“Serindipity & Dirt”

AT Day 115

Miles Today: 15.26

AT Mile: 1850.0

(Ethan Pond Shelter)

Last night’s journal was a lot. I quite enjoy it when I’m able to get that much onto the page, although I will admit that some nights like last night, it’s as if I’m undertaking something so much bigger than I can manage at that hour of the day. Writing these journals at the end of the day has become a great source of joy and fulfillment for me over this summer, and may days I spend many miles looking forward to getting to camp so that I can lay down and write.

The trouble is that I’m so tired at the end of the day that it’s a race to beat my exhaustion. Most nights I’m barely getting a fraction of what I want to talk about onto the page. But there’s good practice in that as well in that it forces me to boil things down to what matters most, and then go for just that.

—

I didn’t expect that I’d be able to sleep in this morning, as I was camped in my tent and I normally wake up at the first light of day. And to be fair, that happened today, but I immediately put in ear plugs and pulled my hair band over my eyes to act as a sleep shade. I was shocked when I pulled my hair band off to see that it had somehow become 7:30 before I finally started to rouse.

Sleeping in that late no doubt slowed my miles, but I also don’t care, as the White Mountains have been beautiful and I’ve come to enjoy this go-with-the-flow style of hiking that I realize now that I didn’t have when I was hiking with Plinko. Maybe it was in the nature of hiking with a partner, or maybe it was specific to our dynamic together, but we always seemed to have a rough plan of what we were doing that day and the next. Since I’ve been solo however, I’ve really just let myself hike, I’ve checked for water as needed, and I’ve started looking for where to camp whenever it comes that time of day. So far it’s worked wonderfully.

Tonight I’m camped at a shelter, and although I could have made more miles before sundown, there was a good feel here and there was a lake where I could get a swim (read “bath”). It’s my second night sleeping in a shelter in the last three days, but I knew that might be the case more often when I got to the Whites, and I could actually set up my tent at one of the sites here if I wanted; there are only three other groups. But I’m the only one in the shelter, so although it’s more of an older and run down lean to style shelter, I don’t mind it. And the mosquitos aren’t too bad.

In contrast to what I just said about not having to have my days all planed out in the White Moutnains, tomorrow is something of an exception. Tomorrow either needs to be a 15 mile day or it needs to be a 26 mile day. And if it’s the latter, then god help me. Because it’s going to include the climb of Mount Washington and the traverse of the presidentials. Even as I write it down, I don’t like the sound of it.

I don’t think that’s what I’m going to do.

I think that the better plan is to stay at Lake of the Clouds Hut in their bunkhouse (which is kindly referred to as “The Dungeon”) and then hit the Presidentials the following day. It’s been a very long time since I have had acid on trail, and I wonder if that might be a good day for it. On the other hand, I wonder if it might also be a bad day for it. It depends on the trail conditions and weather I suppose.

And although these last few days have been very busy as I’ve hiked through the extended weekend, I have reason to believe that things are going to settle down significantly moving forward. I’m going to be hitting the Presidentials during the work week! That will make the crowd a whole lot less!

—

The hiking today was beautiful.

The White Mountains really have been something spectacular and worth witnessing! The crowds have not been nearly as bad as I was told to expect, the weather has been wonderful (especially after that last heat wave!), the huts are fun additions to things, and overall it’s just more enjoyable environment compared to the claustrophobic forests that make up so much of the rest of the trail.

I thought a few times today that the White Mountains seem to be like the High Sierra of the Appalachain Trail. Not that they are nearly as magnificent or even comparable to the High Sierra in any other way, but that they represent something that is so different than the rest of the Appalachain Trail.

Unfortunately there is a lot of smoke in the air from wildfires in Canada. I don’t know anything more about them than that, as “wildfires in Canada” seems to be something of slang term for any fire north of the border that Americans don’t need to know about. It’s weird. I don’t feel like I’m describing it right, but it’s along those lines.

Today wasn’t quite as amazing as the Franconian Ridge from yesterday, but it was still much more interesting than most of what I saw south of there on the AT.

There are indeed quite a few weekend hikers up here, and I have found myself to be quite the minority. In fact, I haven’t seen another northbound thru hiker since leaving Hikers Welcome Hostel and entering into the whites. I see SOBOs of course, but not a lot of them. And a few northbound section hikers. But nobody who is hiking thru. I guess I’m in between hiking “bubbles.”

—

This evening has been delightful.

I set my sleep area in the shelter, filtered water, and had dinner in the cooking area with four other hikers. Two of them are recent grandaparents and they were a pleasure to talk to. The wife was insistent that I tell them the story of my trail name, and so with some hesitation I gave them an elongated version of the story. I wasn’t sure how they were all going to respond, but it seemed like it resonated well with all of them. When I told them that I write about it they all said that they’d be interested in reading that book. It’s comments like that that keep me motivated in this pursuit. In times I do still have doubt, but I also feel like I’m doing it.

Anyways, the wife of the two smiled when I told them the story about the mushrooms, and right away she opened up the journal that was already in her hand to a page and walked over to show it to me. It was an old photo, maybe from the 1970s. A photo of a young man and woman, who the lady said was the two of them when they were younger.

“And you see the bag that he’s holding?” She asked emphatically. “It was a bag of psychedelic mushrooms!”

—

The camp host led an impromptu qi gong class after dinner, which was not what I was expecting when I arrived at this lake to camp, but was a nice added bonus to it all. His name is Peter and he has a super chill vibe. He was there when I was telling the trail name story. I quite like him.

—

I swam in the lake before dinner. It was warm and nice. Another hiker warned me that she’d heard about there being leaches in the lake, but I didn’t see any and thought it was just more fear mongering. But then an hour later when I was down at the lake to get water to drink, I realized that there were indeed visible leaches all over the place. How none of them caught onto me is beyond me.

—

I started listening to Stephen King’s “On Writing” today on audiobook. It is a book that I’ve read before but it’s been many years.

—-

This journal has felt like it’s been disjointed, but they can’t all be zingers.

Wormwood.