get out of the barn before the racist man or the European girl was up to see my mattress was wet and that my white bed sheet was stained with what appeared to be blood, urine, and poop juices. I figured even if I told the truth it would be assumed I had wet the bed and I didn’t need my trail name to be changed for a false assumption two people I barely knew might make. I grabbed my sheet off the bed, balled it up and shoved it at the bottom of the hamper of used sheets and towels. I was out of the hostel by 8:00 A.M. never to return.

I knew I wouldn’t be hiking today with my semi bum ankle and now bum knee. I walked around town until I got to a park and then set my sleeping pad up on a park bench and laid down to take a Sunday morning nap. I felt like a hobo, and I loved it. I woke up from my nap around noon as the park I had set up shop in was hosting the towns bimonthly town yard sale/ flea market. I decided to head to the gas station to get some more stamps and to ask some people how many stamps my letter would need.

“I think five should get the job done for sure.” The forty something woman with a bad red hair dye job said.

“Thanks.” I said and I decided to walk back toward the fast food section of town. On the way to McDonalds I stopped at the post office and dropped my letter to Sarah in the mailbox.

At McDonalds I ordered a Big Mac combo meal, a McDouble, and a hot fudge sundae. I ate my food slowly while I charged my phone and scoped out the restaurant for a potential hitch to the White Birches Campground, another hostel in town that I had heard was cheaper and nicer than The Barn, but a good three miles from where I was.

During my time scoping out potential rides I watched a little boy take a hot fudge sundae off the counter from an old man. The little boy thought it was the one his mom had bought him, which I had already seen his mom grab off the counter. The old man was so shocked he didn’t know what to say, and just watched as the little boy walked away with it. I had just seen the old man set it down on the counter so he could grab some napkins before the boy took it, I thought about intervening but figured this might be the most entertaining thing that would happen to me today and I would let things get a little further along before I said something. The boys mother eventually told the boy she already had his and he came back to give the old man the one he had taken.

By the time I had finished my high calorie feast most of the clientele that was there when I had arrived had left. The boy who stole the hot fudge sundae and his mom were still there. I walked up to his mom.

“Are you heading down the road that way, toward the White Birches Campground?’ I asked.

“Yeah, we are, do you need a ride?” The young-beautiful-probably-had-her-kid-in-high-school-aged-mother asked.

“Yeah, I would really appreciate that.” I said.

“I’d love to help you out.” She said.

I followed the young mother and her son to their white SUV. They moved a bunch of cardboard boxes out of the backseat to make room for my pack. She had explained they were moving into a new house because she and her husband had just divorced. I felt it was a bit of an over share but didn’t really care. She dropped me off at the White Birches and I got out, thanked her and walked toward the front office door.

I checked in with the man who owned the campground and lived in the barn buildings first floor with his wife and daughter, Ashely. I paid for a bunk space in the upper level of the barn area which was much nicer than the barn attic area at The Barn. I also paid for a towel to use when showering.

I walked up the outside stairs to the attic area of the barn and opened the screen door. Inside I was shocked to see Abraham and Bishop.

“What are you guys doing here? I was laid up for 11 days in Andover with a sprained ankle, what’s your excuse?” I asked.

“We’ve been watching the World Cup games, been here since the 6th.” Bishop said.

“Yeah, plus I got sick and was throwing up for a few days.” Abraham said.

They both answered me in a somewhat trance like state. They were captivated by the television as the championship game of the World Cup between Spain and the Netherlands had just started.

I watched the first half with them and dozed off towards the end of the half. At halftime I woke up and went outside to the pool that sat near the trailer park section of the campground. I soaked my foot and there was a radio playing nearby. I soaked up the rays shirtless and listened to the radio. It brought back memories of life guarding at hot pools all summer long during my teenage years.  I hung out by the pool for more than an hour and headed back figuring it would be close to over when I returned.

When I walked through the screen door I saw that the score remained 0-0. The game ended in overtime on penalty kicks around 5:00 P.M.  Just as the game ended and Spain claimed the title of World champions, the rain started pouring and pounded hard against the tin roof of the old barn.

While the rain pounded Abraham and Bishop packed up there things and got ready to meet the old man who lived in the trailer park who would be shuttling them back to the trail. I was glad it wasn’t me that was heading back to hiking in the rain.

The rain eventually cleared and I headed back to the pool to swim and soak my ankle more. No one else was at the pool so I took my shorts off and swam around in my black mesh boxer brief underwear. It felt so good to be swimming and my ankle was pain free swimming around and my knee felt great too. I swam around by myself until 8:15 P.M. and then headed back to the barn. On the way back I called my family. Each person I talked to and told my ankle was acting up told me they thought it was time for me to come home, time to give myself a break, someone even suggested that maybe it just wasn’t mean to happen for me this year. I was furious.

“I’ll be back when I have to come off for my friends weddings like I always planned.” I told them agitated.

After talking to my family and getting aggravated at what I viewed as their lack of support and faith in me I took a 25 cent shower in the first coin operated shower I’d ever used.  I thought a quarter for five minutes of hot water was perfectly reasonable since I’d paid five dollars for a shower at other hostels.

Once I was out of the shower I put the underwear and shorts I had swum in in the dryer and I headed back upstairs to warm up a can of soup someone had left behind in the hiker box.

While my clothes dried I wore my Danskin short shorts and walked around the trailer park while I called and talked to Sarah.

“I bought some women’s short shorts from Walmart, I’ll send you a picture of them.” I said.

“Oh my gosh you weren’t big enough to wear the shorts from the women’s section so you had to get them from the girls section, didn’t you?” She asked after receiving the picture.

“Very funny.” I said. ” But I did make the old lady who worked in the women’s clothing section wait outside the changing room and tell me how I looked in the three different colors I tried on.” I said.

“The thing is I don’t doubt that you did that.” She said.

We both laughed.

We talked about her day, her trip back from my aunts house, and missing each other. Missing each other seemed to be the big topic of every conversation and it seemed it didn’t matter how much closer I got to seeing her again, to getting back home because she knew I’d be going back and leaving her again.

The mosquitoes started biting and I was tired, from what I don’t know, I hadn’t done anything all day, I think my body was just spent. I ended the conversation and headed back inside the barn. Back inside I sat in front of the television watching Myth Busters and I began rubbing some Thermosil (Ben Gay equivalent) that I found in the hiker box all over my ankle, knee, and thighs. The thighs were a mistake, a huge mistake, they burned all night.

Sarah texted me pictures of dresses asking me which one she should wear to our friends weddings coming up soon. Sarah could have worn a trash bag and put every woman in the room to shame and I told her she’d look beautiful in whichever one she chose, but she wanted more participation than that on my part. I told her the one she liked best looked great, which she jokingly said upset her because that one was out of stock, and then I climbed onto the bottom bunk, which was not stained with anything and I fell asleep, looking forward to getting to dance with her in whatever she wore.

Rose – Swimming in the pool, talking with Sarah.

Bud – Slack packing/Freedom Hiking the next section.

Thorn - My family telling me to come home.

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Night 36: Welcome To New Hampshire

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

Lost bird

This bird is no doubt dead.

