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I wake to pouring rain, rumbling thunder and flashes of lightening that brightens the dark lean-to here at the Speck Pond shelter. We’re doing our planned Mahoosuc Range route in reverse – starting out near Bethel, Maine and heading South to Gorham to avoid the rain I wake to. 

It wasn’t supposed to rain today, but tomorrow, by which time we’d be down the Mahoosuc Arm and through the Notch, the hardest day of our four-day trek through the Mahoosucs. From the trail notes we’d read, it doesn’t seem to matter which direction you go through the Notch, but doing it on a dry trail makes all the difference. 

As I turn over in my bag, the patter of dripping rain off the roof, I see Pat’s already sitting up, dressed and ready to go.  

“We’re not actually going are we?” I blurt.

“The birds are singing, the sun is up,” she responds. 

“But it’s wet…” 

“And it may well get worse later,” she replies.

I wouldn’t be out here on the Appalachian Trail on this wet morning without Pat. It’s her dream and determination to section hike the AT and why Jen, Barb and I have been trekking along beside her through New Hampshire and Maine these past four summers. 

If it were up to me today, I’d be lingering in my warm bag for a while waiting for the wind and warming day to dry the slippery rocks down the steep ascent before us.  

But instead, I’m pulling on yesterday’s damp shirt, socks and shorts, tying up my boots. After a quick cup of coffee and bowl of oatmeal, we’re off.  

People find their way to the Trail for many reasons and sometimes, like today, I wonder about mine. What is it that draws me here? It has to be something more than following someone else’s dream, doesn’t it?  

Our through-hiker friend Sully reflected a few days ago over dinner at Mizpah Spring Hut that there are certainly more enjoyable and perhaps even better ways to do the Trail than through-hike 2,190 miles over the course of four or five months. Certainly, section-hikers like Pat have a funner time of it as well as those that just hike the most beautiful sections of the Trail. Perhaps its true, that as Sully said, what’s left for the through-hike is the challenge, and this, the most challenging thing he’s ever done in his life.  

I too like a challenge and doing what I didn’t think I could. To expand the boundaries of identity I’ve made of my life, see beyond what I thought was possible.  

I don’t know if this is right, I’m feeling my way into this, but I also want something more than a challenge. I’ll never be one to finish the fastest or do the longest race. No, that particular drive has never been in me. The joy I’ve found in running a road race, competing in a triathalon, or backpacking for 11 days isn’t in the competition but in the sense of presence I’ve found.

Of course, I can find my way to “here” at home stretching on my yoga mat, sitting and breathing, meditating, listening. I can find my way to presence watercoloring or listening to a friend tell me about their day. I can find my breath sitting here looking out at the mountains. So why the “effortfulness”, the sweat and strain, that I seek out in a challenge to be present? 

Typically, it takes me three days, three days of breathing hard, aching muscles and much groaning to find my way to presence on the trail. To just being here. And then I get it, the feeling of just walking the trail, taking one step at a time, one hand hold to another, making my way on this little path winding its way through the woods, out over the ledge, through the mucky bog. 

At this point on the AT, some 1900 miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia, many of the NOBO’s (Northbounders) who pass are wearied down to just wanting to get through. Just wanting to get done. Tell us they’re tired of everything out here on the trail that drew them here in the first place. We see them as they scurry pass, scarcely a hello, head down, a scowl and grim determination to just keep going.  

Rack wishes he had taken two weeks off to rest his body months ago but admits that if he had he might well not have gotten back on the Trail. So he’s kept on like Rock Bottom who has lost 19 pounds, grim and determined but for that early morning on Mount Moriah when he came up behind us with a wide smile on his face, sharing that indeed it was a good day, a very good one, his 40^th wedding anniversary. 

He almost quit the trail a few days before when he walked in circles up and around Mount Washington and ended up exactly where he’d started three hours earlier. Angry, worn out, sick of it all, life sometimes comes down to exactly this. And the choice, the sheer grit that despite it all, he’d take yet another step forward and keep on keeping on a Trail that by now seems to be extracting from him more than it is possibly giving. Not sure who will win out, his willpower or the relentless grind of the 300 miles before him.  

For Matthew, today’s come down to plugging in and listening to his book. I don’t have any desire to get out there again, but I want to get back to my book. The Trail becomes his morning commute.

No, I want something more than grim determination to just get through, and yes, I get it. I want to be unplugged out here. To pause in the silence and see the swoop of the trail ahead, to feel the rough bark of the white pine, to smell the balsam fir. And yes, sometimes the noise in your head or the toil of yet another day on the Trail, is all too much and overwhelming.  

What’s it all for?  To have “done” it?  Met the challenge? Done what you didn’t think you could do? Know that you can survive good days and bad days, watch your moods rise and fall with the ridge line? 

What’s on the other side of “done”? For some it must be depression – now that its over, now what? For some it’s heading off to the next trail to conquer, the Pacific Crest, Continental Divide or a flip-flop, turning around and heading back South to Springer Mountain in Georgia. 

Perhaps we all want something to have come of it all, these Trails we follow and make of our lives. We want to know that it’s made some difference – given us that longed for change of perspective, an opening of possibility, a clarity.  Shaped us, crafted us somehow into someone different than our weary ways of being. Or maybe that’s all too much to ask of a Trail and the desire for meaning leads only to frustration or despair that we did not nail down that secret of life we were looking for. No, perhaps, instead the answer to meaning lies instead in the wounds we’ve worn, our scratches, sore back and knees. We did something that we didn’t think we could do and this body, this heart, this grim determination carried us through.  

