Date: 2004-09-20
From: Katahdin

To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

B Mountain RoadSeptember 17, 2004Mile 1917After pulling a twenty miler yesterday that included the dreaded Mahousic Notch, I could barely walk this morning. I ambled slow and painful out of my solo abode at Frye Notch Shelter, out of my cozy down bag and up and down the bumps and grinds of the remaining five miles to the B Mountain Road, all the time dreading the 8-mile stretch of road into Andover. Barren and barely surfaced, the road doesn¢t look good for hitching. Why didn¢t I notice this in the planning phase? Impossible map nuances. Too much to think about.I stand up my pack on the shoulder of the hard packed dir4t road (a smidgen better than a rural dirt road where there would surely be ZERO traffic), plant my poles hard in the dirt and, with the ¢thruhiker by the side of the road scene¢ properly established, I sit down for what will likely be a long wait. I have a book with me, ¢Fight Club¢ author Chuck Paluninininichuck¢s (sic) latest novel ¢Survivior.¢ It is a sick frikken book, and I like it.I hear a car approaching before I can crack the book. Ah. Going west. Wrong direction. Before long another truck passes going the same way. And then another. I pull out the map and begin to think maybe I should hitch in that direction instead, pick up the more heavily-trafficked Route 26 which makes a wide arc west then north toward Rangely, another trail town a few days ahead for one afoot, but maybe where I oughta go directly to catch Yazzy. Map in hand, ¢Survivor¢ never gets so much as a glance when voila! Along comes a truck going toward Andover. You see, I can¢t recall whether or not I sent myself a resupply package to Andover. And with Andover being eight miles out of the way, I¢ve been trying to convince myself that no, I don¢t have a resupply package there, and no, no one is sending care packages anymore and no, no one so much as hiccupped when I proposed the ¢Bed and Bath¢ fund, so there¢s slim likelihood that there¢ll be any money awaiting me there, which leaves a postcard from Kate Pearson, which I hate to miss, seeing as how she¢s sent me one to EVERY mail drop on the AT! But..And then the ¢but¢ no longer matters as Steve Hardy and his dog Jake pull up and pull over, he the first to drive up and pull over, he the first to drive by heading east, and I hop in and off we go as though he were expecting me up here in his neck of the woods. Friendly as can be.Steve¢s a maple syrup guy. ¢Been doin¢ it all your life?¢ I ask. ¢Nope. Had to wait until I was fo-ahh (four). I remember when I was little we had a maple out front of the house with one tap and my mother would make me wait until the jar was half full before I could take it into the house.¢ Steve went on to tell me that he has 2000 taps in the forest just west of where the trail passes through. Wow.I wonder how much syrup that makes, like, how long does it take to fill, say, a gallon, with two thousand taps, when the sap is running strong? What would you guess?   I¢m thinking sap runs pretty slow, so I guessed maybe an hour. WRONG. Steve blew my mind with this one: try 125 gallons of sap per hour! But the sap has to be boiled down, such that 125 gallons comes down to like a gallon of actual syrup. And Steve fires his boilers with wood! Wood that he cuts himself! Man, this guy is in his late sixties at least. Old Steve hardy is one tough mutha. Yeah, I learned all this in the short 8-mile drive down into Podunk little Andover with its two general stores, one restaurant and, and.. well, not much else.By the time we¢d pulled up to the post office in town and were saying our goodbyes, I had learned a lot about how maple syrup comes to be and why it is soooo expensive. And as if the gift of all that knowledge and the ride and the company of Steve and his malamute Jake wasn¢t enough, out comes Steve with a fat little bottle of packweight, er.. I mean syrup!! Pure maple! His own brew. Wow! And I was beginning to think the trail magic of the South was a thing of the past. Thank you, Steve Hardy, for the syrup education, the maple nectar and the ride. -RSM