Date: 2004-09-16
From: Bemis Stream, ME

To: Illness and Elation
Miles today: 13.9

I woke up feeling lousy. The weakness and nausea were back.During the first mile of hiking, I forded a wide stream and ascended nine hundred feet to Route 17, a road crossing situated at an upper elevation. A cold and misty wind blew across the road.I crossed the pavement, climbed a few feet up a slope, unshouldered my backpack, and sat down. I felt awful from this sickness. I could barely muster enough energy to hike. I wondered if I should hitch a ride to a town and get off the trail for a while.Moments later, a car pulled over and a man emerged from the passenger seat. He shouldered a backpack and noticed me. He asked me some questions about the conditions of the trail heading southbound. I answered his questions then mentioned that I felt sick. The driver who was still in the vehicle offered me a ride to a town. The offer was tempting but I declined. The reason for my decision was practical. According to my handbook, the next thirteen miles of the trail were relatively easy. After that distance, there was another road crossing. I wanted to complete this easier stretch of today instead of later. At the next road crossing, I could hitch a ride into Rangeley, Maine and take some time off to get well.The trail rolled gently through the forest and passed some ponds. There were numerous concentrations of muck to hike around. In some spots, planks of wood had been laid out above the muck and water. These planks enabled me to keep my shoes dry.In two locations, beavers had flooded out the trail and the planks were submerged. I was able to work my way around those tricky spots.I stopped and conversed with a man from Augusta, Maine who was performing maintenance on the trail. He showed me small trees that had been damaged by a moose rubbing against it. He told me that his car had struck and killed a moose while he was driving at night. He had been seriously injured. In the hospital, they had picked off of his face pieces of moose bone, tufts of moose hair, and shards of glass from the windshield. Since that accident, he has been paranoid about driving at night.I detoured temporarily to a shelter. There, I paid a visit to an outhouse. Chicken wire covered the lower sides of the structure. Inside, a sign read, "Latch door when leaving or porcupine will eat this building."A southbound hiker stopped and chatted with me. He asked me where I was coming from and ending up. I told him that I was thru hiking. When he heard this, he congratulated me for coming so far. It was nice to receive a compliment, but it did not ease the physical misery¢fever and exhaustion¢that I was experiencing.I met a thru hiker who told me that other hikers have been getting sick. Late in the day, another hiker told me that she was feeling weak and ill.Some kind of bug is making the rounds of The Appalachian Trail up he in Maine. There were lots of game birds in the woods. Some of them sat on branches of evergreen trees and flew off when I approached. In one instance, I walked up to a hen like bird that was resting on a branch next to the trail. It had not detected my arrival until I was standing next to it. The bird seemed frightened and afraid to move lest it give away its presence. I waited for a few seconds and the bird mustered up the nerve to fly off.Late in the afternoon, I reached Route 4. At the trailhead was a parking lot. A couple in their twenties was walking to a parked car. They were not wearing hiker attire. We exchanged greetings. They were former thru hikers who had driven to the trailhead in order to, "give something back to the trail;" I think those were the words which the man uttered. They handed me a bottle of sports drink mix and offered me a ride into Rangeley, Maine. I accepted their offers.During the nine mile ride into town, we shared memories of locations along The Appalachian Trail. They let me off at an affordable motel which a southbound thru hiker had recommended.This is a small town that adjoins a big lake. There are cottages and motels that are occupied by summer visitors and leaf peepers in the fall. It is not a tacky tourist place. There is a hostel in this community, but I am leery about sleeping in a bunk room. I do not want to pass along my illness to other hikers or becoming all the more sick from being in close proximity to other infected hikers. I have surmised that my illness was contracted from either drinking some bad water or from being exposed to a sick hiker in a hostel. For now, a motel is a much healthier option than a hostel.When I checked in, the owner of the motel offered me the use of his pickup truck. What a convenience! I drove to the laundromat. It dawned on me that I have not driven a vehicle for over five months.At the laundry, the owner offered me a cotton T-shirt to wear temporarily. She told me that her husband thru hiked The Appalachian Trail and she knew that hikers like to throw into a wash almost every article of clothing in their possession, including their shirts.When it got dark out, I walked into a restaurant to read the menu at a reception desk. The meals seemed expensive, so I decided to find another place to eat. I stepped outside and prepared to descend some stairs to the pavement.On the sidewalk, a family was preparing to climb the stairs and enter the restaurant. We looked at each other and uttered expressions of surprise and recognition. I was looking at David and Mary Walsh, long time friends from back home, and their sons Brandon and Colin. All of us experienced a moment of elation and we embraced.They had known that I was hiking somewhere on the trail northbound from Andover, Maine. They decided to drive up from Massachusetts and attempt to get together with me, but as a surprise. After arriving in the area, they could not find me and had pretty much given up the search. Our chance encounter was as much of a surprise for them as it was for me. They treated me to a dinner in that restaurant and drove me to my motel.They are renting a cabin elsewhere in town for the next couple of days.This day has been a long ordeal because of this illness that is weakening me. But my morale was boosted in increments after I reached Route 4. Those ex-thru hikers drove me into town. The owner of the motel lent me his pickup truck. And as a grand finale, I was surprised by the appearance of long time friends who drove several hours to find me.Ups and downs in elevation and ups and downs in morale is what I am experiencing on this Appalachian journey from Georgia to Maine.