Our determination has us now completing the Appalachian Trail across New Hampshire after three years of slowly, carefully finding our way through spring snow, rain drenched trails, and hot steamy days. We’ve shivered and sweated, wearied and groaned, slept well and not so well. We’ve noticed bear claws on trees and toads at our feet. Chatted with through-hikers and cheered them on. Couldn’t imagine eating another protein bar. Laughed a lot. We did it, and now, besides completion of a goal what did we really get?  

A tightened belt, a day of insatiable hunger, the joy of devouring steak, potatoes and a chocolate chip cookie sundae and still not being full. The delectable luxury of taking days, a week off, to sleep in, let our bodies rest and recover. 

The emptying out that we experienced, quickly fills over the next days. The few pounds I lost, return. Something happened but what?  

The morning after our trek, here we are, maps strewn on the breakfast table, calculating distances, planning next year’s trek across Maine. Pondering if and where slack-packing is possible. 

It seems that your life is now full of purposeless activity, a friend reflects. I laugh, perhaps it is. Instead of making something happen in life, I’m giving myself to Life. 

Sometimes life comes down to sitting up and rolling out of bed, pulling on yesterday’s damp clothes for the Trail ahead. Sometimes, stopping and listening, watching the clouds at this clearing, kneeling and noticing this mushroom, all the time knowing we could wait forever and never “get” this we are waiting to take in. 

Once again, we tighten the pack, walk on.

A tumble of massive gray boulders up the steep mountainside ahead. We look left, look right, for another way around. Seeing none, we stumble forward, seeking to find a way out of no way. 

For the last two weeks my backpacking friends and I have been making our way out of no way. A steep ascent up a smooth rock ledge with not a hand-hold to be found. A precarious descent down a tumble of mossy wet rocks. Rotten dark planks over the bog at the top of Old Speck that disappear into thick brown and bottomless mud. 

The trail looks so easy on the page, a little green line winding its cheerful way up and down the mountains. But here on the ground, it’s another story. Sharp rocks and slippery roots, boulders to heave ourselves over on all fours. We’ll ascend and descend the steepest sections of the AT, crawl our way through that tumble of house-sized boulders called Mahoosuc Notch, the most difficult mile of a difficult trail. Get lost on Mount Success in the worst marked part of the entire AT in the middle of a thunderstorm. Nothing is easy out here on the trail these weeks, and its easy to be overwhelmed.

That morning as we saw no other way than over the massive pile of boulders up the steep trail ahead, we happened to look down and see there below us the white blaze of the Appalachian Trail and an arrow pointing the way down and under the rock pile. We took off our packs and pushed them ahead of us through the cold tight cavern, making a way when none was to be found.  

Neuroscientists like Norman Farb (co-author with Zindel Segal of Better in Every Sense: How the New Science of Sensation Can Help you Reclaim Your Life) explain how our minds use “mental maps” of navigation. Our brains seek simplicity and make patterns that we depend on to help us make our way less stressfully each day. We drive to the store, slowing down and turning right at the pond. We just do it without consciously thinking about it. And while our mental maps serve us, they can also get in our way and provide debilitating narratives or trapping stories that can keep us stuck in mind-map loops of ways of being in the world. 

Here at the intersection of the AT and the Carlo Col Trail, we meet our through-hiker NOBO (Northbound) friend Sully coming up the trail. He looks shaken. 

It’s rough going ahead. Right there, he turns and points to the little green rise in the trees ahead of us, It’s downright dangerous. Be careful, go slow. 

As we say goodbye, I pause to tighten my pack as Jen and Pat descend and cross the small brook ahead. We can now all see what made Sully pale. Dad called it a “chimney” and I can see why – ahead of us a vertical rise of massive rocks up the mountainside. Below me Jen and Pat have headed up towards the rocks. But from where I’m standing above, I can clearly see it, a goat, a brown line of a trail heading off just to the left of the rock face through the trees. Another possibility, a way out of no way. 

Neuroscientists will tell you how our mental-maps can freeze us and trap us in mind-loops as we keep traumatizing ourselves with anxiety even though the trauma is no longer happening now and may have happened hours, days or decades before. But in our mind-loops it feels like the trauma is happening all over again. Look at that pile and familiar feelings of shutting down, clenched jaw, gnarled brow, fear and anxiety all take over. 

The key for getting out of the stuck places of our mind-maps is letting in sensation and feeling that interrupt our debilitating mind-loops.

I call to my friends below to turn back to the goat trail they missed off to the left. We wade through ferns wet with morning dew and hoist ourselves up holding tight to sturdy trees. We’re feeling our way forward, finding our way to another possibility beyond the worn trail.

Unclench your jaw!  Look for the goats!, become our daily reminders as we come across yet another impassable section of the trail.

Today, a few days following our hike, I sit here on the porch looking out at the mountains across the lake. My toes throbbing, rubbed red and raw, from wearing wet socks and boots on the twelve miles of our last day on the trail. I rub my itchy wrist where I have a long cut and my right forearm covered in cuts and scrapes. I bend down to scratch my shins, bloody cuts from the ascent up Wildcat. 

It’s easy to say (my own mind-map) that my cuts and scratches are signs of my failure to find a way out of the mind-maps that no longer serve me as well. On the other hand, perhaps the scrapes and sore toes are in fact the way we find our way forward as we feel our way to new possibilities beyond our worn mind-maps. 

Ahead, two rotting plank boards disappear into the thick mud ahead. We poke in the mud with our trekking poles, continue to poke, looking for something solid below the surface to step securely onto. Here, a partly submerged rock, there what feels like the edge of the board. We continue to poke and step out, foot by careful foot, onto the submerged plank, ever so careful so as not to slip off like the through-hiker we talked with who ended up submerged to her waist and had to be pulled out and back onto the trail.

