Date: 2010-07-08
From: Appalachian Trail RR Station N.Y. 22

To: Mt. Katahdin
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: broken clouds

Wife says it all in our final e-mail to our family. Thanks, everyone. What a great trip. We were truly fortunate to have met each and everyone of you.- H&W Hello Friends, So, after our river trip down the Shenandoah, we were picked up by my Uncle Pete and taken to hishouse just outside of DC. We spend a wonderful couple of days going to theater, baseball games,visiting my grandfather's grave at Arlington and hanging out with my 7 year old cousins. My unclePete is an impressive tour guide and we were thankful to have spend a couple days sitting in a boat - because after coming off a week of hiking I doubt we would have enjoyed the 30 mile bike touraround DC we did on our first day there as much as we did. And then the moment we had been waitingfor since Georgia- the first carrot at the end of a stick - Uncle Pete and Aunt Julie took us forour wedding present to the fabulous and flamboyant, delicious and decedent, Inn at LittleWashington. Tim and I had sent fancy clothes ahead to their house in anticipation of this eveningbefore we left to go hiking in March. Unfortunately we had picked out our old favorites fromthe "skinny pile" you know- those clothes that you get too fat to wear and save for the hopefully-one-day-again day. Back in March, we figured that after exercising 10 hours a day for 70 days, wewould slide into those outfits no problem, so we sent them off with a smile. 1,000 mileslater . . . . . HA! Tim rode to the Inn with his pants unbuttoned and I had to continually tuckthe boob fat back into the tube top mini. After DC we took a trail back to the trail at Harper's Ferry West Virgina and started walking withdripping ice cream cones - in 95 degree temps towards Maryland. O Maryland! Land of Flatness,Flushing Toilets and Things to See! We walked through Maryland, singing it's praises most of theway. It was actually flat, real life no exaggeration flat (although I do remember some guy huffingby me one day, saying something about "knocking out this hill" - so maybe it was just perspective) and it had a city or state park with drinking water and toilets and picnic tables every 10 miles, aswell as loads of Civil War monuments to gaze at. The trail wandered through people's back yardsand the sound of I-70 lured you to sleep at night. Now there is a thing on the trail called theMaryland Challenge, since the section of trail that goes through Maryland is only 42 miles long,people like to attempt to do it all in one day, they get someone to carry their camping gearforward, and wake up at 4 am and walk into the night until they cross the boarder into Pennsylvaniaand collapse, usually near the train track that marks the border. We, however, did Maryland in 4days. Partly because it was too hot to walk through the middle of the day, partly because it was sogreat to put your head under every running facet and lay down on every picnic table we passed, andpartly because my body hurt, my knee swollen, weakened, compromised despite not having hiked for acouple of weeks. And worse of all, my foot sharp pains in my heel that had been largely ignoredbecause all effort was put into aiding my opposite knee, I was walking without insoles in one shoe,because they only seemed to aggravate it. 12 miles a day on flat (but charmingly rocky terrain) wasa real challenge. But we trudged on in the sweltering heat into Pennsylvania. And then Tim spent a night jumping up out of the tent and running to the, thankfully, close by andby far the BEST privy every 30 minutes throughout the whole night. The next day you can imagine howhe felt, so when we discovered that historic Gettysburg was only a 15 mile hitch away, we stuck outour thumbs. I tell you what, one thing about air conditioning, as soon as you spend ten minutesenveloped in it, it is hard to go back out into the heat. And this is where our journey took adecisive turn. We rented a car in Gettysburg to drive around the battlefields, we made plans to spend the 4th ofJuly with my brother and his five kids in Delaware (who was it that said only someone hiking thetrail would find his mad house a Relaxing Place) and we began to calculate how much yellow blazingthat we would have to do to in order to keep the limping pace of 10 miles a day that my body seemedto restrict us to and still hike Katahdin by our 1st anniversary. But a funny thing happened whilewe were in Delaware surrounded by laughing babies and screaming kids, we forgot about the trail. Itbecame a tiny little dot in the radar of our lives. And we started to look to the future with greatanticipation and excitement and a burning desire to get life started. The trail faded away into thedistant memory as a funny little journey that we took so long ago. It had no pull, no hold no realtie to our hearts and desires anymore. So we bought plane tickets west. But then there was curiosity. And a couple of weeks before our flight out west. So we drove north,stopping in New York City to see a friend (Blair!!!) and Broadway show, and Vermont to see anotherfriend (Parker!!!!) and new baby to the White Mountains in New Hampshire, which we had heard timeand time again on the trail, that they were really something, and after 1,000 miles we wanted toknow if there was anything actually worth hiking to. We walked a loop on a trail that ran parallelwith the AT along waterfalls and swimming holes (while the AT ran dry and rocky 1/4 mile away) until it connected with the AT for 3 miles. It was almost cartoon like, as soon as we stepped onthe AT the trail moved away from the river, became frustratingly rocky and we were swarmed by a mobof eye seeking gnats. But then, we saw IT. We finally saw it. After 1,000 miles :   A View ThatTook Your Breath Away. Something straight out of Colorado. A crystal clear lake with mountainslooming in the distance. There it was. Something worth hiking to. And then we limped down themountain jumped fully clothed in a river and hopped in our car. And drove through the mountains andthe forests of Maine to Katahdin. Before we hiked the Northern Terminus of the AT, I wanted to see what we could do about putting ourbodies back together, so we signed up for five days at a yoga retreat at a little vegetarian bed andbreakfast in a teeny town at the base of the mountain. We spent 2 hours in the morning a 1 everyevening, pulling, stretching and balancing. By the second day I could walk down the stairs withoutgripping the handrail. And by time we started the hike up Katahdin, I was flying up the mountain asif my knee had never faltered. The night before Katahdin we camped out and nostalgically set up our tent and cooked with our campstove and said goodbye to the funny life we had lead for the last four months, we even wondered if,maybe, maybe we would miss this? And then we hiked up Katahdin the next morning on a trail thatwould connect with the AT at the top. And comically once again, on the way up we had beautifulviews (I will mention now the smooth soft rocks) and as soon as we reached to top where we met withthe AT, the clouds came in and it started to drizzle. We had enough battery life in our camera forone quick photo at the top before the camera died with the lens still open. A fitting situation Do you remember how we started the trail at Springer Mountain in Georgia? And then we started downthe AT in the pouring rain. The AT trail to the top of Katahdin was very little walking a quite alot of lowering your self down over sharp skin tearing rock. By time we finished, Tim's pants wereripped, my hand and leg were bleeding, our arm muscles were shaking, our boots and backpacks weresloshing with rain water, my foot and our knees were throbbing and all nostalgia and doubt aboutleaving the trail had been washed free by the rainwater that was making the insanely sharp rocksimpossibly slippery. We met two girls at the top who had started in February and were officiallyfinishing that day. I asked them if they were excited. And one of them just looked at me withtired eyes and said "Well, we still have to get down." And then we drove in tornado warnings to Portland, ME via Acadia National Park to visit my AuntKaren and Uncle John, who for three wonderful days fed us fresh lobster and crab, promised us walkswith no evavation change, bike rides in cool tempuratures by the ocean, a wonderful day ofsailblazing around the islands off the coast of Maine and showed us beautiful photos of hikes wecould have done in Europe instead. And then we drove back to Delaware to end the journey wherewe started. That's all folks, we fly west in the morning. Much love to you all and thanks for playing. Husband and Wife