Saturday 7-10-2010
11.8 Miles Hiked, 1881.2  Miles To Springer

When I woke up this morning the view from the shelter of the mountains in the distance was just as glorious as it had been the night before. This morning though things looked slightly more ominous as heavy gray and black clouds began rolling in over the mountains in the distance. I could see the sheets of rain as they fell from the clouds far away and I knew it wouldn’t be long until they reached the shelter.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t have flicked off Maine last night.’ I thought.

By 6:00 A.M. rain drops the size of dimes began falling from the sky and pounding on the tin roof that covered the shelter. I really didn’t want to hike in the rain, hike up and down slippery rock faces, fall down slippery rock faces, and walk in wet shoes, but I did really want to get to a town and nothing was going to stop me with only 12 miles separating me from McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King and a Chinese food buffet.

I got my rain gear on and hung around the shelter while I ate my cold oatmeal and drank my cold instant coffee. Two weekend hikers with a heavy duty weather radio informed me rain was expected all morning.

‘Great,’ I thought. I figured I better get a move on if I planned to make it into town by mid afternoon and I left the shelter.

By 6:32 A.M. I was on the trail heading south. I filled up my water in a stream that the rain had flooded and started my climb. I trudged through puddles, mud bogs, over slippery rocks and roots, but I was determined to get to Gorham and get dry, and comfortable.

By 9:15 A.M. the rain had decreased and become a light mist, not that it mattered. At this point my boots were soaked, my socks filled with water and my shorts wet from rain and my shirt wet from the sweat my rain jacket induces. I wasn’t stopping to look at anything and I blelw right past Moss Pond and Dream Pond.

I stopped for a few food breaks and kept pushing toward the sound of traffic and the idea of civilization.  Every time I felt tired and I’d hear the roar of a car driving on a road somewhere I couldn’t see, but could only imagine my spirits would immediately lift. With about three miles to go I was more than ready to be done hiking. I wanted to be in a building, taking a shower, and doing laundry. I wanted to be off the trail. With about a little less than a few miles left til I would reach Gorham, NH I heard the sound of what I believe was the town’s fire station alarm.

The sound let me know I had to be really close. I was elated, not about the fire in town but that I was getting close to the town. I headed down Mt. Hayes and had to walk down a large slab of rock that was both wet and slick. I tried to be really careful placing my feet on the mossy patches I could find and grabbing onto tree branches when there were any to grab hold of and help me maintain my balance.

As I neared the bottom of the rock slab it broke into tiny rock segments with gaps in between them and became more treacherous. I took a step too quickly and lost my balance. I was on my ass and my packs rain cover acted as an accelerator propelling me further down the slab and taking me straight toward the field of boulders with gaps in between them.

My right leg led the way and got caught right between two boulders right below the knee cap. While my right leg stopped the rest of my body kept moving forward with the momentum the initial fall and slide had created.

The way my shin felt I thought I’d broken something. I gently pulled my right leg out of the crack it had become wedged in. My shin was scrapped and bleeding but as I tested my range of motion I was relieved to find that nothing seemed broken.

After I had recovered from the fall and started moving again the trail went steadily downward toward Hogan road. When I got to Hogan road someone had left a box of Koshi granola bars. I grabbed one of each flavor bar and had a little roadside snack.

As I left Hogan road I noticed a sign for a missing parakeet attached to the telephone pole. Looking at the picture of the bird and thinking about the wilderness I’d already been through I had no doubt that bird was dead.  I crossed the Androscoggin river and walked by the abandon hydro electric plant to my left that sat right on the river.

Once I passed the plant, U.S. 2 curved right. I took my pack off to get ready to starting thumbing. I took off my water soaked boots and switched into my Teva sandals hoping to give my feet a chance to dry. It took about twenty minutes for someone to stop and pick me up. It was a husband and wife and their teenage daughter in a white pick up truck. I sat in the back with the daughter and made small talk until they dropped me off at The Barn, also known as the Libby House on Main Street in downtown Gorham. I thanked them for the ride and they drove away.

When I walked inside the barn, which was a barn style garage attached to a big bed and breakfast there was an Eastern European girl in her early twenties who greeted me wearing a bikini and an apron. Her outfit and poor English had me thinking mail order bride.

“It will be 20 for night, that include shower, another 5 if you want wash dry.” She said.

“Okay.” I said as I handed her the cash thinking this place was a little pricey for getting to sleep on a stained mattress with one bed sheet covering it in the attic of a hot barn garage.

I said goodbye to the young lady and headed down the street toward the Gorham commons in search of Pizza Hut, I hoped to hit up their lunch buffet if they had one. I called Sarah on the walk there since it was about a half mile down the street.

“Hey. How are you doing?” I asked.

“Pretty good.” She said.

“Are you still planning on heading to Aunt Mimi’s for Gram’s 93rd birthday party?” I asked.

“Yeah, probably around noon. I don’t know if I’m going to spend the night though. I have to get back to Williamsburg early tomorrow morning, so I can either leave tonight and then I won’t have to get up early or I’ll have to get up really early tomorrow.” She said.

“Yeah just do whatever works better for you. I’m sure my family would love to see you for as long as you can stay but they’ll understand if you have to leave tonight because of the drive. What are you doing about the bridge?” I asked.

“Claudio is going to be at Kelly’s on Kent Island and he said he’d drive across the bridge to meet me and drive my car over for me.” She said

“Well that works out, that’s really nice of him.” I said.

“Yeah.” She said.

“I’m so jealous you get to go to the party. I really wish I could be there with you and the whole family, but instead I get to stay here all alone.” I said.

“You should be jealous, I can’t wait to see your family.” She said.

“I know, I bet it’s going to be so much fun.” I said. “I just got to Pizza Hut so I’m going to go in and get lunch and I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I said.

“No, don’t go yet. We never get to talk.” She said.

“I know, and I know this sounds lame, but I’m starving, I haven’t had lunch yet, and I still have to hitch a ride to the Walmart and back and then I have to get in contact with Ashley Green about her possibly meeting me in Hanover to give me a ride to the train station in Manchester, but I’ll call once I get everything done.” I said.

“Fine.” She said.

“I’ll talk to you later. Tell everyone at Gram’s party I say hi.” I said.

“Okay.” She said.

When I got inside I found out the buffet was only for salad and though I did crave vegetables I wasn’t going to pay for all you can eat salad. I ordered 10 bread sticks and a pepperoni personal pan pizza and devoured all of it along with three Pepsi’s in just over thirty minutes.

“Does the soda have refills?” I asked the waitress. She looked at me as though I was a crazy homeless person and I could tell she feared if she said there were refills that I would hang out in here all day, smelling like a dumpster, covered in dirt, sipping Pepsi after Pepsi until the place closed.

“Well, you can have two or three refills but it’s not unlimited.” The Waitress said.

‘What the hell type of Pizza Hut is the place?’ I thought. I had come to a fast food place for a few reasons. First to gorge myself on greasy, high calorie, and fattening food. Second, to enjoy food in the comfort of air conditioning. Third and lastly to drink as much damn soda as I pleased. I felt cheated that this Pizza Hut only delivered on the first two of my three wishes.

