Date: 2004-07-16
From: Hemlocks Lean-to

To: Shaker Campsite
Miles today: 25.6
Weather: light rain

The storms last night had been the harbinger of a cold front. It was chilly this morning here at Hemlocks Lean-to. My balaclava was perched on my fuzzy head like a bishop's hat for the first time in probably a month or more. My rain jacket was helping to keep me warm too at the table huddled over my cold cereal. As full as the shelter had been last night, there was one more body on the floor near the edge this morning. He must have arrived pretty late because I didn't bed down in the upper loft till about 10pm last night and he wasn't there then. As the guy went about packing up he looked familiar. Then he opened a field guide to plants and such and I thought, no, that guy wouldn't be carrying the extra weight and thought no more of it. Besides I hadn't seen that guy since the Shenandoah back in mid June.A little while later this guy looks up and announces to the still half asleep and chilled gang, ¢Is someone here Voyageur? Voyageur should be here.¢ Then he looks at another guy and says, ¢Are you Voyageur?¢ Then I say, ¢I'm Voyageur. Are you Pony Express?¢ Well, yes he was and there was much rejoicing! I said it was too bad he had to take 10 days off to watch his cat. He gave me a perplexed look and said that he liked hanging out with his cat. That made plenty of sense to me, being a cat guy, and spoke volumes about him.Pony Express was hoping to catch up to us. He asked about Buick and was sad to have missed him. He figured Buick couldn't be more than 10 miles behind. That was reassuring. He said he had kept the name that Buick and I had given him so long ago back in June. We knew that of course from the journal entries and were pretty proud of it too. We hadn't had much opportunity to name folks due to out speed. After all, we seldom saw anyone more that once. This guy was a kindred spirit however and though he was faster than we were, we understood one and other. His name was well known on the trail for his speed and just being a nice guy. He was off before I was. It was kind of sad, though exciting, to know that we would never see each other again. As he was leaving it dawned on me that Buick had missed adding Pony Express's email address to his collection. He stopped and gave it to me. We said our farewells.Right around 9am there was this guy on the trail taking pictures of thru-hikers but for some reason he didn't take one of me. Oh Well.The day was a happy mix of gray and some blue clouds. There were nice ridges and outlooks mixed with classic New England farm scenes and buildings. It was about noon when the trail crossed US-7. Once again there was no mention of it in the handbook but there it was in plain sight. It was a nursery / garden shop / farm market. Well it must have food and it was only spitting distance up the road.It was the right thing to do. The place was full of fruit and veggies and even some ice cream. My booty was a bottle of orange juice, a peach and a Klondike Bar. Oh, and then there was a basket of plums that were past their prime and they were free for the taking so 2 of them joined me. Mmmmm, plum pits. Things were pretty slow at the moment in this shop. The peach needed to be weighed but the cat was sleeping on the scale. It seemed silly to shoo the poor cat just for one peach. To placate my protests the woman reset the tare on the scale. Then she put the peach on the scale with the cat and all was right in the world. That was lots of fun. She offered the gazebo with the swing out front as a dining area and I took her up on it. As I sat there enjoying these snacks and just reveling in the experience another hiker got dropped off at the trail and headed out. A part of me wanted to catch up but a bigger part said sit, be happy. OK.There were some mighty fine hiking sections today and some fine views but there were some low lying sections that were beyond description. Mosquitoes Madness:Can you say mosquitoes? No, they'll fly in my mouth, eyes, ears. Aaaaaahh. That was a scream. Now bugs are no stranger to me. Each spring finds me out in the height of black fly season back home in NH. Bug repellents don't really excite me. They just smell bad and sweat off. My theory, which works fairly well in practice, is to simply out hike the little buggers. That's right, go fast enough and they can't land. Don't stop until you get to a windy summit. Today proved an exception. It was hot, swampy and boggy. There were long sections of bog bridges which limit evasive actions. The mosquitoes were so dense and so fast there was no escaping. Not only did they land but they bit before they got swatted. It was like a blood bath. They bit through my shirt. They covered me. It was frightening and drove me to near panic at times as the blood ran down my arms and legs. My mind wandered to thoughts of blood loss, anemia and disease as I virtually ran along the trail and bog bridges. At home you climb. It gets cooler. They get slower. There was simply no escape here. There was no way to swat fast enough to keep from being bitten. The blood was all over my hands, arms, legs, everywhere. Grrrr.The entries in the shelter journals confirmed that I was not alone in this suffering. Things were bad for a while but not for ever. Once the trail climbed up to 1900 feet, things got better. Thank goodness. What a terrible place this would be to start the trail. At least they kept me hauling.It was a good day of 25.6 miles in 11 hours with nice long lunch breaks and plenty of shelter journal writing. Shaker Campsite was a fine spot and it was empty on my arrival before 7pm. That changed soon. The mosquitoes found fresh blood. Though it was hot I donned my rain jacket and rain pants and was grateful for the head net that had been in my pack all this way. To avoid sweating just required moving slowly. Then a girl¢s camp arrived. I had passed them about an hour ago. They were loud and a bit rambunctious but nice enough and did their best to be considerate. The buzzing outside the tent was annoying but nothing could keep me from sleeping. It did occur to me, was it all ways buggy here or is this just the bad season. Mid July didn't make sense to me. This was one of the 2 most buggy camps yet.