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 113, 114: Trail peeps.

113:

I'm going to make a new blog called "Pictures of Stevie Holding a Cat". You'd subscribe to that right?

So you've probably heard about a few Appalachian Trail personalities at this point, there's a lot of weirdos like me who have used the trail to enable their life of pseudo homelessness. Some of these weirdos are the enablers of said homelessness. Some of them suck, some of them are fucking great.

One such fucking great person is "The Cookie Lady" whose name I don't know but let's you tent in her yard, pick blueberries from her garden (or orchard, perhaps?), and has a seemingly unlimited supply of homemade cookies, lemonade, and soda. Cool.

Also staying at The Cookie Lady's is Warren Doyle and his crew.

How does one explain Warren Doyle? Well, he claims to have hiked the AT about 17 times, he signs all the registers with the number 36,000 to demonstrate his mileage, and he's one of the personalities who totally suck.

Take one look at Warren Doyle and this is what you see: an older man wearing a much too large cotton tshirt, glasses with one lens held in entirely by duct tape, and athletic shoes from walmart. He looks like a random dayhiker. Not exactly the kind of person you'd expect to have hiked almost 40,000 miles... But maybe this is indicative of the AT and what kind of people seek refuge here.

Anyhow, Doyle's crew (aka cult) is a group of hand selected people who slack pack (carry very little and have provisions waiting for them at every road crossing) every day. Sometimes they're going south, sometimes they're going north, but always they meet back at a van where their supplies and shelter is waiting for them. I mean no disrespect to these people, but Warren Doyle is an ass.

It seems like he's almost always hiking south and he almost always stops me to chat (aka antagonize) for a bit. Much to my frustration, he likes to impart bad advice unto me (and everyone else). Advice like, "Giardia's not bad! It's natural! Your body adapts to having it!" or how about, "You young kids spend too much money on expensive coffee, why don't you just go to McDonald's?" and other such oddities. He also claims to be Jennifer Phar Davis's "mentor", whatever that means, and has talked a fair amount of shit on Scott Jurek.

This pisses me off the most.

Not only does he associate himself with Jennifer and then talk shit, making it out to be like he's speaking on her behalf, he makes all sorts of wild accusations about Scott. Maybe it's the vegan warrior inside of me, but I cannot stand this. Scott Jurek (and all vegans) should not have to endure so much criticism and abuse for little to no reason by people who have no connection to them whatsoever. It's not up to Scott (or anyone else) to have to endure this. At the end if the day, both Scott and Jennifer are tremendous athletes and I respect them both an  incredible amount. I don't want assholes like Warren Doyle creating some false rivalry between them.

End rant.

114:

It's 4:00 in the morning and we're camped out in The Cookie Lady's yard. Thunder peels are closing in on us from the distance and as they approach, I get more and more worried about the oncoming storm. This thunder is unlike any I've ever heard, and I'm from Oklahoma, the land of totally insane thunderstorms. It shakes the ground and rumbles on for a good half minute with every flash of too bright lightning. Fuck, this is scary. Before we know it, it's on top of us, wind whipping our tents around like crazy, and I'm suddenly thinking very hard about the very large almost dead pine trees looming dangerously overhead. Stevie watches as every tent lights up with headlamp illumination, the obvious sign of hikers making sure their tent (or tarp) is working properly. I'm not any different, I'm searching around frantically, making sure that my ground cloth is protecting me and my gear from most of the rain, but it's too much water and I'm getting continual "splash". But the storm is over soon enough, and it's back to what little sleep we can get.

We get up late, letting the sun rise and bake the moisture off our tents, fill up on well water that tastes a lot like hard boiled eggs, use a broken toilet in a seemingly abandoned house and set out.

The trail is increasingly covered in fallen pine needles, much to my delight. In my opinion, pine trees are superior to all other trees, or maybe I just like the change. But pines don't feel as suffocating and provide awesome ground cover. We're obviously getting farther north.

