“There Is No Plan B”

AT Day 110

Miles Today: 16.05

AT Mile: 1779.4

(Smarts Mountain [tent])

That was the second night that I’ve had a bear wandering close to my tent while I was trying to write. But it had been an over a thousand miles, and last time I wasn’t camped alone.

Last night was scary in that it was my first night camped alone on the AT since just past the half way point–somewhere in Pennsylvania. That and it was scary in the way that hearing an unseen large animal tromping around the wilderness in ear shot of your tent is always going to be a bit scary.

I tried to ignore it and hope that he’d just go off in another direction, but as you’ll see in my journal from last night, the tracks in the leaves and broken branches got closer and closer and eventually I had to get out of my tent and do some clapping and yelling.

I could see its eyes in my headlamp at the brightest setting, but that’s all I could make out. At one point, as I clapped and yelled, I saw it drop its head down closer to the ground, but it kept its eyes on me. I’m not exactly sure what my plan was if it had continued to come closer at that point. I’d put all of my confidence tokens into believing that the clapping, yelling, and flashing of my headlamp was going to be enough to scare it away.

I didn’t have a Plan B.

But as you’ll note, I’m clearly still alive, well, and writing my journal this evening, so either my attempts to scare it off worked, or the bear mauling that proceeded was tame enough to leave me still spirited and apparently able bodied enough to be writing this journal tonight. It’s the former.

The bear was the first thing I thought of when I woke up this morning. It was the thought of wondering when I must have fallen asleep, because all I could remember was laying there awake and waiting for the sound of crunching leaves and snapping branches.

—

I knew that it was going to be another hot day today, but still slept in. Normally, if I was on my game I would have been out of camp before sunrise to beat the heat, but I’m really protesting that go-go-go mentality as much as I can.

Instead of busting ass to get to trail and collect early miles this morning, I instead checked my maps to see how to get off trail and into air conditioning.

As it happened I was able to hike about 10 miles to a road crossing where I was able to catch a super easy hitch into the town of Lyme, NH and was fortunate to get a ride back to trail just as easy. It might be a bit of an overstatement to call Lyme a city, as it was mostly just a school, a few homes, a general store, and a library, but there was at least one police officer and a post office, so I think that makes it count as a town. For my purposes all they needed was a place that sold ice cream, which was the general store.

After I had lunch and a Diet Coke, I tried to find the library but accidentally walked right past it. I asked a guy who was also out and about walking if he could direct me to the library and he said that I’d already walked by it. It was so small that I confused it for a house or something.

I spent the better part of three hours in the library going through Vermont photos and reaching out to friends and family by phone.

I was back to trail at around 5:30 which is to say that I missed a lot of the heat today, but it was still a heat index of over 100 degrees. I was so sweaty today that my clothes were as soaked as they would be if I came out a pool wearing them. It’s miserable when it’s hot like this.

I think that the heat is the hardest part of hiking the Appalachian trail. The other long trails don’t even compare.

One more hot day tomorrow, but I’m hoping to get to a hostel before the end of day.

Camped up on a mountain today. Watched a sunset from a fire tower. Maybe the best sunset that I’ve been able to watch the entire trail. So often in the forest that I don’t get to see the sun go down.

So tired that I can barely keep my eyes open. Have to end it.

Wormwood.