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.

Day 138: Presidential tint.

The Yellow Deli drives us back over to Pinkham Notch the following morning and it's up to us to figure out how to make it back up to the top of Washington.

The bad news is that we're going to have to attempt to hitch which is still hella illegal (because then the AMC won't make any money off of us, big freakin' whoop). So we sneakily walk past the auto road gate and over to a convenience store where Stevie starts slyly soliciting rides from people who literally just paid at least 30 dollars to drive seven miles on a road.

A nice older couple has a pick up and we explain our situation to them, to which they decide, yes, they will give a ride. But first they have to ask permission from the Gatekeeper. Oh no, we're so gonna get in trouble. But luck is smiling on us this day, and the old man says, "Oh no, they aren't soliciting rides, I just offered to help them out" and then we're in the back of a truck on a dirt road climbing about five thousand feet.

The weather is perfect. It's super clear and this is quite possibly the most badass way to ride up to the top of Mount Washington.

At the top the couple takes pictures with us, gives us a business card, and tells us to stay in touch. Damn, sometimes people are just insane nice.

Back to business. It's time to do the Presidential Peaks, and I'm hella stoked.

The trail is a hellish haphazard piecing together of sharp jagged boulders and talus, but I ignore that. I'm too busy thinking about how much better it is to be above tree line than it is to be below it.

The day is beautiful and we can see about seventy miles in all directions and as we go I frequently turn back and trace our path with my finger.

The real challenge is Mount Madison, a steep poorly blazed boulder scramble and I begin to think of it as a "choose your own adventure" trail since I can't really follow a nonexistent blaze. We up and over and just like that, we're done with the Presidentials. Unfortunately the downhill is wicked steep, a field of massive boulders that seem sturdy enough until you put your full body weight on one, only to feel its 20,000 pounds of mass rock beneath your feet. It was scary y'all.

After going back down thousands of feet in a real short amount of time, we decide to cowboy camp on a tent platform since there's not really any good place to stay. The Whites never have any good places to camp, in all honestly. It's either do work for stay at a hut or pay eight bucks to sleep in a shelter that "maybe leaks" the caretaker tells us. Sweet.

But the weather seems like it's going to hold up through the night, so we take our chances, lay our pads out sardine style on a pad, and hope that moose don't trample us to death in our sleep.

Day 136, 137: Dodgin' rain.

136: 

Our hitch out of Conway is a former thruhiker (AT twice, PCT once). He lives out of his van and I can't help but think my future will be extremely similar to his.

My dad gets off before us to make his way up to Tuckerman Ravine, a shorter, albeit very steep hike to Mount Washington out of Pinkham Notch (4000 feet in 4 miles). We have an unceremonious goodbye, as all goodbyes end up being on the trail even though I haven't seen my dad in over a year and potentially that could happen again. But the trail does that to you. You never know when you'll see another hiker again, so goodbyes are almost nonexistent. It's grown on me.

Regardless, my dad has been a pillar throughout my life. An immutable source of strength, the foundation on which I build all my endeavors. Beyond being intelligent, athletic, and above all capable, he's always been there to instill that same wealth of confidence in me. Having him around for a few days allowed me to silence the anxiety surrounding my unknown illness and just put faith in my own abilities. Abilities that my dad has never doubted, even if I have. So it feels like a loss, but the recoil of the loss will propel me forward these last few weeks.

A few hours later and we're making our way up the not-so-gradual climb to Mount Washington. We've been trying to play the weather, and it seems like it might be in our favor, but with very few options of where to camp, we end up doing work for stay at the Mizpah Hut.

The AMC allows thruhikers to do work for stay on a hut to hut basis, and so you're kind of at the mercy of the employees at a particular hut. This particular hut ends up being very amiable and they have us sweep the basement, which we make quick work of. They attempt to feed us, but we're vegan and I'm gluten free so I basically just end up eating salad with no dressing. Cheyanne and Stevie get some minestrone soup and some bread. Sometimes I'm really jealous of stupid things like this (hiker hunger is real y'all) but the soup is from a bag and the bread was made by some chump with no baking experience, so I'm not so disappointed.

The employees end up trying to talk to us all freaking night (or you know, past 9:00) and I'm falling asleep standing up. They take a hint and we blow up our sleeping pads and lay them down between the tables in the dining room. The cook bangs around in the kitchen until almost midnight with the lights on, and I mostly regret my decision to stay here... But at least we didn't have to pay anything.

