Friday, June 23, 2023 – The Gap
Today I set out to fill in The Gap we left in our AT trek from the Cascade Brook to the intersection with the Liberty Springs Trail at the base of Franconia Notch. Pat our AT section-hiker and our reason for getting out here on the trail together has no interest in doing it. For me, this little gap feels like a violation, a hole in our accomplishment I am not willing to bear. I’ll take one for the team and color this little section in today.
So I set out on a blue-sky day the likes of which we’d not had in our two weeks on the trail earlier this month. Hot and humid. I miss the exit for the trailhead, turn around and head back. This is easier said than done in Franconia Notch – you have to go a long way to turn around. However, after today’s missed exit, I’m getting better at figuring out where things are here.
I find the trail head marker to the Appalachian Trail, the familiar friend I’ve been pining for. Set my Strava and head down the .8 miles to intersect the Cascade Brook Trail. Here, just a few days off the trail and I no longer have my feet under me. Just one week off the trail and I’m walking like an old man with my poles steadying my every step. Pass the 5 lady-slippers Jen and I passed running to the car last week, now brown and bent.
The trail veers onto the paved bike path and down by the Pemigewasset River. It is so beautiful here and such a lovely sound of water cascading over the rocks. The trail veers off by a wooden bridge over the stream and I head under the highway on a rumble of rocks and up what will be a long slow ascent to where Cascade Brook crosses the trail. Along the way a very worn and mostly illegible sign tacked to a tree warning that the bridge has been washed out over the brook. I wonder if there was a similar warning sign on the descent coming down that we missed.
A tippy, cautious crossing over Whitehouse Brook. I’m holding on way too tight today. Look down mid-stream and can’t imagine how standing on that crooked rock will support me. I get down on my hands and knees, toss my poles ahead, clinking over the rocks. I crawl across. A week ago I would have just strode out on the rocks over this stream.
I cross other little brooks on wet rocks, slippery with green gunk and moss. The trail rises above a steep ravine off to my right. The sound of the brook ahead and then here I am. Cascade Brook has calmed and is not raging like it was two weeks ago. I find a warm rock mid-stream, take off my pack and savor my sandwich. Watch a mom with her infant on her back and her three little kids in tow easily jump across the rocks in the brook to the other side. What a difference a week makes.
I head down to check out where the Basin Trail connects with the spot we waded across. I still puzzle over why we didn’t check out the distance when we reached the other side and head up to the intersection with the AT instead of down the Basin Brook trail which ended up crossing the Cascade Brook trail again!
I’m so tempted to slip into the deep pool at my feet. I remember chaffing with wet shorts. I do not get wet.
Nary a bug today so I don’t have to lather on more of the Sweat Resistant Bug Repellant which resulted in my most sticky head the last day of our adventure. It’s a nice trek out, I feel the swing of the trail. I take on up and over to Liberty Spring Trail.
It looks like I filled in just 1.5 miles on the AT that we’d missed. Perhaps with a 2200 mile long trail, it’s not worth worrying about but I’m glad I did.
I head back to the car down the bike path see a man stopped in the trail looking into the woods. Is he watching a bear? Actually, he’s pondering his map and trying to figure which way to go. He’s looking for a ride back to his car at Cannon.
“You’re going right my way,” I tell him and offer a ride.
Vince loaded up his bike and took off 14 years ago when he was diagnosed with cancer and tracked some 75,000 miles!
“Perhaps I wanted to outrun it,” he says.
It sounds like he did.
He’s wanted for a long time to come back here to see the Alpine Zone again. He’s dreamed of it so often and is so glad he had the fortitude and stamina to make it up to the ridge.
When I came up behind him, Vince mistook me for a thru-hiker (albeit with a very small pack!).
“Feel free to go faster. You look fast,” he says.
I smile, “No, not so fast. My friends will tell you that I’m known less for speed than counting lady-slippers. Going slow enough to talk with Vince about the opening line of A River Runs Through It and the beauty of Snow Leopard which I read when I was in Junior High and Vince reads every year. He sizes me up quickly, “It sounds like you meditate out here.”
“Oh yes,” I say, “All day I watch my mind go up and down with all this crazy thinking about things out here, until sometimes, yes, I just walk and breathe and am right here.”
At the parking lot we meet “The Nomads” a couple my age who are actual thru-hikers. They started in February and hope to finish at Katahdin on July 30. They too looking for a ride and I’m glad to have them all pile into my little car.
And then I’m headed home and so grateful to have gotten out here today. So so grateful for being restored to the trail. And yes, filling in that last little section.
The Nomads weren’t keen on Vermont – “All that mud!” and have no desire to do the Long Trail.
As for me, I have the maps for the Cohos Trail spread out on the kitchen table. Forward dreaming.
And soon, to bed, to dream.
Navigating Through Change 