Date: 2010-08-04
From: Salisbury, Vanessa Bretton' s house

To: Salisbury. Vanessa Bretton's house
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: light rain

Day 16 - Wed Aug 4Plan: zero in Salisbury, receive mail drop, rest and ice knees.Dear Friends,Thank you for reading this long winded journal. Please sign the guest book and let us know who you are. Your encouragement means a lot to us. I know this is the most physically challenging thing I've ever done. But I can feel myself getting stronger. I don't know if this run on sentence journal makes any sense at all...seems like I write more about camp life instead of trail views and vistas but after "dark green", "light green", "verdant", magnificent" I've exhausted my short list of adjectives and haven't done the forest any justice at all. And really it is the people and the shared experiences that I seem to recall. There is really only one trail and we are all on it I guess. But let's talk about Salisbury. The architecture and the people here are just, simply put, "wonderful". Had a great night's sleep in this 200 year old house in the "blue room". The furniture looks as old as the house. Genevieve and I have two twin beds with ten pillows each. You know the kind of picture of a bedroom you see on a magazine cover. I initially pile the pillows all in a corner of the bed but later in the night I discover they have a purpose. Because the house leans in all sorts of odd ways the bed constantly wants to throw me out onto the floor. Across the driveway is the old town hall and the old cemetery with departed dates in late 1700s. I visited it during the day. An old green apple stands in the middle of it. The owner, Vanessa Bretton, doesn't claim that the house is haunted but she has seen ghosts in it. Anyway I use the pillows to build a retaining wall on the bed so I don't fall out. We go to "The Roast" across the street for brekkie. Great coffee, salmon tomato and capers bagel with apple turnover of course and two large fresh squeezed orange juices. Cash ticket only please. Genevieve and I play a tough battle of chess but I outlast her and win the day. Off to Post Office to pick up the mail drop. Our bounce box from Wingdale is here and a special delivery from Sofia but we are missing the food box. Hopefully it will be here in the morning. To the library then. The Scoville Memorial library is celebrating its 200th anniversary. It was chartered in 1810 with $100 from the city government and is the nation's first public tax supported library. The library has a glorious bell tower that has been ringing the time for this tiny community for over 100 years. The place is full of kids and grandparents and people who look like they ought to have jobs on a Wed morning. We have a hard time reserving computers to upload pictures (robert) and research gear for trip to Maine (genevieve). I manage to get through Fri July 30th - about 4 days behind. Will try to add some more pics and video tomorrow morning. I hear one grandmother with a 5 and 8 year old in tow requesting books in french because they are already reading french and english. There is obviously a strong community comittment to education. We spend the day there - takes a long time upload those photos and genevieve gets her gear ordered forward to Bascom Lodge our final destination before Philly folk festival. This will give her a chance to check out her new gear before heading north. I am really proud of her. We stop briefly at 4:00 for a herb chicken soup and a baguette at the french bistro. We then all go separate ways: Genevieve to plan her northbound adventure, Rangler to drink beer with his trail buddies who have caught up with him, and I go to the summer baroque concert at St. John's Episcopal church. Marvelous concert with full size harpischord, organ, violin, cello, oboe, and piccolo/trumpet and french horn: Bach cantata 128, Bach cello sonata, and some other composers I was not familiar with. Full house. The concert is over at 6:15 and I stop by the wine shop across the street and pick up a Merlot and Clos Briord for dinner. Our host, Ms. Vanessa, used to own a french restaurant and prepares a 5* french dinner served at her table: vinagrette salad, fish in white wine sauce, sauteed asparagsus, baguette. Hiking the AT is rough!! We tell stories of course and have watermelon and eclairs for desert. We help clean up in the kitchen and then off to prepare for bed. Genevieve has replanned our trip so that we end up at a clear spot, Upper Goose Pond, on Aug 11-12 for the Perseid meteor shower. When have I had a better day? Wish you coulda been here. Its quiet now - all the extra hikers that showed up today are tucked away in corners all over the house on couches and spare mattresses. I put conditioner on my boots and get ready for some walking tomorrow. I rub the excess on my proud new callouses. The only sounds are the crickets and the library bell tower on the quarter hour. Goodnight all, sweet dreams indeed.