I felt quite good heading out from the lodge despite the late night of drinking. The weather was awesome, cool and dry, and excellent for hiking. It was to be the first day of the trip that I didn't end the day drenched in sweat. We hiked a couple miles and then detoured from the AT onto Sherburnne Pass trail, which would shave a mile or so off our hike that day. We hit US Rt. 4 and once again it was time to head into town for supplies, this time into the town of Rutland, VT. US 4 is busy, but no one will pick us up. We waited by the side of the road for about twenty minutes with no luck. Finally, a day hiker down from the trail shouted at us from the other side of the road and offered us a ride in. She was a young lady, probably in her 20's, and was very interested to hear about our time on the trail. She asked a lot questions about safety and whether or not we felt comfortable being around other people on the trail. It eventually came out that she was interested in hiking the trail, but was worried about being mugged or something since she'd be alone. Neither me nor Jammy pointed out the contradiction between this and deciding to pick up two random dudes on the side of the road.
Once in Rutland we once again hit the grocery store and then headed to another deli for another hot pastrami sandwich. We'd heard about a religious group in Rutland that ran a hiker hostel, and we decided to check it out, hoping that they might be offering rides back out to the trail. The hostel was above a restaurant called the “Back Home Again Cafe” which, in stark contrast to Rutland itself, was quite nice. The interior was all wood with nice polished wooden tables, antique leather upholstery, unique seating arrangements, and nice lighting. The staff of the place were easy to pick out, as they all looked the same. The men had long beards and long hair tied back in pony tails and were wearing earth-tone hemp pants and neutral shirts. The women all had long, loose, hair and loose-fitting earth-tone dresses on top of black t-shirts. We noticed a sort of cubby system on the left wall full of tea mugs which we assumed belonged to the staff. Each mug had a name tag underneath it, except all the names were new-age, like “Shaltiel” or “Menoah” or “Rennan.” We were greeted by one of the identically-dressed women who asked if we were there for the hostel. We said no, but were wondering if they offered rides back out to the trail. She said she'd ask around and see if there was anyone around that could help us. She disappeared into the cafe and emerged a few minutes later full of apologies. “I'm SO, sorry,” she said “the guy with the car is out running errands today. I'm really sorry we can't help you out. You might try the bus station, but I'm so sorry we can't help you more. I really wish we could...” We eventually had to shut her up by telling her it was OK and really not to worry about it. We left the cafe, both commenting about how weird that experience was.
Getting out of Rutland was hell. We had to walked almost two miles up US 4 before we found a spot with a good place to pull over for hitching. We were in the blazing sun for almost an hour before getting picked up by a guy who could only take us half the way to the trail. The second hitch took another 15 minutes or so, but finally we were on our way. Next up on the trail was Killington peak, which is the highest peak in Vermont, but was surprisingly easy to climb. An afternoon off the trail had done us both well and we were beginning to develop our hiking legs. We got to a shelter near the peak well before nightfall. A side trail led the remaining 0.2 miles to the summit. We packed our cooking supplies and headed up it to catch the sunset over dinner. The side trail was quite steep, but short, and the views from the top were awesome. It was the first real peak of the whole trip. All in all, it was a very enjoyable day.
Due to the heat wave that had been hitting the east coast for almost a week, we had sent home our overly-thick sleeping bags in favor of lighter fleece blankets. The night on Killington, however, showed us the error in our ways. The night was cold, not freezing by any stretch, but too cold for our gear to cope with. It's surprising how difficult it is to stay warm at night. During the day, not only is the sun out and the temperatures are generally higher, but you're moving around and doing stuff, which goes a long way to keeping you warm. At night, when you're lying on the ground not moving, warming up is a lot of challenging. Needless to say, we did not sleep well that night and immediately called Jammy's parents to have them send our sleeping bags along.
We got up early the next day not having slept much. After two days of minimal sleep (the first due to alcohol and the second to cold), I spent most of the day in s daze. I felt like I was falling asleep even when I was walking. Fortunately, we found two trail magics (treats which people leave by the trail for hikers) full of soda, which kept me going long enough to get to camp. We rolled into camp early and talked for a while with a couple passing through on their way north who were carrying 65 pound packs with 15 days of food for some reason. We thought back to our misadventures in Maine and grimaced. Since it was still early and there was supposed to be a town only about a mile and a half away, we decided to go in and pick up some fresh sausage to cook over a camp fire. We hiked down and incredibly steep section of trail to get to the road and found some day hikers to ask about the nearby town. We were told that the town in walking distance had no grocery store, and that we'd do better to go into Rutland. This was somewhat disheartening, as we remembered how difficult it was to get out of Rutland the day before. We got a great hitch, however. A national guard woman picked us up, drove us to the grocery store, waited for us, and then took us back to the trail. She talked to us about how her unit had been activated for duty in Iraq and how she was considering going. I hoped that someone who'd been so nice to us would not end up in such a bad situation.