Now days off the trail, I witness how I’ve come home to the familiar routines of my life with a bit of welcome disorientation. I longer just go through my daily routines without thinking.  Instead, there’s now a bit of space as I wonder what I am doing and why. 

Something happened these past eleven days poking our way forward through the muck, grabbing the tree and twirling ourselves around to the rocky ledge below. Something happened feeling our way forward through the ferns up the goat trail on the side of the ledge.  

Through it all we felt our way into a little space of openness and curiosity we’ve carried with us home. A little opening of opportunity to do things another way. We see differently; in fact, we are different. We have a choice we didn’t see before, to keep on following the familiar worn trail of being in the world or to feel our way into something new.

I can sit here this morning watching the morning sunrise on the lake looping in my old familiar mind-maps, thinking my way forward into what the day will bring. And I can unclench my jaw, feel my feet on the porch, my breath rising and falling. Squinting in the sunlight, feel my way into here, now, the possibility of something more. 

Welch-Dickey August 22, 2023

“Unless you accept yourself, you can’t let go of yourself.”  (Stephen Mitchell, annotation to chapter 22, Tao Te Ching)

One of the last days of summer or so it seems up here in the closing days of August. A brisk brilliant blue-sky morning. The tree across the lawn has turned dark green to yellow, a hidden tint of red and orange.  

I’m not yet ready to turn to fall, and today a chance to seize the edges of a fading season. Summer closes up here on Labor Day.  The swimming beach at Echo Lake, the ice cream stand down the street will soon put out their “Closed for the Season” signs.  

I’ve come today to meet a friend here to hike a trail that’s been on her mind. She wonders if years ago she might have hiked it with her mother.  But if she ever did climb these peaks, it has been a long time.  Years ago, I hiked Welch and Dickey with my dad and a friend from the retirement community where my parents live. Dad was in his mid-80’s then; it was the last hike we did together.  

This morning Kate and I take off at a slow ramble leaving our worn stories behind us on the trail as we ascend into the unknown before us. 

Today I don’t know how far ahead I’m ready to look. Not ready yet to think of the needs of this body years hence, the attention it will require, the stairs I will no longer be able to navigate. No, I want to linger here still in summer. In this summer where my body has done and is doing well. Its been a most wonderful, physical summer of hiking, running, biking, swimming. Even Meg, my CrossFit coach, says I’m slowly getting better! But the strings of change pull as well.  My sister is back at school, the kids in her classroom arrive next week. My niece finishes her internship today, a nephew starts grad school tomorrow. St. J. announces its Fall Festival.  

We ascend to broad granite ledges and a spectacular view of the mountains surrounding us. Out at the far edge of the blue hills, the Belknap Range in the Lakes Region where I spent much of July with my family at a cabin on Lake Winnisquam.  

Early this spring he asked me, How do you rest? In a life like many full of lists and things I need to do and want to do, stresses real and imagined, chasing imaginary demons, I have struggled to find the place, the time, the way of rest. I have many things I love to do and many pleasures that make up my day.  But rest?  Not so sure. 

This summer we encouraged each other at church to take a July sabbath month, to put down the meetings and open up time. At the lake with my family and at summer camp as a counselor I got up early each morning and swam and biked and ran my way to rest. My family didn’t understand how all this activity was actually rest. But it was. A gift of time to be time and in this body. 

It’s been a strange summer of fun, of presence, of not needing to do or prove or accomplish anything. And yet, how much I did. Races run, a course begun, commitments kept. And yet, writing and painting and reflecting and ruminating drift off. Instead, I’ve wanted to be here, to be present. I found out it out for a swim, here as I stretch and feel and sweat and ride. No, it wasn’t about the races though that gave an excuse and goal. This summer I didn’t want to be confined to what felt like the imprisonment of contemplation and thought.  

We descend a steep col and up to Dickey.  

“Excellent views for a modest effort” the AMC White Mountain Guide purports – but for sure, effort enough. I remember this steep cleft in the rock.  This place where I had to hoist myself up by grabbing the roots of the small tree. Remember this steep scramble. I wouldn’t call it modest.  Nothing of New England hiking is.  

Today, I wind back and forth along the edge of a steep ledge with nothing to grab on to to help pull me up.  A grateful offer of a hand from a descending young hiker. A strong grip and arm pull me up and over.  

“Who is rescuing who?” my friend’s paw print sticker asks.

We find each other in our need and questions. We are pulling each other up and through. 

A view north to the long ridge-line: The Kinsmans, Cannon, Lafayette where I hiked this late spring. Beyond them home. I feel more at home as I learn to recognize the lines of the neighboring peaks and ridges. Perhaps this the summer I learned to find home again.

It’s been a tricky and tragic summer of floods and heat and death, rain and rescues. Four hikers rescued off of Washington last week as rain turned to snow. Two separate drownings in the past week by parents trying to rescue their young children from babbling brooks turned to raging rivers with all the rain we’ve had.  The children survive, a young father and mother do not.  The challenge of what to do in an emergency – when to jump in, when to grab for a stick. How do you recover from trauma? The ongoing trauma of this world we are live in.  Maui.  How can there be 1000 missing people still?  The worst fire in modern American history.  

Meanwhile, a group of four bikers, and not all young 20-year-olds, haul their mountain bikes up the rocky trail to Dickey, the same bikers we’d seen earlier biking down Welch. Off on their own triumvirate, the first to do it.  

