Having pared down the gear and food we were carrying to a more manageable 30ish pounds, we were ready to hit the trail again. We were aiming to start in the city of Hanover, NH, about a mile away from the New Hampshire/Vermont border on the trail. Getting there involved something of a round-about trip, as we met Jammy's brother in Boston who was driving back to Burlington and was able to give us a ride. We hit the trail in the mid-afternoon and immediately discovered another nice side-effect of our new start location: we were right in the middle of a large pack of nobos and thus had many people crossing our path that we were able to talk to. The hike started with a steep climb out of the city and we ended up at a lean-to about 6 miles down the trail. We covered the distance in 2 hours, surprising even ourselves. There were no nobo staying at the shelter, as they'd all pushed on to stay in town, but there was one guy up for a short hike. He was a scruffy-looking kind of fellow with a lot of missing teeth that had packed up a 6-pack of 16 oz. Budweiser cans for the evening. He also seemed kind of undecided as to whether he wanted to be hiking the trail or hanging out in Hanover trying to pick up college students. He did, however, have a fire going and so we spent the evening with him. There really is nothing like a good camp fire to make one feel good about being out in the woods. Both me and Jammy were optimistic about our new start. We pitched the tent and went to bed.
The next morning we woke up to a rain storm that continued into the early afternoon. We took the opportunity to sleep in and wait for it to stop, and thus didn't hit the trail until around 2pm. The day started out easy and we quickly made it into New Hartford, were we stopped at a deli on the trail to get a hot pastrami sandwich. We also came up with trail names for the trip: I'm Mad Dozer and Jammy is No Worries. We had a tough uphill slog out of town to the shelter, however, which we would soon discover to be the name of the game for this part of Vermont. We arrived at camp beaten and exhausted and soaked from rain and sweat. Our hopes of being able to keep up a 3 mile an hour pace with no problem ran up against the reality that it took us three and a half ours to hike the 4.4 miles from New Hartford to camp. It looks like we'll have some adjusting to do after all. That night we shared the shelter with a middle-aged ex-military guy who's hiking with his dog, who he had trained to clean his dishes for him. Both me and Jammy agreed that that was brilliant. He also had the most enormous sleeping pad I'd ever seen, looking more like a portable bed than a camping pad.
The next day brought another hard hike. I ate too many Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast and crashed early on one of the first uphills. Northern Vermont, we discover, is all ups and downs. We'd hike downhill to a road for a couple miles, cross it, hike uphill back into the forest, and then back down to another road. Contrary to popular belief, it is possible for a trail to be uphill both ways. I was really beginning to feel the fact that I'd spent most of the previous few months lying around watching movies. Hiking became a game of minor accomplishments. I'd choose a tree or a root a few tens of yards in front of me and walk to it, pause for 5 seconds to let my legs stop burning and then choose my next tree. Inch by inch it seems, I made my way along. In the end it was worth it, however, as one of the hills sported a raspberry patch on top of it where we were able to eat our fill. It was getting to towards mid-afternoon when we hit a main road. We needed to get into the town of Woodstock, VT for our first resupply. We stuck out our thumbs, and while it took a little time for a car to come by going the right direction, we got picked up by the first car. We hit the grocery store with gusto, restocking our food and devouring a lot of fried chicken from the deli, Like magic, it seemed, we got offered a ride back to the trail by one of the other shoppers without even having to ask. The guy turned out to be the first of many saintly figures we ran into during out Journey. He talked to us about spending the afternoon delivering furniture to elderly people in the neighborhood and how he built the next few shelters along the trail. He also was happy to hear that I was destined for the Peace Corps as he was intending to do it himself once he retired. Although we were doubtful of our ability to make it to Winturri, the next shelter along the way, by nightfall, he told us it was well within our ability and so we pushed on. It's another uphill slog, of course, but fueled by fried chicken and the encouragement of strangers, we made it in by dark.
That night it rained again, thus beginning the trend that continued throughout the trip of only raining at night, which was actually pretty convenient. I stayed in the tent until around noon waiting out the rain and then moved to the shelter. A couple nobos came through and I talked to one who said he'd had a brother-in-law who was ambassador to a number of countries in the South Pacific, including Vanuatu. When Jammy finally woke up we hit the trail again. It was always bad news to hear from another thru-hiker that the terrain ahead is “easy.” It's almost always a set-up for disappointment. First of all, at this point in the trip we were in considerably worse physical shape than the other hikers we were crossing, and so “easy” was always relative. On top of this, however, hearing that something is going to be easy put you in a kind of mindset where even small obstacles became a great burden because they were unexpected, and you got easily frustrated with, for example, a small section of uphill trail. This was to be such a day. After a brief high where we stopped at a little cottage built on a peak where you could climb a ladder up to the roof and get a great view, we were back to the up-and-down slog of Northern Vermont.
I think the most frustrating thing about the piece of trail that we were on, aside from the fact that we were hitting it while we were still out of shape, was the fact that there were very few peaks. There were no harrowing steep uphill climbs that suddenly ended in a beautiful vista and a nice warm sense of accomplishment. No, these were slow and constant uphill trudges where you could always swear you were near the top, only to see the trail veer off into the one patch of uphill that was previously obscured by some tree or another. It was never really steep or even particularly challenging terrain, it was just never-ending. You'd keep going up until you were so worn down you thought you'd never get to the top, and just then you'd realize that you never would because there was no top, no vista, no peak, just a point on the trail where you'd start going back down to repeat the whole process over again. By the end of the day I was so worn down physically and mentally I was ready to collapse. My feet had taken so much pounding that I felt like the layers of skin and muscle had worn through and that I was walking on bone.
The next day things began to look up for me again. On the advice of one of the nobos we'd met the previous night, we took a short day and ended up at Kent pond, which sported not just a beautiful pond to swim in, but also a full-up lodge to stay the night. We checked in and were given a 50% discount for being hikers. None too shabby. The room we got was quite nice with all the usual amenities, including mattresses, electricity, and a bathroom with shower and flush toilet. We washed our clothes in the sink, went swimming, and took showers. We aired out our tent which was starting to smell bad, even to us, which was impressive. The lodge had a game room where we played pool and a public computer where I checked my email and posted to The Bubble. We decided to forgo the meal at the lodge in favor of our own food since we'd carried it all this way, after all. After dinner we got a round of beers and headed to the hot tub. We polished off our first round and headed back inside for the second. The owner, a very friendly guy named Bill, who was manning the bar grabbed a beer for himself and we got to talking. He turned out to be a hiker himself and we started swapping hiking stories. We finished our second round and Bill gave us one on the house. We continued to swap stories and Bill started to throw beers at us, eventually running out of beer in the main fridge and having to bring some up from the back. By midnight, we'd had about a six beers a piece, and had only paid for one. We ended up in the hot tub talking to Bill until around one in the morning when we all realized we needed to be up rather early. The next morning we woke up feeling a bit under the weather and went down to breakfast. The lodge had a nice spread and we ate our fill. In the next room, we could hear Bill cleaning up from the previous night. There was much clanking of bottles and he finally emerged with a milk crate entirely filled with the bottles we'd drained. He gave a sheepish grin to his wife, wished us well, and we were back on the trail.
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