Date: 2004-08-27
From: Manchester Center, Vt.

To: AT
Miles today: 3.0
Weather: overcast clouds

WHERE HAS BUMPKIN GONE? This page will brief everyone as to where she has been and is Going! Be sure and go to her 2005 entries for the continuation of what is meant to be the completion of her walk to Maine. It has been a year since the Oreo Angel whisked me off of the trail for a few days, then took me to the airport and put me on a plane to Colorado. The plan was for me to spend ten days there with my husband, Papermaker and help erect our log home kit. It was great to see him again, and even greater to work along side of him as we built what we hoped to be our vacation home there in the Sangre De Cristo range of the Rocky Mountains. Too soon though it was time for him to head back. I could not pull myself away from there, and ten days soon turned into two weeks. Knowing I had to get back to the trail, I finally booked my flight for Sunday Sept.19, 2004. My oldest son had flown up to visit me, and we went into the town of Ft.Garland to watch the television and reports of Hurricane Ivan ripped ashore at Pensacola Fl. The next few hours were spent trying to get in touch with Papermaker to see how much damage we had sustained. I was never able to reach him, but did manage to get through to some friends at a local business. It was bad, really bad they told me. I changed my flight plans and was headed home instead of going to Vermont, I was on my way to Florida. The next three weeks I spent handing out ice, water, and food to people in the Red Cross lines. No one had electricity,or ice or water. I could relate to that, I had been without those things for several months. I also spent literaly months cleaning trees and debris from my yard, chasing insurance adjusters and trying to return some sense of normalcy to our lives. Luckily for us, our house sustained minor damage. I cannot count the number of people I personaly know who lost their homes, or had major damage. I lost one friend, a fellow business owner from our small town who died from carbon monoxide poisoning. We lost one of our major customers along with 95 percent of our income. After a 23 year working relationship, we were replaced by a cheaper and supposedly more succesful company. It is scary to realize that a corporate person can come in and in a matter of days and a short report convince the company that the successful relationship they thought they had was all wrong.As the holidays aproached another disaster would come our way when one of our son in laws would be killed in an automobile accident. The year ended on a bad note. We looked forward to the new year in a lot of different ways. Spring came, we continued to clean up our yard and remove downed trees. We were hired to cleanup some other peoples yards. Then early into the huricane season, Dennis the Menace rolled ashore doing much more damage than Ivan had. What trees were left standing through the winter, were blown down. Anything that we owned that had a roof was torn apart and needed to be replaced. Just as the yard began to look pretty good, it was once again strewn with limbs. Mentally we needed a break, emotionally we neded a break, physically we needed a break. And so here we are in the wilderness of Vermont, hiking north hoping to finish that last 300 miles of the Appalachian Trail. As I sit here in a three sided wooden shelter, Hurricane Katrina is battering Florida somewhere along it's penisula. It will hopefully fizzle out before it reaches the Gulf of Mexico. I certainly hope so, I do not want to have to abandon the trail again to go home and clean up after a hurricane. I have set aside about five weeks to hike 300 miles. Those of you who have been following my journal, know that it will be nothing short of a miracle for me to hike that many miles in so few days!Bumpkin                           5 Million Steps for PolioAppalachian Trail GA-MA BumpkinMore in 2004