A surprise of a few stands of Jack Pine in New Hampshire that are usually found further north.  

Meanwhile, a trail to leave worn stories behind that opens into other wonder, questionsand discovery. Not so imprisoned in the comfort of the status quo we are ready to move on.  

You ask all the hard questions she says shaking her head annoyed or amused or exasperated. I’m not looking for an interrogation but I’m hungry and curious and I want to know why. 

Before moving on I want to look back and remember this summer. This summer I learned how to rest. This summer how I learned to be in time and learned to find again my way to joy. This summer I found my way home.

This summer of paradox and sorrow and death all around and this summer of resilience and life.  

The trees here on the cusp of turning, the promise of an especially beautiful fall with all the rain we’ve had.  The dark green turning of the tree to a golden green tint, a hint of red and orange.  

But not yet, summer still lingers.

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.  

Saturday, June 17 Happy Trails

I’m sad to see my friends go, and so grateful to have this day to rest and be in the weariness. 

It’s funny, I’m already missing the trail. I’ve never felt this way before.  

Sunday, June 18

I wake, missing the trail. The effort and challenge, the camaraderie, fun and laughs, the everything about life on the trail that has me longing for more.  

And so I turn my longing into planning our next trek. After talking with Dad today, I think I’ve figured out our next two week adventure next year to complete the AT across New Hampshire. We’ve got some challenging terrain and all new to me – the Wildcats, and Mahoosucs.  

Today, I’m reminded as I wander in the woods that the “Church of the Woods” is my kind of church. This gathering seated on stumps, this question that sends us out wandering in the woods and returning with sticks and stories, rocks and wonders to share.  It looks like it might rain.  If it does, we’ll move indoors. For now we linger here and it does not rain.  

Friday, June 16, 2023 Galehead to the Zealand Trail

The last day of our adventure which may be why I’m in a melancholy mood today. I’m not ready to be done. So my dreams run to everything I’m not done with yet and I toss ruminating, remembering, being hard on myself for choices I cannot change and decisions made for reasons I cannot see or understand. In other words, I don’t sleep well. It’s way too hot up here on the top bunk in the room draped with damp clothes and bunks full of sleeping hikers.  

I get up without banging my head (I am learning!) and step outside to a beautiful view down over the Pemi Wilderness and Garfield in the distance.  

I stretch and sip a luxurious cup of hot coffee. It’s warm, a gentle breeze. Yes, the black flies are out too to greet the morning but they’re not too bad.  

It’s funny I don’t remember now much of yesterday’s long hike.  The view from Garfield up at the fire tower base at Owl’s Head in the center of the valley.  Yes, the waterfall and swinging from trees. But so much of whatever was yesterday’s hard or too much, weariness and worn has drifted away in the morning fog.  

What is it to let things be, to let it all be. If I could I know I would be free. Free to be here, to be whole and happy, so very very happy. The hermit thrush calls. A sip of coffee. It’s so quiet and peaceful out here alone this morning after all the loud reverberating bustle of last night at the hut. 

I turn in to get packed and ready for the day.

There’s something wrong, something terribly wrong with the oatmeal this morning. UGH!  Its sour, its putrid, it’s, how could you ruin oatmeal?  My table mates say it is a bit strange but not too bad. My bowl is just bad. 

“Can you tell me what’s in the oatmeal?” I ask the young crew member.

She looks embarrassed, sheepish, “I let it cook too long.” Maybe.

My theory?  She put baking powder in the oatmeal that was meant for our delicious oatmeal scones….

It’s a long slow ascent up Twin but we are so glad we chose this direction to hike and that we are going up and not down. We reach the top of Twin and the trail turns flat. We patter away across the muck on broken and rotten boards, the kind of boardwalks we have found all through the Whites. (Vermont has much better planks on the trail!).

And yes, despite the rotten boards, it’s another beautiful trail, and rather a miracle. This little thin line of a trail we follow through the dense underbrush around us, this thin strip of safety and assurance winding us on our way home.  

We pass hikers in a hurry who don’t want to pause and talk and those who do. We keep plodding on. 

I feel so many things today. I look back on all that happened in me and my up and down of moods all week. This deep feeling of ease that fills me today. Nothing to fix or solve. Nothing to do but place one foot in front of the other. Letting things unfold as they will. Like I do this morning.  

The long descent to Zealand is not as bad as it appeared on the map. And yes, when we think we’re done and can’t descend anymore, we keep on going down, down, down. And with our descent, I grow weary of descending into what feels like another dark pit on this trail. But then in the distance, the rumble of Zealand Falls. Soon we cross the stream on smooth golden rocks. 

It is so beautiful here. Hope and joy return. And gratitude and love over our respite for afternoon tea and cookies on the porch of the hut.  

And yes, I’ve got nothing left of energy. I could spend all afternoon sauntering down the trail to the car. But we have a journey to complete. I will myself to energy I wasn’t sure I could find and step out briskly as we begin our 2.5 “Friendship Miles” out the Zealand Trail to the car. I shift into fourth gear and take off poles clicking, eyes down the trail. Unfortunately hiking with intention like this prevents me from counting lady-slippers. I trust there are still at least 67 along the way like we counted last week.  

I keep on going, can’t slow down or I know I will slow to a stall.  

On the way out we pass a young couple with their 4-year-old son leading the way.

“Hello Hiker!”

He’s very proud to be carrying his own pack and I share my delight that he is.

“He’s carrying his toys and stuffed animals,” his mom says, “Good training!”

