Date: 2004-10-04
From: Rangeley, Maine

To: Poplar Ridge Lean-to
Miles today: 10.7
Weather: scattered clouds

A great day! Any day that we do more than ten miles these days I¢m proud of myself. Amazing what you can do when you wake up before noon. We woke up at about seven this morning in the church, packed up all our gear, and headed downstairs for the service, which was Morning Prayer, a common ritual in some traditions. Every morning the priest reads a call-and-response prayer for the day¢in many churches it¢s just the priest and a handful of faithful. In small towns, it¢s often just the priest. So today it was just the priest and the two of us. It was a very rewarding experience¢it happened to be St. Francis¢s feast day, and having spent a wonderful time at the Franciscan Friary focusing on the life of St. Francis, it seemed particularly apt. One of those wonderful coincidences. St. Francis should be the patron saint of thru-hikers, in my opinion. He advocated poverty, abandoned his wealthy family to live in the woods, in a cave, and talked to animals. How much more like a thru-hiker can you get? The Psalm also was particularly fitting for thru-hikers, speaking of a journey through the natural world¢I wish I could remember which one it was. Then again, most psalms are.All in all, it was a wonderful way to start the day. We should try to go to Morning Prayer more days on our way out of town. At least towns that have churches. After the service, we spoke to the priest about the trail and our experiences on it. He had many thru-hiker attendees during the year, and was curious where we were from and what we had done with the rest of our lives, the normal questions. He also asked whether we had stayed there the previous night, so evidently what we did wasn¢t even illicit. Which salved my conscience a little. We still had an hour or two before the post office opened, so we headed down to the local diner for some eggs, which were delicious. New England diners are great. Then the post office where, surprise of all surprises: our mail drop wasn¢t there. We sat outside the post office in the sun, feeling extremely discouraged. Now we had to find a way to hitch to the grocery store, which was a half-mile out of town, and then hitch back to the trail. Our early start was shot. Then, one of those coincidences happened that makes the trail so wonderful¢a girl wearing glasses and jeans came up to us and asked if we were Flyin¢ Brian and Silver Girl.County was on his cell phone, trying to arrange a ride into Baxter for us, seeming that it was unlikely we would be there by the fifteenth, so I talked to her. I said that we weren¢t, and then she said, ¢Oh, so you must be County and Marzipan!¢ I guess everyone on the trail really does know everyone else on the trail. Turns out that she was Knuckles, a thru-hiker, and had got off the trail in Glencliff because her knees were shot. She was running support for her boyfriend, Underhill, whom she had also met on the trail¢she had gone to pick up his truck, and now she was slackpacking him through Maine, sleeping at trailheads. She had nothing to do until she picked him up at the Rangeley trailhead, so offered us a ride to the grocery store and to the trail, exactly what we needed. I then called the Gorham post office, found out that my mail drop was still sitting there, the notice to forward right beside it, (note to all future thru-hikers: at all costs, call the local post offices to verify they forwarded your mail drop before you go pick it up) and asked them to forward it to Monson instead.Then we headed to the grocery store to see what we could afford. More ramen and Little Debbie, of course, ever the food of choice for the budget traveler, and instead of mac-and-cheese we bought a two-pound bag of spaghetti for a dollar, figuring we could season it with ramen packets and County¢s four-pound spice bag. Then onward ho, out of Rangeley. We said goodbye to Knuckles, but with Underhill slackpacking we should see them again. The hike out was easy up to Piazza Rock Lean-to, a nice lean-to off to the right. The rock formation was cool too, although it was really more of a cave. It¢s a good thing County didn¢t know about it ahead of time, though, because he would have wanted to hike out and sleep here. He¢s obsessed with finding a cave to sleep in.The hike up Saddleback wasn¢t bad either, for being one of our last 4000-foot mountains. It was another of those Maine mountains that has summit after summit after summit, but none of them were bad. We could see the ski slopes from the top, too¢evidently Saddleback¢s ski area had just been purchased and was being revamped for the new season. Then the lean-to, just before dark¢I was very proud of myself for making the mile down the last summit in a half-hour. It was a cool shelter, too, one of the first Maine lean-tos with the ¢corduroy¢ floor, a series of logs lined up next to each other to make the floor of the shelter. Not that it¢ll affect my sleep any tonight. We¢re here with two other backpackers, Jaws, who thru-hiked the Long Trail this year, and one of her friends. They¢re out for a section, from Rangeley to Stratton, and they¢re going to meet up with Regular Brian, a thru-hiker whom we met in Harpers Ferry and whom Jaws met on the Long Trail. He¢s so called because he started at Springer with Flyin¢ Brian, and after Flyin¢ Brian introduced himself he said, ¢I¢m just regular Brian.¢ And the name stuck. The nicest thing about section hikers is that they give you food, and these two gave us a little bit of chocolate and cheese, as well as their leftovers. Yay!The lean-to is also cool because whoever maintains this section of trail has left an extensive FAQ, with answers to all of thru-hikers most commonly asked questions. He¢s been maintaining the lean-to for fifty years and had great stories, mainly about porcupines, who evidently wreak havoc on Maine shelters. Who knew porcupines could be so destructive?