I switch between listening to my audiobook, Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World, one if my favorites and a book that provokes feelings of warm nostalgia and familiarity in me, and talking nonsense to Stevie and Cheyanne, mostly quoting our favorite bits of The Office or some stupid Chris Farley movie.

I run into Mr. Doyle again and he pays me some offhanded compliments, first asking me if I've been institutionalized and following up by clarifying, "You seem too articulate and too much of a free thinker to have been institutionalized". I think this is his way of apologizing or at least remedying our previous discussion. Maybe I don't hate this guy.

But I still don't like him.

Soon enough we're in town again and the local hardware store has free denatured alcohol outside. Dope. The owner chats with us for a bit and I say something about needing to fix my pole so he gives me some really really strong adhesive, also free. Double dope.

Another such fucking great person is Thomas Levard, a "trail angel" in Dalton, MA who lives literally right on the trail. His yard is a makeshift shelter, his porch is a phone charging station, and his spigot is a high pressure mountain spring. He'll even drive you to Price Chopper! Next to Price Chopper is a Starbucks. Holy crap.

We had planned on hiking out of Dalton tonight, but we loiter for far too long at Starbucks and end up back in Mr. Levard's yard with about fifty other hikers. How silly, looking at so many tents packed into a small residential backyard.

Day 107, 108: Should have brought a portable fan.

107:

Where did these climbs come from? Why is my body so upset with me? Oh yeah, we haven't done any real elevation gain in two or three states. Also, it's about a hundred degrees outside.

Each individual pore is a faucet, and the water is flowing out of me in a steady stream. I'm not sure I've ever sweat this much in my life.

Midday and we're in Stars Hollow-ahem... I mean Kent, Connecticut. Bonus points for whoever gets the Gilmore Girls reference. Guess what Kent has? A motherfreaking coffee shop, but not just any coffee shop, a coffee shop with multiple types of nondairy milk and vegan candy bars.

They also have some sort of chocolate banana vegan protein shake. So I indulge.

Two hours later me and Stevie pass a group of southbounders, one of them is sporting a puffier-than-normal looking face and they politely warn us to watch out for the yellow jackets on the steep descent coming up. Note taken.

We're descending... I'm looking around for these so called yellow jackets and lucky me, I can't find them. In fact, I'm starting to think they don't exist when Stevie suddenly throws his poles down and they come swarming out of a half dead tree. His stings are punctuated by sharp staccato yells and "fuck!"s as he tries to make his way back up the trail, but it's futile, you can't outrun them. Meanwhile, in an act of cowardice, I'm running down the other way, yelling, "Drop your pack! Drop your pack!"

They swarm his pack for a few minutes and we spend the next forty five trying to figure out how to get down the trail and retrieve his pole without being totally annihilated by the bastards.

An hour later I lackadaisically (and accidentally) toss my pole off the trail. It only goes about five feet horizontal... But about ten feet vertical. And the vegetation around it is thick. Thick as all get out. And thorny. So fucking thorny. But I need that thing. So I jump down and get both my arms stuck in vines, vines covered in thorns. Five minutes later I'm back on the trail and bleeding, and I'm wondering how I could have done that differently. Oh well, fuck it, too late now. I'm covered in dirt and sweat and my wounds are not clean at all, so I rub some essential oils and goldenseal in the cuts and suddenly my arms are on fire. Good thing I only have five more miles today...

I'm walking through a field, it's late, I have my headlamp on, and in the distance I see two bouncing lights. Fireflies? Nah... Eyes. I get close enough to make out the silhouette of something big, loping through the tall grass. A deer? No way, wrong body type. It's some sort of cat... But it's really big. My brain freaks, thinking "mountain lion!" but somehow I know that's just not possible. It has to be a bobcat. Regardless, it's too big for my liking and still coming right at me, so I start banging my poles together, yelling, "Hey! Go away! Hey you! Get the fuck away!" It runs off into some bushes making unnatural, guttural noises. Maybe it's injured. 

