Date: 2017-07-30
From: Mt Greylock

To: Dalton
Miles today: 17.3
Weather: few clouds

For all the talk about how the trail has changed in terms of tread quality, steepness and general nature since leaving behind the Whites, nothing quite captures this transformation like this factoid from today: I ate breakfast at Bascom Lodge, lunch in a town called Cheshire and then dinner in another town, Dalton. This is the AT I'd heard so much about, of the many towns and deli-blazing. It's why I'd dubbed this journal as "embrace the civility" -- a weak play on words on triple-crowner Mags' famous description of the CDT: "Embrace the brutality."Except until now the AT has been waaaay more brutal than the CDT ever was. But it seems that the pendulum has now swung the other way, for which my stomach -- and my knees -- are grateful.A few nobo hikers had arrived at the lodge as I was sitting outside in the sun, waiting for the breakfast service to start. One was a mother and her 14-year-old son, who said they'd managed to eat town food every single day since Pennsylvania.Town food and a lighter pack from not having to be self sufficient for several days at a time? Sign me up!Breakfast was a convivial affair, although the demeanour of many of the wedding guests suggested they might have dined "not wisely but too well", as the famous phrase had it, the previous evening.Fuelled by that, the trail down the hill was easy work, being mostly gradual and then with a steep but well-built drop off down to bucolic meadows and then the outskirts of town.There was a new Dollar General a few hundred yards away where I could reprovision, along with a Dunkin Donuts associated with the gas station. At the latter I met a hiker called 77, who said the name came from having hiked the PCT in 1977."With Monte Dodge and Strider?" I asked, and he seemed a little shocked that I knew two others from the tiny 30-odd strong Class of 77.I explained how on my own hike of the PCT, Monte had come up to meet others in my hiking party in Goat Rocks wilderness and I'd know Strider because he used to organise the annual PCT kickoff before his recent untimely death from ALS.For 77, his hike had been before starting university and now that he was retired, he'd decided to do the AT. This had been a bit of a mixed bag, he explained, although many of his descriptions of his nobo experience veered into being unnecessarily negative. Upper House Pond, an AMC cabin which nobos had been talking about in raptuous terms for more than a month, was "overrated" and he said the sobos he'd met were nearly all unfriendly etc.Yet another change in the trail apart from the food was the arrival of consistent cellphone service, even for carriers as crappy as AT&T, and I settled into the vortex of Dunkin Donuts to send the latest batch of journal entries to Becster, my faithful transcriber based in New Zealand.It was 3.30pm or so before I managed to extract myself, hoping that the bagels I'd been eating would power me through to Dalton before dark.It helped that the trail was fast and easy, with gentle grades instead of ridiculous climbs. Soon I'd emerged from the forest onto the road that became one of Dalton's main thoroughfares and walked into town part a series of well-kept homes.I'd briefly harboured the idea of hiking the three or four miles to the next lean to but the prospects of a town breakfast and a lingering dinner at the local burrito restaurant put paid to that.Instead I arrived at dusk at the home of Tom Levardi, a local who for 37 years has been allowing AT hikers to pitch their tents on his lawn for free. Apart from water and a "pee tree", nothing else is offered.There were about five or six tents already there and a few thru-hikers milling around. I was introduced to Tom, who gave me the rundown on the house rules, most of which could be summarised under the heading: "Don't be a dick."I bedded down on the porch, using my mosquito headnet for the first time in weeks to keep the bugs at bay. Tom has warned me that I'm sleeping right next to where the newspaper delivery guy hurls The Berkshire Eagle at his front door between 2am and 3am.I, in turn, have assured him I'm one of the world's heaviest sleepers and it'd be unlikely to wake me. Each of us looked a little askance at the other in making these predictions. I guess we'll find out who's right tomorrow morning.Life is good.AT fact of the day: Just like my gearing up of my schedule to get to North Adams in time for Papa John's pizza, I'd already established the next goal: Upper Goose Pond cabin, which offers bunks on a donation basis and where the hut custodian cooks free blueberry pancakes for the hikers each morning. It's a solid 20 miles or so from here so entirely doable.