Date: 2006-06-01
From: Kay Wood Lean-to

To: Mt. Greylock
Miles today: 17.0

I've entered a new month. the miles are flying past me. i passed the 200 mile mark yesterday. I am currently sitting at the highest point of this section hike, 3,491 feet, the summit of Mt Greylock. Unexpectedly, my journey, my life, has crossed paths with a childhood hero, Henry David Thoreau.(a strange childhood hero, i am aware, but i was a strange kid.)Our paths have crossed before. I have made a pilgrimage to Walden Pond, and have wandered about Concord, Mass..But that was with intention...and with intentions come expectations.Similarly, if i ambled into my favorite pub for a pint (haha...that just sounds more poetic and alliterative...truly, i'd be drinking vodka) and i met Stephen Colbert there, and found out that it was his favorite pub also, it would be much more rewarding than if i just stalked him until i met him.this "chance meeting" envigorated me. As i approached the summit of Greylock, I began seeing stones engraved with quotes from HDT. I started to feel as if it was a shrine to him.He himself had hiked this mountain, spent the night, and written about it extensively in one of his books (A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.) I began to see it, as clear as if we were hiking buddies...his diminutive scrawny frame struggling over the same rocks that my massive oaf-like frame now was, looking out over the same vistas...checking his back for ticks, haha.There is a lodge up here, which is where i am staying. They have luxury rooms, but also a hiker bunkhouse for $14 a night (+$10 if you want dinner-which i was too late for, and another $6 if you want breakfast). I am sharing the bunkhouse with two other AT section hikers.It's a beautiful lodge, probably even more so in the winter, covered in snow, and with the fireplace roaring. I've been told that the storms up here are amazing. You actually look down into the valley, and see lightning beneath you. and because you are so much higher than everything else for hundreds of miles, you can watch the storm, the lightning and the clouds, roll in for hours.For the first time on my hike, i cherish writing these words..."there are supposed to be storms tonight."I am sitting by the fireplace, in a lounge chair with my feet up on a coffee table. None of the regular rooms are occupied, so we three hikers have this whole place to ourselves.I just went outside to have a cigarette and to check the skies for storms. it's weird...I am higher than a lot of the clouds...and they are all right on top of me. I don't look up to see the clouds...i walk out the door, and look left and right. (Can you tell that I grew up in the plains of the midwest?)Even weirder though, is that when i came back in, there was a beer, a Molson even, sitting directly atop of my journal...more trail magic?...but from whom?A mystery, I propose...but it must be someone that works here, because no hiker is going to carry cans of beer with him. right? (bourbon perhaps...but not beer)for the past hour I have been hearing distant thunder, but there is no show out there yet.My feet are killing me.I just talked to the night manager, Kyle. He was the one that left the beer. He says that the storms are definitely moving this way...maybe I will get my light show.one of the other unnamed hikers staying here doesn't shut up. earlier when we were both sitting around this coffee table, i think I got much of his life story, and not even the interesting parts (at least I hope those weren't the interesting parts.)Throughout the whole thing, I did not prompt him once, or even feign interest...but nothing stopped him. I even (in an effort to improve upon my passive agressive techniques from yesterday) started reading the newspaper...by holding it up directly in front of my face. I wish i had a picture of what my face looked like when I realized that this was not slowing down this one-sided conversation at all.eventually, i resorted to some trickery. I walked out of the common area using the south stairwell to go up to the bunkhouse. As soon (5 minutes later) as i heard him get up (the walls and floors are very thin here), I scampered back down the north stairwell, and returned to my comfy lounge chair.One funny thing that he did say... is how he's done part of the trail with his wife...done part with a friend...and now he's hiking by himself...and that he much prefers doing it by himself.I am not certain that he likes solitude as much as he is convincing himself that he does.also...would it be wrong of me to tell him, that i much prefer that he do it with someone else?That is, if he can get any of his previous hiking partners to re-enlist for such banal drudgery.