Date: 2011-07-26
From: The Long Trail Inn lawn

To: Patrick's House
Miles today: 21.5

(In which I am soaked by the rain and sleep in a warm, dry bed)I sleep surprisingly well, despite tenting next to a busy road for the first time, and it is the distraction of the wifi, not the noise of the traffic, that keeps me up past 1am. I wake up only once to find that it is windy and my tent is no longer as taut as it should be. I assume that one of the stakes was pulled out by the wind, since I was only able to put each stake a half inch or so into the hard ground. But when I put on my shoes and go outside of the tent to inspect, it seems that the stakes are fine and the one of the linelocks I use to adjust line tension without repositioning the stakes has slipped. I readjust it, make a note to tighten them more next time, and go back to sleep.My aunt's friend Patrick sent me a note when I first started my trip about putting me up for a night when I passed though Vermont. Vermont seemed like decades away when I was in Georgia, and planning any specifics for it seemed to make as much sense as picking out a retirement home for a newborn, just to have one ready. But here I am, most of the way through Vermont, and after putting off having to figure out where I'll be when for as long as possible, we've settled on meeting this afternoon at Vermont 12 outside of Woodstock. By quirk of road spacings this will require hiking a longer than usual day and finishing early. The easy way to accomplish this would be to get up early and allow plenty of time, but the inn doesn't start serving breakfast until 7:30, which means that after eating breakfast and hiking the 0.5 back to the trail, I won't likely get started until around 9am. Still, it's nice to have an excuse for a fast day every now and again, so I choose the option with the best success scenario (a hot breakfast and arriving on time) rather than the one with the least risk.At breakfast I see Samir, the Long Trailer, who decided to follow the old Long Trail for a few miles to reach the inn. The combination of old and new AT and LT paths are confusing, and the section toward the inn that is the new AT north is also the old LT south, in fact traveling east. I also see Swift and Deja again, who are planning a short southbound slackpack for the day to spend another night at the inn. It's maybe the seventh or eighth time I've seen Swift, with at least a few days in between each time, making him my most frequently leapfrogged hiker, and I tease him about how when we first met he doubted that he'd ever see me again.After a breakfast of chocolate milk, bacon and french toast (with, sadly, no real maple syrup), I hike back up the side trail to the AT. The clouds make the forecasted 30% chance of rain seem low, and sure enough it starts to drizzle, though just enough to keep me cool and make it easier to sustain a 3 mph pace. I hike a bit faster than I need to to build up a buffer of extra time I'll have if I maintain the same pace, and when I have accumulated enough I start doling out small pieces of it for breaks.Two thirds of the way through the day I take a side trail to a cabin with a viewing platform on its roof. Braving the steep, rickety, ladder-like stairs yields as a reward the best view in Vermont so far, and I am once again reminded of how remote and beautiful Vermont's Green Mountains are. The view is good enough that I decide to spend all of my accumulated 45 minute buffer eating lunch and watching the view, again opting for the riskier but potentially preferable scenario. Vesuvio, a southbounder, climbs up to the roof to join me, and we sit in the companionable mostly silence of a nobo and sobo's briefly overlapping break. From our perch we can see the storm clouds rolling in, and no sooner have I climbed back down the stairs does the rain begin to fall again. Thunder rumbles as I hurry back to the trail, and I hope that Vesuvio has the sense to finish his lunch down from the roof.The rain begins to fall harder and is soon a full-on downpour, the first I've hiked in since New Jersey. I have to be extra careful hiking downhill on slick wet rocks, but overall the cool rain increases my speed, encouraging me to hike even faster as if this might somehow help me outrun the rain. Though one might imagine rain to be like a natural shower, washing off dirt and sweat, in actuality it always seems to make things ever so much dirtier. The trail becomes muddy, shoes splashing mud onto legs and socks, and dirt and bugs stick to wet skin. The rain lifts sweat and oil from my skin but doesn't seem to wash it away, and I smell even worse than usual. No matter how dirty I start out, I am always filthy after an hour of hiking in the pouring rain, and since I haven't showered since Manchester, I am especially dirty today, and glad that I have a warm shower and dry bed to look forward to tonight.The storm lasts a couple of hours, then clears shortly before I reach the road. The sun comes out, but I am still so wet that I know my socks and shoes would stay wet for days if not washed or fan dried. I reach the road 45 minutes early and sit in my wet clothes, starting my journal entry on my Kindle through its plastic bag.Pat picks me up in his Yaris and tells me stories of going to Marlboro College with my aunt and of meeting my father in a kitchen once, where he (my father) was wearing impressive leather hiking boots. Pat is an avid bicyclist, and he tells me about Warm Showers, a site for bikers to find places to sleep and shower on their bike tours, like a cross between Couch Surfing and bike trail magic. We try to come up with what the bike touring term for trail magic would be, but decide that there isn't one, at least not yet, and that the very existence of such a term is a credit to the hiking community.Back at Pat's house I shower, wash my clothes and eat a grilled cheese while Pat and his wife eat corn on the cob and burgers (my trail diet is so close to normal for hikers that I forgot to mention that back in the real world I am an unusually picky eater). For desert we have rich, creamy vanilla ice cream with dark grade B maple syrup, and I wonder how I could have forgotten what a wonderful combination that is. After a late night, early morning and full day of hiking I am exhausted, and am half-relieved when I can't find Mac drivers for my camera, removing the possibility of staying up to sort through and upload pictures.It is a wonderful thing to be welcomed into the homes of people you haven't met before, and even more so on a wet, stormy day. One of the lessons of thru-hiking is to experience what it is like to be without seemingly simple luxuries like showers, laundry and transportation, and through this deprivation to be able to appreciate the generosity of others when it comes.