Date: 2007-08-08
From: Williamstown, MA

To: Congdon Shelter
Miles today: 14.1
Weather: light rain

Today started with showers off and on, sometimes hard, but quit just in time for me to get back on the trail. Rain threatened the rest of the day but never actually materialized. Instead, it was hot and very humid the rest of the day.By late morning I had left MA and entered VT, state #12 (of 14). Here the AT uses the Long Trail footpath for about 90 miles. I wondered if any would look familiar because I had hiked the entire 262 mile Long Tail in a month-long trip when I was 15 years old. Now, 32 years later, here I was back on the LT again. This time however I had to walk a little further to get to the trailhead, nearly 1,600 miles further!By 10.00 AM I had left Mom and Dad at the North Adams trailhead and headed up the AT towards VT. Just before I left the trailhead Starvin Marvin and Pearl went by northbound. I had met them yesterday at the library where they looked very familiar to me. I must have met them previously somewhere south on the trail. They had started at Harper's Ferry, WV on March 12 heading southbound to Springer Mt, GA then flipping back to Harper's Ferry and continued northbound to Maine. I must have passed them just south of Damascus, VA and remembered their faces from our trail meeting. We leapfrogged for the rest of the day and ended up tenting together near Congdon Shelter.The 4.1 miles up to the MA/VT line was uphill all the way. There was a short rock scramble up a talus slope to the top of Pine Cobble that was wet and quite slippery. A father and teenaged son were sitting in the middle of the slope where the son had slipped and fallen on his way down the rockpile. He had suffered only a few scrapes but no serious injuries so I kept moving on.The entire day was spent on generally muddy trail and the frequent rocks were very slippery. The mud in VT is quite different from mud in the south. It is a dark black and clings to everything. It seems to jump up onto the back of your legs and even onto your pack cover and arms as you slip, slide and leap from one less muddy foothold to the next. So I spent the day jumping from rock to root to stay out of the mud, and carefully stepping around the edges of larger mudholes that couldn't be easily crossed.Sucker Pond turned out to be a large and long established beaver pond. The trail ran along the base of the beaver dam on a boardwalk. The water level was chest high on me as I stood on the boardwalk. There were quite a few flowers blooming on the face of the beaver dam; goldenrod, blue gentians and a pink spike of flowers I didn't recognize. I looked for ducks on the water but didn't see any. A kingfisher was rattling around the pond, flying from the top of one dead drowned tree to another. There must be fish, probably brook trout, in this pond to keep the kingfisher so busy here. It appeared to be a fine pond for moose but there were no animals to be seen. I saw severalsets of moose tracks just beyond the pond on the trail so they must bw around somewhere.Just beyond the pond I passed thru a nice stand of balsam fir and the smell reminded me I was back in the mountains of New England. The last time I had smelled this was on Roan Mountain, TN about 3 months and 1,120 trail miles ago. The winter wren I heard singing was another elusive New England mountain bird I hadn't heard for months since Roan Mt. It seems that the trees, birds, rocks, and even the mud has changed since I left the southern mountains; just a few of things you barely notice unless you are on foot and the miles pass by slowly.This trip is now down to 3 final states and less than 600 miles left to walk, with less than 2 months to go. What an amazing trip it has been!