We built a fire and roasted sausage and bakery bread over it that evening, our best meal yet. We built the fire up really big and stayed up late to watch the sky. We had decided that we would forgo hiking the following day and spend two nights at the shelter. There was supposed to be a meteor shower that evening, but we either missed it, or it was pretty small, because I didn't notice anything.
The next morning we woke up at 1pm, which felt awesome. I woke up to find a group of sobo girls hanging out in the shelter along with a guy on an ATV named Poor Boy, the volunteer in charged of maintaining the shelter. They told me about a restaurant nearby that was supposed to do good hamburgers. The girls were heading there for lunch, and me and Jammy decided to do the same. The girls took off before us and we stayed to talk to Poor Boy for a little bit, which turned out to be a good call as he told us about an ATV road that we could take that was a shortcut down to the restaurant. We struck out on the road about half an hour after the girls had left, and still beat them there. The restaurant turned out to be out of beef, and so we all had to wait quite a while as the owner went out to buy some. In the meantime, we met Plans-Too-Much, a retired ex-hiker who gives hikers all throughout Vermont rides to wherever they want to go. We had noticed his phone number up in a number of the shelters. Me and Jammy mentioned to him that we were interested in doing some swimming that day and he offered to take us to some good swimming holes in the area. The girls headed on down the trail, and we went with Plans-Too-Much to go swimming. He did indeed know some good spots and me and Jammy got a good laugh out of seeing him, who was probably in his 50's, out-dive all the local teenagers. We headed back to camp in the mid-afternoon and thanked Plans-Too-Much for the ride.
That evening Jammy started feeling sick to his stomach, and when it hadn't cleared up by the morning, we decided to head into town to stay in civilization for a couple night until he was better. We called Plans-Too-Much and he drove us into Rutland to the Back Home Again Cafe to stay with the Twelve Tribes, which we had learned was the name of the group running the hostel. One of the staff showed us up to the rooms, which had gorgeous wooden bunks, with surprisingly clean bathrooms and showers with six kinds of organic soap. The hostel let you stay in exchange for either a $15 donation or two hours of work in the cafe or attached bakery. The first night we decided to just fork over the fifteen bucks and be done with it. We headed out to the Rutland movie theater and saw the Bourne Ultimatum, which was entertaining. We returned to the cafe in time for dinner, which was provided to all the hikers staying for free. It was a beautiful spread of fresh vegetables, bread, and soup. During dinner some of the cultists, as me and Jammy had taken to calling them, sat down with us and began making small talk. Apparently they were involved with the planning of some sort of hiker festival that the city was putting on the following week. Some of the other hikers were talking about hitching back in for the occasion. One of the cultists sitting next to me asked if I was planning on coming back. I said it was probably going to be too much trouble for us, since we were only going to be on the trail for a limited time. His response was “Well, it's only a week away. Maybe you guys will still be here then!” Needless to say, I found this more than a little creepy. We also started talking to this other cultist, Rennan, who told us “I used to hike the trail, before I found this place.” I asked him how long he'd been here, and he said 13 months. I asked if he was planning on finishing at any point, to which he responded “no, I don't think so.” A little weirded out, we decided to call it a night.
The next day we decided to do work-for-stay as we didn't want to spend any more money. He headed downstairs, ate the free breakfast and asked what they wanted us to do. We were sent up to the bakery where they showed us a pile of parts and asked us to put together as many baker's shelves from them as we could. It seemed easy enough, so we set to work. About fifteen minutes in, we realized that the part didn't really go together all that well and that there weren't really the right pieces to make the shelves stable. We asked one of the cultists about this and he told us that they'd picked up the parts a while back and that no one had put them together before, but they he though we could do it because we were “rocket scientists or something.” Apparently the word had gotten around that we were Princeton grads. I asked the cultist if there was a hacksaw or something that we could use to cut up some of the parts to make them more useful. He replied “I don't have the authority to let you do that,” and promptly left. We managed to get two shelves put together and were sent down to the basement to give them to one of the staff down there. We found the guy in the basement who wanted the shelves and he showed us where he wanted them to go. The space looked a little tight, so we asked for a measuring tape to make sure they would fit. “I don't think we have one,” he replied. Next, we asked for some string. “I don't know if we have any. Let me go check.” He proceeded to wander off for a good 15 to 20 minutes. In the meantime, me and Jammy explored the immediate vicinity and located the tool shed, which had a large measuring tape sitting on one of the shelves. The guy returned telling us they didn't have any string and we asked if we could use the measuring tape we had found.