I tell them that my parents took me into Zealand for the night when I was his age. Here I am a life-time or two later, and rediscovering that 4-year old joy of being out on the trail and in the woods carrying your own pack.

At last we make it to my car and head around to Franconia Notch to pick up Barb’s car and then back to my apartment for showers and a feast of hamburgers, fries and salad. Beyond delicious. A pile of laundry to do – tomorrow. For now, celebration and laughter.

After my shower, I reach up and touch my head. It’s all sticky. I take another quick rinse and sure enough my head is still sticky. Alas that bug repellent I lathered on this morning is “splash and sweat resistant” – I’m stuck with a sticky head for 12 more hours!  

We hiked something like 118 miles according to our Strava app. Pat counts 46.3 AT Miles in Vermont and 44 in New Hampshire. And yes, New Hampshire continues to hold her five most terrifying experiences on the AT:

Our Beaver Brook descent off Moosilauke last fall.

And this weeks,

• Waterfall descent between Greenleaf and Galehead.
• Two river crossings coming down from Lonesome Lake
• Descent down Jumping Jimmy’s from the Kinsman’s in the rain.  
• Descent from the snowy peak of Lafayette to the Greenleaf Hut.  

These places where Pat said she didn’t take many pictures because she was too busy trying to save her life! 

Thursday, June 15 – Greenleaf to Galehead: “The hardest stretch of the AT in the Whites”

We wake to sunshine breaking through thick clouds and a clear view of the summit of Lafayette. Watch as over the next hour the fog descends and we’re not able to see a thing outside. However, it looks like only a chance of rain and thunderstorms, which is often the forecast up here. The winds are down and temperatures up.

I step outside to stretch as the winter wren’s song goes on and on and on again. What a gift to wake to sun and clouds lit by what appears as an interior light.  

A hermit thrush’s plaintive call. The murmur of running water in the stream. Something stirs the water in the pond.  

The fog rolls in and the view is obscured in dense white fog.  

I have lived so many days like this pining for the clouds to part and the sun to shine bright. Today, I truly enjoy the wonder of the weather that is. It appears that the fog and cloud will come and go as will we.  

We set out and up.  At last through the mist, we come to the top of Lafayette and seek shelter from the wind again in the stone remnants of the hotel.  After a quick drink and snack, we’re soon off moving down to keep warm. The trail winds over the ridge by shadowy cairns in the fog and then descends into the dark woods below. Yes, everyone’s feeling good when we reach the Skookumchuck Trail. No need to choose this bail-out route. We’re committed now and head off to Galehead. 

It’s a long slow climb up Garfield. Pocket views along the way through the clouds in the valley below and of edge of the Pemi Ridge we’re following. 

On our descent, we pass a worn-out looking family of four. The two teenage girls tell us the worst part is ahead.

Around the next bend, a trail runner in shorts and tee shirt, water bottle in hand beams, “You’re almost there!”  (The hut in fact is three miles away.). 

I guess what’s ahead all depends on your perspective.  

We’re doing okay until the trail turns and a waterfall appears off to our right. I step across the stream to see where the trail leads on the other side.  No sign of a trail over here. As I turn back I see clearly the white blaze on the tree part way down the waterfall. You’ve got to be kidding – the trail can’t go down the waterfall. Of course, they are not kidding. 

You can stand and wait and overthink. Of you can grab hold of a tree, swing yourself around to the ledge below and work down tree hold by tree hold from there. All the while water rushing beside you over glossy slick rocks. 

Pat later says it’s the second most scary thing she’s experienced on the AT.  The most scary, the Beaver Brook Trail off of Moosilauke which she and I slowly descended over four hours last fall.  We both slipped and sat hard that afternoon and Pat took a true rolling tumble. This precipitous trail, the roar of the waterfall has both of us back there on Beaver Brook.

Thankfully, we all make it down safely. Then head up and down and down and up through the trees and a long ascent up to what I sure hope is the Galehead Hut. Instead, at the crest of the ridge, a view of what sure looks like a hut on the ridge beyond us.  So down and up we go again and half an hour later arrive weary and wet.  

The hut is packed tonight. 40-something wet guests crammed into the narrow bunk rooms. We each find a bunk, change out of our wet gear and go in search of something to eat. 

Lasagna loaded with cheese, slabs of thick garlic bread, an abundant salad and over-the-top massive and delicious oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. We each stash one away for our hike tomorrow.  

I am beyond exhausted but play cards to stay awake for a bit before heading to bed. Sullen, sweaty, quiet, worn through. One more day and our great adventure comes to a close.  Perhaps that’s why I’m so worn. Or perhaps because we left before 8 this morning and arrived here at 4:45. All day I watched my moods go up and down, my mind chase passing clouds and glimmers of bright sun.  

The bunk room is stuffy with 12 of us packed in the long narrow room. Especially stuffy up here on the top bunk. But I’m lying down and warm and wouldn’t want to be anyplace else. 

Is it the hardest part of the AT in the Whites? If so, we did it. If not, we can meet the challenge. 

Wednesday, June 14 – Back AT It: Friendship Miles 

We wake to a promising forecast. For sure a chance of showers and thunderstorms but its warmer than last week. It looks again like we’ll we’ll have limited views.  

Last night we got reservations for Greenleaf tonight and Galehead tomorrow night. The last four bunks at Galehead. Looks like some big group is there.  We’ll head up this morning and try again to make it across the ridge.  

“Aren’t we supposed to be doing laundry now?” Pat asks.  

Oh yes, it is 6am as we linger over coffee. No rest for the weary, we have mountains to climb and laundry to do.

