Date: 2003-07-23
From: VT 9

To: Kid Gore Shelter
Miles today: 14.4
Weather: light rain

Once again, Cosmo makes it happen. Without his assistance, I would have had a devil of a time connecting with my rental car. Today he drives me to Benington, VT and, after bagels and coffee, dumps me out into the cold, cold rain.Yes, it is raining. I've missed a week of it. I've also missed a thunderstorm, a tornado and a small earthquake while off-Trail, I am told. But I am so inordinately pleased to be back in the mountains walking that I don't care about the rain. Vermont's 72 vivid shades of Irish green pop wetly into focus.My feet dig into the climb at my request, but they are not happy about their heavy burden and their return to confinement. They spent the entire week in sandals of one sort or another, and now it's back into their tight, smelly caves. Faithful soldiers that they are, they put their shoulders to the harness and trudge on despite their discomfort. Ouch! I swear, it feels like I'd never been walking.The registers at Nauheim shelter tell me Wench and Hotdog are now two days ahead of me. Snappy and Puff-Puff are a day ahead. The soggy notebooks are also full of complaints of the rain, but my pleasure won't be dampened. "Well, yes, it's raining," I write, "BUT...1). Are you sitting in an office, under florescent lights?2). Is your boss crawling down your back?3). Do you even have a boss?4). You can't BUY that good, clean spruce/balsam smell - anywhere.5). You could read that fat book you've been lugging since Kent, CT. Or, not. You could curl up and take a nap. Or, not.6) Others don't whisper behind your back how bad you smell because, you know, they smell worse."And so on. Ha! Bad as a reformed smoker, aren't I?The heavens open as I am climbing the flank of Glastenbury Mt, and I am drenched. I lose my red bandana somewhere in the mopping. There are boggy, muck holes between the the wet, mossy rocks, but I manage to avoid soaking my feet. I stopped a lot on this climb last year, and this year I can trudge right up it. Chalk that up to 1,600 miles of conditioning.It's still raining when I arrive at Goddard shelter - alas, no night on the firetower, no views either and I do love a 360 degree view.An End to Ender, which is what Long Trail thru-hikers are called, is hanging about here. His name is Unitic. He plans to do the LT in 19 days. I say, "poor baby!" My 27 days nearly killed me. But, he looks fit enough, so maybe he will do it.An AT long section hiker, Matt, got on at DWG. We chatted, and before he left he asked if anyone lost a red bandana. Yes!For bringing my bandana forward, I shared my precious stock of special Trail mix with peanuts, wasabi peas and sesame sticks.I was impressed Matt had picked up my bandana. After all, I might have blown my nose on the thing. People do, you know, which is why you see them draped from bushes everywhere.No one wants to touch them.But not me, I don't blow my nose that way (she says with a John Wayne swagger...)I had originally planned to stay here at Goddard/the firetower. Sentimental me, I had in mind a kind of reconstruction of my pass through here from last year when I walked the Long Trail. But it was raining, so no open firetower bivy for me, and only 1:45 pm, too early to stop even for a natural-born lollygagger trying to slow down for trailing friends Notes and Chief. Last year, covering the exact same miles, it had taken me all day to walk. And I'd been dead at the end.No, it wasn't the work ethic pushing me on four more miles to Kid Gore shelter. It would just make tomorrow shorter. I wanted to be over Stratton Mt. before dark. Last year, THAT had nearly killed us both, me and Clyde, starting those three uphill miles at 6 pm.I am trying to slow down now that I am in upper New England, I really am. I love this fine-scented terrain, and I want to experience a hint of New England fall. My target "summit window" is Sept. 17-20.I just checked a calendar. From here on in, all I need to do are 10-mile days. Excellent! Of course, I will take a couple of zeroes in there. But - only 56 days till Sept. 17? Only 56 days left! I got a stab of sorrow as I figured that out. So soon, it's over? I still have work to do!To console myself, I ate one of Beverly and Dale's freeze dried ice creams. I'd always wanted to try one. The package had an astronaut on the cover, supposedly NASA gives them these treats. Anyway, it was pretty good, though a weird texture.So, back to this "work" that I still have to do. The week off Trail was instructive. I was not particularly stressed, but saw how easy it was going to be to get swept back up into the craziness. Crazy like being drawn