Physical, Mental, Spiritual

I woke up this morning (August 8) in my tent on the forest service road, camped out next to trail angel Sir Stops a Lot and his buddy. I feel terrible that I can't remember his friend’s name. It's Steve, I think? I’ll just call him Steve. When I got up, Steve was still sleeping in his car, and Sir Stops a Lot was already busy getting breakfast ready. When I stopped at the Lone Pond campsite yesterday, I heard people talking about how there might be Trail Magic at the service road, though I hadn't expected it to already be here when I arrived.

At any rate, I knew that people who’d stayed at that campsite last night were planning on making their way down this morning in hopes of catching some Trail Magic, so I’d given Sir Stops a Lot a heads up that he could expect to have some pretty steady business today.

Sir Stops a Lot cooked me up some eggs and sausage and made some coffee. And I also had some fruit. What a great way to start the day. As I was finishing up, a bunch of hikers from the shelter who’d gotten up very early showed up. One was Rainbow, and another was a guy named Turbo, who is absolutely appropriately named.

At the same time, some people who were hiking southbound appeared, too — Fish Fry, Flavortown, and Grizzly. It’s always interesting when NOBO hikers meet up with SOBO hikers, because if you put us together, we've done the whole AT at that moment. So we tend to joke that we could all just stop and go home, because we've got the whole trail covered.

I hung out and talked with some of the other hikers for a little bit, which means I got a reasonably late start, but since I did an extra three or so miles yesterday, I had a shorter day today, just short of 15 miles. I had arranged to get picked up at a road crossing at 5:30, so I had plenty of time.

I didn't really get on the trail until a little after 8 o'clock. And it was a pretty challenging day from a hiking standpoint. There were some significant climbs. But thankfully, the mud was not nearly as bad as it had been the past few days. Maybe Vermud will get less muddy as I travel north. I'm not going to hold my breath, but if today was any indication, then I'm feeling optimistic about that. Maybe the worst of the mud is behind me?

Not far into the hike, I came onto just a beautiful lake sort of nestled among the peaks, and I hung out there for a little while. There were some loons on the pond, and I kept trying to get a video of their calls, but it was as if they knew what I was doing and refused to cooperate. I’d hear a loon cry, and I’d wait a little bit, and then I’d hit record and wait a little more —  and nothing, so I’d stop recording. And invariably, as soon as I’d hit stop, a loon would cry. After trying to capture that for a while, I decided it was a futile exercise and moved on.

Oh, I forgot to mention something. At the edge of the parking lot at the trailhead where I started out this morning, I found a box of individually wrapped blocks of cheese, just sitting there. No sign. No nothing. I have no idea how long that cheese had been there. All the guidebooks for Vermont note that you're not allowed to leave food unattended like that. Further south, people will just leave coolers out with a trash bag and a sign that says, “Here's some Trail Magic. Help yourself.” or whatever. But Vermont actively discourages that, because they don't want the wildlife to get interested in people food.

But anyway, there was this box of cheese at the base of the trail. I mean, I was getting off trail later that day, so I didn't need the food, but I also wasn't all that excited about  the idea of grabbing a random block of cheese that had been sitting at the trailhead for an indeterminate amount of time. So that was weird.  

Anyway, I hiked on. There was a pretty decent climb, and near the top, there was a really interesting little rock garden that I don't know much about, but I stopped there to have a snack and saw Rainbow. We hiked together for a little while after that and got some water. Not much excitement there, just hiking. I went down to another road crossing and then had a very steep climb up from there.

At one point on the climb, there was a couple behind me — one of them is named Finger Guns, but I don't know the other one's name. They were starting to catch up with me, and I decided to see how long I could stay ahead of them. They’re both younger than me and were coming up the mountain pretty fast. I was definitely huffing and puffing but still climbing pretty quickly. So that was a big confidence booster. Eventually, I had to pull over and let them go by, but I managed to stay in front of them for way longer than I expected to.

Once I went over the peak, I could look down into a valley and see the Rutland airport. Apparently, the only commercial flights in and out of there are on Cape Air to Boston, but the place looked pretty big from the peak. I had a nice view of it.

After that, I went down a very, very steep descent to the road to get into Rutland. There’s not much else to note about it, other than the lack of mud, which I appreciated. I made it to the parking lot and was again pleasantly surprised to find some Trail Magic. Two sets of parents were there who were helping their kids slack pack and had decided to do a little Trail Magic while they were hanging out.

They had fruit and chocolate milk, which is a great combination for thru-hikers. Chocolate milk obviously has a reputation for being a great recovery beverage. It's got fat and calories and tastes delicious. And anything fresh for a thru-hiker is always welcome.