We leave my car at the end of the Zealand Trail where hopefully we’ll return in three days to find it. Park Barb’s car at the bottom of the Old Bridle Path and head up. We know this trail as we came down this way when we bailed off Greenleaf a week ago. 

As we start off into the woods, we recall these parts of the trail where it seems feasible that a donkey or horse could climb this trail. Then we reach the points where it seems truly impossible for a donkey to have clamored up. It’s challenging enough for us and we have only two feet.  

We make it to the hut in time to enjoy afternoon hot bowls of lentil soup, cups of hot tea and chocolate cake.  So delicious.  Everything is delicious about being here again especially since this afternoon we can actually see the top of Lafayette and the Franconia Ridge we walked on through fog, sleet and snow a week ago. The forecast for tomorrow looks cautiously optimistic.  

I watch hikers coming down off the ridge – appearing so small as they descend off Lafayette, and then appear like giants as they walk amidst the small trees surrounding down to the hut.  

As for Pat, no new mileage on the AT today, its all been “Friendship Miles” to get us here, a term she is learning to despise!  

We lounge at the long wood tables, benches worn smooth by so many guests. Look up birds and plants we saw on the way. Explore inaturalist and learn about the symbiosis between lichens and rocks.  

Listen in on the comforting familiarity of the same talk about the hut we’d heard last week. 

I realize that I am so tired. I should stretch. Stretch.

Dinner of tomato soup, pulled pork, mashed potatoes, beans and peach cake for dessert. How can I not feel extravagantly blessed!  

Over dinner I talk with the man beside me who hiked the AT several years ago with his son.

How did it change you?, I ask.

I’m a swimming coach and I now spot and celebrate small victories like I never saw or appreciated before – like a good flip turn, a particularly good stroke. Small victories got me through the long hike.  

Saturday, June 10 – Happy Hills

Its another world over here – from New Hampshire’s rocky and steep to Vermont’s smooth dirt trails, with a dusting of soft pine needles.

We park one car at the end of our 2-day hike ahead of us and leave another car here in the lot in Hanover that says they’ll tow us if the car is left overnight. It’s the same lot where Pat and I got dropped off last fall when we hiked from Hanover up and over Moosilauke. The Dartmouth police say we won’t get towed here though we might lose our catalytic converter.  We’ll take the risk. It’s far too convenient. We take pictures on the bridge over the Connecticut River, the border between New Hampshire and Vermont. We head up the sidewalk and into the woods.  

We clip along and half an hour later we’re delighted to see we’ve already done a mile. Towering white pine but alas no flowers, no lady slippers here. I’m missing the color and beauty of the Zealand trail. It’s truly a different world and woods over here. As I remember, two different continents joining here at the Connecticut River, the New Hampshire side and White Mountains torn off from Scotland meeting the original continent containing Vermont. Vermont’s limestone truly makes the grass greener over here than in the Granite State.  

Today I’ve chosen a better lunch. I’m weary of my handful of nuts and dry protein bar while my friends munch on tuna or peanut butter sandwiches. Today I’ve followed their lead once again, as I do with so many of my hiking choices, and bring a burrito shell sandwich stuffed with cheese, avocado and tomato. One squashed messy delicious mess of a sandwich.  

We pass Taylor the NoBo through-hiker who is among those Pat follows on You-Tube. Pat says Taylor eats crap and gets a lot of crap about her dietary choices. As she bounds away behind us at a brisk clip,  it doesn’t look like her diet is affecting her stamina.  

At last, 5:00 and here lying in the tent sweaty and sticky. We found this site at the top of a rise in the trees. Before dinner we wander out into the field above our site, find the little bench. Like so many fields we’ve walked through today, yet another beautiful view over distant hills.   

And at the edge of the field the one flower we’ve seen today. The “Jack” of the Jack-in-the-Pulpit gets lots of titters from the women.  

Sunday, June 11 – Light and Fast

The conversation on the trail today is all about the choices between going light and fast versus heavy and slow. The kind of choices that can lead to life or death decisions on the trail.  

Those who will run into wet and cold out here (like we have all week!) have to find the balance between having the right stuff you need to survive (remember those 10 essentials – not the 25 essentials?) and having a light-enough pack to keep moving and stay warm when the weather turns.  

The forecast today bodes warm. A passing hiker joins our conversation. He asks his hiking buddy if he’d rather be hot or wet?  “Definitely wet!” he says, “I can’t stand this heat!”. 

 Today we get it all: hot and sweaty-wet!  

The other question on the trail today is whether we call it today when we reach our car and give into the inevitability of a forecast that has rain and cold everywhere on the AT from Maine to Vermont. 

Another NoBo through-hiker passes. Pat is ecstatic to see Frizzle and gives her a big hug. She loves her you-tube postings, her spunk and perspective.  

Speaking of perspective, around the bend ahead we come to another grassy field with a ripple of blue hills in the distance. I look down and see the small pointy green leaves of wild strawberries and a few white and pale red berries.  We step off the trail to look for more and find a patch of bright red berries.  Like every other fruit or vegetable you can buy in the grocery store, wild strawberries are a completely different fruit than store-packaged strawberries. Tiny little berries that are packed with flavor and oh so sweet.

I devour handfuls stem and all. We also gather handfuls for Barb who has gone on ahead of us.  Unfortunately, our berries never quite make it to her before they turn ever more salty in our hands and disappear into our mouths. 

Speaking of sweet, we pass mysterious lines of blue, black and clear tubing strung around trees. Jen tells us they are in fact lines for maple syrup. She tells us that every season they have to go over the lines inch by inch to check for places where mice may have bitten through.  

