AT Day 93; LT Day 6

Miles Today: 29.83

AT Mile: 1698.7; LT Mile 93

(Governor Clement Shelter [tent])

I must have slept fairly well last night, as I failed to wake up to the sound of mice chewing up the rim of my Jet Boil at around 3am. I know it was around then because Plinko said he thought he heard me messing with the lid of my cold soak jar at that time. But I was doing no such thing. That was the work of mice.

I’m fortunate that they havent been a bigger issue on trail so far… except that one night where I had one run across my face while I was trying to sleep.

—

The spider webs made it difficult to maintain my composure this morning. We were to trail early, a couple of hours before sunrise, and first to trail out here has to deal with the webs. They were so troublesome that I ended up putting my buff around my face, so that I at least didnt have to keep pulling them out from my beard as I hiked.

—

Very tired as I write this tonight, so going to have to keep things brief.

—

We did not end up breaking 30 miles, but we’re close enough that it’s almost worth rounding. I told Plinko that I could walk around in circles for a minute or two and it would bring me to 30, but at the same time, I barely care. Those were the worries for the beginning of the trail. I don’t lose myself in them so easily anymore.

The heat and humidity today have been intense! My clothes have been completely soaked through to a point that I’m constantly dripping sweat from my elbows and my knuckles. The flies were also terrible this afternoon, just as the heat was at a peak, and it was difficult to tell the difference between a deer fly landing on you and a bead of sweat running down your arm. As a result, you’re swatting at flies and sweat beads as they form all over your body.

The number of times that I slapped myself in the head today because of those fucking flies landing on me though… it was really getting to me.

Temperatures broke 90 degrees F, and with the humidity that likely put the heat index a bit over triple digits.

—

Extremely tired.

Can barely keep my eyes open.

—

Met a hiker named… well, let’s call him Burger, so I don’t give away his identity.

We talked for some time. He’s also finishing a triple crown. He started his NOBO AT hike on April 20th, but caught norovirus twice in a month and decided he didn’t want to hike with the crowd anymore. So he flipped up to the northern end and is hiking south.

We’re going to see one another when he picks up the AZT in Flagsaff this fall.

I offered him a coyote tooth and a half gram of mushrooms. He took both with gratitude.

—

Swam in a lake today.

Swam way out into it.

The waters were deep, but I didn’t realize it until I was swimming back in.

I swam out, maybe a quarter way across and turned over onto my back to float there and look up at the clouds. The sun broke through and the direct light was pleasant in its warmth.

Out there, far from the shore, I wondered how deep the waters must be underneath me.

I had the thought that if anything happened, I’d sink to the bottom and nobody would be there to save me. Plinko was at the shoreline and he knows how to swim, but he doesn’t like to. And anyway, I was too far out for him to be able to do anything if something did go wrong.

Not that I thought it would, but the thought sat with me there.

Only after swimming back to shore did I get to see that the lake actually dropped off aggressively, about ten or fifteen feet past the shoreline. You couldn’t see that from the shore though. From the shore it looked like a gradual and slow drop, like most of the other lakes I’ve swam in on the AT. But this one dropped right off into darkness, just out of eyeshot from the shoreline.

It sort of freaked me out, thinking I’d been swimming out there, who knows how deep the water was that far out.

It seems strange that there would be any good in a feeling like that. That there would be any reason that we should feel drawn to situations like that, but somehow that’s how I found myself. It was almost like an erotic allure.

Terrance McKenna once commented on the closeness of eros and death in one of his lectures that I listened to on the Psychedelic Saloon podcast during my AT hike. Maybe it’s something like that. Maybe the allure of being hanging there, swimming in deep-deep water that could swallow me if I lost my focus is the same thing that draws me to trails like this to begin with–to go far out and deep into something that has the power to eat me, but trusting that instead of being eaten, to trust that I’ll float above it. And that there will be some good to come from taking risks and swimming into deep water. Believing that the sun will warm my skin once I’m out there, that the water will leave me reborn, and that the miles ahead will be better because of it.

Hopefully I’m not being too deep… pun intended.

—

We are camped beside a river tonight.

