Hey guys!
I'm writing to you for my, most likely, second-to-last blog post of the trip. There's a lot I want to touch on and I think it's an excellent time to do it.
You may or may not know I'm not getting in quite as many miles as I'd like to be right now-- or that I feasibly should be. I would love to be hitting at least 18 miles a day right now for my trip-- I'd love to be pumping out miles and breaking speed just to make it to Katahdin but in reality, I don't really want my journey to end. I'm about 200 miles from the finish and after rushing so much, I have a real feeling in my heart that I'd like to take this moment to appreciate the difficulty, the ease, the overall spectrum of the trail before it's all over. I might never be cold enough to be hypothermic again in my life, I might never see the stars so clearly as I did last night (so beautiful, I could see the clouds of the milky way and more stars than I could really even imagine). There's so many things I feel like I missed out on now and it's so sad that my journey will soon be over. My last post will be in Monson, Maine before the 100-mile wilderness-- so that should be coming about a week from now.
At the Pine Ellis Lodge the other night, I enjoyed a bottle of private stock and some whisky with Silly Sobo. After getting mildly drunk, the manager of the place, David, who is a Mayan, offered to read our palms. He read mine and studied my life line and my love line and told me that I'd live a pretty long life, up to 85 years and that I'd have two wives and two children. It was also added that I wouldn't be poor but I wouldn't ever be rich
It was kind of disheartening because Silly Sobo's palm reading was so much more Kurt Cobaine: he would live a short life but he'd be rich, have many girlfriends but he'd have an alcoholism problem. It made mine feel like a life in a convent.
I have to question myself sometimes if I'm content with a simple life or if I want complication-- what is it we really want? I was told that at the end of the trail, the only way I'd finish anyways, is if I came to an answer for these questions. Maybe that's why I'm slowing down so much, the answers need to unfold gently, even with the chilly nights creeping in. I wonder often why I'm out here, why I'm doing this and what it's all about because I get so tangled up in reasons-- I need my answer or else I won't be able to finish. Also, how much trust can I take from a Mayan who charges 6$ for a shuttle?
We left Pine Ellis and encountered rain pretty early on-- Firefox and Silly Sobo and I hiked north and met a couple, Fudgie and Sancho and then later passed Baby Scrooge and another guy. We all made it in to the shelter after a very short day and took our spots in the 8-person shelter with Brightflower, lucky trout and jungle cat. Those that stayed that night were lucky as it was very windy (consistent 40mph) and rainy-- I imagine the people left out in their tents were pretty miserable (though they smoked pot the whole time, so maybe they had a great time-- I sure as hell had to waft it constantly and it grew a little tiresome). I took some Dayquil that I had purchased at the store early in the morning at a terrible price of 10$ but it wound up helping a lot-- I was able to focus on the book I had begun reading that I picked up at the hostel: "Sex, Drugs and Coco Puffs." It's a really interesting book on pop culture that explodes a bit like On The Road and reads in long sentences but it all made sense to me. It took about 70 pages and listening to everyone's conversations in the shelter before I was asleep for the night. I was quiet much of the time as I often am in groups, I like to just sit back and listen and watch and take it all in-- some call that a bad trait but I really don't mind-- it's not that I don't like people, I like to just sit and unwind to their ideas and voices.
We hiked on the next day with Jungle Cat and Lucky Trout to try to get to Rangely-- we made it to a stream and figured there would be a bridge to cross but it wound up being an unmarked ford. I tried out the water and it went up to my thighs-- it was rushing like crazy from the 3.5 inches of rain and as I got a quarter of the way across, I turned back and thought better of it. I didn't really want to wade through the water just to trip and fall and wind up miserable and cold for the rest of the day. Rangely was the main goal if nothing else-- we just wanted to get somewhere warm for the night because there was a freeze advisory. Jungle Cat and Lucky Trout took off with us up a dirt road that would hopefully have an alternative way of crossing the stream-- we hit a blue-blazed trail that took us over a bridge and right back onto the Highway we wanted to go on. It didn't take us far out of our way but we began doubting our ability to get to Rangely for the night so Sobo and I decided to motor and hit 3mph the rest of the hike for the day. It didn't work well-- the entire day was filled with deep puddles, areas of mud with broken pontoons (and the mud can be several feet deep, once Sobo fell in and went up to his calf), slick roots and oddly-angled rocks.
