Date: 2004-07-09
From: Cooper Lodge

To: US4 (The Inn at Long Trail)
Miles today: 6.2

I got up in the early glow of a cold and cloudy morning, picked up my stuff rather silently, and packed outside the shelter--a drafty stone cabin that leaks in heavy weather. Leaving a handful of goldfish crackers for Adam, I slipped, slid, and sometimes hiked my way from Killington the mountain down to Killington the ski town. Got rained on just enough to be damp and chilled. A blustery road walk later and I checked into the Inn at Long Trail. I called dad to work on logistics, took a shower, and then took a bus down to Rutland, where I transcribed five days of journaling before taking lunch. First I had a monte cristo at Clem & Company. Then, around the corner, I had Chinese Roast Pork with Chinese Vegetable on Rice at the Kung Chow Restaurant: the least Chinese food I've had--putting "Chinese" in the name of the dish a few times did not convince. It was rice and pork in a brown sauce that would have been at home as part of an Illinois Thanksgiving dinner. Adam made his appearance around one and when he had dome some work on the internet we resupplied at Price Chopper. Then (always "then" or "next", sometimes "later" or "after"--the subject/verb/object ordering of English sentences forces a writer to invent many odd sentences to keep past tense narrative from going stale)--then we walked out of town and hitched back up to the Inn. Along the way we stopped by an outfitter well-stocked with Lowe Alpine and Limmer, but bought nothing.Our room is to the left, up a set of stairs that rises out of the large and empty fireplace room (what should I call it--do ski lodges have living rooms? This place must get hoping during ski season (and we saw a price list--yikes!!!)--it's got atmosphere and such. The dining room (seats maybe 75) a television room (nominally the sun room), and McGrath's Irish Pub all branch off from the living room, as does the laundry room. Along one wall a telephone proved patrons with access to the rest of the world--noteably not a pay phone, saving those of us making long distance calling-card calls about 50 cents. In the winter everything bustles; now it is dead and quiet.We made calls, split up the food, wrote postcards, and raided the hiker box for dinner--Lipton "cooked" in hot tapwater--but I had stopped at Wendy's on the way from town and could not bring myself to down much of either the Lipton or Spam and stale crackers Adam had pulled from the hiker box.Finally, after all of this, we alked downstairs to the pub. It was a low-key, older crowd being served pints of Guiness and Long Trail Ale for $4.50; we stayed for one round and then crashed--a long day for me.A fun game: listen to yourself tal for a few days; not the words, expressions, and sentence structures you overuse; reconfigure your speech and stop using them--fun for the self-concious introverts out there.The White Mountains--known for rugged terrain and terrible beauty: "Oh yeah, people die up there all the time." Dot continued to relay a harrowing story of death and life. A hiker will find himself hiking above treeline one clear, cold day and ten minutes later be in the midst of a freezing thunderstorm. Hikers have been struck dead by lightening--to avoid it our hiker will have to throw himself off the side of the mountain in the five minutes warning before the storm hits. If he lives through the fall and avoids the lightening, then he has only to survive the hypothermic rain driven sideways in the wind and make his way to an AMC survival hut. Where he get to pay $75 for dinner, breakfast, and a place in the bunkhouse, or get put out into the elements and stealth camp somewhere. I'm ignoring work-for-stay and overlooking safety-driven convern for the hiker from the hut crews, but it makes for a better story.