After I left Pizza Hut I headed to the road to try and hitch to Walmart. I ran into the guy who had offered me 151 the night before I sprained my ankle. He informed me that there was a bus service that ran through town every thirty minutes and for two dollars you could ride it unlimited all day. With this information I kept walking with him down toward the bus stop.

I spotted a McDonalds along the way and headed inside for an ice coffee to take with me on the bus. By the time I had reached the bus stop I had already finished the iced coffee and it and the Pizza Hut food had apparently shot right through my system.  I had to go and I had to go immediately.

“What’s your name?” I asked the 151 distributor.

“I go by Pneumonia.” He said.

“How come?” I asked.

“I got pneumonia and was in the hospital the last week and a half.” He said.

“Oh no. Well I’m  glad to see you’re doing better now. Do you happen to know when the bus comes?” I asked.

“It’ll be here in five minutes.” He said.

I ran to the gas station next to the bus stop knowing I would not make it another five minutes and a bus ride to Walmart without pooping in my pants if I didn’t take care of business now.

I got inside the gas station. There was a line of two people before me. My mind had already told my body when I walked into the gas station that I was going to get to go in the next minute. Things had started moving.

I waited in line trying to think of anything but going to the bathroom to help slow things down. The two people in front of me seemed to take forever. The last woman ahead of me got out just in time. I ran in, dropped my shorts and started going not a half second after they were down.

I made it back to the bus stop before the bus arrived and got in when the female bus driver pulled up. Pneumonia wasn’t coming with me, so it was just me and the female bus driver.

“Hiker?” She asked.

“Yep.” I said.

“You must be interested in traveling then?” She asked.

“Yeah.” I said.

“I wanted to travel the country when I was your age.” The forty something woman said.” So I got my CDL (Commercial Driver’s License) and became a trucker and got to drive all over the country. I kept driving until the day I delivered each of my first two kids. It was great, my husband and I got to see every inch of America.” She said.

“Sounds pretty cool, I don’t think I could do it though.” I said.

“Sure you could, you’re still young, you don’t have anything tying you down.” She said.

I thought of myself as a free spirit, but I wasn’t that free. I wanted to be stationary most of the time. I wanted to be able to still see Sarah, see my family, see my friends whenever I wanted and I knew a life of non stop moving would make that impossible. The bus driver sounded like she loved her life but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted. I had officially crossed off cross country truck driver from my list of potential professions. I knew I couldn’t do it.

I got to the Walmart and finished my food shopping relatively quickly. I still wanted to find a pair of shorter shorts to replace the long cargo shorts that hung over my knees and caught on my knees every time I had to take a big step up.

There was nothing in the men’s section that didn’t hang over my knees. I headed to the women’s section and asked one of the employees to help me find some very short women’s athletic shorts. The older lady gave me a strange look and then helped me. I ended up trying on and loving the way a pair of black women’s dancing shorts called Danskins felt. I bought them and then walked around Walmart trying to find someone I could ask to drive me back to Gorham since the bus was no longer running at this time of the evening.

I met a woman leaving the pharmacy section who said she and her husband could drive me back. The couple drove me back to the hostel and waved goodbye as they drove off.

After I loaded my food things into my pack I talked to a man in his mid 40′s named T*******ack who was from Utah and as I found out was born in the same hospital I was in Virginia.

“I could never live in Virginia.” He said.

“Why” I asked.

“Living in Utah I know I’m way less likely to get shot up by any black boys. I just feel more comfortable there being around mostly white boys.” He said.

Given this was one of the first things he said to me I could tell any conversation I had with him would involve me bring highly uncomfortable and offended so I decided to tell him I had to leave to get to dinner before the restaurant closed and hoped to not return until he was asleep.

I headed down town to the Dynasty Chinese food buffet and tried calling each of my four siblings, my mom, my dad, and my three siblings in-law and Sarah so that I could wish my grandmother a happy birthday. No one answered their phones. I felt really alone and sad. I figured everyone was having such a good time that they were too busy to answer.

I entered the restaurant at 9:15 P.M. and I was the only person there. They had even shut off the heat lamps on the food and were cleaning the table tops with a wet rag while half the employees were eating dinner in another section of the restaurant.

The feeling of isolation in my stomach grew bigger and the greasy, half warmed Chinese food wasn’t capable of filling it. The rest of dinner I felt terribly lonely. One wall of the restaurant had mirrors and when I looked over and  saw myself, not looking like myself and eating all alone a thousand miles from home I realized my new life wasn’t as glamorous as I had hoped it would be.

I could barely eat the rest of the food on my plate. I spent the remainder of time there picking at my egg roll and starring out at the pool of the Motor Inn Motel across the parking lot watching as a family splashed and laughed with each other.

I left the buffet both unsatisfied by the food and sad that I wasn’t with the people I loved and that I wasn’t with anyone. I was alone and I realized I may very well be alone for a long time to come.

I opened my fortune cookie on the walk home. It read ‘bread today is better than cake tomorrow.’  I took it to mean that I should be thankful for what I had today instead of upset about what I didn’t and I walked back to the hostel alone.

Rose – Pizza Hut and getting dry

Bud – A full day off.

Thorn – Feeling so alone.

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Night 29: An Old Goat Returns

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

The incredible nachos Nightcrawler made for us to have with our delicious moose chili.

The incredible nachos Nightcrawler made for us to have with our delicious moose chili.

Saturday 7-3-2010
O Miles Hiked, 1932.7 Miles To Springer

The port a potty door banged close behind me as I exited after my morning poop. It had only been two days since it’s delivery and it was already getting gross. Hundreds of beetles and flies crawled all over the waste floating in blue water. I could feel them land on me while I sat.

When I looked up after I exited Caretaker was standing in front of me.

“Want to go hiker cruising?” He asked.

“Sure. What’s hiker cruising?” I asked.

“Just driving through town and seeing if any hikers need a ride to the trail or a place to stay. If you want I can drop you off at the general store while I cruise around.” He said.

“Sounds good.” I said.

We drove around town and stopped at the post office to see if any thru hiker packages addressed to the hostel had arrived.

Caretaker drove me to the house of an old man in town he likes to check in on and visit with. Our visit was short lived. The old man told us he hadn’t taken his morning dump and would have to ask us to leave so he could take care of business.

I bought a box of powdered doughnuts at the general store to have for breakfast. When we returned to the house Caretaker invited me in to watch the Germany and Argentina World Cup match. I brought my doughnuts and shared them with him. We watched the game and talked until Monkey and Giggles called saying they needed to be picked up from the trail so they could check on the package they were expecting at the post office.

When Caretaker returned with Giggles and Monkey they didn’t stay long.

“Don’t walk too fast.” I said as they walked down the road that lead to town. “Hopefully I’ll catch up to you eventually.”

“I’m sure you will, just make sure your ankle is all the way better before you get back on.” Giggles said.

