Naming Squirrels

This morning (September 3), I woke up at a random camping spot off the side of the trail about 3.5 miles short of where I had originally planned to camp, but I’d had a good night's sleep. After I’d gotten into my tent last night and was ready for bed, some other hikers arrived and decided to camp out near me, which is fine. I'm always glad to have company when I’m stealth camping.

This morning, I was up and out before everyone else. I needed to put in some additional miles today, since I hadn't made my goal yesterday. I covered the 3.5 miles to the Sabbath Day Pond shelter pretty quickly — that's where I’d intended to camp last night — and it was nice weather today, much nicer than it was yesterday. Less breezy, a little bit sunnier and warmer.

I got there by about 9 o'clock and saw Groovy and Half Boot, who were still at the campsite. A guy named Micro was also there, and I've kind of been hiking around him for the past couple days. From what I can tell, it seems that Micro actually likes to fish more than he likes to hike, and along this stretch of trail, there happens to be a lot of ponds. I guess in Maine, lakes are just generally called ponds. And Sabbath Day Pond was really lovely.

I don't know who it was, but someone generously brought a few canoes over and left them at the campsite for people to use. So Micro found a canoe and shoved out onto the pond and started fishing, and Half Boot said, “He's not going to come back until supper.” And I actually didn't see Micro again for the rest of the day. So I suspect that he probably stayed in the canoe and fished all day, but he's young and a fast hiker, so I know he’ll be able to make up those miles and catch up.

About 5 miles past Sabbath Day Pond, I stopped at another campsite on a pond to have some lunch, and not long after, Groovy and Half Boot showed up. A little bit after them, a couple who was day hiking arrived and mentioned that there was a group of people setting up on Route 4 — which is the main route into Rangely, where a lot of people get off trail — to do some big Trail Magic, and that's all that Groovy, Half Boot, and I needed to hear.

Groovy shot off into the distance pretty quickly while Half Boot and I struggled to keep up. We had a 5-mile stretch to get to the highway, and as luck would have it, it was probably the easiest stretch so far in Maine — probably over the past couple hundred miles, I would say. So I was able to hike those 5 miles pretty quickly. I think I did it in just shy of two hours, which is definitely a record pace for me lately.

I got down to the parking lot, and there was a group of people there with a really big spread. I got a cheeseburger, a hot dog, some warm macaroni with meat sauce on it, and some watermelon. And I drank some chocolate milk, a Moxie, and some Gatorade. They also gave me a bunch of granola bars to take with me.

Oh, and a quick side note, the hot dogs they were serving were what they call red snapper hot dogs. I guess they’re also just called Maine red hot dogs, but they’re a pretty vivid red color, and they have a bit of a snap to them when you bite into them. I guess that explains the name.

Anyway, I was definitely grateful for all of that. They were just so kind, and they clearly liked feeding all the hikers. While I was there, I saw 2fer and Shenanigans, as well as Groovy and Half Boot, of course. And Munich Mule, a guy I met at Full Goose shelter. He was heading back out onto the trail when I arrived, so I just said a quick hello and goodbye to him.

[Photo credit: Betty Rodrigue Latham]

Half Boot and Groovy [Photo credit: Betty Rodrigue Latham]

Shenanigans and 2Fer [Photo credit: Betty Rodrigue Latham]

I hung out at the Trail Magic spot for a little while. Some of the hikers — like Shenanigans and 2fer and Groovy and Half Boot — were talking about going to a hostel for the night that's run out of a church for free, but I wanted to make some more miles. I'd done about 13 at that point, and I have ambitions to get to the Maine Roadhouse on the 5th. So to up my chances of doing that, I needed to keep going.

From there, I crossed Route 4 and headed to a shelter that was about 2 miles down the trail, called Eddy Pond shelter. I had about a thousand foot climb to get up there, so I was really thankful to be full of calories from the Trail Magic. These days, I can just feel when I need more calories, and all of that extra food really helped push me up the hill.

When I arrived at the shelter, I still had plenty of daylight, which was great. Eddy Pond is just a beautiful spot, and there’s only a handful of tent spots. I knew I was going to be getting there a little later in the day, so I was really hoping that I’d have a place to set up my tent. And I lucked out. There were only two other people set up at Eddy Pond — Munich Mule and a lady named Carolina Sunshine.

I’d crossed paths with Carolina a few times on the trail, but she was always quite standoffish. As I've gotten to spend more time with her and kind of gotten to know her, though, she’s really opened up. I think she's just very guarded around new people. It was just the three of us at the shelter for the night, and we ate dinner together next to the lake and had a nice chat.

At one point, Carolina commented all the red squirrels that were running around and how enamored she was with them. She said, “Look at all the squirrels. They're great. Let's name them all!” So I knew she couldn't possibly be a bad person if she wanted to give all the squirrels names. We were all on the lookout for some moose while we were there, because we’d heard a couple reports of moose sightings on Eddy Pond in the recent past, but in the end, we didn’t see any. So we retired to our tents slightly disappointed, unfortunately.

I have a huge day tomorrow, so I need to get to sleep soon. I’m hoping for good weather and a good hike tomorrow.