Date: 2011-07-09
From: Riga Shelter

To: Glen Brook Shelter
Miles today: 10.1
Weather: few clouds

(In which I hike into Massachusetts with Papa Portrait)We pack up leisurely, giving the tents some time in the sun to dry some of the night's rain. I let my dad hike first to set the pace, and coming out of the shelter he starts to turn left, south, instead of right. I tell him about my idea that the white blazes on the north and south side of trees be marked differently to avoid just this common confusion, and he suggests putting a white dot above (northbound) or below (southbound) each blaze. I like this idea even better than any of the ones I had come up with, since it could be easily added to existing blazes, would still work on blazes on the ground (a single blaze could look correct to both northbounders and southbounders), and read bottom to top, as turn blazes are, the dot would represent Katahdin.Less than a mile after we leave the shelter we cross the unmarked 1500th mile from Springer Mountain. I raise my arms in celebration, but having only hiked a few miles my dad doesn't feel has earned any congratulations yet. A couple of miles of hiking later we double check the guide and cross another important unmarked threshold: the Massachusetts state line. Of all the states on the trail, my home state Massachusetts is the one I've been anticipating most, and reaching it feels as satisfying as I'd hoped.A mile or two into Massachusetts we reach a fork in the trail and try to decide which way to go. This turns out to be a trick question, as investigation clearly shows that neither path is the AT. At this point we decide to backtrack to the last white blaze, and fifteen minutes later when we are still backtracking we realize that we must have gotten onto another heavily trodden path shortly after entering MA. We eventually find the wrong turn, where the AT branched off of the more heavily traveled path and headed uphill. Unlike most diversions from a larger path, this fork is not marked with a double blaze, piles of sticks or other signs, so we try to help future hikers out by making a stick pile and tepee on the wrong path at the intersection. At nearly a mile each way, the wrong turn is my longest accidental trail detour so far, but given the lack of trail markings I think that I would have been just as likely to make the mistake even if I hadn't been busy talking with and following my father.The trail is filled with as many weekend hikers as I've seen since Bear Mountain in Georgia, and once we are back on the actual AT we pass dozens of clean, beardless hikers out to enjoy the view from one of the two summits we pass. The mountains also mean steep ups and downs, and we are glad not to be in a rush, stopping to take cool-down breaks on each climb.Even with the breaks we still reach our destination by 3:30pm, which gives us plenty of time to set up our tents and continue the tent drying job we didn't quite finish in the morning. The only other hiker near our shelter is a weekender from Hartford, and after chatting with him for a bit we walk south on the trail back to a lake we passed not long before the shelter. We sit on the rocks by the water and then follow a trail a mile or so all the way around the lake and back to where we started.Along the trail we see tiny little frogs, no bigger than flies. Having seen them before but never wanted to stop and take my camera out, I take advantage of the fact that I'm already carrying my camera in my hand to take a few photos of the miniature creatures, including a quarter in the shots for a sense of scale.Back at the our tents we still have a couple of hours to kill before it gets dark, so we head down to the shelter, out of earshot from the tenting area and relaxing weekender, and listen to music on my speaker while my dad rests on his air mattress and I write in my journal. The day has been a good one, with interesting trail, good views and a nice camp spot, and though it has been light on the social side (after the morning at the shelter we don't see another thru-hiker all day), it has otherwise been a good sampling for Papa Portrait to get to see what the trail has to offer.