Day 120: Even if it destroys me.

120:

I've been playing phone tag with the hospital back in Bennington all week. They'll call and leave me a voicemail with no real information... So I'll call them back (from a mountain top most often, the irony of thruhiking is that reception is best up high) and they'll ask if they can call me back... And I'll say no, I live in the woods... And they'll say, oh okay... And then the cycle repeats itself three or four more times that day. So no results yet.

In the meantime, I pick up some more witch potions (tinctures) from Manchester Center, VT, where we spend most the day, trying to figure out our resupply.

Honestly, I'm a hundred thousand times more comfortable taking tinctures than pharmaceuticals, but I just want someone to tell me what's wrong with me.

I've come to the realization that thruhiking is inherently self destructive. Or maybe it's not thruhiking, maybe it's the obsessive personality that allows someone like me to finish a task or complete a goal regardless of the consequences to their own health and well being. I'm a person of extremes, and I don't really believe in compromise, especially not with commitments (like the one I made to myself to finish this trail).

So I will (I will!) finish this trail. 

Even if I totally destroy myself in the process. Just wait and see.

Our hike out of Manchester Center is short and steep, and I love it, even if I don't feel totally up to par.

Apparently we're climbing to the top of a ski resort, and near the top the trail busts out into a ski slope. It's still insanely steep and I can't help but fantasize about snowboarding (which I haven't done in years, snowboarding that is, not fantasizing).

Then it happens. I turn around, and unobstructed by trees or foliage are mountains. Huge, beautiful mountains. My god, how I've missed you.

Our camp tonight is on top of Bromley, the ski resort of which I spoke, inside a ski hut.

The top of this mountain is basically a bald, and the views are incredible, regardless of the spaceship (ski lift).

The hut is fully enclosed (so luxurious) and it soon attracts every hiker in the area, sobo, nobo, long trail, whatevs.

Me, Stevie, and Cheyanne take over a small room that is maybe a pantry in the winter months, and I fall asleep to the sound of southbounders playing Egyptian ratscrew (card game), in which they slap the shit out of the table. It's frustrating, but whatever, I'll never see any of them again.