When I entered the building, I was dripping wet, and I left a stream of water in my wake as I walked through the lobby. I was chilled to the core, but a wave of warmth came over me when I saw Raptor sitting in a chair by the window.
Looking over at me, he smiled and winked. “You almost had me worried,” he said. Then he pointed me upstairs, where he had placed my pack on a bunk near his in the hiker loft. I was thankful to be reunited with my pack, my tent, and my raincoat. It was incredibly generous of Isaiah to drive my pack up to the summit, but I swore I would check the weather forecast before I accepted another slackpack.
After taking a shower and warming up, I met Raptor downstairs for a lasagna dinner. When we finished eating, we left the lodge and walked over to the lighthouse monument that crowned the summit. Sitting on the gray stone benches nearby, we watched the sun change shapes: from a globe, to a semicircle, to a line, to a dot . . . and then it was gone.
To the south, the large white plume of a thunderhead changed from pink to purple in the dimming sky. Above our heads, there were golden jet streams that pointed away from the farmlands of Massachusetts toward the Green Mountains of Vermont.
Staring off at the green ridgeline, I wondered briefly what awaited me in those mountains. But in that instant, it didn’t seem to matter, and neither did the memories of bugs and hail in Massachusetts. I didn’t want to think about the past or the future. I was on top of a mountain at sunset with a friend. The moment was too full for any other thoughts.
17
OPTIMISM
MOUNT GREYLOCK, MA, TO HANOVER, NH—160 MILES
In Vermont, everything is green—really green—and the trail is often choked by lush, verdant plants. The narrow path leads to an increasing number of mountain lakes, which offer refreshment and recreation in the summertime. The mountains of Vermont grow taller than their southern New England neighbors and double as well-known New England ski slopes. The region is dotted with quaint towns that cater to skiers, leaf-peepers, and thru-hikers. They pride themselves on serving delicious maple syrup and local dairy products to all their guests.
A warning to future thru-hikers: When you arrive in Vermont, you will think that you are close to the end—you’re not. At the Massachusetts/Vermont border, there are still 590 miles between you and Katahdin. That’s over a quarter of the trail, and the fourth quarter is the hardest.
Raptor and I parted ways after spending the night together on Mount Greylock. His wife was coming for a visit, and he planned to take several days off the trail. That meant I entered Vermont alone. And as fate would have it, I didn’t see another thru-hiker until New Hampshire.
Being by myself again was hard. Because I didn’t have any company, I started to focus solely on my relationship with the trail, and that wasn’t going so well either. At this point, I expected some reward from the trail: a gold star, or a medal of honor . . . or something.
I spent my first day in Vermont mulling over why I was entitled to walk a red carpet to Katahdin. I had been struck by lightning, caught in a snowstorm, stalked by Moot, offended by an exhibitionist, scared by a religious fanatic, and deeply shaken by a suicide. It seemed to me that I deserved sunshine and wildflowers all the way to the end.
So when the trail remained buggy and humid, when the terrain became increasingly difficult, and when the most exciting discovery in southern Vermont was a big pile of moose poop, I began to feel mistreated.
The first half of the AT had been an adventure. I met new people every day, and I was learning how to backpack, how to be a thru-hiker. The mid-Atlantic was also an adventure, in its own scary way. But Vermont was just kind of boring.
I had figured out how to backpack, so those details no longer occupied my time. I knew most of the people in front of and behind me, and there really weren’t any thru-hikers nearby whom I hadn’t met yet. My diet, my routine, where I slept, what I saw . . . it had all become commonplace. I hadn’t planned on getting off the trail and hitching to Manchester Center, Vermont, but when I came to the road, I just didn’t want to keep hiking. So I went to town.
Manchester Center was a cute town. Unfortunately, it was so cute that all the lodging options cost over one hundred dollars. It was a ski town in the winter, a mountain resort in the summer, and a leaf-peeper destination in the fall. They had great coffee shops, expensive restaurants, and very few locals. When I realized that staying inside Manchester Center was out of my budget, I got a ride back down the highway and found a motel several miles from town.
