Date: 2010-08-26
From: Bemis Lean-to

To: Little Swift Pond Campsite
Miles today: 13.9
Weather: broken clouds

26th August Thursday ¢ 13.9 miles to Little Swift Pond CampsitePolite kids whispering awoke me this morning. Innocent conversations with ¢like, um¢ descriptive terms. Other than an occasional, ¢Really!¢ they were trying not to wake everyone up. They did. They woke everyone up, but they¢re trying not to at least. There¢s no way I can concentrate to write with these kids. They¢re entirely to entertaining to ignore.I¢m thinking of the day at Zealand hut where I took a 2 hour nap in the Whites of NH. SnowFox told me that the Lake of the Clouds Hut was on the look out for me. The Croo had passed on a warning about some guy who fell asleep, drooled all over himself, and then abruptly left on of their huts.(That story is out of sequence but that¢s how my journal is written)Loud thuds and vibrations on the shelter floor make me give up the hope of anymore sleep. The tarp worked well. It kept Cheeseburger dry all night. I¢m glad the bright orange reflective tap ropes worked well because Cheeseburger threatened me if it failed. The kids are boiling water again and all the thru-hikers get up to see the show. Tabasco, Cheeseburger and one other hiker wake up at the sound of fire nearby. These kids are better than television in the morning.¢Which socks should I wear, the wet ones or dry ones?¢ ask a young manThey¢re really nice. I¢m glad they¢re enjoying themselves. Hopefully today it doesn¢t rain. Maybe yesterday won¢t repeat itself.Cheeseburger is taking forever to pack his crap up. He¢s in my way. I¢m tired of waiting so I rush him. I expect him to snap at me at any minute but he¢s only joking about being a bad ass. Cheeseburger is all talk. I¢m joking with him. I direct my comments at him about the crap lying around but I¢m really joking with the kids instead. They all start laughing at Cheeseburger and I can¢t keep a straight face anymore. 12 kids soaking wet camping gear is taking up all the space. Not Cheeseburger.I swing by Conan and Backwards place before leaving. They camped behind the shelter. They¢re about to leave when I walk out in my pajamas. We discuss our plans for the day and I go back to get in my sleeping bag. We¢re going to Little Swift Pond campsite for the night. Cheeseburger is in my spot when I get back.¢All I need is my food bag and I¢ll leave you alone¢ I say to Cheeseburger.I grab my stuff and sit at the back of the shelter eating my White Chocolate Peanut Butter! Lish feeds me well. The kids gave me a bag of ¢unpalatable¢ dehydrated humus. I didn¢t think it tasted bad. I ate the poorly hydrated humus in a Ziploc bag with a banana that the kids also gave me. The banana is black and perfectly tenderized. The fruity deliciousness taste like it¢s been a freezer.At the rate I¢m eating I won¢t make Stratton without resupplying. I¢m starting to put things together. I¢ve got to curb my appetite long before arriving home. If I manage it now I can avoid gaining weight. It will be a lot easier to start now. The amount of bodily exertion should diminish and so should my hunger.I give up hope that the group of kids will ever leave the shelter anytime soon.\]= The kids are emptying their supplies to a synchronized their pack weights. They call it, ¢readjustment¢ but it looks more like their shit is everywhere.When I get up to leave the shelter, Cheeseburger is still in my way. This time he¢s putting on his waterproof pack cover. I impatiently ask him to move. He responds with, ¢Hold on a minute!¢ in his weird German accent. I think of the time Rest Stop asked me if I was going to ¢move my shit¢. Personally, I¢m a fan of blunt honesty and people saying exactly what they want. It makes me laugh when someone speaks their mind without reserve or caution.The sky looks like fluorescent light bulbs today. You can tell it¢s going to clear up eventually because the sun is still bright and the air is dry. It¢s starting out better today. The trail continues changing elevations on top of this bumpy mess that is Bemis Mtn. I get the feeling that the trail is switching back in large zigzags and circles. The foggy white glare of the sun has been swirling around me in circles. When I have to take a dump I walk 200ft off the trail and slip on a huge patch of moss. The moss peeled off the rock like an animal skin rug being snatched from beneath my feet. This place is like walking on a sponge. It¢s soaking wet everywhere. It¢s wet because it retains moisture. The trail became another slip-n-slide before I reached the next road. I took a quick fall but caught myself just before I got hurt. My left knee fell straight down and I stopped myself just before my patella crashed into a pointy rock. That could have been an injury similar to the busted knee I had near Pearisburg. The time I fell right in front of Trinkette.I forded Bemis stream where I met back up with Conan, Backwards, and Cheeseburger. They¢re taking a break in the middle of the stream. My feet are soaking wet so I don¢t even try to remain dry as I walk to the tiny island where everyone is resting. Cheeseburger is whining about not having anymore pretzels and he wants to go to Rangeley to resupply today. Cheeseburger ate all of his breakfast bread and Nutella because he was too lazy to cook last night. It was so cold no one wanted to do anything yesterday. Cheeseburger is describing his coldest day on the trail. ¢I had to boil my jar of Nutella because it was frozen¢ said CheeseburgerCheeseburger stayed inside the Roan Mountain shelter and had a miserable night.