Date: 2011-07-11
From: East Mountain Retreat Center, Great Barrington, MA

To: Upper Goose Pond
Miles today: 19.0
Weather: clear sky

(In which I hang out at the cabin by the pond)I stay up trying to post my journal on the retreat's intermittent one bar of AT&T service, but eventually give up and go to sleep, missing my first post since reaching the North and civilization. In the morning I walk down the long driveway and start walking back to the trail on the road, sticking my thumb out just in case. In a few minutes a van stops and less than a minute later I'm magically transported back to the trail, having barely had time to exchange pleasantries with the driver.After a few miles of hiking I run into a woman I met yesterday who is out hiking for a couple of weeks. She is taking a break with another female hiker whom I haven't met before. I try to guess whether the new woman is a thru-hiker or not, but without the beard, it's harder to tell with women. Remembering how Vinca identified the first southbound thru-hikers I glance at the woman's legs for signs of mosquito bites, but see none. Still undecided, I ask her where she's coming from. She bristles at the question and replies, "Georgia, same as you." Her name is Brazil Nut, and having started on April 16th, she's been averaging 26+ miles a day for a while now. I ask her about who's behind us, eager to get reports from the south, but she shrugs off my questions. "I've passed hundreds people," she says, "I can't keep track of them all." Her indifference to the ever-changing stream of hikers she passes reminds me of the worst aspects of going fast, and as much as ever I am glad to have gotten out of the fast lane.After months on the trail, most aspects of hiking have shifted from being an adventure to being a lifestyle that, if not entirely normal, at least seem less strange when surrounded by others who share it. In this lifestyle other thru-hikers become one's primary and most consistent sources of social interaction, and to hike dramatically faster or slower than most of them is to cut oneself off from nearly all regular and reoccurring social contact, and to adopt a lifestyle considerably more isolated than that of most other hikers.* * *I would prefer to hike around 15-18 miles for the day, but at 19 the famed Upper Goose Pond cabin is a bit too close for a convenient two day hike. Dalton, home to two renowned trail angels with outdoor and indoor sleeping accommodations, is twenty or so miles further, meaning that I will likely hike another slightly longer than ideal day tomorrow as well. I consider zeroing at the cabin, but since I plan to go home for a family dinner on Wednesday night, this would mean getting picked up near Dalton and missing the trail angel experience.The pond is in fact a good sized lake, and the cabin is a full sized two story house, with bunks upstairs and a living area downstairs. As expected, it has drawn hikers from ahead and behind on the trail, and from the thru-hiker vacuum I had been in I enter a new bubble of hikers. JP ("Just Phil"), a section hiker out for a month on summer break, jumps into the pond for a swim. He walks back to the cabin some time later, dripping and grinning. "I'd walk another twenty miles to do that again," he says. The area would likely be one of my favorite spots on the trail if it weren't for the ferocious mosquitoes. Having used up nearly all of my 6 oz of deet, I soon retreat from the porch to the first floor of the cabin, which while far from bug-free, at least has a lower concentration. I would tent to stay well clear of the bugs, but given the rumors of thunderstorms overnight I decide to risk the bunk room.Tomorrow I hope to reach Dalton, the town where I attended eighth grade and the psychologically and perhaps geographically closest spot to home on the whole AT.