My morning energy tires to slow. Yesterday we passed Podunk Road, an Algonquin word for “mired in mud”.  It’s how I feel – tired, perhaps more tired than any other day. The Vermont trails, smooth as they are, seem to go straight up the hills. I’m eating, drinking but nothing seems to help. We cross a stream and I sit with my feet in the cool water while eating lunch.  That helps. Also devouring my second squashed avocado, tomato and cheese sandwich. So delicious! I feel better.

We have just one hill left between us and the car. We start up Dana Hill when the couple who passed us with the little brown furry dog come back down the trail towards us wide-eyed. “We saw a bear cub on the trail and heard the mother breathing in the bushes. We’re headed around and up the road.”

We have no such luxury of going around and up the road. We are here to hike the AT and we need these miles. So we turn to loud, very loud, exuberant singing as we ascend Dana Hill with my favorite preschool song that I teach my hiking companions,

I’m dressing myself what is this here?

These are my underpants my darling dear.  

Underpants, underpants rinky dinky doo 

That’s no way to a party!”  

The song continues with socks and pants, shirts and shoes, and everything else you need to dress yourself and keep the aforementioned bear away.

On the other side of Dana Hill we meet the couple and their dog. They tell us they’d heard us singing as they walked down the road and yes, met a big bear sprinting across the road in front of them. Our singing our way through was a great success. No bear and AT miles complete.

As we reach the end of our hike and Barb’s car we have our priorities right. First, head for ice cream and the amazing “Vermont Maple Creamy” made of course with real Vermont milk and maple. Beyond delicious.

We also make a second delectable choice. It’s supposed to pour tonight and while we have talked about staying at the lean-to a mile up the trail from here, the idea of staying at a motel sounds even more delightful. So we’re off for hot showers followed by burgers and brew at the Long Trail Brewery. Perfectly decadent. So wonderful.  

I learn alas that the brewery will not in fact offer me a free tee-shirt if I return with proof of actually completing the Long Trail. 

Monday, June 12 – SlackPack

Barb decides that she will take a day off today and visit with a friend in Woodstock. She’ll sherpa us over to our trailhead and pick us up at the end of the day. And we’ll take full advantage of leaving most of our belongings and everything that is heavy behind us at the motel. Since it’s supposed to pour again tonight and tomorrow morning, we’ll treat ourselves to another night with a real roof over our heads!  So good! 

We’re planning to hike east and back to the road where we ended yesterday. However, the challenge of actually finding our way to the trailhead is its own mis-adventure as our alleged Google-maps “shortcut” turns into a “Class 4 road”, rough and impassable. On a bike ride last month we found ourselves on a “Class 5 road” which must mean “left to return to woods” as we had to lift our bikes and carry them over several downed trees across the road.  

I’m so happy out here on the trail today. Where does such happiness come from?  Is it the swing of the beautiful smooth trail, the surprise of a cloudy day without the expected rain, the immersion in woods? Is it the convergence here of what brings us joy – movement, nature, beauty, companionship and solitude? Is it the simplicity of one foot in front of the other? Of eating when you are hungry? It comes for sure from spotting eight lady slippers in the first mile of the trail, our first sightings in Vermont.   

So Yes! to the marvelous restoration of sleep and waking in a warm hotel with dry clothes. Yes! to slackpacking and Yes! to the anticipation of another night at the motel and not out in the rain. This is not a bad way to travel!

I ponder ease and the invitation to relax into the moment. Letting things evolve as they will.

Express yourself completely,

Then keep quiet.

Be like the forces of nature:

When it blows, there is only wind;

When it rains, there is only rain;

When the clouds pass, the sun shines through.

(The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 23, Stephen Mitchell translation) 

We pause, listen to the silence.  

My tracking silence and serenity is interrupted by my own frantic yelp when I look over to see the gray face off the side of the trail which I mistake for a bear. 

Said face is thankfully not a bear but Martha the through-hiker sitting in the grass and taking a break.  Martha tells me she started out on the trail several years ago after the end of a long marriage. “I followed the only thing I wanted to do, to hike the trail.” Somewhere along the way she broke her foot and she’s now back to complete her trek north. She’s in no hurry, hence, sitting here off the trail under the tree. “The trail has already worked its healing in me and jumpstarted me to a new chapter in life.” We talk about the joy of the trail, the wonder of being in your 60’s. 

We stop for lunch at a small cabin that has a long ladder leading up to a little platform on the roof. And yes, a most gorgeous view of the surrounding green hills. I munch determinedly on my apple determined not to think about being on the roof and how much weight this little rooftop platform can hold and if through-hiker Dirt, Pat, Jen and I will soon tumble to the ground. Unable to stop thinking about how high up we are and how much I hate heights I clammer down the ladder to the safety of the ground below.

All afternoon it’s like this, tracking my moods up and down, down and up. Like troughs and crests of waves my mood swings.  It’s funny how these feelings follow us and are all so fickle and fleeting. I was comforted last month to talk to a couple of hikers who shared that they too tracked their feelings of rumination, despair, delight and joy as they plodded down the trail. We move on, move through. The moods come and go.  No feeling is final. (Rilke)  

It looks on the map that the trail is all downhill from here. But no, not true. Instead the trail winds up and down, up and down when we think we’re done with up.  

Trail runners bound past in skimpy shorts and teeshirts as we lumber on with our slack packs. 

