Date: 2017-08-01
From: Upper Goose Pond cabin

To: Great Barrington
Miles today: 19.6
Weather: overcast clouds

As dilemmas go, this was a good one to face. Do we linger longer in the delights of Upper Goose Pond? Or do we head off early so we can spend longer in the hot tub at Great Barrington community center, where AT hikers get a special discount?There are 28 AT miles between the two, making it too long to be done sensibly in one day -- and particularly without missing out on the pancake breakfast. So it's two short days, but do we spend equal amounts of time at each end or do we favor one over the other?This balance was taxing the minds of Spiff, Littlefoot and me. They'd had most of the previous day at Upper Goose Pond, having camped just six miles out then spent the afternoon paddling the free canoes around the titular pond, so they opted to leave around 10am after a leisurely breakfast.After my relatively late arrival, I'd planned to leave at midday so I could enjoy this most pleasant of environs and go for a swim.But then a nobo told me it was feasible to hitch in to Great Barrington from an earlier highway, Massachusetts Route 23, and then self-slackpack the nine miles in between the following day. It meant two nights in town, with all the benefits that offers, but without the cost since thru-hikers were welcome to pitch their tents in the forest behind the community center.A few hours after leaving the pond at 11.15am, I caught up with Spiff and Littlefoot as they filtered water at a stream."If we do 19 miles today," I explained, "we can each shower, have a hot tub session and go to the brew pub tonight for dinner."I didn't know it at the time but Spiff and Littlefoot had been two weeks since their last shower and a similar amount of time since doing their laundry. Part of this reflected their new philosophy of trying to avoid towns because they'd been burning through their budget faster than they'd wanted, but two weeks out here is like two months in normal life and they were hankering for cleanliness."So beer and a shower?" Spiff asked. He then looked at Littlefoot and noted: "I can see the gears turning..."And with that, both of them were down for this plan.The only downside was we were maybe 10 or 11 miles away from the highway and it was mid afternoon, which meant it was time to put some of this hard-won trail fitness to the test.Littlefoot hauled her ass up the next slope at a pace I couldn't even begin to hope to match, so I resigned myself to panting and puffing my way up behind them. They were also similarly quick downhill, something my aging knees didn't permit me to match. It was only on the level ground that I was able to truly cope.But that also involved the prospect of trail conversations of the kind that are common on the PCT and even most of the CDT but which the hitherto brutal grades of the AT had made impossible.Most thru-hikers tend by nature to be interesting people, which I put down to having actively chosen not to follow the path in life that society pushes us all towards of school, job, marriage, kids and the consumerist ideal of a bigger house/boat/car.Spiff and Littlefoot certainly fit into that category. They were interesting and thoughtful people. And I hadn't seen them since I was slackpacking through the Kinsman's, the second last mountain range in the Whites way back in the middle of New Hampshire, and we found ourselves at a shelter with a Lebanadian who expounded on how it was obvious that 9/11 was clearly a conspiracy between the Saudis and the Israelis.Most of the trail towns we'd encountered have been hiker friendly but they explained how in Lee, a lesser-visited town just up the interstate they'd gone to the day before, they'd been glared at by most of the locals as if they were homeless vagrants. The terrain was not always easy but the conversations in particular helped the miles fly by. After getting some trail beta from nobos that the community center closed at 8.30pm, our chances of getting there on time gradually improved from uncertain to probable to us emerging onto Route 23 at 7.30pm.There was an hour of light left in which we had to hitch the three or four miles into town. This can be an uncertain prospect with three people, an awkward hitching number, and we didn't know whether the citizens of Great Barrington would be hiker friendly or be like the disdainful types of Lee that Spiff and Littlefoot had endured the day before.We needn't have worried. After about 10 cars went past without stopping, a driver of a car going the opposite direction stopped, turned around and drove us straight to the community center.An hour later, we've showered, pitched our tents in the forest and now we're enjoying some of the best microbrews and burgers on the trail at the Harrington brewpub, a few minutes walk away from the community center. (Admittedly, it would have been funnier to pitch our tents in the dark after visiting the pub, but sometimes we make the smart decision rather than the most amusing one.)We're also buzzing from the quintessential trail experience of setting an ambitious but unlikely goal then turning it into reality.Life is good.AT fact of the day: We might have arrived at the road half an hour earlier if not for our predilection of talking to every hiker we meet. This also provided some important trail beta but the epitome of this was running into Poppa, with whom I'd had a tortoise-vs-hare relationship ever since Baxter State Park. I'd last seen him in Glencliff as we exited the Whites but about 40 minutes after leaving Upper Goose Pond cabin, I crested a hill and saw him below. It was good to catch up.