Getting a motel room by yourself on the trail is kind of like drinking alone. It’s supposed to be a social tradition, so doing it by yourself often means you’re ashamed, or trying to hide it, or else you’re just really depressed. I told myself that wasn’t it—that I just liked the taste.
The sad thing was, the motel room didn’t make things better. At first it felt good—the shower, the warm bed. But once I was clean and dry, I didn’t have anything to do and it was only 5:00 PM. I turned on the TV and just lay there for four hours, mindlessly watching a rerun of the MTV Music Awards. I hated it.
Somewhere amid the evening gowns and makeup, the loud music and provocative performances, I was overcome with a sense of fakeness. Nothing about the awards show seemed real. I was stuck in a motel room, listening to overinflated performers sing bad music and watching them receive funny-looking awards. I didn’t care how hard, miserable, boring, or scary the woods were. They were better than this.
I realized that I didn’t miss the lifestyle I’d left when I started the trail. I missed my family and friends, I missed my warm bed and clean clothes, but I would rather watch a sunset than watch TV, I would rather walk than sit in an office all day, and I would rather sing out loud to myself on the trail than watch the MTV Music Awards.
The next few days were much better. The trail didn’t change, but I did.
Suddenly, I loved hiking. I loved the trail, and I loved Vermont. I made a vow that I would only hike twenty to twenty-five miles a day, that I would swim in every lake I passed, and that at night I would find a place where I could watch the sunset.
I also tried to find a resting spot each afternoon where I could sit still for an hour and watch the world around me. I’d stop and get to know a stream or watch the trees dance in the breeze. I marveled at spiders building webs, squirrels gathering nuts, and birds calling to each other. Sometimes it would rain during my breaks, but that was okay because I had my raincoat. Other times I would find myself surrounded by a cloud of bugs, but I would just apply DEET and stare past the swarm.
I learned that I didn’t need much to be entertained. I didn’t need loud music, bright lights, or TV. I just needed to be still.
Being still was a relatively new concept for me. I couldn’t remember much stillness in my pre-trail life. And the times I do remember were highly uncomfortable. My whole life had been filled with activity and movement.
Until now, I hadn’t been okay just being, I had to be doing. Everything was part of a schedule, a routine, a constantly flowing series of commitments. I never stopped after I finished an activity, I just looked ahead and prepared for whatever came next. I started to think about how many different things I used to do in a day. I would schedule myself to the max, and the only free time I would leave was taken up with getting from one commitment to the next.
On the trail, all I had to do was walk. It was up to me how far I wanted to walk and where I wanted to end up. I could stop when I wanted, I could eat when I wanted, I could take naps at any point during the day. The trail allowed me to feel a strong sense of freedom. And it helped me to see the oppression of a busy schedule and the way we multitask in civilization. I no longer saw what was civil about filling my life with commitments if I couldn’t stop to watch the sunset or listen to the birds sing.
Because I wasn’t in the company of thru-hikers in Vermont, I would sometimes talk with the animals. If I found myself alone in a shelter, I would share conversation and a few crumbs with the
resident mice. I knew I shouldn’t give them my food, but they were cute and furry, and I figured if they were full then maybe they wouldn’t try to eat a hole through my food bag in the middle of the night.
On the path, I was delighted to once again find the bright orange salamanders that had dotted central Virginia; the fact that they were so lethargic made them really good listeners. I would pick up the lizards, tell them about my day, mention how lucky they were to live in such a beautiful place, then I would put them back down right where I’d found them.
There was another animal in Vermont that I hadn’t seen before. It had the coloring and size of a chipmunk, but it looked like a squirrel, so I called it a chaquirrel. I liked the chaquirrels, because it was fun to say their name and because they were mischievous. They skirted around tree trunks and jumped from branch to branch to keep an eye on me. And their noise didn’t sound like a chirp or a tweet, but like a laughing child.
