Date: 2003-09-11
From: Jump up for Love

To: Lost in Space
Miles today: 14.7

At the post office in Caratunk, I respected a moment's silence for the victims of 9-11. The lady at the post office was so nice we hung out there most of the morning making our plans, dividing our foods, and making phone calls at the only pay phone in town. By mid-day we were ready to hit the trail. We were trying to figure out how to get as far as we could with such a late start. Three of us wanted to take a road walk around Mt. Pleasant, Fly wanted to go over it. So we decided to humor all of us and split the journey. Smoothie, 'Guana and I headed out on the road walk and made plans to meet up with Fly that night at the Bald Mountain Brook Lean-to.Off we went. The road walk proved to be the most boring one we have been on. Nothing but gravel and the woods surrounding the road allowed for no views. Although the ground was flat the gravel was hard on the feet. The sun was hot but we pressed on. As we trod on one road turned into another and we branched off several times from the road. It became apparent that we were in a maze of logging roads. At one point I got a funny feeling and started setting up arrows which pointed to the path we took. Smoothie and Fly were laughing at me but I insisted and thought they would come in handy later.Finally we got to a point where the trail seemingly ended in a stream. This confused us, we thought it was a road road. So we figured we took a wrong turn and back tracked to the next turn (where I left my arrow) which ended in a small stream and turned into a woods trail. We definitely were lost! Not the first time we got a bit off the path, but this time we had no maps with us. We debated about walking back the way we came. That would have taken us 4 hours and we figured Fly would be going crazy not knowing where Smoothie was. We ruled that out as an option and decided if we kept going the general direction we knew we should go we would run into something. So we decided to take the woods path. It came to a bog where we had to wade through sludge to get across, still we all felt it would lead us somewhere so we could get out of this maze.It was apparent that the trail had not been used in a while with trees blocking the way. No cars at least had passed here. However, tell-tale candy wrappers said that humans had passed here. Finally the path came to a dirt road. We decided to scout both directions. I went one way and 'Guana and Smoothie went the other way. As I rounded a bend I burst out laughing. There in front of me was the first stream we had encountered when we first decided to turn back. Confident but still not sure that we were on the right path, we trod on. After what seemed an eternity, the path came to a pond and we knew we were on the right path. Still we weren't exactly sure where we would land. There were houses around the pond, but no one was home to ask. Mostly vacation homes, we figured. Then we saw it, the white blaze, and never were three hikers so happy to see a white blaze of the Appalachian Trail. Our journey was not over, we now were 3 miles from where Fly was undoubtedly anxiously awaiting us. Without stopping we took a deep breath and plowed into the woods before us. We flew up the hills as darkness came to the mountains and before long we saw Fly heading our way. Yes, he came looking for us having gotten to the camp 2 hours before. So we were only 1 mile from the camp at that point and pretty much ran all the way to beat the dark. A hasty team pitched the tents and made dinner as dark settled on us. That was our first real time lost and it was only for a couple of hours. Just another story to tell and laugh about another day.