I was alone again, but I wasn’t lonely for long as has become typical at the hostel. Caretaker brought in a pair of brothers named Toofpick and Thrillbilly. Toofpick had brown eyes, shaggy brown hair, caterpillar eyebrows that rivaled mine, and a thick reddish brown beard. He got his name because he always had a tooth pick in his mouth but wanted to be original so opted for Toofpick over Toothpick. His brother, Thrillbilly, got his name cause he’s kind of a hillbilly and he likes adventurous outdoor things, he was on the lumberjack team at his college which I didn’t even know they had at colleges . They were both from Virginia too, and were also both heading south, but moving at a much faster pace than I was.

“So you two are really brothers? You look nothing alike.” Caretaker asked.

“Yep.” They said.

“Well which one of you looks more like the mail man?” He asked. They both laughed.

The brothers loaded their gear into the RV and took their shirts off to throw in with the load of laundry they were doing.

On each of their backs was a tattoo about the size if my head. The tattoo was done in black ink and it was of their family crest.

“Did you guys get your tattoos together?” I asked.

“Yeah, when we turned 18. Our dad and his brothers have them too. Every man in our family gets it when he turns 18.” Toofpick said.

“That’s a cool family tradition, sounds a little painful, but cool.” I said.

Our conversation was interrupted by a barking dog and it wasn’t Caretaker and Nightcrawler’s Besenji mut dog. I walked out of the RV to check it out. My ankle was healed enough that I was able to walk without much pain so I was no longer using the crutches.

As I got to the entrance of the big orange box I saw two familiar faces. It was Mt. Goat and Lou, his small Basenji dog. I hadn’t seen them since the second day of the 100 mile wilderness and hadn’t seen any of the group he was with either. A big part of me had assumed he, JANASTY and AC Farm had called it quits, but here he stood right in front of me.

“Hey, how are you doing? Where’s the rest of the gang?” I asked.

“JANASTY realized she wasn’t prepared for this and wasn’t in any condition to be doing this. She dropped out 30 miles in when we stopped at The White House Landing for the one pound burger. She was a nice girl and she at least had the grace to come off, which was a relief because it meant we wouldn’t have to carry her ass through the 100 mile wilderness and make sure she got out alive.” He said.

“What about AC Farm?” I asked.

“You mean Farm-A-Sea?” He asked.

“Is that what his name was?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s Farm-A-Sea. Not sure how that mix up happened but a couple people thought his name was AC Farm. He’s a little bit behind me. I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up here today or tomorrow.” He said.

“That’s great that he’s still on the trail.” I said.

“Yeah he’s a really cool kid.” Mt. Goat said.

Toofpick overheard us talking and asked, “Is he the one that quit his job to do the trail?”

“Yeah. He quit his job as a janitor at the high school he went to. He graduated and then he was janitor there for two years after that and decided it wasn’t for him.” Mt. Goat said.

I hung out around the RV while Mt. Goat, Toofpick, and Thrillbilly came and went doing their laundry and taking showers one by one. We spent the afternoon listening to Steve Earle and Old Crow Medicine Show counting down the minutes til Nightcrawler would be done with dinner.

Caretaker hung a dinner bell in the conex that afternoon and when the four of us heard it sound we bolted from the RV, and in my case I hobbled.

The wait was well worth it. Nightcrawler made us moose chili that was spicy as hell and equally tasty. With the chili she brought out a huge plate of nachos covered in cheese, diced jalepano peppers grown in her garden, sliced raw onions, black olives, all garnished with freshly picked cilantro.

The chili and nachos were delicious, but so spicy that all four us were sweating bullets all meal and for the thirty minutes afterward.

After dinner I was so full of moose meat, beans, and nachos, I felt like I would projectile vomit if I moved too fast as I walked from Bob to the RV.

I sat on the empty cooler that sat outside of the RV and I called Sarah.

Right as I hung up the phone I saw Nightcrawler walking toward the RV with a tray full of food. I stood up to see what was on the tray, but before I could figure it out she told me.

“I made everyone some Hillbilly Bon Bons. They’re made with Ritz crackers that I dipped in chocolate and then coated with peanut butter. I put a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle and made little sandwiches out of them.” She said.

“They look amazing.” Thrillbilly said.

They tasted amazing too.

The Hillbilly Bon Bons cooled all of us down and cured the sweats the chili had induced.

Lou Dog, Mt. Goat, Thrillbilly, Toofpick, and I settled into the RV and watched Zombieland. The movie was surprisingly funny and Woody Harrleson was hilarious.

There was a cameo by Bill Murray that made me realize how much Caretaker reminded me of Bill Murry. He was crazy, wacky, and inappropriately funny, but he was also a military killing machine. I decided he was a combo of Bill Murry and Bruce Willis with maybe a dash of Randy Quaid.

When the movie ended we could see some fireworks being set off down the street by a group of kids as their parents watched. They weren’t anything special, but they were a reminder that even far away from home and civilization it was Fourth of July weekend, and even though we were in Maine, we were still in America and even the backwoods people here were proud of that fact.

Rose- Hillbilly Bon Bons
Bud- Fourth of July
Thorn- Sleeping in RV with poor air circulation with three guys who just ate chili.

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Night 27: Mmmmm…..Moose

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Thursday 7-1-2010
0 Miles Hiked, 1,932.7 Miles to Springer

The NOBO hikers I met the day before left my life as quickly as they came into it. We got a group picture in front of the RV before they left. I watched as they packed up, and loaded up to head back to the trail just as I had watch Mud do the day before and I felt alone again.

I think Caretaker’s wife, Nightcrawler, sensed I was lonely, down, and struggling. Nightcrawler is a woman whose personality emits warmth and comfort. She’s is younger than her husband is Greek and has the tan complexion, and long thick black air you’d picture any Greek woman to have and she cooks like she’s Greek too. Her smile is warm and welcoming and she has an extreme motherly vibe about her.

“Tiny Tim,” She said as she knocked on the RV door. “I have a warm Epsom salt bath with some lavender mixed in for you to soak your ankle. It’ll help draw the blood in and bring down the swelling.”

“Thank you so much, this is so nice.” I said. I spent the rest of the morning and early part of the afternoon watching Lost. I’d decided if I was going to be stuck here for potentially more than a week than I would do something productive with my time like try and watch the entire series of Lost since I’d never seen any of the show. As I wasted my day away I began immediately hoping Kate and Jack would just get it over with because the sexual tension was almost too much.

While I watched Lost Monkey and Giggles were doing their work for stay in Caretaker’s yard. They were cutting down fields of weeds and clearing out fallen logs and debris from the yard and moving them onto a trailer which they towed further down the yard with one of Caretakers ATV’s.

“How are my hiker slaves doing?” I heared Caretaker ask as he inspected Monkey and Giggles work. Satisfied with they job they were doing Caretaker walked toward the RV and through the screen door said, “Tiny Tim, we’re having shepherds pie for lunch today, it’s five dollars if you would like to join us.”

“I’d love to join you guys for lunch.” I said.

I’d never had shepherds pie and the only image I had in my mind of it was when Anthony Hopkins serves a shepherds pie made of two human men to their own mother in the film version of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. The shepherds pie in that movie was bloody and raw looking, but I was hungry and hungry for meat and I decided I would enjoy this pie even if it was a little bloody.