I eat dinner in my tent, in the dark, buck ass naked. My clothes are soaking wet from all the sweat. It's disgusting, I agree, but if you've made it this far and haven't totally embraced the urine, ammonia-esque smell of stale sweat then you must be doing something wrong.

108:

I wake up, still nude, and it's a struggle to put on my still wet, still disgusting clothes. Yuck.

Lucky for me there's a pretty nice stream in a mile and I take the opportunity to do some laundry. This means soaking an article of clothing and ringing it out until the water that comes out isn't brown. Tah dah, laundry!

I put my still wet clothes back on and immediately drench them in sweat, again. Still worth it.

Hours later I'm staring at a stagnant puddle of water, almost salivating. The last three water sources have been dried up (no thanks to my guide book) and I haven't drank anything in probably five hours. I've never been this thirsty in my life, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to drink from this puddle. A guy did that back in Tennessee and got dysentery. They had to medvac him out after he totally collapsed in the middle of the trail. Not worth it, I'd rather be dehydrated.

I get to a highway and there's a bunch of signs about a detour because of a downed bridge or some shit. Unthinkingly I start to follow the detours, then realize they're taking me around the city I'm trying to get to. God damnit. I turn around, try to hitch back to where I left off, no luck. Add a few extra miles to the day, y'all.

I walk into a weird little town called Falls Village and buy some Gatorade from a liquor store. There's a dog sitting on the counter, her name is Rachel. There's an old man seated in the corner of the shop, in a recliner, just observing things. He's surrounded by stacks of diet coke on either side, and I imagine that he's the diet coke king, sitting on his diet coke throne, long ago dead, but totally preserved by artificial sweeteners. They have a landline that you can order pizza from (no service), and so Stevie does. Cheeseless, lots of veggies. The usual.

It takes three hours to arrive. Ha.

As soon as I can, I eat a shitload of rice noodles and set up my tent behind a cafe, next to a big ass tool shed. The porch light is way too bright, and most people would think this is a weird place to sleep, the delivery driver certainly does, "Do you all just set up your tents wherever?" but not us. We're fucking weirdos now, remember?

Day 105, 106: Jokes y'all.

105:

Three vegans, a boy scout, a teenager, a generic 20 something bearded hiker boy, and a Finn walk into a motel... And promptly get denied a room.

So we go to another motel. This time... We lie! There's only two of us, I swear. Access granted.

What's the difference between a thruhiker and a homeless person?

Version 1) an REI dividend.

Version 2) cell reception.

Version 3) trick question, thruhikers are homeless.

Ba dum CHSHHH.

106:

Serious picture:

Lost our fucking minds picture:

Connecticut. New England. We're here. Time to religiously check myself for ticks.

Over and out.

Day 103, 104:

103:

We wake up early, determined to put miles between us and our ukelele wielding peers.

The trail is relatively easy at this point and I'm cruisin'. With no need to process each individual footstep my mind becomes almost completely occupied by my audiobook.

Late into the afternoon we get to another public beach. These places are so dense with convenience that thruhikers can't escape, much like light can't escape a black hole. I mean, they've got free showers, a concession stand, and power outlets. We literally need nothing else.

Needless to say, we spend way too much time there and suddenly our entire "bubble" shows up, caught in the tractor beam of overpriced Gatorade and potable water from a spigot. Before I know it I'm listening to same three ukelele chords over and over and over. We gotta go.

Our camp this night is a shelter that was once a cabin but has had one wall knocked down and a porch put in its place. This seems like an awesome place to spend the evening, except that everyone else in the world is there already. Oh, and it's literally right next to a road... but this has its benefits. Namely, you can order Chinese food delivered directly to the shelter, and sure enough a laminated menu can be found inside the shelter next to the hiker log.

