Date: 2017-08-05
From: USFS 71

To: VT 11/30
Miles today: 19.5
Weather: scattered clouds

I started the day thinking I'd lost my hiking stick.  This was a very bad thing: Vermont is full of mud, and I need that third leg to help me negotiate the mud and wet rocks.  We were just hoisting our packs to leave when I discovered my stick was missing.  Rennie had already pulled away in the van.  I ran down the road waving my hands and yelling, "Stop, stop!"  With some difficulty I managed to flag down the van.  I opened the door to look for the stick where it's normally kept.  It wasn't there.  Rennie said he'd take all the sticks out of the van.  I headed back wondering where I could find a suitable  branch to use.  We headed to the trail.  Chili Dog, a hiker I first met at Dan's Pulpit the day I hiked alone in Pennsylvania, was leaving at the same time.  He called out that there was a stick right on the trail.  It was my stick.  Then I remembered that I'd set it there last night when I arrived because I desperately needed to pee.  I peed against a tree and accidentally left my stick there.   The weather forecast was for rain around 1:00, so we tried to make good time in the morning.  The beginning of the hike was an ascent of Stratton Mountain.  There is a fire tower there that has good views in fine weather.  By the time we got there the mountain was fogged in, so we didn't climb the tower.  There's a small white building there that we wondered about.  It turns out that the building is the residence of Just Jean and her husband Hugh, who are caretakers of the tower and the land around it.  The Green Mountain Club employs them, and they live there from May to October.  They've been connected to this place since 1977, when they were hired by the state of Vermont to be firespotters.  Just Jean told us that yesterday a southbound hiker arrived saying, "I need to sit down now before I faint." He was very weak and sick.  Jean, suspecting Lyme disease, took the hiker to the medical clinic at the Stratton ski resorts be checked out.  This was a major event in their caretaking routine.Stratton Mountain didn't used to be part of the Appalachian Trail.  However, the mountain plays an important part in hiking history.  It was here in 1909 that James Taylor conceived the idea of a "long trail" that would extend from the Massachusetts border to Canada.  While the Long Trail was under construction, Benton McKaye conceived the idea of a trail that linked all the mountaintops of the entire Appalachian range.  The idea of the Appalachian Trail was born.  The AT was rerouted to include this location once this was known. Before the AT passed here, Jean saw about four hikers a year. Will hike for ice cream: When we met Rennie headed south he told us there was a ice cream and snack stand about half a mile east of our end point.  From that moment we were in a race to finish hiking in time to eat ice cream before the stand closed at six.  We took almost no breaks for the rest of the hike and picked up the pace for the last four hours.  We succeeded in getting there before six, then learned that it didn't close till eight or whenever the food ran out.   I had a grilled cheese sandwich and two scoops of black raspberry ice cream, which I turned into a float by pouring lemonade over it.  Bill and Terri each ate four scoops of ice cream in addition to other real food.  We had our first ethical trail dilemma today.  We were hiking along when Bill heard a noise.  He discovered a garter snake had captured a frog and had one of the frog's back legs in its mouth.  The frog was squealing piteously.  Bill wondered whether we should try to help the frog escape.  Terri immediately responded, no, we should let nature take its course, the snake had to eat.  I responded yes, because the frog was in terrible pain.  Bill wondered whether we should kill the frog to put it out of its misery.  Finally Arlene caught up and responded, "This is the wilderness.  We're only visitors here."  Argument over.  We could all understand this and moved on.  I think that's what Terri had also been trying to say, but Arlene captured it so succinctly that it ended the argument.  We slogged through a lot of mud today, and we got rained on for several hours, but it was a much better day than yesterday.  I mixed an instant coffee packet into my UHP (Ultra High Pasteurized/shelf stable) milk this morning and got my caffeine dose. This put me in a much better frame of mind.  Perhaps my headache and lethargy yesterday arose from caffeine withdrawal.  Tomorrow we hike over Bromley Mountain.  It's supposed to be 72, with no rain.  I'm looking forward to it. My feet are so wet, and I'm running out of dry socks.Grace, I thought of you when we crossed a road called Stratton-Arlington road and when we looked out over Manchester Center from Prospect Rock.  Meggie, I think my mystery bird might be a hermit thrush.  Morph, what makes Vermont have so much mud in high places?  Mel, thanks for the cowboy breakfast cookies. They're delicious, but I don't think I've reached cowboy status yet.