137:

It's almost 5:00 in the morning. The cook is back and they sound like they're throwing pots and pans around. I ignore it as long as I can but before long patrons start to wander down to the dining room and I'm forced to break down my "camp" on the floor between tables.

The kids workin' the hut want us to stay and help clean up bunks after breakfast, and that sucks because it means we won't be hiking until after 9:00. Oh well, the chores end up being easy and the forecast says Mount Washington will be clear and almost no chance of precipitation.

They were wrong.

Right about the time we get to Lakes of the Clouds Huts (plural on huts because I think the plural use of lakes is redundant as all get out and it becomes a running joke for us), we're totally immersed in a really dense, really wet cloud. Seriously, the wind is crazy and it's basically sleeting on us. I can only see about 30 feet in front of me as I make the final ascent up to Washington and I hear the tourists before I see them. Wow, what a fucking zoo.

I really wish they'd stop building roads to the tops of mountains. I seriously hate it. Nothing like hiking 1800 miles through "wilderness" to emerge into a faux Disneyland where they sell four ounces of lentil soup for $4. I hate this place, but outside is worse. It's sleeting and feels like it's below freezing.

Clear?! 4 percent chance of precipitation?! What the hell AMC!

We know that the next eight miles are on a really unforgiving, exposed ridge above tree line, so we ask the "rangers" at the "state park" what our best option is. 

We can either hike back to Lakes of(s) the(s) Clouds Hut(s) or pay 40 dollars (each) for a shuttle down to the notch. There's no hitchhiking down the Mt W auto road... But who's going to stop us?

It takes a surprisingly long time to find a ride, but when we make it down we get in touch with a bunch of the others hikers who made the same decision as us. Seems like no one wanted to hike over Madison in sleet today.

So we call up The Yellow Deli (hurrah hurrah!) and they assure us they'll be through the notch later to take us to their "hostel" in Lancaster. In the meantime we hangout at the AMC center in Pinkham Notch and teach all the hikers to play a charades-like game called "poop smoothie". The game basically forces you to guess whatever gibberish someone else wrote down and most of the cards end up being poop humor (hence the name) with a Slender Mane reference or two thrown in. Much fun is had by all and even though I feel like shit and go to the bathroom to sit on the toilet once every 5 minutes, making someone else guess "Stream Clean's naked body" is satisfying.

My best homies in the Twelve Tribes show up late... With lots of other hikers... And what looks like a truck designed to carry hay bales. Dang. Me and Stevie hop in the back of the truck and tuck ourselves under a giant tarp to block the wind then just try to zen out for the long ass drive to Lancaster.

At the Deli we grab some bunks, eat some shitty grocery store food, and pass out with our electronics plugged in to an outlet (what a luxury!).

131 - I don't even freaking know: The Whites with my dad.

First day is a zero in North Woodstock/Lincoln. The weather is shitty and there's no way I'm going above treeline again, so me and my dad hang out in town and he listens to me talk shit on section hikers for most of the day.

Day two is Kinsman Notch to Franconia Notch. Not a whole lot of pay off for a whole freaking lot of really difficult hiking. Probably 4000 to 5000 feet of ascent and descent and the trail is once again, massive boulders. This will be a reoccurring theme for the rest of the trail. My dad quickly realizes that despite his ironman status, this trail is no fucking joke. This will also be the day that my dad gets to witness how bad my stomach problems have become. Although we only do 16 miles, it takes us eleven hours and we end up in Franconia Notch with nowhere to camp. So we head back into Lincoln to camp at "Chet's". Chet is a trail angel with no desire to be in the AWOL guide, so instead there's a secret black dot on the map of Lincoln where Chet's house is. He lets hikers stay, but first he grills the shit out of them about the trail, just to make sure they're true thruhikers.

Day three. Franconia Ridge. God damn. I don't have anything to say really, I've been dreaming of this moment for the last year. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Day four. We each paid eight dollars to stay in a shelter. This will be the beginning of my disappointment with the AMC (Appalachian Trail Club), they maintain (profit off of) the trail in the Whites. On this day we walk through more massive boulder laden trails, slowing us down to less than a mile per hour at times, and end up back at another shelter (where we pay more money to sleep... in the woods).