In an act of extreme self destruction, we all order Chinese food and soda. I fall asleep waiting on dinner to be delivered (what a marvelous luxury!), but before long, Stevie rouses me, a Buddha Delight with garlic sauce (gluten free, duh) in hand. I eat with blatant disregard for my intestinal health and pass out again, letting my cardiovascular system sort out whether sleep or digestion is more important.

104:

We set out early (again), but the motivation is gone (again). What is motivation anyway? At this point I'm finishing this trail for no reason other than that I fucking said I would.

I sit down to wait on Cheyanne and Stevie at an undrinkable water source. It's downstream from a cow pasture, and you can tell, if not by the look then by the smell. A seated hiker always attracts more of our kind and soon enough I'm making fun of Fin's compass. Who uses a compass on the AT?! We only look at elevation maps. At my provocation, Fin shows me that he actually has two compasses, one of which is on his whistle. I give him a look of extreme disapproval and say, "Two? Really? C'mon man."

He replies, "I'm a fucking survivalist man."

This is the funniest thing I've ever heard, and I laugh an inappropriate amount of time. Fin has gotten both norovirus and lyme, his body is literally falling apart on him, and he does very little to stop it from happening. The night prior, Cheyanne witnessed him wake up at 2:00 AM and chug a two liter of Pepsi then promptly fall back asleep. This is why we like Fin. He's dying, just like us, laughing the whole way to hell.

A few hours later, I walk half a mile off trail to a deli that I can't eat anything at to use 1) a water spigot and 2) their bathroom. The spigot is whack, but it's my only option (other than the cow pasture) and there's no bathroom. Shit, literally. It's an emergency. I half run, half power walk into some nearby trees and let loose, keeping an eye on the parking lot and hoping no one witnesses me in my depravity.

If you've been keeping up with me, you know that I've been having intestinal problems for some time. I thought they were over, but either the remnants of giardia are still doing their best to destroy my comfort or something more insidious is going on. At this point I'm convinced that I have some sort of worms living inside my gut.

With this in mind, I continue walking, headphones in, talking to myself. "It's not killing you. You're fine. How bad do you want it? That's what it comes down to. It's not killing you. You can still hike 20 miles a day. You can finish this trail. It's just discomfort. How bad do you want it? How bad? How bad do you want it?"

I turn around to find someone just behind me, discovering that another thruhiker has just borne witness to me in a moment of true and total insanity. That's fine. He knows already. We're all fucking insane. We have to be to still be doing this.

I find a big tree, the largest oak on the AT, and take my first picture in two days (since the pirate ship). I'm always unsatisfied with tree pictures. There's no way to accurately portray how fucking huge these behemoths really are.

It's late evening, I walk over the AT railroad and into a gardening store, Native Landscapes. They have our food boxes and we have to find somewhere to camp. The only problem is that there's only two places to set up tents, by the railroad or by the highway. I choose the highway, but I'm still a dozen feet from the railroad.

We walk over half a mile in the dark along the side of the highway to another deli that we can't eat anything at. I get my usual, some chips. As a child my mom would warn me that consuming too much of any one thing would eventually cause you to morph into that one thing and I start to wonder when I'll turn into a bag of chips. Hopefully I'll be salt and vinegar. I also wonder when the other thruhikers are going to turn into packages of shelf stable spam. Maybe they'll turn into cigarettes. Maybe they're already a combination of the two... They certainly smell like it. And sometimes they look like it.

We walk back to our tents, dressed in dark colors, Stevie flashing his headlamp at incoming cars so they don't kill us.

I fall asleep with my hand in a bag of chips, only to wake up in a panic fifteen minutes later, a train flying by 80 miles per hour, horn blaring. This is a terrifying experience, one that would repeat itself many times. At several points the sound of the incoming train and highway traffic enters my dreams and I'm totally convinced that I'm going to get hit by a train (or semi) in my tent. Afterwards I anxiously pass out, not entirely sure that I won't die a horrible death this night.