Date: 2008-07-15
From: Moxie Bald Lean-To

To: Monson, Maine/Shaw's Lodging
Miles today: 16.9

I have come to the rational conclusion that I was not coming down with Giardia last night, I hope. I'm feeling 100% right now. In fact, you might say I'm 'Fired up and ready to go!'.I had Monson on my mind when I hit trail this morning, I'm ready for the pending zero tomorrow. The trail was once again poorly maintained with mind boggling amounts of mud on the trail. Cookie and I did our best to avoid the slosh pit.The first significant task was to ford the Bald Mountain Pond outlet. This required putting on my crocs and hanging onto a poorly attached piece of rope across the stream. Cookie fell in the moment he grabbed onto his rope, I laughed once I confirmed he was OK. When it was my turn, I learned from his mistake and was sure to carefully enter the water and glide across, which I did while continuously swaying back and forth due to all the slack in the rope.Oh, but then it was time to march through some more slop. By this point in time Cookie and I did not even bother trying to avoid the slop and proceeded to march right through it. Some good trail maintenance happening on this stretch of trail.In their defense, the trail was fairly level today. The trail spent most of the day following a river as it weaved through the valley.The west branch of the Piscataquis river posed an interesting fording scenario. The part where the trail crosses is where two rivers become one, which left an island in the middle. My objective was simple:Cross the first river, celebrate on the island having not fallen in, then march across the second river, celebrate on the other side of a successful ford. Everything went according to plan. One problem is that Cookie is always in th lead, which means he reaches the oppose shore about five yards in front of me. This gives him ample time to deploy what ever tactics needed to ensure I completely fall down in the water. My goal is to never make eye contact with him while fording.About 15 minutes from Horshoe Canyon Shelter I asked a SOBO how far to the shelter, she replied "not far, 1 to 1.5 miles at most". I made a comment to Cookie after stating "I know we have to be closer than that". I was right, and we were.Horshoe Canyon, where there's a shelter junction, is an interesting spot. There's a waterfall crashing into a deep gorge that looks like a Horshoe, hence the name. Cookie turns to me and says "Did you happen to bring a kayak?".For the home stretch to the blue blaze junction I was in high gear, which meant running at times. It felt absolutely amazing to be able to run full speed with a pack, I was the happiest man on the face of the planet at that moment in time. At one point during my running I lost trail and continued on an old snowmobile trail, but then discovered that the trail would rejoin it. Why it left the snowmobile trail in the first place is beyond me. I rolled into the Monson blue blaze at 12:20PM.After getting lost due to poor blazing and refinding the trail, we rolled into Shaw's at 1:00PM.When we entered Shaw's we were greeted by Landfill, who is essentially bumming around claiming to be helping out, but a lot of hikers seem to be annoyed with him. In the living room down stairs where hikers gather he always has the TV on, and tells everyone to be quiet when in the room. Hiker interaction is a key part to not going insane out here. Trading stories is a past time passed from AT thru hiker to AT thru hiker that dates back all the way to Earl Schaffer(sp?), the first person to ever thru hike the Appalachian Trail.Technically, I've now completed the Appalachian Trail, one continuous path from Springer to Katahdin.The deed will be done in 114.5 miles, then I shall return home and begin my transition.There's a good chance I will avoid contact with everyone I know once I return. There's a particular coffee shop in Portland I'm quite fond of that no one I knows goes to. Going from The trail to Portland will be a culture shock, I'll need time.Tomorrow is a zero, right now is time to end the day.And that's the way it was.Kirby