into other peoples' dramas, expectations, anger, moods, histories, etc. So I've been pondering how to sidestep that on my "reentry."It was fascinating today to observe how things from this past week that had been perceived but that I hadn't really been aware of now swam into focus as I walked. Also things that had been felt but not understood and articulated now became clear.I could see again! A return to clarity. Things just bubble up to consciousness when I hike.How much of my life do I live like this, half-aware, distracted by the muddy waters of busy-ness? I am active while hiking. But my mind spins free, and other people aren't pressing their expectations on me; those that do are so easily deflected.My center stays mine. I don't give it away. Stuff bubbles up.So, now that I've seen the contrast so clearly, how to take this clarity back to the non-hiking world? Since I don't knit.I suspect my next big adventures will be internal ones, though the external ones will surely continue - I now believe they are a metaphor for the internal changes. The challenge ahead: Finding out how to hold onto my center no matter what the external circumstances. I started this AT quest about the time I began to investigate a very big question: "What would it mean to live a life without fear? What would such a life look like?"I wasn't referring to the biological fear that sends me reaching for handholds when I'm teetering on the brink of a cliff. That is a natural-born fear. Or the acquired wisdom that keeps me from stepping in front of busses. I mean the head fears that are conditioned into us: the constant line of defenses we throw up, the offenses we take because we may think we need to hit first to survive, the millions of strategies we enlist to come out on top of the heap or win someone's approval or grab that last cookie, the fears that keep us locked up in our cast-iron roles like good boys and girls. The "game" of it, as Cuba Gooding called it in the movie "Instinct." Those fears.I think the question has evolved now into: How does a person become and remain happy no matter the circumstances? A happiness independent of external events. Certainly, such a person would still feel, deeply, and retain the ability to react - or not, depending upon the circumstances - but the core of them would remain unshaken. I have been fortunate in my life to meet a rare few such as this. I know such a thing is possible. Now, I believe I can have it for myself. The AT has suggested as much.I think all, and I do mean all, of our adventures and searching in life is a search for this core thing, whatever it is. For our centers. For our real selves. Our true heart. For authenticity.So there it is. My next big adventure. A lifetime's work. But now I have some sense of where the adventure lies - within.Despite the rain, I did climb up the Glastenbury firetower. The views were short, and the wind long. Last year I could see for miles. The balsams below pointed their spanking new blue growing tips skyward.That balsam smell. It's like chocolate! Chocolate is not the right word for it, it smells nothing like chocolate, being far too clean and fresh. But it has the same rich, nose-filling quality that chocolate does.The northern trees are very free with their surface roots, however. I was chatting with young southbounders Waldo and Smooth, and they commented that Maine had even more roots than Vermont. "Step on one and do the electric slide," warned Smooth.I told them the fir roots diminished in Massachusetts, but then there would be other wonders - rocks, mud and Connecticut.About an hour north of the Glastenbury Mt. firetower, I saw my first moose scat. Mindful of my friend Trail Trooper's hilarious encounter with same (check out Trailjournals.com 2003 Long Trail, entry #6, The Acorn Story - you'll never look at a crystalline brook the same), I vowed to be extra vigilant in my northern water treatment.There was a moose said to be as far south as October Mt. in Massachusetts, but this is the first sign of moose I myself have seen. Later, I see two more piles, and muddy tracks leading into a small, grassy bog.I settle in at the Kid Gore shelter for the night. Unitic follows after. For supper, I doctor a chicken ramen, by chopping in a huge clove of garlic hauled from town. Then I pick a handful of spicy Wasabi peas from my special trail mix, and toss those in too. Though the peas stay crunchy, the taste is good. Not too bad for chicken ramen.The hermit thrushes are singing their little throats out now as darkness has nearly fallen. Unaccountably, I ache like hell, all over. I can live with it. I am back on the Trail. All is right with the world.