Date: 2017-05-27
From: US-Canada border crossing, Fort Fairfield

To: Mars Hill
Miles today: 18.8
Weather: overcast clouds

Our first lesson on the IAT was this: when the ATV tracks on the border swath separating the US and Canada disappeared, it inevitably meant there was something terrible ahead. The reason was simple enough. The arbitrary path of the 40ft-wide swath is based on degrees of longitude chosen by bureaucrats who never had to come this way so it goes across whatever is there on the ground, whether it be cliffs, rolling hills or, in the case of the places where the ATV path vanished, swamps.This was all familiar ground to me, based on my years of hiking in New Zealand's damper places such as Fiordland and Stewart Island, where annual rainfall is around 10 metres or so. Progress required utilising the kiwi skill set I'd dubbed "quagmire gymnastics", which involved bypassing boggy sections by clinging to vegetation on the fringe of the swamp while leaning outwards over the muddy morass.Half an hour into today's walk, I'd come to a moss-filled pool maybe one metre across and almost ventured in before distant memories of similar previous bogs came to the front of my psyche and I backed off in favour off a less direct and more complicated but ultimately less risky option. Possibly because bog walking isn't a common skill set in southern California, Scout soon after encountered a similar situation but opted to try his luck -- and promptly sunk to above his knees. Then he discovered the challenge of getting out without leaving his shoes behind. Being a caring and dedicated hiking partner, of course I supported him in his moment of need by capturing all this on my camera. We'd already long since adopted another kiwi tramping tactic by abandoning the concept of maintaining dry feet, which freed us from even more convoluted attempts to avoid the boggy areas. It's so much more freeing to just embrace the idea of wet feet and deal with it. I think there had been maybe a handful of trips I did in the New Zealand outdoors where my feet were dry more than an hour into the tramp.Combined with the black flies and mosquitoes, the conditions we'd encountered thus far had supported what we'd been told that morning by Cheryl and Kirk, two IAT stalwarts from northern Maine who had been kind enough to meet us for breakfast and give us the benefits of their trail beta.The two-adjective executive summary of their advice was this: it'd be buggy and boggy. The longer version included telling us where the good shelters were, what the early water sources were like, that ticks didn't occur this far north and how to avoid a particularly unpleasant walk on a narrow highway used by logging trucks via a couple of ATV trails.They lived about an hour away from the start of the trail at the Fort Fairfield border station, just outside the small eponymous Maine town, but took the meeting with us as an excuse to come down and do some early trail maintenance on the first shelter on the trail, about five miles away. On top of their help, they literally gave us the caps from their heads.Frodo then drove us as we followed Cheryl and Kirk to border station, where a amiable customs and immigration officer was happy for to cross over to the border monument and then come back in.After the usual border photo, we headed down the lightly travelled road because even by IAT standards, it turned out the first few miles of the border swath were even boggier (and probably buggier) than the bits we were about to do.Some previous nobo zealot had opted for the direct route, Cheryl and Kirk had told us earlier, but had ended up wading chest-deep through beaver ponds. We were happy not to follow suit.Instead we walked on the road briefly then turned onto an even quieter road that dead ended at the border swath.Just as we arriving there, Cheryl and Kirk were coming back on their ATV from visiting the IAT lean to, our first of a gazillion or so we'll see this summer on the IAT and the AT."You'll be in Georgia by September at this rate," Kirk quipped. The porcupine they'd told us about earlier -- having taken up residence, first at the lean to and then in the outhouse -- had apparently found somewhere better to live. A little under two hours after starting, we reached the lean to and went in to have a look. It would have made a fine place to stay, although it was a little disturbing to notice all the tall trees surrounding it were dead.Scout and I wrote in the log book, variously noting our gratitude for the unsung heroes like Cheryl and Kirk who keep these things going but also noting the gratitude for us for having the forms of wealth -- financial, health, time etc -- to be able to do long hikes in our retirement. Scout, at 65, was particularly aware that this was a privilege denied to many.The navigation, it had to be said, was not challenging. The border swath ran dead straight, usually with an ATV trail meandering amid the 40ft zone.The border markers ran from short stubby concrete ones through to large stainless steel and granite ones of a shape we remembered all too well from the northern terminus of the PCT.For a while, we were lulled into a sense of optimism by the good trails we were following. And then the ATV trail