Date: 2017-07-10
From: Seth Warner Shelter

To: Glastonbury Firetower
Miles today: 21.9
Weather: scattered clouds

I awoke to the sounds of Sock's laughter eminating from the shelter and echoing across the campsites at 530 which finally motivated me to get up. I packed up my stuff and my tent and then relocated to the shelter to make breakfast and socialize.At 6am Socks proclaimed that he was late and finished packing up and headed out, with Lost not far behind. I took another couple minutes to use the privy and finish packing before following them. I caught up to them after the first mountain, first hearing distant voices and bits of conversation before finally closing to where I could join in. We chatted throughout the morning about various topics, fire fighting, forestry, and other trails... things that Socks had done and was knowledgeable about, since he's the main talker. He seems to be an interesting person, having done all these adventurous things.We passed a pond created by a beaver dam, the beaver swimming around in his personal swimming pool right up until Socks got his phone up and running to take a picture at which point he dived under. A little while later we came to another gorgeous pond which the trail skirted on a series of boardwalks which seemed to actually be located below water line, the water held back only by the engineering ingenuity of the industrious beavers.Lost was mudblazing for us, showing Socks and I every path which would lead to wet shoes before finally just giving up and walking straight through the pervasive mud. Socks and I continued our dance behind her throughout the morning, doing our best to avoid the worst of it. This section, the only section of the LT I have not hiked seems to be the muddiest of all, though it's hard to tell if that's because of the trail or the different season.To explain, I hiked the Long Trail (LT) last fall, but about 2 days before HeavyD, BA, Faceplant, and I had reached this point my finger began to swell. And turn colors. Colors that a finger should not be. Like green and black. By the time we got here my finger was double it's normal size, painful to the touch, and colorful, and I decided that I needed to be looked at faster than I could finish the trail, and so I got off trail at Rt9 and went down to Bennington to the urgent care. By the time my finger had been drained, antibiotics prescribed, and my medical supplies picked up it was too late in the day to get back to the trail and hike this section, and so I yellow blazed to the road crossing just before Seth Warner shelter to catch up to the rest of the group, leaving this 9mi undone. Well, now I was back and finishing the LT to become an official End-to-Ender.We took a rest at Cogdon shelter and Socks  shared some of the 2lbs of twizzlers he was carrying, which he had picked up 2/$3 at the store yesterday. I didn't stay long, striking out solo go try to get to town and back at a reasonable hour. Socks, Lost, and I had all discussed sleeping up at the fire tower on Glastonbury Mt tonight, so I'd meet them there later today. I skirted through a ton of mud on my way up to Porqupine Ridge and enjoyed a nice view of Bennington and it's large stone obelisk. Along the way I was startled by a grouse erupting from the underbrush and taking to the sky, which had yet to happen to me on the AT but had been all too familiar on the LT. Guess it's a VT thing...After a steep downhill I reached the road and set about finding a ride. After about 20min I manged to get one, from a woman coming back from a cigarette buying trip to NH (which has no sales tax). While waiting I did have one false alarm after someone pulled into the parking lot that I had stationed myself ahead... he was only coming to hike for the day, and asked me if this was the Allegheny Trail. I informed him that this was in fact the Appalachian Trail, and he thanked me and offered me a ride if I was still there when he returned, which I was glad I wasn't.I headed to the post office, picked up my package containing my next months supply of contacts, a new dry bag for my food (13L isn't cutting it anymore,  especially on the first day out of town and definitely wouldn't work for the 100mi wilderness, so I got my 20L), a refresher on earplugs, and a cable to replace my headphones which had been on the fritz recently (due to internal damage to the wire from minimum bending radius violations from inside my hipbelt). After that I picked up another day of food (to get me to Manchester, VT), and some gause for my toe. Every time I'm in Bennington I end up buying medical supplies to take care of my digits, this seems to be an unlucky city for me...After that I headed to the Two Brews cafe, where I got lunch and hung out for a while to charge my phone. I picked up some new