Date: 2011-07-28
From: Happy Hill Shelter

To: Ruby Slippers' Art Studio
Miles today: 5.8

(In which I enter New Hampshire and nero into Hanover)I wake up well rested from a cool night sleeping on soft pine needles, and head down from the tent site to the shelter to see who's still around. Cimmaron is gone, but the southbounder remains. His name is Bayou and he's out hiking a section for a month. I ask him if he slept well and he laughs bitterly. "Well I did until Cimmaron got up at 5am. He didn't cook breakfast but somehow he managed to stay round the shelter making noise for an hour." I shake my head sympathetically, not entirely surprised that someone who was offended by noise before it was dark out would not have a problem making it himself before it was light.After an easy 5.8 mile hike across the state line and into Hanover, Arrow and I meet Cimmaron again, and I get a chance to see him for the first real time. In the morning he is bright and cheerful, though it might help that neither of us let on that we were the two hikers who arrived at the appalling hour of six-something-pm the night before. He seems in remarkably fine health, and I would have guessed that he was no older than his seventies if I hadn't heard so much talk of the 89 year old hiker on the trail.The town of Hanover seems to consist almost entirely of college students -- mostly girls in extremely short shorts, though the sampling methods of my visual cortex might be biased -- and hiker-friendly shop owners. When we try to buy a cinnamon roll and donut from a sidewalk stand the vendor gives them to us free, mentioning that she is an aspiring thru-hiker herself, hoping to hike the PCT next year and the AT the year after that. At the bagel shop we are both given a free prepared bagel -- I get mine toasted with butter, Arrow gets his with jalapeno cream cheese -- and two free bagels of our choice each to take with us in our food bag. We hear about free coffee at the Starbucks and a free pizza slice at a pizza shop as well, and it seems almost as if thru-hikers simply get one of whatever each shop happens to sell.Arrow tries on new packs at the outfitter, hoping to replace his current pack with something smaller and lighter before one of his fraying straps breaks. I head over to the movie theater and watch Tree of Life, a strange non-narrative film about growing up in the fifties and also about the birth of the universe and the age of dinosaurs. The dialog consists mostly of enigmatic voiceovers that seem to be the reading of disjointed lines of poetry, and the whole movie is so over-the-top in its artsy surrealism that it functions not so much as a film as a topic for discussions to have afterwards. My own take is that the movie is supposed to be god's view of a life of a man, as he sees it through the man's own eyes and understands it in the context of the whole universe.I see Doc Boom and Trashcan outside the movie theater. They are getting picked up by a trail angel for the night, and when he shows up the trail angel offers me a bed and a shower also, but I decline so that I can stick around Hanover a little more. The experience repeats itself when I meet Portable G, a flip-flopping hiker I meet for the first time who is getting picked up by a different trail angel, but again I decide to linger in Hanover rather than get a ride out of town. Having passed up first another night at Pat's and then two other trail angels, I try to figure out what it is I'm waiting for. In addition to simply wanting to spend more time in town, I think that I'm waiting for a new experience, and hope that I will recognize it when it comes.After a dinner of cinnamon knots with icing from the local pizza shop I decide that the time has come when Freight Train and Plan B arrange to stay with yet another trail angel, and offer to try to let me tag along. They meet the woman outside of the Hopkins Center, and when Freight Train asks if there is room for a third she studies me appraisingly and checks over her shoulder as if to check if anyone is watching. "I normally try to limit it to one person a night," she says. "It wouldn't be a problem except there's this woman in the apartment complex who makes it her business to spy on everybody." I say that it's not a problem and start heading off, but she waves me back and tells me to come along anyway.It turns out that she is taking us to her art studio, and the implication of the way she talks about trying to sneak us in past her snooping neighbor, she is not supposed to have overnight guests. She asks us to take whatever we need for the night from our packs so we can hurry up the stairs less conspicuously, but I would sooner walk back to Hanover than be parted with my pack and convince her that mine is small enough not to be an issue. Inside the studio she speaks in hushed tones and checks to make sure that none of us snore. Her trail name is Ruby Slippers, having hiked parts of the AT in New Hampshire and Vermont, and she isn't staying at the studio herself, heading back to her house instead. Since their packs are still in her car Freight Train and Plan B ask if it's OK to go get them, but Ruby Slippers goes out to check the parking lot first and returns with news that the snooper is just getting out of her car and that they should wait for the coast to be clear.They eventually retrieve their packs, and when Ruby Slippers leaves for the night we laugh at what a strange situation we've stumbled into. We're grateful for the generosity and are sure that our host no doubt has her reasons to be careful, but the experience feel a lot like getting snuck into a fraternity or sorority against their rules (which was, in fact, another leading possibility for the night). I apologize for preventing Freight Train and Plan B from getting a private apartment, not having realized that our host wouldn't be spending the night. Plan B laughs, saying, "Don't worry, we'll still make animal noises." Luckily there is still plenty of privacy with a small room with a door downstairs where I sleep and a loft with a fold out bed upstairs. If nothing else, it satisfies my desire for a new experience, and a shower and roof over my head is always a treat.