disappeared, veering off into Canada. And then Scout discovered why.There were other challenges, including a plant that had an oily sheen on its "leaves of three", making us suspect it might be poison ivy. I was familiar with poison oak on the west coast but had encountered its ivy equivalent and had no wish to discover if it was a problem. We gave it a wide berth. Soon enough it was back to normal.Until we hit a series of beaver dams.But there was usually a route through and the dam walls proved to be an unexpectedly easy path.By then we could see our destination: the wind towers on top of Mars Hill.The terrain became increasingly hilly. This being the border, but clearly channeling the AT's famous directness, the path went straight up and straight down the steep part of the hills.This was broken around 2pm by arriving at Easton border crossing point, where we knew we could refill with beavery-free water.It provided a good place to have lunch, On the way to the border patrol point, I'd been seeing increasingly obvious signs that it was indeed here and not one hill further. That hill was particularly steep and I was hoping to avoid it on this first day of our hike but also didn't want to say anything about it in case I was wrong and had raised hopes unnecessarily.So when this was indeed the border station and knowing that we turned in to Mars Hill using a sealed road, I assumed that this was one and the same. Scout quickly set me right -- as I'd have known if I'd bothered to read the map -- so we ended up having to climb the hill I thought I'd avoided.We'd done about 12 miles by this point and I was feeling it. My philosophy has long been that the only real way to get fit for thru-hiking is by thru-hiking, ensuring it is done at a pace that eased your body into it. Scout had a book deal in the offing and had the goal to finish by his birthday in mid-October, which would involve a fast hike of four months and three weeks or so. That'd be fast just for the AT, let alone with the extra 138 miles of the IAT added onto it.What that meant for us was that although we had tents, we were aiming for the Mars Hill lean to, a challenging distance of 18.8 miles -- a solid first day.We climbed the hill I thought we'd avoided -- which of course exacerbated the pain of it being the steepest we'd encountered yet. A second unpleasant discover was being engulfed in a mass of black flies, showing that the terrain had put us below the flies' 2mph pace. It was a powerful message against slothfulness on trail.However we still had time to interact with border patrol guys, one of whom knew about the IAT. We'd had to advise the patrol that we were walking the border swath so they knew we were a particularly incompetent pair of illegal immigrants.As we found the correct road to leave the border swath and headed up Mars Hill, I was really feeling it.The IAT featured real trail here, although it was more of a marked route than a trail, apparently in the hope that traffic would bed it in in the absence of larger-scale engineering. "I thought this hill was small," I thought to myself as I sweated to the top, finding new patches of maybe-poison-ivy to avoid.Even when we emerged among the wind farm towers, the road undulated in a way that depleted my remaining energy levels.Just before we topped out, we met some young local ATVers, who were bringing equipment for friends who were staying at the lean to. After advising them of a back door way to the lean to -- a downed tree had blocked their way -- we reconciled ourselves to sharing the lean to with others.They were a bunch of young men from the nearby community and had all the usual quantities of alcohol one would expect. But they were also pleasant and respectful guys, trying to say they didn't plan a huge party and we were very welcome to stay in the shelter too. But I was ready to drop and was going to bed at 8pm so I pitched my tent, too tired to eat. I'd yogied a beer from one of the guys but only managed half of it and couldn't even contemplate eating the subway wrap I'd been carrying since breakfast.As I lay, semi comoatose, in my sleeping bag, Scout came over and asked for a second opinion about a suspected tick bite. I'll have to admit that I asked hesitantly: "Um, just where is it?" and envisaging a close inspection of something both gray and sagging. It was, thankfully, on his outer thigh. With the help of my camera's macro function and zoom, we were able to confirm it was indeed a deer tick -- a potential carrier of lyme disease, which Scout had suspected was going to be the single biggest risk to us successfully thru-hiking the AT.We removed it, hoping we'd got the head and relying on the theory that disease is only transmitted when ticks are embedded for 24 hours or more. Even the most pessimistic estimate of when he was bit was barely 11 hours. But it still shook us -- particularly because it was so small, unlike the ticks I'd encountered before on long hikes, but had a disproportionate risk of contagion. IAT fact of the day: The nondescript concrete marker a few feet from my campsite marks the first place in the US that sees the sun during the summer months. Based on how wiped out I was, something told me I wasn't going to be awake to see it.