headphones and a four pack of 16oz hard ciders for tonight at the fire tower before heading back to the cafe to repack.Back in the cafe a mother and daughter had taken over my table so I joined them and got to talking and they were super into my hike and gave me TRAIL MAGIC of $20. While I had never directly received money as trail magic before, I didn't see a way to politely refuse their offer, and it would pay for half a week of food, or my lodging through VT, etc, so I thanked them before heading out.Back on Rt9, I hadn't even reached the edge of town before I got a ride. The guy driving explained that he had someone do something nice for him this morning and was just passing it on. As we drove the 5mi back to the trail he revealed that he was interested in doing the trail someday and we chatted about my experience thus far. Before leaving I promised to pass on the good deed, which I think the cider I'm packing for Socks and Lost will count for.I powered up the steep hill from the road, remembering my frantic pace down this the last time I had convered this ground, which had been in the rain. Last fall I had left the others at the last shelter and gone ahead to hitch into town with my finger painfully throbbing, preventing me from fully utilizing my trekking poles, and my knees aching. My experience this time was wholely different and much more enjoyable... though my knees are sore, they're holding up better than last time and my toe does hurt, especially when I stub it while hiking (which I've never noticed before, but it turns out I do regularly), but all and all I'm a stronger hiker (and perhaps person) now. Or I've invested more in this hike than the LT and am stubborn... Take your pick.The hill leveled out and turned into a gradual uphill, my favorite terrain. Despite the roots and rocks I crushed it, catching up to AlreadyStinky and LuckyPenny at a stream..I chatted with them for a bit, since I had seen them a couple times in the past couple days, before continuing on.I summited a wooded mountain, headed down for a bit, and then climbed up Glastenbury Mt. Being the end of the day, the hill seemed to go on forever and I didn't have much hindsight to navigate by since last time it was raining and foggy and I was distracted by my finger. I finally reached the stream right before the shelter and found Lost cleaning the mud off her feet. I filled up on water and Socks, Lost, and I headed up to the summit since the shelter was full of LT hikers. We joked amongst ourselves that us trail-hardened AT hikers would push on to the tower and leave the shelter for the LT hikers, but in truth we had been planning this anyways. We got to the top and found that the tower had no windows, which wouldn't be very pleasant since rain was expected. We tried to rig Sock's tarp to cover the western windows (where the wind and rain would likely come from), but we couldn't get it secured well and finally retired to the ground to setup our tent/hammock, settling on walking up the tower to watch sunset and sunrise.Socks doesn't carry a personal shelter, he always sleeps in the trail shelters, so Lost agreed to let him bunkbed with her hammock, sleeping right under get to use her tarp for rain protection. As we setup we got swarmed with bugs so we quickly retreated back up the tower for dinner.I had the cider and it turned out that Lost had whiskey, which we shared after dinner. If you had told me that I'd be half drunk in a Firetower on top of mountain with this kind of great people this time last year I would've called bullshit, but here I sat. I don't think any of us have laughed that hard in a long time as we did enjoying our time up there tonight.Finally, we took a couple moments to enjoy the scenery, the mountains various shades of blue fading into the distance in every direction. Between their peaks, a scattering of ponds gleamed in the evening light and the forest stretched on forever in each direction. We had no sunset tonight as the sun ducked behind the clouds to the west and disappeared, but that was alright. Looking north, once again the horizon was full with mountains that we'd have to climb, a welcome sight after having been in the lowlands for so long through the Mid-Atlantic.We headed to bed not long after, at around 8pm. I cleaned and bandaged my toe again... It's one thing to lose a nail, it'd be another to get it infected. We've got a couple days of rain ahead, which won't help the mud situation, but I'd rather have rain here than in the Whites, so hopefully we'll build up some good sun karma with this. Apparently there's a BBQ going on tomorrow, put on by Sunny, that we may or may not have a ride to, so we'll see tomorrow. If not we'll hike up to Stratton Pond shelter. I think I might try hike with these guys for a while, it's a good time.