Almost thirty miles today. Point two miles short. Close enough to round up if I wanted.

Tomorrow we have a massive climb in the morning and about 10 miles to the road crossing that will lead us to the town of Rutland.

Actively falling asleep.

Wormwood.

AT Day 92; LT Day 5

Miles Today: 10.31

AT Mile: 1668.7; LT Mile: 65

(Griffith Lake [tent])

We were five miles into the hike today when it hit me that I literally feel different, in light of having made the choice to hike the Long Trail.

It wasn’t until around noon that we got to trail today, having spent the morning comfortably lounging at the Green Mountain House Hostel and waiting for the morning to pass. I spent some time repacking my gear, eating another pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and drinking too much coffee before we made our way back to trail. But we weren’t in a rush. Plinko and I both have enough food to comfortably get us to our next resupply in Rutland, VT in two days after the writing of this journal, so we didn’t have any motivation to get to trail early.

I guess we could have busted through this stretch in two big days. But neither of us want to do those kind of miles and make that kind of push anymore. We’ve been enjoying the pace of 20-25 miles a day so much more than either of us were feeling the 30+ mile days at the beginning.

I say all of this in light of the fact that we’re going to do a 30 mile day tomorrow… but we’ll get to that later.

For now, more on that feeling from this morning.

—

Nothing acts in isolation out here, or anywhere in the world for that matter. Everything we experience is an amalgamation of so many different influences that it’s hard to pin point what’s from what and what’s from what… (no way I said that in a way that makes sense, but let’s go with it for the time being). What I mean is that, take today for example–I was feeling amazing this morning in the ten miles we had from the road crossing where we picked up and this tent site beside Griffith Lake. It wasn’t because of only one thing. It wasn’t just that we’re now hiking the Long Trail, but also that we got a good meal yesterday, slept in beds last night, got a ride back to trail easily, and the weather was awesome. There’s ten thousand other things too, but that’ll do for now.

The Long Trail had a lot to do with it though. I stopped at one point and turned back to Plinko, who normally chooses to hike a good distance behind me even though he could be ahead with how much faster he can hike. He was close this time though. I told him that it feels different, because now instead of having 600 miles left to the end of the trail, now we only have like… 240 miles left until the end.

Plinko looked at me funny for a second, but then a look of comprehension passed over his face. “Oh, you mean because we’re going to get to the end of the LT sooner than we would get to the end of the AT.”

“Yeah. Yesterday when we were just thinking about it, it felt like we were making the choice of whether or not to add an additional 200+ miles of hiking to our thru hike, but now it feels like the Long Trail is sort of its own seperate thing. Like, even though we’re on the AT still, it feel like I can put my mind in a different mode and pretend that I’m just hiking the LT for now.”

—

At the trailhead this morning, just before we started back to hike, there was a trail crew there and we told them that we had decided to hike the whole Long Trail. They were stoked about it, as they were technically LT crew, as per their tshirt logos, and they gave Plinko and I each a trail sticker.

When we arrived to camp this afternoon, we took a pice of cardboard, stuck the sticker on it, cut it out, and made an unofficial Long Trail pack tag to go with our Appalachain Trail pack tags.

So I guess now it’s official.

And that feels really good to me. It doesn’t feel like we’re adding onto something that I don’t enjoy doing. Authentically, I’m excited to be hiking the Long Trail, and from what I hear, some of the best parts of Vermont are in the northern part of the state, which the AT does not explore. Instead, the AT takes a hard eastern turn after Rutland and heads into Maine before turning north again.

—

We met some ladies at the top of one of our climbs today. They were day hikers, but we made banter with them for ten or fifteen minutes at the top of the climb. There was a ski lift there, and it was the drop point for skiers and snowboarders in the winter season, but in the summer it made for an impressive view in every direction.

When I got to the top of the climb, the two ladies were sitting up there on chairs, presumably provided by the ski resort, and I told them that they looked royal, from how majestic the scene appeared. They played along with it and told me I was right, and that they were indeed royalty. They told me they were members of the Cabernet Club, and I said that I knew about that club. I said that I liked that club, but I knew better than to be mixing up with that kind of trouble. And that that’s what they were–trouble.