Late that afternoon we meet Barb and return to beautiful Woodstock, Vermont. Woodstock was bought by the Rockefeller’s and restored to look like an idyllic New England village that in fact never existed. The town green complete with green grass and bandstand that would in fact have been a grazing spot for cows. The whole town would have had a particularly pungent stink instead of the waft of fresh baked bread and roasted coffee that fills the streets today. It’s a wonderful Vermont version of Disney World and a fabulous place to stop again for ice cream!  

All of the New England landscape has been shaped by disturbance. From farming to fires, hurricanes to lumbering. And yes, by the invention of an idealized place like Woodstock that never existed.

But this truly exists: tonight’s scrumptious salmon salad at the drive-in staffed by five women from Jamaica. So many surprises along the way, so many wonders to meet.  

Tuesday, June 13 – Vermud

Our choice of staying a second night at the motel is a most wonderful choice as we wake to pounding rain. A perfect day to linger in bed until it stops. However, others in our group have other ideas. It’s supposed to clear in an hour, so we best get ready now so we can hit the trail. No time for another delicious breakfast at the diner next door like we had yesterday where we met Madolyn who is off on an adventure to hike at least 4 miles in every state. She’s off today to Boothbay Harbor and we filled her with oodles of ideas of where to walk and what to see. 

Barb will drop us off at the dirt road where we began our hike yesterday. We’ll hike the five miles up and over Quimby Mountain and meet her on the other side this afternoon. 

“This is it!” I call out when we round the bend to what appears to be a parking lot. Alas, as Barb drives away to meet us at the close of the day, it is soon clear that this is not in fact the parking lot where she had left us off yesterday. Instead, we’ll discover it’s a good mile or so up the road where Pat, Jen and I are now trudging. 

As we ascend Quimby, we meet two women in bright pink who offer us trail magic candy bars and peanuts. The hiker with hands wrapped for arthritis tells us that she would have been the oldest hiker to complete the AT this year.  Alas, she had fallen earlier and broken something.  Now healed, they’ll go as far as they can this year before stepping back into it next year.  I hear so many stories out her of all the physical and emotional weights these hikers carry and I wonder how I can complain! And yet, here I am complaining as I slip and flop into the mud. Around the bend, a second time. Ugh.  Another loud groan, the kind that accompany me along the trail as I step up and over a downed tree or up a steep trail. UGH!  OOOF!  OUCH!  

Mud-spattered and groaning, I am passed by two 60-something year old hikers who exude vibrancy. As they bound by with a wave, I ponder vibrancy and from whence it comes. All the pictures of me on the trail show a worn and weary face. As Pat stops for a picture of the three of us, I slap my cheeks, open my eyes wide. All to no avail I see, I still look worn out. I’ll never make the cover of Backpacking Magazine. 

“Great day out here isn’t it!”, yet another buoyant and bounding hiker cheers as he passes us by.

At long last we reach Barb and she decides to join us for the last five miles of the day. Before we take off for our afternoon ramble, a stop for sandwiches at a deli in Killington. The special for the day is a ham, cheese and salami sub with a long list of other things on it as well. Yes, of course we’ll have that. And a bag of chips, a donut, iced tea too, thank you very much.  The women open their sandwiches and remark that they have enough here for lunch and dinner. I inhale mine, all of it.  And the donut. I’m already thinking of dinner and the wonder of how it can be I can eat all this and still not be full.  

The trail ahead looks promising on the map – a winding beautiful and fairly flat trail by a pond, passing through a state park. The hiker we pass remembers that it’s a good trail ahead although it is also quite clear that he’s not very clear about much of the terrain he just passed through. 

Once more, I slip and plop down hard on the mud. 

Ahead we hear, Thundering Falls. So beautiful, some of the most beautiful falls I’ve ever seen, sparkling white cascades down dark rock.  

A text message that Mom has pneumonia, dad a respiratory infection. I’ll call them, check in later today.  Feel powerless with nothing I can do for them. A sharp pang of grief, a twitter of anxiety as I feel the angst of not knowing what to do when there is nothing to be done. There’s a life question to ponder. I return to being present, with each footstep to take, each tree to grab along on the trail.  

The trail ends at the foot of Killington where hopefully someday we’ll return and complete our next section of the trail heading south.  

But today, we’re headed home to Littleton this afternoon, where we’ll devour a pizza and salad dinner, and figure out what’s next. After hot showers and the promise of clean clothes, we determine that we don’t need to head off to Maine to find better weather but that in fact the Whites look more promising. We’ll head back up to Greenleaf tomorrow and see if its possible to complete our trek over to Galehead Hut and then down to Zealand and out the next day.

Friday, June 9 – Zero Day 

Oh, the joy of a zero day! A day to stop, rest and recover. We meet up down the street from my apartment at the Crumb Bum coffee shop to cheer Tara off at the start of a 357 mile bike race through northern New Hampshire and Maine. It’s once again drizzly and gray. As we cheer them down the road, we begin to ponder our plans. The weather doesn’t look promising if sun is what we are after. Do we head over to Maine? Does Pat bag it and head home? We agree to meet for lunch and mull over what-if and make a plan.

45 minutes later a text from Jen. They have a plan and are headed to Polly’s for breakfast. Want to join us? Over pancakes, which is always a good thing to decide things over, a decision is made to head to Vermont. Reading the weather angels, it sounds like the best chance for sun and safety is on the trail in Vermont and not the slippery rocks of New Hampshire.  

I go home after stopping at the spring to get water, lie on the couch, ponder my notes on the trail, and finish reading a book on another hiker’s journey on the AT. Fall asleep.

Lots of laughter over dinner, yet another fabulous meal at Roger and Marsha’s. We are off tomorrow at 7 and headed to Hanover. We have a good plan for the first two days and we’ll see what happens after that.