Caretaker gave a shout toward the RV from the conex where lunch was being served. “Lunch’s ready!” He said.

I crutched my way from the RV to the big orange box and had a seat at the long wooden table in the common area.

The huge meaty pie piece that sat on my plate was steaming hot, but not bloody. It looked delicious. There was a layer of ground beef on the bottom, a layer of corn cut from the cob on top of that, and it was topped with mashed potatoes that were covered in a crust of golden baked cheese. On the side were a few slices of Nightcrawler’s fresh baked bread covered in chopped garlic and soaked in melted butter.

“Did Caretaker tell you he almost hit a black bear today when he was taking Dutch to Portland?” Nightcrawler asked Monkey, Giggles, and I.

“No.” We all replied.

“Fuckin’ thing ran out in front of my car, just fuckin’ missed hitting it. I saw something black bolt from the side of the road and next thing I know I’m swerving to miss it. It scurried off into the woods on the other side. It was a decent sized bear too, probably about 200 lbs.” He said.

“What exactly are the rules on hitting a big game animal like a bear or moose, if you don’t have a license to hunt it and you hit it or see someone else hit it are you allowed to just load it up into your truck and take it?” I asked.

“Oh, did Nightcrawler not tell you, you guys are eating road kill.” He said.

My stomach turned a little as I imagined dead skunk, squirrel, raccoon, and possum making up the meat I was chewing on.”

“No, she didn’t. What type of road kill?” I asked as I swallowed the last bit of meat in my mouth.

“The meat in the shepherds pie is a moose that got hit by a car just up the street. We loaded the thing up into our truck. The head was hanging out the back, tongue out flopping all around. Hope you’re okay with eating road kill moose.” He said laughing.

“That’s fine with me, tastes like hamburger. It’s actually kind of cool to be able to say I’ve eaten moose.” I said.

“I mix it with beef fat cause it’s too lean on it’s own and it falls apart when you cook it if you don’t have the beef fat to help hold it together, and you can’t really taste a difference, can you?’ Nightcrawler asked.

“I can’t taste any difference. Everything tastes awesome.” I said.

After lunch I lounged around the RV and watched more Lost until I heard Nightcrawler knock on the door again.

“We’re having pork chops, spinach pies, and a Mediterranean salad for dinner, if you’d like to join us it’s six dollars.” Nightcrawler said.

“Yeah, I’ll join you guys, you’ve got me hooked after lunch.” I said.

“Oh thanks, we’re glad to have the company. Did the Epsom salt and lavender bath help?” She asked.

“Yeah I think so.” I said.

“I’ll bring another one out after dinner.” She said.

“That’s really nice of you thanks again.” I said.

Dinner came and Nightcrawler did not disappoint. The spinach pies had the flakiest crust and melted in your mouth. The pork chops were seasoned so they had a perfect sweetness about them, and the salad Nightcrawler picked from her back yard garden was so fresh you could taste the earth the greens were grown in.

After dinner I crutched my way back to the RV. I was filled to the brim and feeling like I could get used to eating like this. Monkey and Giggles invited me to play cards in Bob with them, but I was more interested in seeing what was going to happen next on Lost so I told them I’d have to take a rain check on the game.

They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Nightcrawler had found a way into my heart and she had filled it with hope and happiness. I fell asleep full for the first time in too long and I had hope that things were going to get better much sooner than Dr. Moses had predicted, especially if I kept eating like I had today.

Rose – Nightcrawler’s cooking.

Bud – Being one day closer to my return to the trail.

Thorn – Still being stuck on crutches.

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Night 26: There’s More Than Mud

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Wednesday 6-30-2010
0 Miles Hiked, 1,932.7 Miles to Springer

Mud picked up his pack, walked out of the RV and loaded it into the back of Caretakers truck.

For every time he had ever been on my nerves or annoyed me, none of it mattered. I was going to really miss him. He’d become a close friend. He was the only person besides my college roommate that I’d ever spent more than two weeks sharing a sleeping space with. Mud and I didn’t just share a bedroom. We shared almost every moment of every day for the last three weeks. We’d spent every day, all day together. We’d seen and smelled each other out our lowest and stinkiest, we’d made it through so much together, and yet we’d made it through so little of the trail together. We hadn’t even finished one state together and we were separating. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen, but this was how it was going to happen.

I had no doubt of Mud’s importance in my journey. He had saved my life less than two days ago. I would have kept pushing myself up Moody Mountain if he hadn’t given me the okay to stop. I would have pushed until my ankle snapped, until I couldn’t catch a breath, until my asthma got the better of me, until my fever took over and boiled me from the inside. Mud was the reason I stopped, the reason I pushed my pride aside and put myself first. Mud was the reason I was stuck in Andover alive. I didn’t want him to leave, but the trail works in mysterious ways and I knew it was important for him to keep hiking his own hike, just as it was important for me to stay here and get better so I could get back on and keep hiking my own hike.

On the drive back to the trail head Caretaker pointed out some of Andover’s famous landmarks. He pointed to the top of a mountain that was adorned with giant satellite dishes.

“They broadcasted the first nationally televised presidential debate from those dishes. Because of where they are on the mountain and where Maine is they were the only dishes that could broadcast all the way to Europe because of the angle they are at on the mountain.” He said.

Caretaker pointed to a bare rock face on the side of another mountain just ahead of us.

“A family of three crashed their private plane right into that cliff. The mother and father died on impact. Their sixteen year old daughter climbed from the wreckage. She climbed two miles down the mountain with a broken leg. She made it to the road and got to hospital. They had to amputate her leg, but she survived. She’s a legend around here. Tiny Tim, if she did it with a broken leg, what’s your excuse?” He said.

Caretaker became quiet and Mud and I had nothing to say. My mind does what it always does when things get quiet, music turned on in my head. As we drove down South Arm road I couldn’t get Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show out of my head. Mud and I had been listening to their music the past two days. I’d never heard anything by them until Mud started playing them on Caretaker iTunes. I instantly loved them and Wagon Wheel had become my trail anthem. I was determined to get back on the trail and start heading south just like the song says.

The trail head sign came into view and Caretaker slowed down and pulled the car of onto the gravel shoulder.

Mud got out of the car and pulled his pack out of the truck bed. I got out and hobbled on my crutches toward Mud.

“It’s going to be weird to be alone.” I said.

“Yeah, I didn’t care about going alone before we started, but it’s definitely going to be more daunting without you.” Mud said.

Mud slung his pack onto his back and buckled his hip belt.

“I’ll miss you, good luck, be safe, be smart, have fun, and text me when you get to Gorham, and be sure to write in the registers so I can see how you’re doing and how far behind you I am.” I said.

“Will do, I don’t think you’ll be catching me though.” He said as we shook hands and our quests all the sudden became separate and our paths took two different directions, at least for the time being.

I stood next to Caretakers truck and watch Mud disappear into the woods. I realized the trail would be different from here on out. There would be no more Mud.

I sat in the RV alone. I was mopey, and I wished I was better. I wished I was back on the trail hiking again.

