123:
The day starts with a climb. A long, moderate ascent up Mount Killington. I excel at these types of things and honestly, I'm looking forward to it.
My stomach still churns and bubbles and I feel pretty shitty, but the cadence of my feet quickly lulls me into a sort of reverie, and I can ignore the serpent in my intestines.
Before long I'm at the top, and I feel like the climb was total chump change. I forget that I'm a total badass hiker sometimes. The mountain is covered in fog or mist or clouds or whatever it is that literally every mountain with a "good view" on the AT is consumed by.
Regardless, the alpine vegetation is pretty awesome, a nice change from the constant suffocating feel of dense forest at lower elevations.
The rest of the day is a race to our "last box". What I mean is that it's the last box we sent ourselves before our hike, but we have to make a bunch more once we get into Hanover, New Hampshire.
By late afternoon we pick up our boxes at a lodge literally right off the trail, and without having anything better to do, decide to hitch into Rutland to stay at The Yellow Deli.
I'd heard a lot of rumors about this particular place and the Twelve Tribes people who run it ("it's a cult! don't drink the punch!"), but honestly, to me, it was a sort of sanctuary.
Yeah, it's run by a religious group, and yeah, they seem a bit weird in the way they dress and act, but in all seriousness, I would trade every baptist in the world for a twelve tribes member. I don't claim to know everything about their religion, but I do know several things. One, they never ministered to me. Two, they were insanely nice and accommodating. And three, they want almost nothing in return.
I'm getting ahead of myself.
Our hitch into Rutland is weird and our driver says some weird borderline racist stuff and I'm more uncomfortable hitching than I have been this entire hike, but he drops us off right at the hostel and I never have to speak to him again. Awesome.
Upon arrival at the hostel we're immediately approached by a girl with her hair tied back tight wearing what I can only call "pantaloons". She looks as if she's a big fan of Little House on the Prairie. She offers us mate and we decline after finding out that they add honey to almost everything. The hostel is upstairs and the deli is downstairs, but there's no distinction between the two.
Turns out that the "punch" here is actually mate. You know, the really strong South American tea that you drink out of a gourd? I'm not real sure why, but all of the other hikers act like they don't know what mate is and think it's gross. Also turns out that the Twelve Tribes own their own mate company, Mate Factor, and in addition to tea they make a variety of other mate products.
I digress. The point is, I order a mate latte with almond milk from their deli and it blows my mind. Maybe it's just been awhile since I've had some good mate but damn it's good. I understand why they basically worship this stuff now.
After consuming too much caffeine, I shower and put on the loaner clothes provided by the deli so we can do laundry. They're at least three sizes too big and so I roll my cuffs up, feeling a lot like a hobbit.
There's an overwhelming amount of hikers at the deli at this point, much too many to fit practically anywhere, so I end up sleeping in an overflow room behind the deli. Me and Stevie have to walk through their kitchen to get in and out of the room, and you'd think this would irritate or annoy employees, but they have a seemingly endless amount of patience for us.
I can't eat anything at the deli (vegan, gluten free, ya know), so I end up getting a frozen pizza from the grocery store, popping it into a microwave (sacreligious, I know), and scarfing it in my secret room behind the kitchen. Content and comfortable, I pass out still wearing my Frodo clothes.
124:
It's morning and the hostel providers have been up since probably 4:00 am making food for all 47 hikers.
We take over their entire restaurant and they literally serve us hand and food. Knowing that they won't have food for me and not wanting to be difficult I try to get some coffee without making a fuss, but of course one of the Twelve Tribes members notices me bumbling about without any food and makes it his personal mission to find something for me to eat. It takes him awhile and I feel awful, this man running around on my behalf, and he produces a vegan gluten free cereal and almond milk and bananas. Wow, he did it.
I get sucked into the vortex of town easily, spending way too long at the health food store down the street, and miss the first bus back out to the trail. Eventually though, we make it back, but it's already afternoon and we know we don't have much time to do huge miles, so we stop early at a place ambiguously named The Lookout.
The Lookout turns out to be a fully enclosed cabin with a rooftop deck. It's crazy badass and privately owned, and once again I wonder what kind of people spend this much time and money just for dirty hiker scum like us.
Some other hikers are already milling about, most of whom we know. It's very apparent that the hiker herds are thinning out quite dramatically. Which is nice. Not because I relish in others' failure, but because I value solitude and I'm not crazy stoked on trails and shelters filled to the brim with "hiker trash". A term that I don't really find endearing.
125:
As we near New Hampshire, the trail becomes increasingly difficult, and it's obvious. The elevation profile looks like a stegosaurus's spine, perhaps a small taste of what's to come.
There's also a lot of this:
Which can slow you down pretty dramatically.
Regardless, we march forward, pausing only to eat some snacks from a nearby farm (blueberries, rhubarb soda, pickles) and dodge some afternoon storms. Unfortunately the afternoon storms turn into evening storms and instead of hiking in the rain (which is complete and total misery) we wait it out, opting to night hike (which isn't much better when your headlamp totally sucks and you're in a crazy dark forest on a trail filled with roots and rocks).
Ghost pipe, a parasitic plant with no chlorophyll:
In the aftermath of the rain, me and Stevie trudge forward through trails completely covered in rain soaked vegetation, and quickly become just as soaked (negating our efforts to stay dry).
It's not all bad though. We're walking towards a massive rainbow, unobscured by foliage. It arcs into the ground somewhere in the distance, vivid and sharp, and I can't help but think the end is somewhere in New Hampshire, our metaphorical pot of gold. Some deer lope by through the dense, tall grass, and seem more like unicorns from Fantasia in the rainbow strewn gathering orange of evening.
Soon enough it's night, and an hour or two later we arrive in a small town on the edge of Vermont. There's literally nothing there except a place to tent and a water spigot. On the roadwalk in, however, Hollywood (fellow hiker) runs up on me and Stevie from a nearby house. She says the locals are having a party and there's food and beer and... Wait a minute, you guys can't eat any of it and you don't drink huh?
So we move on.
In town we find that Cheyanne somehow found a free "hostel" for AT hikers (aka garage apartment with some old beds) and better yet, there's a tv, VCR, and seemingly endless supply of VHSes (seriously, this place must also be a museum of bad 90s movies). She's already watching Jurassic Park, so we join in and fall asleep long before the plot even gets anywhere.
126:
Ten miles into Hanover. A good chunk is a roadwalk. Supposedly there's lots of trail magic to be found on the way in, but I don't see much of that. Must be because it's crazy early on Sunday. The only trail "magic" we get is an old man on a front porch yelling at us, "God bless Oklahoma!" he exclaims when we announce where we're from.
So just like that, we're in New Hampshire. The next two days will be full of errands, buying groceries, building boxes, and mailing ourselves the rest of our resupplies.
We picked Hanover for this endeavor because it has a lot of stores (including a coop), and is a "real" town.
First things first though. Thai food and espresso.
Afterwards we hitch into West Lebanon (where our hotel is) and spend the rest of the night watching bad movies on HBO, a favorite past time of ours when in town.