It was a playful vibe between the three of us.

Plinko mostly hung in the background and checked the maps for the miles ahead.

“Well,” one of the Cabernet Queens started. “What gifts have you come bearing for our majesty?”

Without any hesitation, I said “I have a bag of coyote teeth! Would you like one?”

I gave one of them a coyote tooth, and told them an abbreviated version of the story about how I came to be carrying them. But I’ve decided that moving forward I’m going to refrain from explanation. Even if the story of the Witch of Waynesboro is a good one, I think it might even be a better story that there’s just this guy hiking across the country carrying a bag of coyote teeth in his fanny pack.

—

We set camp beside Griffith Lake early this evening, at around 4:00. I remember gawking in astonishment at the AT hikers setting up at shelters at 4pm in the earlier states of the trail. Now I understand it a bit better. But it’s also not going to be a regular thing for us. We had been told that this lake is a good swimming lake, and saw that there’s camping right beside the swimming access. To be fair, the swimming is only about 3/5 on Wormwood’s Subjective Swim Scale. The bottom is rocky and the shallows go out for so long that it’s hard to get deep enough to swim.

Still, I feel awesome having only hiked ten miles today and getting a bath in the lake tonight, and being in tent before 8pm.

Like I said before, we’re going to aim for 30.0 miles tomorrow, which will probably come out just over 30 via GPS tracked miles. But that brings us to a shelter and our previous alternative would be only 24ish. Since we’re getting to bed early we think it’s fair to aim for a big mile day, and then the following day can just be 15 into Rutland where we’ll resupply for going north into the LT/AT split point. I’m looking forward to being on the Long Trail for a bit. It will be quieter than the AT. And it’ll also mean that when we get back on the AT we’ll be ten days “behind” where we are leaving off. So we’ll get to see hikers who are ten days “behind” us now and we’ll get to be in a completely different group when we get back to the AT.

It’ll still leave me with around 2 weeks after the trail to focus on writing, hopefully aiming to make a book from this trail and have a draft mostly or fully completed in those two weeks. I know that’s an ambitious goal, but I also think it’s a good thing to aim for in light of all the words that have gone to page in the last three months, and the stories that have come to fruition.

I spent some time with that thought today–that I didn’t know the stories that would unfold over the course of this trail, but that I had faith that they were worth risking a lot to pursue. I believed deeply enough that this would be worth it that I was willing to give up 5 months of income and professional development, give up an entire summer with my friends, give up all my long term clients, just to come here and walk a dirt trail.

Having done it before made it easier.

But still it was a risk.

And now that I have a better view of the stories that have come to fruition over the last 92 days, I look forward to taking a couple of weeks to step back, find the themes and redeemable stories, and see what I can make from it. It just seems like such a waste not to try–having spent so many hours and so many days writing over the course of this trail and this summer.

Even though it’s early in the evening, I’m still tired, and I hope to fall asleep soon.

I know that when the 5am alarm sounds that it’ll feel like only a moment has passed, but if I get to sleep soon, then the hours that follow won’t be so bad.

Here’s to falling in love with thru hiking again.

It’s good to be on the other side of the mountain, and out of whatever hell we’d been in for that heat wave those two weeks ago.

Thanks for sticking with me through that dear reader.

It’s good to still have you on the other side.

Wormwood.

AT Day 91

Miles Today: 2.85

AT Mile: 1658.1

(Green Mountain House Hostel; Manchester, VT)

Something big might have happened today… and I feel like I should jump right into it.

Plinko and I might be leaving the Appalachian Trail. It might be over for us.

After this week, we might not call ourselves AT hikers anymore.

Because…

…

We’re hiking the Long Trail!

For those unfamiliar with it, the Vermont Long Trail runs from Vermont’s northern and southern borders for 272 miles, and around 105 of those miles are shared with the Appalachain Trail.