Caretaker left the house to go get some more hikers. When he pulled into the driveway it was with some familiar faces. Monkey and Giggles, a young couple I had met about a week earlier walked out of the car. They said they had to stay in town because they were waiting for a package and would be here at least tonight and maybe another night. They opted to stay in the conex or Bob, for big orange box, so it appeared I would be alone in the RV.

Monkey and Giggles were doing work for stay so they were busy working and I was alone in the RV with my thoughts and my swollen ankle.

Caretaker left the house again. This time he returned with a smiling group of NOBO’s. Their scraggly crew was made of a one armed, bean pole of a kid named Naptime, because he liked to nap. Caretaker had renamed him The One Armed Bandit. The oldest looking guy in the group was a redheaded guy named Nopoint, apparently everything he says has no point. He was wearing a headband and a red kilt and looked like he was an extra in Braveheart. The final member of their trio was a guy named Walleye. He had piercing blue eyes, thick black wavy hair, and he got his named because he loves the band Fish.

These three would be staying in the RV with me tonight. I was glad to have the company and a distraction from the idea that I was now alone. They moved their gear into the RV and I quickly decided I like them.

With their things settled in the RV they all found something to sit on and cracked open some Old Milwaukee sixteen ounce cans. I found out they were all friends from high school. Each of them went to college for a year and decided after once year that they wanted to take a year off of school so they all decided during that year off they would hike the trail together.

As they sipped on their beers they had nothing but positive things to say about the remainder of the trail. They assured me once I got back on things would be just fine and I’d be moving fast soon enough. I was relieved for the first time since I left the doctors office.

Caretaker got a call from another couple of hikers needing a place to stay. I tagged along for the ride to get them from the general store. I bought some coffee ice cream to ice my ankle and then eat.

The two hikers we picked up were flip floppers, meaning they started in Harpers Ferry were going to Katahdin and then would go back to Harpers Ferry and head to Springer. Their names were Dutch and Chitland and they were both from Pennsylvania.

After talking to Chitland I found out that Dutch was leaving the trail for good. He was having some girlfriend and family issues. Caretaker was going to take him to the train station the next morning.

Naptime, Nopoint, Walleye, Dutch, Chitland and I all squeezed into the RV for a movie night. We watched The Count of Monte Cristo, which was awesome. The RV was dark except for the glow of the Dell monitor on which the movie played.

The occasional lighter flash as a joint was passed around and relit illuminated the faces of each of the new characters I’d met. I felt like I was in a movie, think Wet, Hot, American Summer. The hiker, outdoorsy, hippie, stoner cliche image wasn’t a cliche anymore it was reality and this was my own Wet, Hot, Appalachian Summer. Though I didn’t participate I loved these people, the attitude they carried with them, the air about them. Tomorrow didn’t matter. They were alive for today, for right now and that was all that mattered, feeling good in the moment, being happy in the now. Maybe that was enough. Maybe one day at a time was the way I needed to start living. I’d been planning things my entire life. It was time to stop planning and start living. The only problem was I wasn’t sure how to do that and I thought I’d have to have a plan to really start.

I’d lost Mud this morning, but I’d gained something in return. When the trail taketh she giveth back. I knew things were going to be okay. The trio I’d been sent gave me the reassurance that though Mud was gone I’d be just fine.

The movie ended and my new friends settled into their beds.

“Night guys. If I’m asleep when you’re leaving, wake me. I want to be sure I get to say goodbye.” I said.

“Sure thing.” They said and I shut off the last remaining light in the RV and went to sleep with no Mud in sight.

Rose – Meeting the trio of NOBO’s.
Bud – What life will be like without Mud.
Thorn – Saying goodbye to Mud.

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Night 25: One Last Night of Mud

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Tuesday 6-29-2010
0 Miles Hiked, 1,932.7 Miles to Springer

My fist pounded against the storm door of Caretaker’s house around 8:30 A.M. It was far too hot for a morning in Maine. I waited a couple minutes and then a shirtless Caretaker answered the door.

“Is it okay if I use the bathroom?” I asked.

“You certainly may. It’s nice to have one hiker staying with us who has some manners.” He said. “Your friend just barged in this morning without waiting for us to let him in. I don’t like people just walking in and there’s something I just don’t like about him.” Caretaker said in a tone that let me know he wasn’t joking and he really didn’t care for Mud. I knew I’d be here a while and Mud would be leaving tomorrow so I didn’t bother trying to defend him. If Caretaker had decided to like me and not like Mud that would be okay for the mean time.

I came out of the bathroom and heard Caretaker call to me from the  basement. “Tiny Tim, come on down here.” He said.

“Oh, no. I’m on crutches, why would he asked me to come down the stairs? He’s probably waiting down there with an axe, or an operating table lined with cutting tools. I was getting a bad Frailty movie vibe from this whole scenario. Maybe he’s calling me down while I’m on crutches cause he knows I won’t be able to run away, at least not fast. He said he’s got a bag knee, if he comes for me I’ll kick out his knee. That’s what I’ll do.” I thought as I scooted down the steps toward the dark basement one step at a time.

When I reached the bottom step of the stairs I realized the basement was their main living area. I didn’t see Caretaker. I picked up my crutches and stood up while looking around waiting for an axe to the face.

“Over here Tiny Tim.” I heard his voice call from the dining room and kitchen area.

Caretaker was inflating a plastic bag with his Volcano vaporizer. It looked like the base of blender and it vaporizes weed into the bag so you don’t have to smoke it. “Since I got hurt in the military I’m prescribed this.” He said. “It’s the only drug I take for all my knee and back problems now, and it’s the only drug I’ve taken that doesn’t have any negative side effects.” He said. “Do you smoke?” He asked as he motioned the inflated baggy toward me.

“No, I don’t smoke anything, never have.” I said.

“Bummer, that ankle would hurt a hell of a lot less if you were high.” He said. “Good on you though, it’s nice to see a straight laced kid whose been raised right. I had never smoked until I got hurt. I was pretty straight laced like you.” He said.

I sat with him at the kitchen table and one his two kittens jumped in my lap. I pet the black kitten named Romeo while Caretaker deflated the vaporized bag of weed.

“Once your friend Mud leaves, since I really don’t get a good vibe from him, you’ll be welcome to come in the house and eat with us and hang out with us cause I like you a lot I’m getting a good vibe from you. But til he’s gone I’ll give you guys your space and if you want food we’ll bring it to the RV cause I don’t want him in our house. Sound good?” He asked.

“That sounds great.” I decided it wasn’t worth trying to defend Mud since he’d be leaving tomorrow and I’d be stuck here for who knows how long. I wanted to stay on Caretaker’s good side as long as I could and if letting him continue disliking Mud was the way to do that than that was what I would do.

As I got my crutches and got up to leave I noticed another kitten. “What’s her name?” I asked.

“That’s Stella. We name our kittens alphabetically like hurricanes he said. It’s sad but we lose them pretty frequently. There’s lots of predators in the woods back there that kill the kittens.” He said.

I quickly counted in my head and realized if they were on an ‘R’ and ‘S’ that they had lost 17 cats. That was a lot of damned cats. Maybe it was time they just started keeping their kittens as indoor cats.

