Date: 2003-07-23
From: Smarts Mountain Ranger Cabin

To: Hikers Welcome Hostel
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: light rain

I was sleeping on the front porch of the shelter last night. Of course I opened my eyes about the same time the sun was showing up. It was about 4:30-4:45. I just lay there for a bit. In about 20 minutes or a half hour¢¦.about 5:00 or so¢¦.it started raining and raining really hard. It was making really loud noises on the tin roof of the cabin. I continued to lie there until 5:30 when my alarm went off. I went ahead and got up and started packing. I made and ate some cereal. The SOBO that was there sleeping with me on the porch, his Trail name was Zaggat, also got ready to roll and we both left about the same time in the rain. He SOBO. Me NOBO. This is like the 5th day in the past two weeks that it¢s raining and we had to walk in it. I¢m starting to have flashbacks of Virginia where we walked through rain for 26 hard and rainy days that it took to get through. The only problem with that is the rocks are a lot steeper and slicker. Roots are all over the place and you are constantly losing your footing. I walked very slowly and deliberately concentrating on trying not to fall. I was pretty successful at it. I slipped a couple of times on the wet rocks but I caught myself. Unfortunately when I was coming down T (?) Mountain which was about 11 miles into the walk I did manage to fall badly. I fell back on my backpack which probably saved me from really getting hurt very badly. I did manage to hit the back of my head on a rock. I lay there for a few minutes and also my knees are in bad shape. I managed to twist the left one really badly. Now I can barely walk which is just fantastic because I¢m just about to enter the White Mountains here tomorrow or the day after walking on one leg. I can see myself having to be helicoptered off of some godforsaken, rocky summit. So I have a little problem with that. Anyways, I got out to the road about 3 miles after I hit my head and I was feeling more than a little groggy. I mistakenly thought it was a different road. I got out on 25A but what I needed to get out on was Atwell Hill Road which is another half a mile or so on the Trail. I was probably a little messed up anyway so I figured it was the right one. I looked on the map and the reason I was getting out on this road was because it ran parallel to the Appalachian Trail for a period of 4 miles or so. I figured being that I had just slammed my head and was probably unconscious that it would be a good idea if I just walked along the road for awhile in case I took a shit and died. I¢m trying to stretch out and see if anything is wrong. I figured that if I was on the road and I did have a concussion and something happened it would be better that I would be laying on the side of the road instead of the Trail. So, I went for that. I started walking in the road in the direction I thought I needed to go and I stopped and asked one guy who had no clue what I was talking about even though he lived there because he said that the way I was going had to be wrong. I kept walking that way nevertheless and I stopped two other gentlemen and asked them the same thing. They basically told me the same thing the other guy had told me¢¦that I was in the wrong place and walking the wrong way. We looked at the maps and finally figured out what had happened. I told them what was going on¢¦that I had just hit my head and I was out on the road making sure that I was going to be ok. One of them offered me a ride which I turned down at first. Turns out that they are the owners of the Mt Cube Farm which produces maple syrup products. They have a little stand there that hikers can come up to get sodas and candy and stuff on a self serve basis. You can come in and see what you want and take it and write them a check or put some money in a box that¢s sitting there. They were having a family reunion apparently. Several of his friend were here. They own 600 acres and it apparently had a rich history behind it that the family was very proud of. The grandfather, who I guess is no longer alive, was the senator or governor of New Hampshire. The maple syrup farm has been here for a long, long time. It was passed down through the generations. I talked to one of the sons who kind of filled me in on what was going on. There were big ??? running down to this house down at the bottom. What he says it that it¢s suction¢¦that they provide suction. Something that I had seen earlier in Vermont was that they had tapped the trees¢¦the maple trees..and had run plastic lines downhill to get the maple syrup. Anyway, he told me they had tapped upwards of 10,000 trees which I thought was pretty stunning considering that they had to tap them and untap them each year. That just seemed like a tremendous amount of work to do. At any rate I¢m sitting here at the Mount Cube Farm waiting for them to get back because they offered me a ride. I think that is probably the smartest thing for me to do right now. I¢m not sure how I¢m going to do if I get back on the Trail and walk. I¢ve already wasted so much time today I¢ll never make it to Glencliff. I don¢t know if it¢s safe for me to go into the woods and camp out and go to sleep because I may never wake up again. I¢m going to take the offer to go to the hostel in Glencliff and talk to the guy there.   