When I did come across people, I would talk to them too. Not just “Hi” and “Bye” and “Have a good day”; I wanted to know where they were from, what they were doing on the trail, if they liked it or didn’t like it, and why.
I spent one full afternoon on the rocks of Clarendon Gorge talking with the locals who had retreated to the cool rapids of Mill River to escape the summer heat. They shared their food and their stories with me. And as I sat and listened to them talk about interests ranging from car parts to pottery and football to farming, it struck me that every person I had ever met and would ever meet knew something I didn’t and could do something I couldn’t. It was a simple truth, but I finally realized that the more people I invested in, the smarter and better equipped I would be.
That night at Governor Clement Shelter, I spent the last hour of daylight at a nearby creek, sitting on a rock with my feet in the water, my journal in my lap, and a pen in my hand.
June 12, 2005
Before I started hiking the trail, two of my biggest concerns were that I would be bored or lonely. Aside from the first two days in Vermont, I haven’t been bored, and even without thru-hikers around, this trail certainly doesn’t seem lonely. I think I actually experience loneliness and boredom more at home than on the trail.
I stopped writing and looked into the water to think, to find my answers in the cold current that swirled around my sore, swollen feet.
Maybe the fact that I wasn’t lonely had more to do with the quality of relationships than the quantity. In college, I remember sitting in a packed classroom or cheering at a football game in the midst of a crowd, but still feeling alone. I had also spent the last three years loathing social mixers. Traveling around the room and having the same meaningless conversations with different people left me feeling empty inside.
The problem in college, and in life, was that there were a lot of people who knew what I was, but they didn’t know who I was. No wonder there was so much pressure to look a certain way, when usually the only thing people got to know was someone’s outer image.
When I spent time with someone on the trail, it could be for a few minutes or a few days, but the time was focused. There were no distractions and fewer inhibitions. When we parted ways, they didn’t just know my profile, they knew my person. They knew what I liked and didn’t like, how I felt, what I wanted to be, and what mattered to me. And just as importantly, I knew them.
I picked up my pen and journal again.
One of my favorite things about the trail is that you don’t see your face. I mean, I guess you can see it in the reflection of the water, but there are no mirrors, no vanities, and no places to check yourself out. I used to think that people perceived me based on how I looked, but now that I don’t see my face, I feel like people perceive me by how I treat them—that is, by what I say to them and how well I listen. Now I feel beautiful when I make other people smile.
My last full day in Vermont was saturated with heavy rain, but that was okay, because rain was nature’s DEET. I walked all morning and all afternoon in a steady downpour. It was warm out, so instead of putting my raincoat on, I just let my t-shirt get wet. In the past, I usually tried to avoid rain puddles, but today I was purposely splashing in them and laughing. And instead of reaching for my water bottle when I was thirsty, I would just tilt my chin up and open my mouth toward the sky. The whole day was like combining hiking and a summer swim.
That evening, I was wrinkly from the rain, and since I wasn’t near a shelter, I stopped to set up camp at a flat spot just off the trail. As soon as I pulled out my wadded tent, the rain penetrated the fabric, and in the five minutes it took me to set it up, the tent floor became completely soaked by the saturated undergrowth. By the time I put the ground cloth underneath the tent, there were already puddles covering the tent floor. Then when I crawled inside, the day’s rain dripped off my body and made the puddles more of a pool. Finally, I unrolled my sopping wet foam sleeping pad and laughed at the idea of putting a perfectly dry sleeping bag on top of a wet sleeping pad in the the middle of a puddle. Finally, I just pulled off my wet clothes and climbed inside.
The next morning I woke up, packed up my soaking wet gear, and hiked—fast. I hiked fast because I wanted to hike fast. Back in March when I started the trail, there was no way I could have comfortably hiked eighteen miles in under six hours with a pack on my back, but now I could. That’s part of what made it fun, the fact that I could now do something that I couldn’t before, something that most people couldn’t dream of doing.
