“The End of Some Things”

AT Day 105; Long Trail Day 18

Miles Today: 9.26

AT Mile: 1709.3

(Yellow Deli Hostel [again])

Today I completed my hike of the Vermont Long Trail.

It is done.

The Vermont Long Trail was the most difficult thru hike of my hiking career. It was also beautiful, exciting, intimate, unique, and new. But foremost it was difficult.

To be clear, I have had more difficult experiences in thru hikes, but mile-for-mile this trail has been extremely difficult. The mud, the climbs, the overgrown vegetation, the black flies, the isolation, the dry stretches. There was a lot of challenge to this trail.

I don’t recommend it to anyone as a first-time thru hike, and there were a lot of miles along the way where I felt like I didn’t want to be in it, but now that it’s over, I’m very grateful that we took a left-hand turn at the Maine Junction and that I can say that I’ve hiked the entirety of the Vermont Long Trail.

—

We woke early this morning, as we wanted to get to the end of the trail in time to make it back to Rutland before the day was too late. Plinko’s friend Alaska was scheduled to meet us at the end of the trail at around 10:30, so we were on trail before 6:00. It was around 8.5 miles from where we camped to the end of the trail.

I took a small amount of mushrooms as we were leaving camp. And I’m glad to have done so. Even though there was one more rough climb right out of camp this morning, the effect of the mushrooms through the rest of the day was perfect in all of the ways that it led the trees to breath and the wind to flow.

Plinko and I hiked the entirety of the day independently today.

It was windy, but the sky was clear.

I listened to music for some of the morning, but in the last few miles I just wanted to be with the trail and in the experience. It ended up being more profound an experience than I was expecting. That last mile and a half today hit me hard.

Plinko was ahead of me when we reached the end. I’d stopped to drop pack and have a short smoke at the top of our last climb, about a half mile short of the end, and he passed me there. But I heard a shout from him when he reached the end of the trail. He was only a couple of minutes ahead of me.

When I did arrive, I was feeling a lot of things. It was impossible not to remember the endings of my other trails, and spending the entire summer thinking about a Canadian monument. At first I didn’t think that I was being affected by it, but then when I actually arrived at the end of the trail and saw the monument, it struck me. Not all at once, but slowly.

I began to weep.

It came to me unexpectedly, but overtook me fully. Before I even reached out and touched it to make things official, I sat there beside the monument and cried for maybe a minute or two before reaching out to put my hand on it. Plinko stepped away and gave me privacy for those minutes.

Plinko and I took pictures for some time, then continued on to where we met Alaska. She was only about a mile and a half down an approach trail.

The drive back was a few hours and we checked into the Yellow Deli Hiker Hostel again. This is the same place where we stayed when we were in Rutland last time.

We will reconnect to the Appalachian Trail in two days. Tomorrow we’ll rest and take a Zero.

One of my closest friends from Arizona has joined me for the next few days.

I’m extremely tired. Falling asleep.

A lot to share about the Long Trail and my stay here in Rutland. It’ll have to get to the page tomorrow.

Wormwood.