Day five. Near-o into Crawford Notch. Get our boxes from the AMC highland center, hitch waaaay too far away into North Conway, hit up an awesome natural foods store, eat Thai food, watch Friends at the Quality Inn, and decide that tomorrow we must part with my dad. His schedule won't allow him to make it the full distance back down into the next notch with us, and so he decides that he'll take a side trail up to Mount Washington, just to tag the summit.

Hopefully this adventure has dissuaded him from ever attempting the entirety of the Appalachian Trail.

127: All the errands.

We aren't hiking, so I'll keep it brief.

We go get groceries (several miles from our hotel). 30 days worth of groceries. This is an incredibly hard task. Can you imagine planning everything you'll eat for the next month in one hour? 

We hitch back to the hotel, each with 30 days worth of groceries, laughing at our own stupidity and the absurd notion that we were somehow going to walk back with all these damn groceries.

A few hours later the hotel room is covered in grocery bags and discarded pieces of cardboard. Repackaging this much food is a total fucking pain but necessary.

Then we have to figure out how many days worth of food to put in what boxes. Much math, calorie counting, and generally boring stuff ensues.

But wait, Rush Hour is on?! Damn this movie is great, I forgot how funny Chris Tucker is. I'll just finish watching this and get back to my boxes later...

Two hours later, oh shit, Just Friends? This movie sucks but is hilarious in my calorie counting delirium! The boxes can wait.

Two hours later... What's this movie called? Something with Cameron Diaz. It's not funny but I'm busy eating this vegan gluten free pumpkin coffee cake with cream cheeze. Might as well be watching tv as well.

Two hours later. Damn, I really need to finish these boxes.

They aren't done until late at night, and by that time it's decided that I'll get very little sleep.

128, 129, 130: Prelude to the Whites.

There's about three days worth of hiking until we hit the Whites (the promised land) and these days are filled with insanely huge elevation gains and losses, 90 degree weather, 100 percent humidity, night hiking, episodes of intestinal distress, and in one case, a wild college party that kept me up all night (shouldn't have slept so close to the road).

But on the third day, I feel pretty decent and we get to climb Mount Moosilauke, the first of our challenges in the Whites. I'm supposed to meet my dad at the top at 4:00 pm (weird I know, but he's hiking through the Whites with us), but there's seventeen miles of ups and downs before I can even start my 4000 foot ascent, so I'm honestly pretty concerned that I won't make it.

But like always, I remember that I'm a total badass and basically run to the top, passing northbounders all the way, yelling, "The promised land! We did it! We made it!"

I'm so enthusiastic that I don't really notice the time passing and I'm up at summit by 1:30. I feel so good that I even summit the south peak, just for the heck of it.

The weather wasn't the greatness. The visibility was total shit and the wind gusts were insane, strong enough to knock me over even. So I headed back down into treeline on the other side.

Round about 4:00 my dad still hasn't showed up and the weather is becoming increasingly bad, so before we get rained on at 5000 feet, I decide to head down and see if I can find my dad. At the very best he got lost, at the very worst he's dead.

Little did I know that the descent would be twenty thousand times worse than the climb.

Let me paint you a picture, 2000 feet down in less than a mile down wet boulders with rebar and wooden steps (also wet) hammered into the sides of them. Why is everything wet? Oh, the trail goes down the side of a massive cascade called "Beaver Brook". Ask anyone in New Hampshire, they'll tell you how scary that shit is.

It takes us more than two hours to go the one mile, wow, but my dad is just chillin' at the bottom, smiling all crazy with a brand new set of super white veneers (we Bransons have bad teeth, my future is in veneers as well). I'm relieved to see him, on the way down I had decided that he for sure was dead. Lo and behold, he found us a hitch into town, a nice older lady that was slack packing her daughter (also a nouthbounder), and I have more than a small inkling as to why she's willing to drive all us smelly hikers in to town (and it has to do with bright white veneers and my dad's ironman triathlete status).

We end up at a really nice hostel (where they force you to take a shower before you can do anything else) and pass out thinking that tomorrow will probably be a zero.

Day 123, 124, 125, 126: The beginning of the end.

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.

Day 122: Salvation is free.

Life on the AT is a constant struggle between injury and convalescence, health and illness, and in that regards, it's no different than normal life. Only, the possibility for injury/illness is much higher and it leans towards that end of the spectrum more often than not. Also, not like real life is the fact that regardless of malady, we still have to get up and move forward, miles and miles forward, every day.

