Day 112: Sometimes you just do things.

112:

The AT at this point looks like a lot of this:

And some of this:

And even some of this:

But today we stopped at a magical place, a place called Upper Goose Pond Cabin. This may very well be the highlight of the AT in Massachusetts.

Upper Goose Pond Cabin is a relatively new (20 year old) fully enclosed cabin with a propane gas powered range. It has its own caretaker (during summer months) and they (whoever they may be at the time) are extremely amazing. They get you spring water, wash your dishes, provide you with hot water for coffee and tea, and they'll even make you pancakes (obviously not vegan, so we didn't partake).

Needless to say, hikers flock to this spot to live out our wildest hedonistic fantasies and sleep in a mosquitoless bunkroom on a vinyl mattress. Luxurious, we know.

But the cabin isn't the dopest part of Upper Goose Pond, it's the pond itself. The cabin comes equipped with canoes and kayaks and you're welcome to boat or swim at your leisure. The water is so clear you can see probably ten feet down, and it's so warm that the surface is something akin to lukewarm bathwater.

There's a chessboard at the cabin that someone sharpied onto a piece of wood, so me and Cheyanne have at it. Before long we've attracted the attention of an older fellow (section hiker and thruhike alumni) who unbeknownst to me, is the Chess Master. He promptly whoops my ass and explains, "I just got lucky." Then his twenty something year old daughter challenges me to a game and I accept, embracing myself for another methodical evisceration. Through some sort of weird fluke, I win, and regain some of my injured pride, but I'm a smug asshole and tell her, "I just got lucky".

I'm the last of the fourteen thruhikers up to the bunkroom. It's 10:30, but I still can't sleep, so I read for about an hour, finally finishing my book, Eat and Run by Scott Jurek. 

There's a part where he talks about what it takes to be an ultramarathon runner, the mental fortitude, the physical prowess, the dedication to discipline, but mostly about the will to achieve something great. To push your mind and your body to complete and total exhaustion and then to just... keep going. He repeats a mantra that his dad nailed into him throughout his childhood, "sometimes you just do things", and applies it to his experiences with running.

And I realize, on the most basic level, a thruhike can be explained in similar fashion.

Sometimes you walk 2189.2 miles, sometimes you live in a tent for six months, sometimes you soak dehydrated beans in a titanium cup and squeeze ketchup packets on them to disguise how gross it is to eat the same thing every day for months at a time.

Sometimes you push yourself to your mental and physical limits and then you just keep going.

Sometimes you just do things.