Date: 2010-11-11
To: Portland, Maine
Miles today: 0.0

So, as I said in my last entry, a lot has happened in the past year. Here¢s a quick update ¢ as promised:One month after summiting, I went back to work at the environmental consulting firm in Portland. I was grateful for the 7 month leave of absence, and glad I had scheduled my leave so I had a month between finishing the trail and going back to work. I visited family in Florida and friends in Texas and then spent a couple weeks relaxing at our apartment in Portland. I never thought I would be itching to go back to work, but I was craving some sort of routine and structure and I needed money.      Two months after completing the trail, Dom and I decided to go backpacking in the whites on a cold November weekend. My feet had recovered and I was ready to get back on the trail. I always thought that by hiking every day for 6 months straight I would be in the best shape of my life for at least 6 months post-trail. Wrong! Just after 2 months, I was huffing and puffing up Mt. Cabot (a 4,000 footer we wanted to cross off the list) and our 4 mile hike to the top felt like 20. It was embarrassing! Being mid-November, it was dark at 4:30pm and the temps had dropped into the 20s by 5pm. We spent the night in a fully enclosed, ice-covered cabin on top of Mt. Cabot, protected from the wind and cozy in our sleeping bags. After an early dinner cooked by the light of our headlamps in this cabin on top of the mountain, Dom proposed! I was surprised, to say the least! He did a great job waiting until the perfect moment and we couldn¢t have been happier:The next week, we ran in an annual 5-mile turkey trot in CT¢¦.I was sore for 3 days. Depressing!Went to Trail Days in Damascus in mid-May. I had quite the adventure getting there from Maine with cancelled flights and the changing of plans several times. But I quickly forgot all about that once I got there. Damascus brought back so many trail memories¢¦just the smells from the Creeper Trail brought me back to life on the AT.   The trail in Virginia has such a distinct smell, it¢s hard to describe it. The parade was the best part of the weekend. It was great to reconnect with trail friends including Hot Sauce, Cricket, Tagless and Tagalong, Hellbender, Wags, Gangsta, and the packadivas (who I hadn¢t seen since Damascus the year before). At Cowboys, the diner in town, I caught the whiff of some current thru-hikers and was appalled and envious at the same time¢¦would I ever smell that bad again? I hate to say it, but I hope so! Check out the shirts I made for Hot Sauce, Wags, Gangsta, and I!In June, Dom and I hiked the Presidential Traverse (20+ miles) in one day: Madison, Adams, Jefferson, Clay, Washington, Monroe, Eisenhower, Jackson, Pierce. We could have done Webster too but it added an extra 5 miles and it was already 8pm when we finished Pierce. My knee was killing me towards the end ¢ gotta start doing those leg lifts again! Met some thru-hikers just before Washington ¢ one of them was Lil Buddah (who has a great trail journal) who was hiking from Key West to Canada. Glad I did the presi-traverse, but can¢t say that I¢d do it again In August we bought a house! After 6 years of living in a great apartment but in a not-so-great part of town, we took the plunge and bought a house a mile from downtown Portland. We are so happy with the place¢¦lots of space and most importantly we have a small backyard and a porch that¢s perfect for drying out a wet tent.On September 25, Dom and I got married! We had the most beautiful fall day in CT ¢ flowers were in full bloom, the trees were starting to change color, and we were surrounded by our families and closest friends ¢ it was an all-around perfect day.In late October, Grommet and Katchup visit!So, what¢s next? For our honeymoon we¢ll be hiking the John Muir Trail in the summer of 2011¢¦7 months from now! The JMT is in the Sierra Nevadas in CA and stretches 211 miles from Yosemite to Mt. Whitney. We¢ve never been hiking in that part of the country (Dom has never been to CA!) and we are super excited. We¢ve already made our reservations in Yosemite and will be applying for our wilderness permit in the next few months. I¢m nervous about the grizzly bears and the altitude (and the knee pain I felt during the presi-traverse which I hadn¢t felt since before the AT) but am hoping the hike goes smoothly. I will eventually set up a trail journal for our hike but will probably just keep a written journal while on the trail since we will really have no way of updating it electronically until we are back in Maine.I guess that does it for all the highlights of the past year. Post-trail life was not a hard adjustment for me but I do think about the trail every day. The trail seems like ages ago since the contrast between trail life and this life is so great. I find myself daydreaming about the trail or remembering a funny trail moment at the most random of times. I have saved my Tech Ts and find myself smelling them from time to time¢¦while on the trail I would smell my shirt and gag¢¦now I smell it and smile.   I suppose this entry marks my AT09 journal as complete¢¦I¢ll set up that JMT journal but can¢t say how often I¢ll be posting to it over the next several months. Check back as summer approaches.This is Loon, signing off!