Today is one of those days for me. All of my clothes are wet, I feel fatigued and somewhat sick, but the need to move forward is a higher priority. If you sit around for too long and think about how much it's going to suck, you'll never get anywhere, so it's better to adopt the mantra "ain't nothin' to it but to do it".

So I'm doing it.

Along the way we run into a clearing filled with cairns of all shapes and sizes. I'm not sure what the reason is, but it seems like the tradition in this area is to build a cairn before moving onward. Well, all the rocks are used up so instead I just take some pictures.

The weather isn't bad, and I honestly don't feel horrible, so I'm moving along at a somewhat decent pace, even though Stevie is far ahead of me. I walk up on him eating at a shelter and decide to hike out before him, knowing that I plan on going slow. I pass up eating as well, since I'm certain that snacks will only make my problems worse.

I make it to the top of a climb before I realize that not eating was a horrible, terrible, absolutely awful idea. I bonk so hard that I honestly don't know if I can go any farther, my hands are shaking, and I don't know what's wrong with me. With a sense of urgency and worry, I down all my remaining snacks for the day, Stevie passing me up along the way. I eat two macro bars, some coconut oil, almond butter, and two chocolates in about a five minute period.

This turns out to be worse than bonking, and almost immediately I feel like complete shit.

A few hours later it's getting dark, thunder is booming somewhere behind me, and I know that I'm not going to make it to the shelter. Sitting on the side of the trail, trying to gather energy and willpower enough to make it the final push in the dark, a local couple walks up on me.

We talk for a bit and they inform me that there's a "secret" shelter just off trail in a really short amount of time.

Secret shelter?! You mean I don't have to hike in the dark anymore and potentially get rained on and I can be alone and have intestinal problems alone and not be crazy uncomfortable around every other hiker on the trail?!

The shelter turns out to be weird. Real weird. First of all it's immediately off a logging road behind an abandoned tractor. Someone has obviously decorated the place, whether that be local kids or what, I have no idea. There's burned up candles everywhere, animal skulls, and random bits of what would otherwise be considered trash loosely strung up around the place. But it's a shelter. It has a roof, and I'm there, and I'm tired. And just I start to relax, it begins to rain.

But I made it. Sanctuary. I'm dry, I'm safe, and I might feel better tomorrow. So I drift off to sleep listening to the steady drum of rain on a tin roof.

Day 121: Pause.

It's raining. We knew this was going to happen, and in anticipation, every other hiker sleeps in. You see, we're all really cozy in our fully enclosed ski hut, and after awhile out here, you learn that you don't have to force yourself to be uncomfortable, because uncomfortable will seek you out on its own.

Regardless, we eventually venture out into the rain, and man does it suck. A steady all day downpour. We haven't been in one of these in awhile, and I'm thankful for that. After a few hours I find a shelter and hunker down amongst the other hikers (also seeking shelter) long enough to take my shoes off and let my corpse feet (this is what we call feet that have been submerged in water for far too long) gain back some of their normal color. It's futile, soon eough I'll put my feet back into my wet socks and shoes, but it's nice to let them dry out occasionally.

Whilst this is happening, I notice that three hikers, neatly tucked away in sleeping bags, are watching a movie on an iPad. I spy over one of their shoulders for way too long, trying to absorb some of their warmth and comfort.

But then I head back out into The Endless Rain.

It sucks. But it's okay, because it's nothing we haven't dealt with before.

A few miles away from the shelter Stevie and Cheyanne leave me behind. I'm having some issues and I really, really don't feel well, so I sit on the side of a road for about an hour, trying to figure out what's wrong with me (for the thousandth time) on my phone, desperately googling symptoms, trying all sorts of combinations. It's always the same, it could either be everything (probably cancer though, duh), or nothing at all. Most likely it's somewhere in the middle.

By the time I get up to start hiking again, I'm sure that Cheyanne and Stevie have already made it to the shelter. I'm frustrated. Frustrated by all of this. By not feeling well, by being left behind, by having no fucking idea what's wrong with me. Frustrated with the three hospital visits I've made for the same reason. Frustrated with the money I paid a bunch of professional idiots to tell me what I already know. Frustrated that no one knows what's going on, and yet still I suffer and hike 20 miles a day.