It was also fun because even though it felt like I was going fast, I really wasn’t. I was hiking barely over three miles per hour, which meant I was still well aware of my surroundings and could see and appreciate everything as I passed.
I think life would be much better if the speed limit were three miles-per-hour. Traveling by trains, planes, and cars seemed too fast. It’s difficult to notice details when you zip past things at sixty-five miles-per-hour. I appreciate mass transportation because it allows me to see friends and family who live far away, but part of me wished that everything and everyone I wanted to see was in walking distance. But then again, after the trail, there was going to be a lot more that I considered “within walking distance.”
After six hours of fast hiking, I crossed the Connecticut River and said good-bye to Vermont. I had reached Hanover, New Hampshire.
New Hampshire—my penultimate state.
18
REGROUPING
HANOVER, NH, TO
PINKHAM NOTCH, NH—123 MILES
New Hampshire is difficult, but not remote. It feels remote to the tourists who stay at the huts in the White Mountains, visit the rest areas in the notches, and drive their cars or take the Cog Train to the top of Mount Washington. But to thru-hikers it feels scenic, challenging, and populated. Despite the people with daypacks and video cameras lining the ridges and mountaintops, the strenuous climbs are worth the effort because of the stunning views, and the many tourists mean there is lots of potential trail magic.
Hanover is home to Dartmouth College. After asking a few students for directions, I soon found my way to a brick building that housed the Dartmouth Outing Club. The DOC was a campus organization that facilitated skiing, hiking, backpacking, climbing, water sports, and anything outdoors for the college community. The club also maintained part of the Appalachian Trail and served as a resource for thru-hikers.
Inside the DOC headquarters, I asked a student volunteer about lodging options near Hanover. He presented me with several hotels within walking distance, all with prices over three digits, and then he said there was a bus line if I was hoping to get something in the seventy to eighty dollar range.
I was hoping for free. This was a college campus and I was twenty-one and it was the summer. There had to be thousands of empty rooms and beds in this town. I was pretty sure that if I made a sign and stood on a curb, a kind student would share her room. All I wanted was a shower and a place to put my sleeping bag.
“I really don’t have that much money to spend o
n lodging, especially if I can’t split the fee with any other hikers,” I told him, looking as pitiful as possible. “I was hoping to spend the night and take a shower here, but I guess I’ll just keep hiking. By the way, I heard that it was supposed to rain tonight, do you know if that’s true?”
The young man took a minute to run his fingers through his hair and then replied, “Look, I’m not supposed to do this without checking with my roommates, but I live in a house just down the road, and I’m sure you could take a shower there and spend the night on our couch if you want.”
“Really? Thank you so much! I’ll be gone first thing in the morning. Promise.”
The student gave me directions to his building, which sounded pretty much like a coed fraternity house. But I didn’t care as long as it had a shower and a roof. Along the way, I stopped to pick up brownies so I would have an offering to present when I arrived. The gift was well received by the DOC housemates, and in exchange, I was offered a clean towel and a twenty-year-old couch on the front porch.
I had everything I needed for the night, and I planned to head back to the trail the next morning to begin New Hampshire. But then I checked my cell phone messages and discovered that Nightwalker and Mooch would be arriving in Hanover the next morning.
That was a problem.
It shouldn’t have been a problem, because Mooch and Nightwalker were my two favorite people on the trail, and I knew that hiking with them would be fun. But then there was this feeling that I hadn’t really dealt with that I had been trying to leave back in Connecticut. You see, I kind of liked Nightwalker. And the worst part was that I was pretty sure he liked me too.
If I stayed and we started hiking together, the feelings would be unavoidable. But if I kept hiking, it would be an obvious and potentially hurtful dismissal of two good friends who had been there when I needed them the most.
Becoming Odyssa Page 24