Date: 2014-08-01
From: Maine Highway 17, Oquossoc, Maine mile 232.6 

To: One mile north of South Arm road, Andover Me mile 
Miles today: 12.2

Lauren and sue left town to prepare for a big family reunion and left a local lady to manage the house and prepare breakfast for the guests. I shared a delicious blueberry pancake breakfast with her. She told me about her dad who died last year after a long career teaching music at Virginia Intermont College in Bristol, Tennessee. Unfortunately the College had financial problems and closed before he died. I remember the school had a famous organ that he played. One of her stories was of dad interweaving "Here Come the Clowns" into "Pomp and Circumstances" when the faculty marched in as he played the organ for graduation. Another story was how he recruited the African basketball plyers that the school had brought to Bristol to strengthen its sports team into his choir. The players later helped him get new keyboards for the music program that the school administration had refused to budget. The players snuck a keyboard under the stands at a big game and hooked it up to the speaker system. Instead of the taped version of the National Anthem that they always used for games, Dad played a jazzed up version that brought the house down and created sports fan support for his keyboards which were quickly approved for funding. Her husband is a federal employee who suffered a salary reduction as part of the federal government's cut backs. She had drunk from the Fox News Kool-Aid and placed the blame for their family problems on the President. She gave me a bottle of Lavender Oil explaining that it was a magic-like elixir that would speed the healing of the raw sports on my shoulder.   I do not know if it does any good, but it makes me smell funny. NiNi picked me up and got me on the trail at 9:00 am. I knew the day world be demanding, but I did not think I would have any trouble getting to the South Arm Road to Andover before the day was out if it did not rain. Again I underestimated the difficulty of the Maine trails. My energy held up and I hiked at a steady pace without any significant breaks, but I ran out of daylight before I ran out of trail. Although it looked like possible rain most of the day, no rain fell. Almost the whole day was either steep climbs or steep descents. I had to carefully choose where I put my foot for every step to avoid tripping on roots and rocks and to make sure I had a flat place to put my foot where it would not slip in mud or on a slick rock. Early in the morning I was passed by two fellows trying to set a speed record and complete the whole trail in 25 days. One wore a T shirt that said "100 miles is not far for a day's hike"' I rounded a corner and found a beautiful fat grouse standing in the trail in front of me. He let me approach to within a couple of steps and posed until I got out my camera and took some picdtures before he wondered into the brush. On top of the mountains I passed my first ripe blueberries that moose, deer and hikers had not beat me to. I only took time to eat a few, but they were delightfully sweet. The last mountain on today's hike was Old Blue. It was a steep climb and a longer and steeper descent. As dusk fell I was still one or two miles from the road. Although I continued to be careful with every step, the trail was very steep and the rocks were wet, slanted and slick. I fell a few times and in one fall landed on my back on top of my hiking pole putting a bend in it that will require replacement of a pole section. I tried hiking the last part of the trail with my headlamp, but quickly concluded that the descent was too steep to do so safely in the dark. There was no flat space on the steep rocky mountainside to pitch my tent and by 9:00 dusk had turned to pitch black. With no other real alternative I chose to cowboy camp.   I laid my tent ground cloth on a strip of relatively flat ground right beside the trail. Blew up my air mattress and put my sleeping bag on top of it. Put my pack and boots in a plastic garbage bag and used them as an uncomfortable pillow and pulled my tent rain fly over me to keep any sprinkles and the night dew off me and my sleeping gear. I quickly ate the MRE sandwich I had been carrying as an emergency meal for super and burrowed in for the night. It was not comfortable, but I got a decent night's sleep.