Date: 2008-05-09
From: South Wilcox Shelter

To: Upper Goose Cabin
Miles today: 16.0
Weather: light rain

I took another alternate route today that took me past Tyringham on a horse trail, past a huge dog that came barking after me, down a gravel road where there were old blazes on telephone poles, and down a road that ended before I thought it would, so I had to bushwhack a half mile or so up to the trail.It was cool and lightly raining most of the day. I still don't feel completely healthy and I've decided to hike 50 more miles to N. Adams where I will take a complete zero before going up to do the northern part of the long trail.We spent the night on the front porch of the upper goose cabin after a short day of hiking. Like many things the actual cabin doesn't open until memorial day. We saw other people hiking to the cabin and were afraid we would have to share the porch, but they moved on after Vagus pretended he was demonic.* * *Skit's bits:I had a strange and vivid dream last night.It began with me hiking an extreme snow slope surrounded by an inspiring array of mountains. I was finishing some segment of a much more intense version of The Quadre. For some reason a few other people I knew were in the area, including my sister. I walked off this snowfield and came down to a parking area where my sister and I and several other friends piled our gear on the back of this flatbed truck. Our gear made a big pile and there was no other place to sit but on top of it. Pat Mentele, a melon farmer and old family friend from South Dakota, was for some reason driving the truck. We drove down this narrow, winding mountain road hanging on for dear life, I was clinging precariously to some piece of gear that was threatening to fall off the truck. Pat drove down out of the mountains and we came out at the ocean (we may have been in New Zealand?) anyway he tried to make some fast turn from our gravel road onto a bigger highway that ran along the rocky coast, but the truck slid across the icy road. We all somehow managed to bail safely from the truck, but all our gear and the truck was lost in the frigid water.I had apparently just finished some exhausting section of hiking and when someone who knew us in the area gave us a ride to their house I crashed soundly through the night. In the morning, however, I was upset. I had lost all my gear and couldn't afford to replace it. I was most of the way done with The Quadre and really wanted to finish. I went out to the garage and saw my sister and I started complaining to her about how I couldn't afford to buy a new sleeping bag, a new GPS, etc. She looked at me with tired bloodshot eyes and asked how I slept last night. I told her I slept pretty well. She said she had not slept at all then turned and I noticed her entire arm was missing. Just then Pat had come in and his cheeks were completely black with frostbite. They had both felt so bad about the missing gear that they had gone back and dove without any equipment into the icy water searching for stuff all night.That's where the dream ended. I think my sister lost her arm to a shark bite while searching for the gear. I know that Pat's cheeks were black because of it. I had talked to Stride recently about picking watermelons in South Dakota when I was younger and driving the truck in the fields so that is where I think Pat came from. My current struggles with sickness and motivation I guess were the cause of the rest of the dream. The most disturbing part, however, when my sister turned and showed that she was missing an arm, cleanly cut from the shoulder, I don't know what that means. I think my sister was there for some reason as a representative of my family. The dream as a whole I interpret to say I might be taking the whole Quadre thing too seriously.