I strolled back to the RV and told Mud to make sure he knocked and waited for them to answer the door before he went inside next time, hoping to spare him from getting any further on Caretaker’s bad side. I’m not sure Mud really cared since he barely looked up from the computer. I figured I’d at least tried.

Caretaker came up to the screen door of the RV and said, “You guys want to go adventuring?”

Mud and I both said yes as we stepped out of the RV toward the two four wheelers caretaker had in his driveway.

Caretaker gave Mud such quick directions on how to use the ATV it seemed like he hoped he’d mess up.

“Tiny Tim, you’re going to ride on the back of my ATV.” Caretaker said.

I hopped over to his camo patterned ATV and hopped on the back. I looked for a grip and quickly realized four wheelers were meant to hold one person, not two, this was no motorcycle. My grips were the piece of plastic covering the wheels and I could just imagine the wheels spraying sharp gravel into my hands or worse my hand slipping down and getting caught in the wheel, or even worse losing my grip and falling right off the ATV unto the hard black asphalt with no helmet and no protection.

Caretaker lead the way as we headed up the street, he hadn’t given me any directions on how to hold on so I felt weird putting my arms around him to secure myself. He  flew down the road at near 30 miles per hour. I notcied the ATV trail sign to my left. We drove straight passed it.

“Missed the turn. You know why?” Caretaker asked.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I’m high out of my fuckin’ mind.” He said. “No I’m just kidding, I’m not that high.” He laughed.

We got a little ways down the muddy ATV path and Caretaker put the breaks on and said, “It’s your turn Tiny Tim.” He hopped off and told me slide forward and now he was riding behind me. He hastily showed me where the ignition was, by my thumb, where the breaks were, by my good foot, and then he told me to gun.

We jerked forward as I got used to the ignition and how fast it would move us and I braked as a puddle came into view or a new boulder appeared. Every puddle we drove through sprayed my freshly wrapped ankle bandages with mud and left them more and more soaked.

“Look at us. It’s fuckin’ Tiny Tim and Mr. Scrooge four wheelin’ and we’re fuckin’ flying.” He said as I picked up speed. “Look at you smilin’ like your sayin’ ‘thank you Mr. Scrooge, thank you. It’s good to see a smile back on your face.” He said. “We’re going to have fun here while you get better, it won’t be so bad.”

I wasn’t sure if we were going to have fun or if I was just going to be terrified every day, but I thought it would be worth while to stay and find out. I decided in this moment I wasn’t going home, I was staying right where I was until things got better, or so much worse that I had not choice but to leave.

Caretaker took us to the road and directed us towards town via a snowmobile track. It felt good to be driving, to be moving, to be secure, to be up front, to like I was capable again, to feel in control of where I was going. The scariest part of the drive came when I had to drive over a 70 foot wooden bridge that rose about 20 feet above a small creek. The final push toward the main street in town came with a huge hill we had to go.

“Gun it.” Caretaker said as we reached the base of the hill.

“Okay.” I said as I pushed my thumb down as hard as I could. We flew up the hill. When we reached the top Caretaker told me I did a good job.

“Last time I saw someone go up this with two people on an ATV the ATV flipped, we got lucky.”

“Oh great.” I said, wishing he had shared that information with me before I decided to tackle the hill with a 220 pound man weighing down the back.

We stopped at the fire station in town where Caretaker was a volunteer firefighter.

“I want to stop in and say hi to one of my friends.” Caretaker said as he got off the back. “It’ll only be a minute.”

“How’s everything at the firehouse?” I asked as Caretaker returned.

“Oh it was just the usual, molesting young boys in the back. No, I’m kidding, that’s pretty unusual here.” He said laughing.

Once Mud, Caretaker and I pulled back into his driveway we split ways. Caretaker headed back inside the house and Mud and I returned to our RV or the ‘Pimp Palace,’ as Caretaker called it.

That evening I watched Mud as he loaded his pack and got everything in place for when he would hit the trail the next day. It wasn’t til I watched him pack everything up that I realized that Mud and I would not be reaching Springer together, we wouldn’t even likely hike together again, and in all reality I wouldn’t be seeing him until the next college reunion. Mud was leaving and I was going to be alone.

Our last night together we pulled up Netflix and opted for a more nostalgic choice, a childhood favorite of both ours, Terminator 2. We didn’t talk much before, during, or after the movie. Neither of us addressed the fact that we’d be parting ways likely for good, and we just enjoyed each others company for one last night.

As the explosions happened, Sarah Connor kicked ass, and Arnold strutted naked I began to think how different things would be without Mud and how the journey I had envisioned to Springer with him would be completely different alone. I knew Mud would be fine, he was the backpacker of the two of us, the confident one, the one with the good ankles, I was the reader, the technological nerd, the one that lacked real world hiking know how. Mud would be okay, but would I? I went to bed more unsure than I was the day we started.

Rose – ATVing.

Bud- Getting one more day into the healing process.

Thorn – Mud packing his things.

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Night 24: What’s Next, Home or Here?

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Monday 6-28-2010
0 Miles Hiked, 1,932.7 Miles to Springer

When I woke my ankle had nearly doubled in size and looked as though someone had inserted an orange underneath my skin. When I asked David if he could drive me to the doctor he said he was too busy shuttling other hikers around all day. He said he might be able to drive me the 25 miles to the family health center in Bethel the next day.

I was actually enjoying my down time lying in bed and watching the Price Is Right, it brought back memories of staying home from school sick when I was a little kid. I can remember faking sick just to get an extra day of watching Bob Barker call the next contestants down the isle. The only problem was that I was no longer a little kid, this was not my home, and Drew Carry is no Bob Barker. I wanted to get better and get out of Andover, out of Maine, and closer to home as soon as possible.

After seeing my ankle Mud agreed there was some urgency in getting me to a doctor as soon as possible. Since David wasn’t going to be of help in getting me to Bethel Mud said he would run to the general store and beg anyone he could find to drive me us to there. After a half hour Mud returned from the general store with a smile on his face.

“Good news, I ran into the guy who runs the High 5 Hostel at the general store and he said he could shuttle you and it’ll be a dollar a mile. He said he’ll be here to pick us up in about thirty to make sure you make it for the 1:00 P.M. slot you said they had open.” Mud said.

We let David and Eileen know we’d be leaving soon and waited on the porch. Both David and Eileen gave us an odd warning, “The people from the High 5 are nice, but they’re odd.” They said.

I didn’t care how odd they were. They were willing to take me to the doctors and that was all that mattered to me this morning.

A man with minor white facial hair and a beak of a nose and sunglasses pulled his black dented SUV into the drive and gave the horn a honk.

“How you doin’ Tiny Tim?” The man who sported a Jimmy Buffet shirt over his beer gut asked me before he even knew my name.

“Not too good.” I said as hopped toward the car using my trekking poles like a cane or crutches.

“I’m Caretaker.” He said as I climbed into the front seat.

“I’m going to reset the odometer so we both know how much you owe when we get back. I’ can’t keep track of it in my head. I’m no good with numbers since my head injury in Cosovo.” He said.