With this in mind, I put on some crunchy tunes and basically take off running. Hatebreed satisfies my mood quite thoroughly and as I stomp down the trail, Jamey Jasta hits me with motivational lines like "perseverance, against all opposition, persevance, crushing all limitations" and "you wanna see me fail, you won't get your chance, you wanna see me fail, you'll never get your chance" and "this is now, how can I change tomorrow if I can't change today, this is now, if I control myself I control my destiny".

I feel like shit. My body is wracked with discomfort and the serpent that lives in my stomach writhes with every jarring step, but I force myself forward, concentrating on the task, on the cadence, on every foot step, and soon enough the pain and aches and discomfort fades to background noise. At some point I start chanting, "I will finish this fucking trail."

"I will finish this fucking trail. I will finish this fucking trail. I will. Finish. This fucking. Trail. I. Will. Finish. This. Fu-. -King. Trail."

I get to the shelter at Little Rock Pond. It's full, duh, it always is when it rains, and I never finish hiking early enough to get a place in one. So I set up my tent, cook food, and don't say a word to anyone. My movements are methodical and it's obvious that I'm in a bad mood. I want to get all of my chores for the morning done tonight, so I head over to the pond to grab some water.

It's dark at this point, and the rain has finally stopped. Toads and frogs leap out of my way as I make my way towards the beach. At the beach there's a canoe and a paddle, and I contemplate getting aboard for a bit, but no, I have to sleep.

I dip my bladder into the water and notice something. There are dozens of crawdads, huge crawdads, and dozens of salamanders (the adult version of the common eft stage newt). They're all swimming around just below the surface, but the water is so clear and my headlamp is so bright that it seems as if they're just... levitating. Gently moving about, a whole community of living things, content in their silence, in their stillness.

I pause.

And then, I just sit there.

Sometimes I forget why I'm out here, and I become wholly, obsessively focused on hiking, on the miles, on the need to finish, and on the pain it's causing me. I busy myself with chores and tasks and goals, and I rarely stop in my singleminded determination.

But sometimes I remember why I'm here. Other times it gets thrown in my face. And tonight the latter happened.

I sit on the beach for an incredibly long time. Watching the green salamanders and the more ambiguously colored crawdads, the minnows, the perch, and the toads, the frogs. I watch them move about in their less busy lives, doing what they always do, showing up after a rain, drawn to the vast amount of water that's seemingly everywhere, being so stereotypical in their ways. And I liked it.

I don't hurt anymore. I don't worry anymore. I go to sleep.

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.

Day 118, 119: It's not all dark.

118, 119 (are much the same):

I wake up unscathed, no beaver attacks just yet, and get an early start on the day.

The most noticeable difference between Vermont and the last 1000 miles is that we're finally doing significant climbs again. You'd think this would kill my motivation, but there's something about the pure physical endeavor of pushing myself up a mountain that allows me to silence my mind, and even my mind's worry about my body, and just embrace the task at hand.

And the pay offs are getting better.

The mountain tops, although not bald, are covered in massive pine trees, and the smell is immensely pleasant. But no mountain in the northeast is complete without a firetower, and in that regard, Vermont delivers.

The trees are insane green. The clouds, a fluffy white layer in an otherwise perfect blue. The mountains form various layers of silhouette across the horizon, promises of what's to come.

I know my posts have been dark as of late, but that's the reality of the situation, life is dark sometimes. I'm telling my experience as it happens, and what sort of adventure would it be if there wasn't hardship? If there wasn't suffering? It wouldn't be any adventure at all.

But it's not all suffering, it's not all misery.

Yeah, sometimes we slip on wet rocks and twist our ankles into oblivion and shit our pants and cry for no reason, but we also take off sprinting down mountains (when our pack weight is low enough to allow this), bounding off rocks, laughing like an insane person the whole way. Sometimes we can't hike because we laugh too hard at our own stupid inside jokes (Slender Mane, album coming soon), sometimes we make fart noises into the pure pitch dark of night just to see if anyone else is awake in their tent, sometimes we walk through fields after a rainstorm and the most massive rainbow is arcing across the sky hovering vibrantly above clouds painted orange and lavender by a setting sun while a small group of deer (and unicorns, sometimes) leap away through the tall grass and into the trees.

So you see, it's not all dark.