Date: 2017-07-19
From: Totman Hill Road

To: Stony Brook lean to
Miles today: 16.8
Weather: few clouds

One benefit of swimming against the tide on the AT is the way nobos bring details about the good things ahead for us on the trail.I suspect this is a taste of things to come as we get to more populated parts of the trail. I'd already heard about the "deli blazing" part of the trail in New York, where you pass stores offering fine food several times a day. It'll make a change from Clif bars and their variants.Today was a perfect example of that. I'd been telling nobos about the increasing crescendo of trail magic as they approached Hanover and in turn nearly every one told me about the On The Edge farm produce shop, just off Route 12.I'd heard so much about this that I deliberately lingered this morning to make sure I didn't arrive before the shop opened at 10am. In truth, Cassidy's parents' home was such a little slice of bucolic paradise that it was difficult to leave. When I did, Pete was already into the midst of one of his 12-hour working days, turning the shed into what will be an awesome home. Both the enthusiasm and long hours reminded me of renovating my own 120-year-old wooden house in New Zealand.This section of trail is one of the AT's many linking sections, connecting the high mountains of the Whites to the Green Mountains in mid-Vermont that form the basis of the Long Trail, a 270-mile footpath that predated and then inspired the creation of the much longer Appalachian Trail. What that meant for me was I was crossing the grain of the country, rather than following along ridgelines.Even with the ups and downs -- distinctly moderate, after the kind we found in Maine and New Hampshire -- the trail remained fast and I emerged onto Route 12 a little after 10am and immediately turned right to hike the 0.2 miles to the On The Edge farm produce shop.A few minutes later, I was scoffing a blackberry and peach pie that was still warm from the oven. It was as good as it sounded and I remember thinking that if the rest of the trail was like this, it's going to take me until sometime next year to finish this trail. I grabbed a blueberry muffin for the road and headed on, beginning a gentle five-mile climb back up to the crest of the mountain range at The Lookout, where a local farming family had built a simple cabin with a viewing platform on top. They generously left it open for hikers to use, and it was understandably more popular than the official AT lean to a little way below even though there was no water.I'd wanted to get to Killington Village early tomorrow, for reasons to be revealed soon, so I pushed on to Stony Brook lean to for the night. Yet another one of the snippets of trail news the nobos had proffered had been the presence of a problem bear at the lean to only five days before. It was reportedly bold but not aggressive, which made an unwelcome change from the skittish bears we'd seen in hunting areas.Once I arrived, there were more notes about the bear, although there were no reports of it in the past few days. The advice -- to use the lean to's broom to shoo it away -- required a degree of confidence and/or bravery I didn't possess. Usually I'd camp away from the shelter but tonight I'm camping right next to it. There are about a dozen people here, so I figure there's at least an even chance someone else will be attacked before me.I figure, the odds are good... and so is life.AT fact of the day: As I approached the shelter, I met an Israeli hiker. He got on the trail the previous year but was overtaken by winter so went to Patagonia for the southern summer. Now that he's back on the trail, and for the final 500 miles or so he's been joined by his parents. "Shvilistim!" I said, causing them to react with surprise that I knew the Hebrew word for "hikers", leading to me swapping tales about the Israel Trail.