Date: 2017-06-26
From: Full Goose Shelter

To: Gorham
Miles today: 21.0

We start hiking at 5:00 am. There is the slenderest of chances we can make it to Gorham. If we don¢t start in this dim-lit hour the chance is zero, zilch. If we don¢t make it to Gorham we have no chance to make it the next day to Carter Notch Hut, run by the Appalachian Mountain Club, where we have bed, dinner, and breakfast reserved and paid for. But Gorham is 21 miles away.The Mahoosuc Notch yesterday set us back 4 miles. So today¢s planned 17, still a big big day, has turned into 21. But should we even try? This is only Sean¢s second day on the trail with me, and maybe I should remember that I¢m 65.(Frodo: It¢s taking some time for us to realize and accept that the 20 to 25+ mile days we were comfortable with on the PCT and Scout usually did on the CDT are well-nigh impossible in these mountains of Maine and New Hampshire. We¢re told it should get easier in Vermont.)After some slow going, at mid-morning we get a boost. We¢re at the Maine- New Hampshire State Line! I have hiked all of Maine. Do any of you ever get choked up at a state border? Try hiking 430 miles to it. I am glad Sean is there. I hug him and dampen one shoulder.  I took a brief moment to take a photo of this lake with lily pads: http://www.trailjournals.com/j...(Frodo: I'll bet it also had leeches....)By the way, do I write too much about food? Frodo has told me to limit my gushing about her, many people have told me no more foot photos, but what about all these tributes to town food? Are you tired of intimately described pot roast and tributes to bacon?Let¢s highlight some differences between this trail and the other two I¢ve hiked, the PCT and CDT.1) At night your dinner doesn¢t cool down so fast, so you don¢t have to bolt it. On the AT my dinner pot cools slowly because, unlike the other two trails, the temperature doesn¢t plummet when the sun goes down. Here it swings down mildly and has yet to head south of 45°.2) Spiders. On the PCT and CDT I was often the first person on the trail and I would often catch spiderwebs across my face ¢ they¢d stick to my moustache and eyebrows. Here it is very rare. Where are all the spiders? (Frodo: Ahem¢¦ I was usually the first on the trail, since Scout usually let me set the pace. But given my lack of height, he still got spiderwebs in the face ¢ we both did. Every once in a while, when they were particularly bad, I¢d walk with one arm reaching up high, to clear those spiderwebs for him.)3) Lastly, let¢s talk about boogers, hardened snot. [Hey, princesses, do you like to hear your parents say ¢boogers¢?]  Out here I never pick my nose on trail. Admit it, you PCT and CDT hikers, we are always picking our nose out there. It¢s so dry and the snot hardens to nostril-narrowing boogers. We get mini nosebleeds in the elevation, and the fine dust mingles with the snot to make eminently pickable boogers. Not here. No dust (everything¢s too wet), high humidity, and no 10,000-foot-plus elevations.But back to this day. We did a ten-by-two. We hit 10 miles by 2:00 pm, when we finally had a short lunch. By 4:00 pm we¢d been walking 11 hours and we were at 13. We kept moving. Even if we hiked in the dark, would it be possible? We hit the last mountain before Gorham, 3.8 miles out, at 7:30. We called White Mountain Hiker Hostel. ¢Yes, you can come in after 10:00 pm.¢We turned our headlamps on at 9:00 pm. We hit the road with under a mile left at 9:30. Then we spotted blinking lights, Swamp gas? Are we seeing things because we skipped dinner and have been hiking nearly 17 hours straight?No. Those are fireflies. Fireflies! What a perfect end to this arduous day.Or maybe the pizza delivered at 10:40 pm was the perfect end.Or maybe the shower was the perfect end.Or maybe the perfect end was at 6 minutes past midnight, finishing up today¢s journal. I put my heart into it. I sleep well when I¢ve reached out to each of you this way.Off to sleep the sleep of the dead.