At this point I¢m not sure¢¦.I¢m pretty confident ¢¦that I cannot start climbing big mountains without being in serious trouble because of the knee problem. So, I¢ve got to figure out what I¢m going to do about that¢¦if I¢m going to lay around and wait for them to stop swelling or for the fluid to go down and get out of them or what. But it¢s a decision I¢m going to have to make pretty soon here. The other possibility here is that I just give it up and go home which would really sucks since I have less than 400 miles to do now. I¢m just looking at the reality of the situation. I just may not be able to physically be able to do this section. I got into the hostel. I did make it into the Hikers Welcome hostel. I was dropped off by the people from the Sugar House. The first person I talked to was a guy named Big John who was the owner of Moonbow. Which is grass roots manufacturer of backpacks here. It¢s basically just him and his wife and a couple of sewing machines. He really didn¢t know what was going on. He told me to hang out and wait for Packrat who was the owner of the hostel. Packrat was a previous hiker as well. Big John was too. Pack Rat has hiked the AT and the TCT and was very involved with the hiking community. In the meantime I also met Ffej. Ffej was Pack Rat¢s assistant for at least a couple of weeks. Ffej is Jeff spelled backwards. He said just go ahead and make yourself comfortable and grab a bunk and soda¢s or whatever. This hostel operates basically the way a lot of other hostels operate which is on the honor system. There is a sheet you sign and then any time you get a soda or a candy bar or whatever¢¦.if you stay an extra night¢¦you write it down. The total at the end is what you pay off. Pack Rat came in after a bit and I pulled him aside and talked to him. I told him that I¢d been hurt. The policy at most hostels is two day maximum stay because there¢s always limited bunk space and there¢s always hikers coming through that need a place to stay. I told him that I was hurt pretty badly and that I had taken a fall. I told him I may need to stay a little longer than most people are allowed to. He said it was ok with him as long as there was something I needed to do and I was hurt. The Hikers Welcome hostel is pretty cool. It¢s a thru hikers dream. There are candy bars and soda¢s in abundance. There¢s beer and other stuff for sale everywhere at a reasonable rate. Reasonable prices. Not only were there about a dozen places to sleep upstairs but they had a variety of tents. About 10 tents and hammocks of all different types and sizes set up outside so you could elect to sleep in one of them as well. That¢s what I did. I picked a tent. Actually it was one of Big John¢s tents. Very cool little tent. I decided that¢s where I was going to sleep. I set up myself there. I got my laundry together and did my laundry. The dryer was broken so I had to give Ffeg the clothes to dry inside. I took a shower. The shower, laundry and toilet were all set up outside in this little shack. A real nice set up because you could walk in and out and people could do multiple things all together. Definitely set up by a hiker. Really nice, hot water in the shower and a big open space to shower in. The water just drained down into the rocks. Packrat passed around a menu for the only place to eat locally that was about 5 miles away in the town of Warren.   It was a little restaurant¢¦a little diner. I ordered a meat lovers pizza and an order of onion rings and some buffalo chicken wings. Ended up they didn¢t have buffalo chicken wings so they gave me buffalo chicken strips which was ok. Way more food than I could eat which was cool because I would end up eating it for breakfast. Then he took at least 6 of us down to get our stuff and do some shopping. Then we got back and sat at the table downstairs¢¦the big table. Everybody ate their stuff. Ffeg and I stayed up pretty late. We sat there and watched a movie after everyone had gone to bed. Then I crawled out to the tent to go to bed myself. It rained during the course of the night.