¢It was so cold I couldn¢t get anything out¢ said CheeseburgerBackward gives me some of the Gatorade I¢d donated to their food bag. I didn¢t want to carry all the food that Lish sent so I gave some of it to Conan. It was either the Gatorade or the cookies! I have been regretting the decision not to carry all of the Gatorade.At ME17 there¢s an unexpected view awaiting me! It looks like I¢ve been teleported to Alaska. It¢s big and blue and the white clouds look like snow in the valley. There¢s a giant pond with mountains all around the horizon. The sky is still grey and it gives the whole world a frigged appearance. The clouds are clearing out and the weather is shifting back into ¢Awesome¢ mode. The weather seems to be either raining or awesome and nothing in between. The air is moist and fresh.The kids distracted me from writing about all the logging noises we heard yesterday. Despite the rain the logging industry stayed hard at work. Several of the thru-hikers noticed the sounds of heavy equipment all around the trail yesterday. The sounds of trees being removed don¢t sit well with us. This place is so beautiful so why must they destroy it? I thought Maine¢s motto is ¢the way life should be¢.Yesterday at the shelter I asked Fields, a south bound flip-flop thru-hiker, if he had noticed a canoe at Little Swift Pond Campsite. Fields specificially remembered that there are boats near that pond! That excites me! I¢ve been telling everyone I¢m going to cowboy camp in a boat.There were three aluminum canoes on the other side of Moxie pond. The trail goes past the pond but doesn¢t go to the boats on the other side. You could bushwhack to the canoes! I wonder if you could use the boat to aqua-blaze over to the shore of Long Pond. If only I had a map, I would have floated past Bates ledges. Talk about pointless! The trail runs beside Long Pond for a mile and doesn¢t get anywhere near it. The trail remains up by the jagged ridge line overlooking the beautiful water on the right. The path runs up a tiny little hill where you can see the pond better. The amount of foot traffic around this miniature vista is causing lots of erosion. It¢s really dangerous here in muddy conditions like today. I fell 5 times trying to navigate this place. I¢d fall a total of 10 times today. There are lots of moose turds everywhere. It¢s like a moose farm is nearby and all of them got out of the fence at once.The sound of waves crashing on the sandy shore of Long Ponds sandy beach catches my ears! I¢m going to take a long break by that sound. The things I miss most about NC are our beaches. The sound of water sloshing on the banks of this pond will have to suffice my desires for now! I feel like I¢m on Gilligan¢s island for a while because I¢m alone here. Maybe I go swimming I think as I stare out over the distant horizon of this huge ¢pond¢. Nothing but peacefulness and floating pine needles on the water surface everywhere. You can see a sand bar with a soft bottom. I dry my soaks, shoes, bandana, and backpack in the sun. Maybe I won¢t go swimming. I¢ve had enough of being wet for a few days.Cheeseburger comes along but doesn¢t stay. He¢s going to sit at the shelter just ahead. And miss this? Whatever!Conan and Backward came along next and recognized this places potential like myself. This is a wonderful sunny beach spot. We took a really long break here. Time just seems to stop but then I¢m surprised that it¢s 2:00pm. We realized the day is slipping away from us. We still have 4.7 miles to go before making camp.It¢s so muddy today around these rivers and ponds! I¢m soaking wet from the knees down. Still the rumor that Maine doesn¢t have bridges is not true. There¢s a few. When you get to Maine you won¢t actually care about mud or puddles. (I wrote that then, but there are places where I wouldn¢t want to wade through waist deep bogs). Maine has no mosquitoes!Conan and Backward are hiking in front of me today. There are a few tricky spots where the trail balances over some gnarly looking mud puddles. Conan sinks his hiking poles into the mud at one point to measure the depth. His poles have to be 4 feet tall and they sink to the grips of his handles. I¢m actually tempted to jump in the mud but