Day 139: Meese is plural for moose.

I sleep poorly because I never closed up the footbox on my quilt and my body heat escaped all night. The nights are getting noticeably more chill. Not chill as in Mathew McConaughey but chill as in my face is frozen so I cover it with a bandana.

The first four miles down into the notch are smooth sailing, a little victory lap for jumping up and down treacherous, sharp boulders for the last week.

Along the way I run into Haulin' Oats, a quirky thruhiker with strange mannerisms who I honestly like a lot more than most. She's standing down the way exaggeratedly mouthing "MOOSE" at me.

Oh dang, I pause my Neil Degrasse Tyson podcast and sneak forward, and sure enough, a moose momma and baby, meese if you will, are basically eating trees. It's mega loud which makes sense since they're megafauna. I mutter a silent prayer for all of the megafauna that humans have forced into extinction, take a few blurry pictures, and head out before momma moose decides I'm too close to baby.

Out of the notch is our last section of the Whites, referred to as the Wildcats. Why? I don't really know, but the first climb out is mean as hell. Sometimes "rock scramble" just doesn't cut it. The trail is, at times, a straight up hand over hand, pull your body weight up with your arms, rock climb. But I love it.

I'm feeling pretty good and I've learned to really appreciate these moments. I just want to be healthy and injury free, I could give a damn how hard the trail is, just get me back to 100 percent and I'll crush anything you put in my way.

Obviously whatever is going on with my stomach isn't affecting my athleticism too much because I literally run up the side of the mountain, and all the way up I'm wondering if there's a foot race like this somewhere in the world, more vertical than horizontal. That'd be fun. I should look into it.

I get to the top and find a bunch of tourists just milling around. God damnit. There's a gondola ride to the top, and I'm actually standing at the top of a ski resort. Ugh.

I wait around on top, listen to the soothing narration of Neil Degrasse Tyson talk about science and science related humor and at some point, I fall asleep.

Hours later I wake up to find Stevie standing over me. Shit, it's already 3:00 and we've got a ways to go.

We make it another five miles, the trail never lets up on us, and it doesn't look like we're gonna make it much father than the next the hut. So we hobble in wondering whether or not we should try to stealth or do work for stay. Then they feed us potato dill soup and it's decided. Y'all got some more of that? We'll definitely do work for stay.

This time though we actually have do some real work. Dun dun dun! So what do we do? Clean the range. Well shit, I've only been a line cook for most of my adult life. I'm so pro at cleaning commercial stoves that I actually enjoy it. So we go beast mode on the range, steel wool held akimbo before me and the process is therapeutic. I miss the rituals of real life, especially those related to food.

After, we go beast mode on some soup, broccoli, and salad. The black bean soup isn't as good as the potato dill, and the broccoli is half steamed/half raw, but I can't say anything bad about the salad and regardless of whatever, real food is tasty.

Turns out the dudes working this hut just finished the trail and they shoot the shit with us for a little bit about AT related crap. How hard the trail is in Maine, how the hell did Scott Jurek hike on two hours of sleep every night, never listen to a southbounder, etc.

Then, we sleep, once again blowing up our pads between the dining room tables, swearing that tomorrow we'll make up for our "low" mileage today.