In other words, we’re technically already on the Long Trail, and we have been since the AT entered the state of Vermont. But the two trails diverge in about 60 miles from where we left off today, and Plinko and I are seriously considering diverging off the AT for an extra 10-14 days to complete the Long Trail. It would bring us to the US/Canada border (which I think would be pretty cool), and then we’d catch a ride back south to the AT/LT split point and pick up the Appalachian Trail from there.

So no… I’m not going to leave the AT unfinished, at least not for long. I’ll just be stepping off the AT to finish the LT, then I’ll head back to finish the AT.

I like the idea of getting off the AT for a little while. I like the idea of having walked from Georgia to Canada. I like the thought of completing another thru hike and adding it to my list. And I have a feeling that I may never come back to the eastern US hiking trails again after this summer. So if I want to hit the Long Trail then now might need to be the time.

We have just over 60 miles from here to the next trail resupply town (Rutland, VT), and so we need to decide by the time we leave there. The split point is about a mile north of Rutland. So we’ll have an answer decided upon by the end of the week.

—

For now, there are three of us at the Green Mountain House Hostel in Manchester Center, Vermont. We caught back up with Yama (the hiker from Japan) yesterday, and although we didn’t share any miles together, we did tell him to contact us when he got to town today so that we could all lodge together.

The day ended up being such a typical town day… good lord I’m exhausted from it all.

We only hiked 2 miles in from where we had camped last night, and I even remarked to Plinko that we’ll have almost the entire day to rest and relax.

Ha! Joke’s on me…

I forgot how busy town days can be.

We had to hitch into town, go to the grocery store for breakfast, go to Mountain Goat to pick up my new shoes and my repaired Hyperlite Pack, shop around and get a new shirt and some food items at the Mountain Goat, replace all the gear from one back to the next, switch out my shoes and insoles, open a bag of coyote teeth that I got in the package as well, then we went to the post office to send out my old shoes back to Arizona and return my loaner pack to Hyperlite, then we went to the Ben & Jerry’s shop for a snack, then we went to the cannabis dispensary, then we went back to the grocery store to resupply for the next leg of the trail, then we met a couple of other hikers who are staying at the hostel, then we waited out a rainstorm at the grocery store, then we went to a place called DSB (Depot Street Burger) for burgers and fries, then we got a ride to the hostel… are you getting tired yet, or are you still along for the ride?

At the hostel it was laundry, pack explosion, shower, trim nails, edit journals, resupply food… good lord… it’s making me tired trying to list all of this.

Needless to say, it’s now almost 9pm, and we’ve been in town for almost 12 hours, and I’m still not done with everything I needed to get done in town.

Such is life on trail…

Sometimes we get time to slow down and float on a lake and look up at the clouds. But a lot of time we go go go.

—

Oh! Here’s a good anecdote from the trail worth telling:

So, when Plinko and I reached the road where we’re going to hitch into town from, he drops pack, but I continued up through the parking lot and to the start of our next stretch of trail. My thinking is that I don’t want to skip any steps along the AT, and when we get dropped off back at trail tomorrow, I don’t want to accidentally “skip” the parking lot and miss those steps of the AT.

Anyways, when I get to the other side of the parking lot, I see that there’s a cooler with soda and a bag of candy on top. It was almost too good to be true. I hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast and I was *starving*. So I quickly peel open the bag of chocolate, pour 3 of them into my hand, and pop one right into my mouth, as I open the cooler to search for soda.

That was about when I realized that the chocolate tasted really funny. I spit it out and looked at the bag.

It was fucking soap.

Who the fuck leaves a bag of soap labeled “Caramel & Seasalt” that look like chocolates?

So now there are two of those soap squares that have bite marks on them, back at the trailhead.

—

It rained a bit earlier, but it’s absolutely *dumping* rain now as I sit at the kitchen table of the hostel and write this. We’re fortunate to not be out in it, especially since we were expecting something like this last night. We were lucky to wake up dry this morning, but whoever’s out in it now is getting hell.

We’re planning to get back to trail tomorrow. We have food all packed and gear set up. But I’m in no rush. I only want to do about 10 miles tomorrow, which will bring us to a lake that I’ve been told is good swimming. I’m hoping to camp there.

Wormwood.