Conan¢s trekking pole sinks all the way to the handle grips.Today I saw the first cut-through for power lines in Maine. First one! Good for you Maine!Little Swift Pond Campsite is awesome! I¢m sleeping in my tent tonight because I¢m to chicken to try balancing in a canoe all night. It seems like such a great idea but I just can¢t bring myself to do it. Anchored out in the middle of a lake under the stars of Maine might make my head explode or something. I tell myself I¢ll do it one day. I do it if I know I can dry out my sleeping bag when I flip out of the boat in the middle of the night.There¢s moose poop all around out campsite. Maybe tonight¢s the night for my first moose sighting! Conan, Backwards and I shove off and go for a canoe ride across the pond. Beautiful, incredible, stupendous, and I don¢t know what else to describe about this lovely spot. There¢s grass all beneath the surface of the water here. Moose food! Maine is starting to put up a fight for the best state! We investigate the marsh lands all around the pond with the boat. We paddle over a few grassy patches and turn around.We¢ll try starting a fight tonight. This place needs a campfire. There¢s a feeling in my soul that tonight¢s going to be one memorable night. Especially if a moose appears! We get the fire started while we eat dinner and have warm tea. The moisture remaining from the storms lately makes it difficult to create a good fire. Dry wood is hard to come by. When we get the fire under control I decide to go for another stroll around the pond. The surface of the pond is calm. I feel so relaxed and thankful. My face is going to fall off from how happy this place makes me feel. There¢s a gentle breeze flowing but the clouds still reflect on the surface of the water. Paddling towards the shore of the opposite side; the tree line makes a v-shape optical illusion. I¢m so in the moment that it feels as if I could keep paddling through the marsh and slip into the crease of another universe. This place is too good to be true! This is something every kid from Harnett County, NC should see in their life. This place has to be capable of inspiring something incredible in every person that sees it! This could make a bad person become good. It could heal the dying, I¢m sure of it. No medicine or drug could give you the kind of happiness you get as you gently stroll through its mirror surface.I have dinner with Backwards, Conan, and Out There. Out There arrived late in the evening and his namesake is true. He tells us that he¢s hiked the PCT but quit the AT in the Whites because of ¢stage two¢ lymes-disease. I wanted to know if the PCT was harder than the AT but I couldn¢t get a straight answer out of him. Tonight for dinner, I¢m splitting my proportions in half. Dessert was my favorite candy bar, Hershey¢s Cookies and Cr me!We hear something huge walk out of the forest. It¢s very close. Whatever it is, it doesn¢t care that we¢re close. The creature doesn¢t care about the fire either. We¢re probably 25ft from the sound of something really big. From the sound of it¢s footsteps it¢s really BIG! Couldn¢t see what it was but we could hear it walking towards the pond. The footsteps sounded like a large Bovine bull stomping the ground.Conan and I followed at a distance behind the sounds. When it walked through the trees it moved everything out of its way like an armor plated tank. It pushes the tree limbs aside instead of avoiding them. We could hear it wade out into the pond. With each step I could hear the sound of its legs through the water. I could hear its molars grinding as it chewed on wet grass. That sounded like its head reaching beneath the pond surface. I could hear the water trickling off its long hair facial hair when it came up for oxygen. You could even hear the creature slurping water between each guttural swallow of food.Conan and I never saw it in the darkness, but we knew what it was!Perfect day! What a very, very bright moon tonight! The scene by the reflective pond melted my heart tonight. The portrait of the night sky hurt my soul. I couldn¢t get a picture to capture the prettiest night on the trail for me. My camera couldn¢t take in enough of the moonlight. There¢s no way I can show you what I saw. I didn¢t need to sleep on that boat because it couldn¢t possibly be any better. It can¢t get any better than this! The moon was full and it caused a black and white reflection on the surface of the pond. The whole world looked like an old movie scene. It left me speechless.We end the night by talking about Cheeseburger (the German) around the campfire. We want to print out a full sized picture of Cheeseburger and put it somewhere in Washington, DC. Cheeseburger claims that American will erect a statue in his likeness here when he becomes a national hero. He¢s going to become a celebrity when he returns to America and kills all the mosquitoes in PA with a super-soaker.