Date: 2004-10-02
From: Campsite near East B Hill Road

To: Hall Mountain Lean-to
Miles today: 6.0

Our goal was ten miles again today, and to maintain that pace until Katahdin, but we fell short, partly out of laziness and partly because of rain. The hiking gets easier and easier, at least compared to the Mahoosucs. We met a southbounder again today¢crazy that people are still heading south. He started at Katahdin thirteen days ago, putting us exactly on pace for an October 15 arrival date. Not that I¢m at all convinced that we¢ll be able to maintain his pace. It was a lovely hike, though, today. I¢m picking up the pace again, maybe rejuvenated by town food. I was able to maintain more or less a two-mile-per-hour pace again today. Two miles south of Hall Mountain Lean-to, though, it started raining. Not exactly raining, but drizzling enough to make us cold and wet. We got to the shelter and debated cooking a hot lunch, now that we have food, or at least mac-and-cheese, to spare. Mac-and-cheese remains my all-time favorite hiker food, maybe my all-time favorite food period, so I was excited to stop. County cooked while I walked the .1 back down the trail to the water source. It was a good spring, but the entire area was utterly swamped with spring water and marshy, and the rainwater didn¢t help any. My feet got soaked a couple of times.County added some split peas that we had been rehydrating to the mac-and-cheese, not something I was particularly excited about, since I like my mac-and-cheese straight up, but I figured we needed the protein. We¢ve been using lentils our of hiker boxes the whole trail¢they work really well if left in a Nalgene to rehydrate all day. It doesn¢t take much longer to cook them than it does rice. Three-year-old split peas, however, are a different story, as we discovered. Who knows how long those peas had been sitting on the shelf in Andover. I certainly have no idea. But after boiling them three times, County gave up on them softening. Our meal was less than scrumptious. But still, with it in our bellies, and with the rain increasing outside, we didn¢t feel very excited about hiking on. Neither of us wanted to say it out loud, but I felt like I was permitted to agree when he suggested it first. I already had on all my clothes and was shivering at that point, so I said that we either needed to hike out immediately or get out our sleeping bags. And laziness took the day. Not that it was bad¢we had the shelter to ourselves, we pulled out our sleeping bags, and cozied up against the wall of the shelter.We were hoping to have the shelter to ourselves all night, but right at dark a hiker out for the weekend pulled up. She had hiked from the Baldpate Lean-to that day, more than what we had done in two. She had intended to hike all the way up to Maine 4 that weekend, but was considering cutting it short at South Arm Road the next day. She was really nice, a runner, and a hardcore backpacker, even though she had just started a year before. She had done the entire Mahoosuc range, in sandals, in two days. Definite thruhiker material. We attempted to talk her into it. She was considering going with a friend of hers next year. We attempted to give her gear advice, too¢she had brought a six-pound tent out for a two-night trip, both nights of which she planned to stay in shelters, no stove, but far too much food, which she generously shared with us. Then the adventure of the night commenced: a mouse made an appearance. I¢ve seen mice as we¢ve hiked over the last six months, but none as aggressive as this. It made attempts at both of our food bags while we were sitting right beside them, headlamps on. It even ran across all of our sleeping bags while we were in them, looking at it.So I came to the only obvious conclusion, which will probably haunt me till the end of my days: ¢County, it must be rabid!¢ He makes fun of me now, but at the time he seemed half-convinced himself. Our fellow hiker was definitely not enthralled by the idea of a mouse crawling all over her in her sleep, and I listed my knowledge of the symptoms of rabies: animals become very aggressive, disoriented, and do things they wouldn¢t otherwise do. County pointed out that it wasn¢t foaming at the mouth. Which was quite true, but still. So he decided to take it out. Neither of us girls looked, and he spattered the mouse¢s intestines all over the floor of a shelter with a rock, and then tossed its carcass out. Rather horrific. I felt really sad afterward¢the poor mouse really hadn¢t done anything to us. It was just trying to survive, like all of us are, the best way it knew how. I didn¢t see the carcass that night, not until I went outside in the morning to get more water. Its fur was matted down by the rain, its belly burst open, all of its life snuffed out. I suppose killing a mouse is a necessary part of the thruhiker experience, but it was much more brutal than I expected. So that¢s the mouse saga¢I wonder if I¢ll ever live it down.Already today County has queried my expertise on the rabidity or lack thereof of every animal we¢ve seen. Oh well. Hopefully all these rabid squirrels won¢t get us.