While I was waiting for my ride in the parking area, a guy named Rally showed up. He's from England, and he’s hiking the AT southbound. We started chatting and realized that we were both waiting on the same driver. At around 4:45, a guy named Neighbor showed up. I had arranged to meet him at 5:30, and when I was booking him, he said he wasn’t sure if he could get me any earlier, because he was picking up another hiker. That hiker turned out to be Rally. So it all worked out in the end, and I was happy to get the earlier ride and not have to wait there another 45 minutes.

So Rally and I rode into town together and got dropped off at the Comfort Inn. I was muddy and wet and feeling gross, so it’s great to be able to stay in yet another hotel. I feel like I've been doing that a lot lately, but I've also been putting in big miles. Over the past week, even though I had two zeros with Jim, I still managed to hike about 90 miles.

And I need to be mindful of my progress and make sure I’m getting in the miles now, because — and it feels crazy to say this — S. and I have set a date for her to meet me in Maine. So I have to be able to cover the distance from here to there in the time allotted. This hotel stay will give me a chance to really do some detailed planning and figure out exactly where I need to be and when, being mindful of the tough sections of northern New Hampshire and southern Maine. It's difficult to make quick miles there.

I jumped in the shower just as another wave of rains swept through. They weren’t part of Debbie, though. Just another rainstorm. It's just been incredibly wet here in Vermont over the past week or so. After I got myself cleaned up, I popped over to the Dollar General for a few things and then went to the Vermont Tap House, because where else would I go?

I took a seat at the bar, and Neighbor, my shuttle driver, had told me I should order the pizza called The Vermonter, which I did. It was a combination of sweet and savory — there was some maple syrup in there and apples and bacon and garlic — and it was just delightful.

There was a couple sitting next to me, and they were good friends with the bartender. They were all chatting, and somehow, they kind of pulled me into the conversation. The guy works as a mechanic, and he seems like one of those mechanics you'd be lucky to have in your town and that you'd always want to go to, because he's incredibly knowledgeable. He knows how to do everything, and he does things for a fair price, and apparently, people are just flocking to him to work on their cars. He has an old Ford pickup truck, and I have an old Ford pickup truck, so we were talking about our trucks and about hiking the trail and just all kinds of stuff. I really enjoyed hanging out and chatting with him, but eventually, he and his soon-to-be wife headed out.

I was just about done myself, so I asked the bartender for my tab, and he said, “It's been taken care of.” So this guy who's been a mechanic his whole life and clearly worked very hard but maybe never had a ton of extra money just paid for my dinner. I was just totally flabbergasted by that. I asked the bartender how I could somehow pay it forward. He was like, “Well, just buy someone else dinner or do something else that’s nice.”

And earlier, before I’d entered the conversation, I’d heard the bartender and the guy talking about how the bartender's daughter was going through a very, very difficult divorce, and they were trying to scrape together some money to get her a better lawyer. The bartender had told the guy that he was picking up extra shifts whenever he could to do that. So I ordered another beer and was going to leave a big tip when I paid.

Once I’d finished my beer, I asked for the bill, and the bartender said, “Don't worry about it. The beer's on me.” And I'm like, How are all these people so nice?  You know, I'm the one who's out here hiking and goofing off and not really contributing to society, and these guys are all working hard and helping other people, and they're the ones paying for my dinner and my beer. I feel like I’m the one who should be paying! I practically begged the bartender to please give me a bill, which he reluctantly did. So in the end, I was able to add on a tip that was many multiples of what the beer cost, and I was more than happy to do it.

But wow, what a really nice evening out and what incredibly generous people. That’s two days in a row now that I've been incredibly fortunate to run into such kind, giving people. You know, all we're doing is hiking, and I keep trying to wrap my head around why people want to be so nice to hikers.

I mean, I don't think anyone should be mean to hikers. But we're the ones who have the enormous privilege of leaving our day-to-day life to go walk around in the woods while they're all still, you know, going to work and raising families and contributing to society. I don't know, maybe it's just the idea that we've taken on this challenge, and they kind of want to vicariously participate in it or something. But maybe this is what they mean when they say — and I’m paraphrasing here — that the first part of the hike is physical, the second is mental, and the last is spiritual.

It's definitely given me a lot to think about, and I'm incredibly grateful for all the support I’ve gotten along the way. It's a bit energizing, but, to be honest, I'm looking forward to being done. I still have about 500 miles to go, which sounds a lot, but when there's an end date attached to it, it suddenly doesn't feel like there’s enough time. I just have to be smart about planning, so this hotel stay is going to be very valuable in that regard.

Tomorrow, my friend Doug Padian is going to come visit for two nights, and that'll be great. I've known Doug my whole life. If the weather cooperates, we're going to see if we can get a day of hiking in while he's here. I know he's interested in doing that. So we'll see how that plays out.