Date: 2004-08-09
From: Campsite past Cascade Brook

To: Campsite past NY state thru-way overpass
Miles today: 14.7

My new found enlightenment has been short-lived. I had another really brutal day. We had told Flare, an early riser, to wake us up in the morning, but he was not successful, so we woke up late as usual, to Freebird going by. This is the third or fourth time he's walked by us while we were waking up, so it's getting to be a joke. He told us about an icecream stand .2 miles off the trail at the next road, where you could also get water. We still really needed water--we had drank from and cooked out of the stream, but the thing had brown water, literally sepia toned. And it tasted like tea. I'm hopeful the stuff was just leaves decomposing, and I haven't gotten sick yet, so maybe I'll get lucky. So we traipsed down to the road, got hotdogs from a hotdog stand, and then got a pint of icecream each, homemade from the icecream store. It was no pricier than Ben and Jerry's, and made from the milk of a local family owned creamery. When we ordered our first pint, the counter girl gave us two spoons. I had to correct her--"No, that's just for one of us." We hang out there for a while with Freebird and ran into two southbounders Zeroing, SweetFish and Sourkat. So when we finally got on the trail again, it was about as late as yesterday. Definitely afternoon. And we had only done two miles. So our ambitious plans to do a twenty, or a seventeen, or at least more than a fifteen evaporated, as are our plans to get to Hanover in time to see my brother. It was a lovely day for hiking, with more ridge bouldering and great views, and I was trying to retain my enthusiasm from yesterday, but towards the end of the day it started to flag. The terrain in New York has been hard so far, a lot of unrewarding climbs of one hundred to two hundred feet, clambering up rock the whole way, and then straight back down the other side of the knoll, down steep boulders, for evidently no reason at all. I had been doing well with it but during the last two miles or so I started fading. After coming to rockface after rockface, climbing up and down, only to find another. I just broke down. I don't know how I'll manage everything from here on out, which according to southbounders, just gets harder. And feeling that way is completely overwhelming. So on the way down the last cliff I started crying. I got to where County was sitting, waiting for me, and he asked if I was alright and I said, "I just don't know if I can do this," and started bawling. He was good, but didn't know what to say--it's probably the closest I've come to quitting. I finally straightened out and we kept hiking, down to the road. We were intending to go to Island Pond Mountain, where Flare had recommended we stay, but when we got across the road we found a fire pit and decided to camp. I can hear the moaning of the cars from the freeway right below us. I'm writing at the fire tonight. We bought some fresh sweet corn at the creamery's farmstand and roasted it over the fire tonight. It's delicious. So I'm feeling better. But still broken. I still don't know if I can really do this thing. It breaks me every single day. And I don't know how much more I can be broken.