Date: 2017-08-03
From: Great Barrington

To: Salisbury
Miles today: 21.2
Weather: few clouds

Littlefoot was hauling up the hill when she let out a loud "Eek!" and stopped in her tracks. This was then followed by another "EEK!!" that was louder and at least an octave higher because Spiff, who was walking right behind, failed to notice her abrupt halt and ran into the back of her, pushing her forward.And that's how I knew we'd found the rattlesnake.We'd been told about the snake, our first, by some nobos shortly after we topped out on the northern end of Mt Bushell's summit ridge.But they hadn't explained just how enormous it was. I'd seen dozens of rattlesnake before on the PCT but this was by far the biggest yet. It wasn't that long -- maybe a metre or so -- but its body was as thick as my forearm.It clearly knew we were there, but this snake was so honey-badgerish that it didn't even bother to buzz us with its 14 or so rattles.We told the next lot of nobos about this and soon learned that one couple were serious herpetophiles but -- as is the way of the universe -- were the only ones among their tramily not to have seen a rattlesnake. I only hope it didn't move on before they got there.That morning, we'd opted to use Uber to get back on the trail rather than relying on a continuation of the luck that had characterised our hitching thus far in this town.Spiff, Littlefoot and I were joined in this by Poppa, who'd rocked into town the previous evening through his steady all-day pace. Uber proved to be a good choice, costing just $9.50 for all four of us.Our driver, Ahmad, was Pakistani but Poppa's attempt to address him in Arabic, "Min ani balad ant?" ("What country are you from?") fell flat because despite the Arabic script on a religious inscription hanging from his rear vision mirror, his native language was Urdu. My own Urdu wasn't good enough for any meaningful conversation, but it turned out Ahmad had studied in eastern Ukraine -- an ethnic Russian enclave -- so using my basic Russian would have a been a better choice.Among our goals for the day was crossing into another state, our fifth, although my goal was more ambitious than the other three: to do 21 miles into Salisbury, where I had my next set of shoes waiting for me with Vanessa, a local woman who ran a discount B&B service for hikers.What that meant was that after watching snakes and chatting to everyone who passed and then visiting a trailside lean to for lunch, we'd covered a measly eight and a bit miles by 1.20pm -- and the first four miles were easy flat miles across the Housatonic valley as we connected the ridge we'd descended the day before to the different one that we'd follow for the rest of the day.This meant I opted to head off on my own, hoping to make a faster pace on three other mountains traversed by the trail. Adding to the unknown in all this was that crossing into Connecticut also meant changing the group responsible for trail creation and maintenance. Would the Connecticut chapter of the AMC have Maine envy, opting to overcompensate for its relatively modest mountains by making the trail as difficult as possible?The boundary between Massachusetts and Connecticut was mismarked on the ground, although the sign probably did accurately mark the administration boundary between the two volunteer groups who maintain the trail. I ran into the supposed border sign nearly a mile early, but at the actual unmarked border, it was suspiciously close to where the trail suddenly changed from easy and walkable to the kind of scrambling that we associated with the toughest bits of Maine.Maybe the AMC really did have Maine envy? If so, this was going to be a very long five miles into Salisbury.Fortunately, this was just a "welcome to Connecticut" stretch, just as the steep boulder field had welcomed us to Massachusetts less than a week earlier. I was very grateful when the trail improved to even better than it had been in Massachusetts, which was already our easiest state yet.After making conditional plans to hike the final mile or so of road walking into town in the dark, I arrived around an hour before sunset. I located the home of Vanessa, settled in then went in search of the immediate necessities of life: food and alcohol.The White Hart provided both, although the tone, prices and clientele also reflected that we were well within the range of weekend traffic from New York City.I found myself sitting next to a businessman visiting his father, who lived in the town, and discussed the merits (or, in his opinion, otherwise) of peaty single malts. On the top shelf of the bar, by chance, were two of my favorite whiskies: Lagavulin and Laphroaig, both peaty malts from Islay in Scotland.A few minutes into this, he summoned the bartender over and soon we each had a shot of each one lined up in front of us, along with the bartender's suggestion, another Islay single malt that had been deliberately de-peatified. Why on earth would any distillery do that? The fact that it came in a sky-blue bottle just deepened my suspicions.The businessman and I failed to resolve the issue but we certainly had an amusing time discussing it. Coming after two pints of beer, I was certainly feeling no pain as I wandered back to Vanessa's home.Life is good.AT fact of the day: Vanessa is used to hiker packages arriving, but she admitted she was a little suspicious about mine. "It sounded like it had pills on it," she said, shaking the package I'd sent from Boston a month earlier. "It's actually macaroni cheese," I explained...