TRAIL DAY 101
Tue, May 31, 2016 Echo had said she was going to be up early, around 4:00 a.m. Perhaps it was the rain but she was still in the process of leaving when I got up. She had left an envelope under my tent flap with $15.00 in it for her share of the site rental. I gave it back.
I remember charging my phone the night before in the ladies’ room because there was no outlet in the men’s room. Echo cleared the way for me to enter in the morning and it was outside the bathroom that she bid me farewell. She wanted to do 30 miles this day and she looked like she would be able to. She had the American flag stuck in her pack. At the pace she would keep, I knew I would never see her again! She was underway by 5:50 a.m. – not too far off schedule.
Steve and Gail hadn’t yet emerged from their lap of luxury. So I quietly returned their cord to a table under their awning and left several extra quarters I didn’t use for the laundry with a short note of thanks. A hiker does not want to carry heavy, jangly change.
It was a beautiful, 138-photos day with quick-silver sunlight resting gently on ferns as we left the campground. Along the way north there would be countless views to the west over hill and dale enough to make me think I would need more of the same when I got off the trail back home and maybe I should take up flying again. I wasn’t real serious about it but the thought did come to mind, so nice were the views from aloft.
I stopped somewhere along the trail to draw a stick figure to text to my family. My birthday was not far away and I wanted to prepare them for what I would look like. I think my limited artistic skills were up to the task.
I saw my first non-painted white blaze, a strip of tape or metal. I would see plastic ones, metal ones, some with borders and some that paid little attention to the official 2″x6″ dimensions. There would also come a time where the blaze-painters got carried away painting rocks that stuck up out of the ground. A fit of protective instinct that was so out of keeping with the countless unmarked natural hazards that gave the trail its character, its challenge and place in nature as close to her unmitigated genuine state as could be.
There was a section of muddy trail, a last-minute hangover from the wettest-May, another rock slide challenging my limited knowledge of geology, more evidence of extraordinary trail maintenance and an adorable picture of Theo trying to get shade from low-lying branches.
The trail emerged along a line of fences at horseback riding stables where I stopped for lunch at a picnic table. A couple already there soon left and another fellow came along telling me that he was waiting on his wife soon returning on a ride. He excitedly rose to take pictures of her when she appeared. The horses were returned to the stables and I returned to the woods.
More awesome views and pretty little flowers brought me step by step to the Byrds Nest #3 Hut where even more miraculous encounters than double Echo and double Mike and Debbie began.
I arrived at the hut at 6:20 p.m. It was stone and sturdy and sat near the crest of a hill in pleasant woods. There were people at a picnic table in front of the hut. Late afternoon. Hike done. Folks to meet. Find tent site; set up; cook and turn in. But first, I walked over to the picnic table to meet and greet. In time the conversation went like this:
“Did you ever hike on The Long Trail in Vermont?” asked the older fellow at the table.
“Yea,” came my response with a hint of “Why do you ask?” and “where is this going?”
“Did you ever stay at Ma and Pa Bowers’ B&B in Richmond, Vermont?”
“Yeaaaaaa.” And then the lady asked:
“Is your name Soren West?”
I was standing on the moon. Floating in outer space. In the depths of the ocean yet able to breathe. I was Pavarotti getting recognized for the first time on a world stage.
As I write, trying to capture the other-worldly sense of that question containing my name in the midst of the wilderness when I’d left all that was familiar behind, I think of a similar rocket blast into space that occurred in the deep woods of Maine in early October. That event had more to do with a physical impossibility being nonetheless real. But that time will come.
The couple that ignited the jet fuel for escape from gravity had hiked The Long Trail in Vermont back in 2010 when I was getting my legs under me for this adventure. I had seen them at a shelter where I’d stopped for lunch and we got briefly acquainted. We got talking about places to stay in town and, since they’d been on The Long Trail before, they knew the turf and recommended Ma and Pa Bowers’ B&B in Richmond as a good place to recoup and regroup. I took a picture of them at the shelter and again when I saw them at the B&B.
There was a guest book at the B&B which this couple signed before I did, including their address. I took a picture of the address so I’d have it to send them copies of the pictures I’d taken.
Now, the lady who had just said my name said that she had received my pictures and felt bad ever since that she’d never written back.
Guilt. It’s a horrible thing. Look at the burden this fine person carried all these years because she hadn’t written to acknowledge my meager gift. My name must have been rattling around just below her conscious mind all those years until the sight of me and Theo, who had also been with me on The Long Trail, yanked it out of the dark recesses into the light.
I pray her burden has now been lifted!
Shock and celebration over, it was time to find a spot for my tent and then get water.
The fellow who had been sitting with my Long-Trail buddies had said, “You should have seen your face when she said your name.” He also told me: “The water’s down an old service road past the privy to your right. Be careful, there was a bear down there when I went.”
Now, they say you don’t want to surprise a bear – but I did!
Just as I turned the corner past the privy to go down the overgrown service road, there was a huge commotion off to my immediate left. I turned instantly and was face to face with a bear.
I am happy to tell you he scurried away in a heartbeat – mine! Two beats and he was gone.
It all happened so fast, the fright and recovery were instantaneous but the moment was pregnant with other possibilities. I didn’t dwell on any but rather continued down the long path to the water figuring that my bear encounter was over.
I filled up at a spring and returned to my tent site. Another tent was already set up when I arrived but there were two new arrivals during the late afternoon and evening. There was a fellow to my left and a lady a little farther on who kept to herself, intent (no pun intended) on pitching, sleeping and moving on in a most efficient manner. A lady to my right pitched in thick growth. She, too, just went about her business as we all did really. There’s a lot to do and figure each night and morning. I think I may already have said, it took me 2 hours from waking to first step and 2 hours from last step to head down.
What an interesting day – the first of my 2nd century!
Day #101 Big Meadows Campground > Byrds Nest #3 Hut 14 miles