It was a long hike and we hit a swimming area that would have been peachy if I had only reached the spot a month earlier. Alas, with my stress fracture, it would have been impossible even if I had gone at top speed the whole time-- it's just gotten too cold to swim in such a lake. The fall foliage has really peaked after the last few frosts we've had-- the leaves went from being green a week ago to now tinges of brown, yellow and Chuck Berry red-- it made the lake setting almost ethereal.
We trudged on and on and on towards Rangely and came upon a shelter where a guy was laying inside. I recognized the voice right away-- it was Turtle Tracks who I had met in Waynesboro, Virginia-- he was flip-flopping and taking a lazy day to relax and snuggle up and get warm in his sleeping bag (rightly so, with the shelter being so close to a lake, I can't exactly blame him). He was in his normal mood of reflective melancholy so we left him to his element. After pressing on past five and going at least 3 mph, Sobo and I took a break at a random spot 2 miles from the trailhead. Both of us were exhausted and in need of town food (I wanted dark chocolate, mostly) and from the lack of breaks, I literally had steam coming off of my body when I stopped. We got up from our break and pressed on a little to find a red-head going southbound-- after an introduction, she told us she was named Trail Freckles, she was from Germany and she was trying to find a place to camp (preferably with us) because she was worried about "some creepy guy who was stalking her." We walked with her to the road and persuaded her to get a hotel room with us in Rangely after we worked out some plans at the IGA where we could cellphone service (and I ate 1600 calories of Mr. Goodbars, Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate and Krakel bars-- no worry, it only cost me 3.75). Sure enough, we got a hotel room for 50$ with Firefox, 70% and Hombre and only had to pay about 5$ a person (this was a great turn of events seeing as if any of us were alone, we would have experienced a freezing or expensive night). Happy Trout and Jungle Cat likely stayed in town last night as well though I'm not sure where.
We went to the pub and had a few beers, I enjoyed two local drinks that were very well-made and talked with Trail Freckles and the group until later on. We got back to the room and all passed out watching Comedy Central (some Daily Show, Colbert Report and South Park) and enjoyed some jokes about Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer and Dr. Pepper (the soda of choice for agnostics).
In the morning, I got up and had a shower and joined Freckles for orange juice at a diner, then moved on to have a muffin at a different diner when more people joined us and then poked around for a sleeping bag liner at the outfitter's (I found one that was silk, so I will live afterall). Sobo and I have been spending most of the day in town, just enjoying the sunshine, getting our shoes dry (muchly needed!) and taking it easy. I'll be with Silly Sobo up until about Stratton when he heads back to Lincoln to go South and then I'll be on my own again to finish-- just the way I'd like it to be at the very end of the journey. That said, Silly Sobo is getting one heck of a sendoff from me-- the guy has been a blast to hang out with and al good friend.
All of that said, I am getting introspective about the trail and what I'll do next. Several options have opened up-- one of which was last night at the bar when a random stranger asked me what I'd be up to when I finished (it seems to be the new question to be asked-- it used to be "where'd you start from?"). I confessed I had absolutely no idea so he told me about a job at Bryce Canyon park in Utah that I'd work 4 10-hour days with retail and reception work and then be free to spend three days a week hiking around the canyons-- that sounds absolutely delightful. I could live with my sister, live with my mom, live with my wife, live with my best friend, work at a hostel, work in a state park or do whatever the heck I want. But when people ask me from now on what's next, I'm going to look up at the sky and say:
"Oh, my salvation?"
And hopefully they'll say: "we'll see what we can do."
(I'm Not There)
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