Date: 2009-07-06
From: Another hostel

To: Who knows...
Miles today: 238.1

The trail never ceases to surprise in wonderful ways.I left the Rutland hostel at about 3:30 today planning to do about 10 miles and sleep in a shelter. After about 3 miles, I stopped at a State Park campground to fill up on water, and as I was filling up, a pickup truck pulled up to me and stopped. Out of the trucked jumped a tall English guy who asked if I was a thru-hiker, and when I replied in the affirmative, asked if I wanted to stay for free at a hostel in town in return for a little bit of work. Our meeting was so incredibly lucky that I felt I couldn't pass up the opportunity, so despite having done nearly no miles today, I said sure and hopped into the truck.The hostel is beautiful, and it's story is almost as bizarre as how I got here. Apparently there's a guy in the town (Pittsfield, VT) who owns a bunch of land, a wedding resort/function hall, and a few other things in town. He had this barn on his property where he would put outdoor wedding parties if it started raining, but he wasn't doing anything with it. He sort of wanted to turn it into a hostel, but hadn't acted on it yet. Then about a week ago, this guy met two southbound hikers - PowPow and Crux. Crux had just broken his foot and had to get off trail for a week, so he had them stay in the barn. They liked the place, and had time to spare, so they basically worked out an agreement with the owner where they would renovate the barn and basically build the hostel, and in return they could stay as long as they liked.So bottom line, I'm staying in a half-finished hostel owned by some awesome VT landowner (whom I actually have yet to meet) and run by two hikers who basically built the place up from nothing in a period of about a week. How cool is that?Since I haven't updated in so long, I feel a summary of sorts is in order, so I'll append a few fun bullet points on to the end of this entry:-Massachusetts was buggy. As in very buggy. As in there were times when I stopped to pee, and then reconsidered and kept moving because the second I stopped I was swarmed by 20-30 mosquitoes.-The views are back! I haven't had really excellent views since PA, so climbing Mt. Greylock in MA and hitting Bromley and Killington peaks in VT was refreshing, uplifting, and generally wonderful.-IT FINALLY STOPPED RAINING!!! For those of you who haven't looked outside this past June - it rained. Basically for the whole month. I haven't written about it until now because it became so much a fact of life that I didn't even think about it when writing entries.-The Rutland hostel was very interesting. It's a Twelve Tribes community (twelvetribes.org), which is basically a sort of Christian commune. All of the members live together and have no individual possessions (or if they do, they have very few). They run a cafe together and in addition run the hostel upstairs. The commune-esque nature and the fact that joining the community means giving up all of one's individual possessions led to some whisperings about them being "cultish" but as far as I could tell they were much more of a commune than a cult. Their views weren't really extreme (they basically amounted to "Loving people is good") and they all seemed very happy to be living in the community they had created for themselves. Overall, it was a great place to stay and a really great place to eat.So... onward! I'm almost to New Hampshire, and then on to Maine! It's weird to think about the end of my hike, but it is quickly approaching, so I'm going to enjoy this last bit as much as I possibly can.