The misting last night turned into rain, but nothing too hard. That’s good, because our tent doesn’t protect us much from rain anymore. We slept in a bit, until 6:30a. It was later than I expected considering we were short of our goal mileage yesterday by 1.6 miles. We decided to break down camp before heading up to Scout’s for breakfast. The cabin was toasty warm and inviting. Scout had coffee out on the table already with real deal ceramic mugs for us lucky hikers to use. Jenerous is apparently more of a morning person than we are. She had been settled in and visiting with him for a while now.
When we arrived, Scout started up to get breakfast going. Jenerous offered to help and I did too, which turned into us ladies making breakfast. He has cast iron skillets, the only thing he cooks on here. We made the eggs and pancakes. Scout had already baked the bacon in the oven. Breakfast probably took a little longer than normal considering we were in a kitchen we didn’t know. But soon enough, we were all sitting around the table eating delicious food – if I do say so myself.
Like last night, we talked about all kinds of things. Scout is an easy guy to have a conversation with. When we said it was about time for us to press on, he offered to give us a ride around the mountain or, if we weren’t interested in the ride, we could walk the road too. He said the road took you to the same place we were headed to tonight but cut off something like five to ten miles of our fifteen. It was kind for him to offer, but we have to hike where the blazes take us, even if it’s up and over a mountain that we could easily take a road around. We were leaving his place around 9:30a.
The first thing we hit was a river where we filtered our water for the morning. Shortly after that we hit another river, this one we had to ford. It was another grey, misty day like yesterday was – the kind of a day that makes you feel like you are half awake. That would be fine if it was easy walking. However, today was a little more difficult than we expected. We knew we had a lot of climbing to do, we just didn’t expect our bodies to be so tired. All four of us are chronically tired now. You may not even realize it until you are trying to push up a climb. Then suddenly you feel how weak your body is. I write that, but I know it’s not true. We are incredibly strong. We just feel weak.
Warthog fell a lot today. It surprised me actually. He might slip a lot, but he doesn’t usually fall like I do. One of these times, we heard a crashing and looked back to see Warthog flat on his back on the ground. “What happened?” I asked. He told me that one of the strings on his pack got caught in a tree. The tree had just enough bend that it stretched a bit as he walked away and then yanked him back like a slingshot. It’s something I’ve warned him of many times because he likes to keep that string hanging out of his pack. Now he was on the ground, laughing, his trekking poles were at odd angles, his legs were out from under him. I’m glad he wasn’t hurt. I’m also glad this means he’ll be tucking in that stupid string now.
Even though we only covered about fifteen miles today, we had a long day. It wasn’t without accomplishment though. We hit the 2,100 mile mark ! We are now down into the double digits. It’s a weird feeling to be so close.
We didn’t get into camp until 8:45p. That’s way too late. We like to be going to bed by 9p if possible. The late start from Scout’s place is what pushed us back. It was such an incredible morning that I was happy for the experience. Although, I still kind of hate night hiking. Especially when I’m tired. It’s dark by 7p now, which means we night hiked for almost two hours. I was struggling mentally. I think Warthog was too. I can’t say whether or not Snow Monkey and Wonder Woman were. That last stretch was probably the longest four miles of the day. At one point my trekking pole stabbed something and it moved. I screamed out of reactionary fear, an embarrassing noise that resembles the hollow sound of a wooden train whistle toy. I thought maybe I had gotten an animal and was worried it would bite me in response. I scared everyone, especially Warthog who was right behind me. Snow Monkey and Wonder Woman stopped to see if everything was okay. I looked down to identify the poor victim of my pole and saw it was just a tree root hanging in the air. It had enough resistance and bounce to feel like it was something alive and wiggling. I was kind of embarrassed, but I was also kind of too tired to care too much.
We hit our campsite for the night not too far down the trail after the root incident. It was down a steep .2 mile trail. The campsite is right on the water – water we can’t see right now, but will be able to in the morning. We set up camp, ate dinner as fast as we could, and crashed. More miles have been conquered, another day is done, we are that much closer to Katahdin.
-ansel