Date: 2006-09-27
From: Katahdin Stream Campground

To: The summit of Mt. Katahdin
Miles today: 5.2
Weather: few clouds

Let the trumpets sound and the cymbals clash! Release the doves and celebrate the wonder of today. Joy has no bounds and smiles are impossibly wide.        Five months ago I walked through the arch of the Springer Mountain Approach Trail to visit a humble copper plaque with a small white rectangle next to it. I picked up a tiny stone and pocketed it, ever guarding it that I might place it on a summit cairn over two thousand miles from its home. That Georgia morning back in April shared a cold chill with this one here in Maine. Skies clear with blue and a hint of frost in the air, I woke to an overwhelming antsy feeling. I strolled over to the open green to look up at the Greatest Mountain. Katahdin was clear, quiet, a wash of cold blue-grey color where its granite rises thousands of feet above treeline. What a sleeping giant, it would soon awake with sunrise. Red, yellow and orange leaves said it was getting late, not many days left in the season. Only one more would be all that¢s needed for this soon to be thru-hiker.        By eight my gear was packed and strapped to my back, my abbreviated load consisted of all my clothes, lunch and first aid bag. Chuckbuster, his friend Jim and I made our way up the AT to the register sign-in post. I scribed ¢9-27-06¢¦ Postcard¢¦8:16 a.m.¢ We shook hands and I said ¢See you at the top.¢        My enthusiasm propelled me northward one last time. My exceptional footwork that had gone missing after my bad fall had fully returned to me a week ago, I was in top form again. Two splints still graced my right wrist, but even it was near 80% again.         I tried to measure my pace, this would be a long, upward ramp until it hit the area known as the Gateway ¢ a mess of boulders requiring scrambling more than hiking. It is an unnerving section that is the farthest thing from anyone¢s idea of a trail. Exposed to high winds, this area tests your skills, courage and resolve. It¢s not for those afraid of heights since the mountain uses this area to guard its summit. My hiking poles became useless here so I stood them against a hundred year old spruce no taller than them. The shoes were sticking and the black ice was melting in the rising sun.        Katahdin, happy with my passage of its diabolical Gateway then surprises you with the Tablelands. A flat, rock strewn plateau that lets you glimpse Baxter Peak ¢ home of the AT¢s northern terminus. At a mere mile-plus, you know you¢ll soon be there. You know it¢s going to happen.        You hike and look and hike and look; it¢s nearly impossible not to keep glancing up, watching the summit inch ever closer. At a half-mile, the sign and its ¢A¢ frame shape emerge. The winds are increasing, the temperatures are dropping, but now nothing will stop you. Your pace quickens. Not a person is in sight. A hundred feet remaining¢¦ Fifty¢¦ Five¢¦I embrace the sign, hugging it while resting my face upon its weather beaten surface. A flood of warmth feels me.        I reached into my pocket and produced my tiny stone and placed it on the summit cairn, ¢There, its complete¢ I whisper to myself. 2,174.6 miles on foot and heart and joy. A true life adventure. Georgia is impossibly far away.        I pose for pictures when Chuckbuster arrives and then he for me. I made it up in two hours forty-five minutes without stopping. It was 11 a.m. and you could see 200 miles. Hidden just out of the wind were two other thru-hikers who started much earlier ¢ Baltimore Bill and Sam-I-Am. Jim arrived in all due time while I ate lunch to get warm ¢ all my clothes were now on in the below freezing wind-chill. Snow blanketed the shadow side of the summit. Jim surprised us with champagne, the cork was launched and swigs were passed around.        I wanted this thru-hike to be different from the first and indeed it was in part to the people. Great people like Mystic and Masterplan who I met on the first night in Georgia. LB and Marley who I was around for a month. Slim, Chemist and Magic Shoes who I spent another fun month with. My dear friend Jubilant John through Pennsylvania and then Chuckbuster these last two weeks. And of course so very many others who lived vividly in the shelter registers or in brief meetings. Yes, this hike was different. In Virginia I came close to stopping. In Maine a broken wrist tested my will again. Rain, cold days and humidity so nasty that water poured from me, all asked if I really wanted to endure this again.        A thru-hike agrees with me ¢ both times it has turned me into a climbing, walking athlete. I¢m fit, slim and dare I boldly say a tad more handsome? I¢m promising myself to begin to diet and stay slender. To seek out and start yoga. And maybe to write another book that can help others achieve their own thru-hike. I like helping others.        Maine remains my favorite State, its thousands of lakes and ponds please my eye and its countless evergreens touch my heart. Sleeping in fresh air for months has a rare wonderful effect on me; a thru-hike makes me less selfish about the world, that its not just mine but I share it with the animals and other critters. The world is a vivid, full texture experience and thru-hiking makes the mini dramas of others inconsequential.         This journey may be over, the memories in the wilderness of awes will go on and on. Four small words say it all ¢ I did it¢¦again.