Date: 2011-08-24
From: Lakeshore House, Monson ME

To: Long Pond Stream Lean-to
Miles today: 15.0
Weather: overcast clouds

(In which I try to build my first fire and bake cookies)Though I have heard good things about breakfast at Shaw's, the other hostel in town, a couple of donuts at Irving is more my speed in the morning, so I do that, and end up splitting the second donut with Towns and Ben. Sitting on the porch I finally get to meet Rebekah, the well known proprietor of the hotel. "Poop a lot?" she asks me, seeing my nearly full roll of toilet paper from Gun Runner. She turns to Jude to ask, "OK, who did the wake-and-bake in the bathroom this morning? I don't care if any of you smoke pot -- hell, I used to smoke it like a chimney -- but for god's sake, just not in the house!" Jude nods toward the corner room from which the pungent odor of weed had been emanating the night before and Rebekah calls out, "Hey you, girl in room 6, quit smoking pot in there! You're not hiding it very well!"Jude drops me off at the trail head and I wish him good luck finally hiking south this afternoon after two and a half weeks of being sucked into the vortex of the Lakehouse. Hitting the trail again myself I am excited as I've been coming out of any town stop that I can remember. The final stretch! 100 miles will take me to a small store at Abol Bridge, and from there I enter Baxter State Park for the final 15 miles and the big K.The 100 mile wilderness is the longest stretch without a town or store, and is the most remote section of trail. Having already carried more than 100 miles worth of food on several occasions -- mostly due to my lack of planning and erring on the side of excess food -- the length of the wilderness isn't intimidating so much as it is exciting. I can feel Katahdin waiting even if I can't see it yet.The beginning of the 100 mile wilderness is what I had expected Maine to be like, wild and rugged but with a reasonable, pleasant trail. I pass pond after pond, and from the tops of the regular ups and downs I can see even more ponds and lakes in the distance. I ford three streams, stopping to take my socks and shoes of at each one since the rest of the trail is dry. Two of the fords have rope lines to hold on to, but since these are taut and high enough to prevent the simultaneous use of trekking poles I ignore them and use my poles instead. Each ford is a slow process involving searching for rock hopping routes, taking off my shoes, the careful ford itself, and then drying my feet and putting socks and shoes back on. I probably spend the equivalent of almost half a mile worth of time on each ford, but having gotten the hang of them I no longer dread them like I did before.I stop early at 5pm, unpacking my things in an empty shelter after hiking only 15 miles. With 110 miles to hike in six hiking days this makes it a short day, but I stop anyway in part because it seems to be the most popular nobo plan to hike 15, 21, and 19 miles for the first three days in the wilderness to hit the right shelters and get an easy day out of Monson with a full pack. The other reason to stop early is that I have packed out a roll of chocolate chip cookie dough -- an unplanned eleventh pound of food -- and want to make my first camp fire so that I can bake trail cookies. As luck would have it the previous shelter happened to provide a book of matches (I've never carried matches or a lighter) and a small, dented frying pan, so I figure all that's left for me to do is find some sticks and convince them to burn.This turns out to be trickier than I had expected. I waste 12 of the 36 matches in the full book trying and failing to light a dry leaf before the brief flame of the match fizzles out, and then waste another 12 trying and failing to get a dry leaf to burn long enough to start a chain reaction with other dry leaves. I quit trying with 12 matches left, figuring that I should save them for use by someone who actually knows how to use them.I am in luck when Amanda and Jessie show up. They had been planning to make a fire anyway, so Jessie takes over as lead fire coordinator and we all scavenge for appropriately sized fallen sticks. Jessie collects birch bark to catch the initial flame and uses his lighter to light the birch bark. The birch bark lights the leaves and twigs, which light the larger twigs and soon there is a nice blaze going.I squeeze cookie dough into the (rinsed) frying pan and hold it over the flames. I accidentally burn the bottom of the first giant cookie, but Jessie stops me when I am about to throw it away and I put it in his bowl for him to eat. "Part of that was really good," he says a minute later. To prevent the next batch from burning I try to flip the giant cookie regularly, but since it's still mostly liquid, it turns out to actually be more like scrambling an egg. The chocolate chips melt and run through the concoction, which turns brown and textured in a not particularly appetizing way. It tastes pretty good though, like a cross between a brownie, cookie dough and a cookie, and we all eat some of it.Jessie's cooking attempt results in much the same mixture, but with the last of the dough Amanda decides to take a more patient approach, holding the pan further from the coals. We watch admiringly as her delicately rolled balls of dough slowly transform before our eyes into something closely resembling cookies. After more than twenty minutes of careful tending she declares them done and generously distributes them. I'm holding mine in one hand on Jessie's spatula and taking a picture of it with my other hand when the cookie slips off the spatula and onto the ground. After all that build up a little dirt and ash hardly matters though, and I brush the pieces off and pop them in my mouth.They taste, remarkably, like cookies, and the success makes me think about all of the other campfire baking I could try -- brownies and cupcakes, not to mention grilled cheese. Unfortunately there is only one small resupply left, and a slim chance of fires past the resupply in the park, so they are experiments that will have to wait for a later hike. (How strange to think of hiking on anything other than this current trip.) I am glad to have gotten the chance to have baked at least once on this trip though, and to have shared the experience an results. Of all the cookies I will ever eat (and there will likely be quite a few), I doubt that many will live up to those cooked over a camp fire on the AT.