“Were you in the military?” I asked.

“Army, specs, 17 years. I busted my legs up in a parachuting drill. Broke my femur and never fully recovered.” He said. “Even with the way things ended, I’d recommend the military to any young person today.It was the best experience of my life.”

“I’ve thought about the Navy as a possibility, but never with any seriousness.” I said. “How long have you been doing this whole hostel thing?” I asked.

“We started out as trail angels, helping out people in your exact situation. Then it just kind of expanded into what it is today over the last couple years. We gotta pay the pills like everyone else.” He said.

“That’s pretty cool. Have you lived in Maine your whole life?” I asked.

“No. My dad was in the military and after killing one too many people he found religion big time. Became a Mormon and made our whole family Mormon. He moved us all out to the middle of nowhere fuckin’ Utah. It was actually a great place to grow up. Lots of space to run around. So what brings you guys to the trail?” He asked.

“Just finished college and I didn’t want to get a job or go to grad school right away, and this seemed like a pretty cool thing to do.” I said.

“Same.” Mud said.

“College degree, pretty expensive piece of paper. So you both got B.A.’s or B.S.’s?” He asked.

“B.A.’s.” We said.

“Yeah. You guys seem like silver spoon fed type of kids.” He said. “If you’ve got parents that support you like I figure you do, I say travel as much as you can.” He said. “Besides traveling get into scuba. No matter how worn out your body gets you can always scuba, your weightless in the water.”

“And if you ask my advice for a happy life; Scuba, travel, and fuck as much as possible. I’ll tell you, monogamy is for the fuckin’ Christians.” He said.

“So you’re not married I take it.” I said.

“Oh no.” He laughed.  “I’m married.”

The rest of the ride went quickly and we were in the middle of Bethel before long. Caretaker parked the car in the Bethel Family Health Center lot and as I got out of the passenger side he begged me to wait and let him get the wheel chair and wheel me into the lobby. I insisted I’d be fine hopping in. Once I got checked in with the nurse at the front desk Caretaker and Mud left to hit the local grocery store.

I waited a short time before one of the nurses called me into one of the back rooms and left me there to wait for Dr. Moses. She gasped a little when she first saw my ankle.

“How did you do this?” She asked.

I explained that my ankle had been bothering me for a few weeks. I told her I’d been rolling it on a daily basis and that I woke up two days earlier with chills and fever and explained what had happened the previous day on the way up Moody Mountain. I told her how I woke up this morning and it had doubled in size.

“It looks really bad. I’d say you’ve got a severe sprain or strain. You’ve done some pretty severe soft tissue damage by being on it day after day when it’s been bothering you. It’s a good sign that there’s no cuts or scraps around the ankle given how red and hot the area is, and from how you’ve described it I’d say it’s not broken. The breathing troubles and fever were probably just your body telling you something was wrong when you weren’t giving the ankle the time it needed to heal and you probably were working harder than you normal have too since you essentially had one dead leg.” She said.

“Can you do x-rays to make sure nothing is broken?” I asked.

“We can, but it’s really not necessary in my opinion.” She said.

“I think we better do x-rays because I know my mom will first ask if anything is broken and then ask what the x-ray showed, and if I tell her there was no x-ray she’ll make me wish I’d had one done.” I said.

I put on the lead vest and we got the x-rays. They were developed and nothing was broken. I thanked God I hadn’t done any permanent damage.

“How long do I need to stay off the trail? What’s the earliest I could try hiking again?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t recommend getting back on before a minimum of two weeks and I’d say three weeks to be safe.” She said.

My heart instantly sunk. I was hoping she’d say a few days. Three weeks was a death sentence, at least for this portion of my hike. Three weeks meant I might as well catch the next train home and heal there until I was able to hike again.

“You’re sure it might not be better in more like five days?” I asked.

“It might feel better in five days, but if you get back on it that soon you’ll likely injure it again and you could do permanent damage and be off the trail the rest of the year.” She said.

“Okay, so two to three weeks. What about ten days, you think maybe ten days and I might be good to go?” I asked.

“In ten days it might be decently healed, but you don’t want to mess around with this, especially with as much as you have left. I’d make sure you let it heal completely before you try and hike on it again and I’d like to see you in a week if you’re still in town.” She said.

“Okay, I’ll be careful and I probably won’t be here in a week.” I said.

I pivoted out of the exam room on the used crutches they gave me. I saw Caretaker and Mud waiting for me in the lobby. I gave them the bad news. In the five minutes since I’d been told of my recovery timeline by Dr. Moses I’d already started thinking of what my next move would be.

“I’m going to look at train and bus ticket prices and see if it makes more sense for me to stay here and heal or to head home and just take all off July of and come back at the beginning of August.” I said.

We picked up my prescription from the local CVS. I was given a weeks supply of an ant-inflammatory called indocin. I picked up some heal lifts for my boots and I bought some bandage wraps to keep my ankle bound.

As we drove back to Andover Caretaker gave me some news that changed all the plans of heading home that I’d made in my head.

“If you decide to try and stay here and heal I can make it as economical as possible. It’ll be ten bucks a night, and you can stay in the RV in my front yard and watch Netflix on the laptop we keep in there until you’re healed up. A young swimmer like you, you’ll be healed in no time. Breakfast is four dollars, lunch five, and dinner six, and my wife is an amazing cook. If you decide you still want to catch a train or bus home we can get you there tomorrow, but I just wanted you to know all your options.” He said.

Caretaker took us back to the Pine Ellis. I started crutching too quickly and trip up the porch stairs and fell to the ground. We settled our debts with David and grabbed out gear, I didn’t grab anything, but Mud grabbed mine and his gear and we loaded back into Caretakers car. When we got back to Caretaker’s house, or the High 5 Hostel Mud and I got settled into the RV and looked around the big orange conex shipping box that was filled with bunk beds and wired with satellite tv. The High 5 Hostel was by far the most interesting hostel I’d seen in all of Maine, and it seemed like a place I might be comfortable recovering.

After we finished exploring and getting settled down we checked out the iTunes on the RV’s mini laptop.  Caretaker came back to the RV to check on us and make sure everything was okay and he gave us the rundown.

“I close the main house at 9:00 P.M. I usually wake up around 7:00 A.M. If you have to pee just go behind the RV. If you have to do more than pee use the main house bathroom, but knock on the door and wait for someone to tell you to come in before you enter. I don’t like people just walking in. The RV is hooked up to water from the house, and if you need anything else just knock.” He said.

“Okay, sounds good, thanks for everything.” I said.

Mud and I relaxed and ate some of our stockpile from the grocery store in Bethel. Once we figured out how to set up Netflix we spent the rest of the night watching a Zach Galifinakis snowboard comedy, Out Cold. It was stupid, raunchy, and funny, and I didn’t have to think while watching it. It was nice to have something to laugh at and to take my mind off of what my next move would be. I could heal in Andover or head home. I wasn’t ready to leave the trail, but there was no guarantee I’d get better in Andover. I decided to sleep on it.

Rose – Meeting Caretaker

Bud – Deciding what the immediate future held.

Thorn – News of a 2-3 week recovery timeline.

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