We measured the shelves and concluded that they would fit, but only if we knocked off the wheels on the bottom, which would be useless anyway since he wanted stationary shelves. We went back to the basement and told our guy this. “I don't think I have the authority to let you do that,” he said. I tried to explain that his shelves would not fit otherwise, and while I was doing so Jammy wandered into the tool shed and located a hammer. We set to work knocking the wheels off, leaving the cultist standing uselessly in the corner with a blank look on his face. Eventually we started asking him to hold things for us, as he seemed to have nothing better to do than stand and watch us. Finally we got the shelves set up in the requested space and just about the same time our two hours were up. We headed back up to the cafe for lunch. The wrap we had for lunch were quite good, and while we were eating one of the cultists (keep in mind, all these guys look the same) sat next to us and started making small talk. Turned out he was in the navy and had some cool navy stories. After a while though we lapsed into silence. “So,” he said, breaking the silence “what have you guys heard about us?” We both groaned inwardly. Jammy tried to avoid the question, but before we knew it he had launched into a detailed description of their group.
They were indeed a religious group and their theology was some variation on Christianity. I'm no theologian so I wasn't really able to get that good a handle on how “out there” they were religiously, but they certainly weren't as overt as, say, alien worshiping cults you hear about in the news. Really, the strangest thing about them was that they'd seemed to have blended conservative Christianity with hippyism, and were pretty radically anti-society. We were told about how the corporations were running everything and that governments only existed to make people feel better. He told us about how we were all slaves to the “gas-man” and the “oil man” and various other types of “man.” He talked about how public school just brainwash kids and promote commercialism, and how they were too dangerous because too many kids end up shot or raped. The highlight, however, was really his lack of understanding of US government. He talked a lot about how we didn't have a say in our own government. I responded by asking if they voted, to which he responded that, no, they did not. I think he completely missed the connection between those two statements. He also railed for a long time about how “we lost the right to make laws.” Afterwards, me and Jammy weren't really sure what this was supposed to mean, as the US has a representative government and was never set up to have the populous make laws directly. He told a long story about some petition they'd gotten going in the 70's and how they'd gotten 5 million signatures (not even close to a majority, by the way) and how they'd sent it into congress and received a letter back saying they needed to contact their representatives. While he was telling this story, I took a look around the cafe, at the earth-tone clothing, the stand selling organic soap, the signs listing the benefits of some Brazilian tea and thought: “You guys were trying to legalize marijuana weren't you? That's what this petition was about. You wanted to legalize weed.” Sure enough, he got to the end of his story and add, almost as a side note: “We were trying to legalize marijuana.” Of course. About two hours later (seriously). We finally got away from this guy and out into the city where we decided we weren't going back to the hostel until it was time to go to sleep.
The next morning, Jammy was feeling better, so we called Plans-Too-Much for a ride back to the trail. He said he was busy and would not be able to pick us up until around 1pm. We said this was fine, but now had some time to kill before leaving. As I mentioned before, the cafe was planning on doing some catering for the upcoming hiker festival, some of which apparently involved smoothies, because they had a lot of bananas that needed peeling and freezing. We volunteered to help to pass the time. The cultists had also apparently had some sort of sermon involving salmon that morning because they were trickling down the stairs murmuring about salmon-this, salmon-that, and about how moving the lesson about salmon was. We headed downstairs with a number of the cultists and a few other hikers too. We were peeling bananas for a while when one of the cultists pulled out a gorgeous salmon and started butchering it to serve for lunch. Me and Jammy were salivating staring at this thing and Jammy finally said, “Nice fish.” The guy butchering it turned around and said, with a knowing nod, “yes, it's a salmon.” Which was the cue for all the other cultists to turn to each other and smile and go “yes, a salmon.” I got to say, it was pretty creepy. Finally, Plans-Too-Much showed up to take us back to the trail. We told him about our experiences during the ride at which point he told us “yeah, I try not to go stay in that place for more than a half hour at a time.” Good call.
A QUICK NOTE ON THE TWELVE TRIBES: I refer to them as a cult, which seems to mean different things to different people. I do not mean that they were a cult in the violent-anti-government-armed-and-dangerous sense, in fact, they were generally very subdued and were some of the nicest people we were to meet on the trail. I also don't mean it in the don't-drink-the-Kool-Aid sense. Most of the members seemed happy and to be getting along just fine. In other words, these were not people that were a danger to themselves or to others, which is what may be called to mind with the word “cult.” This is not the kind of group that I would want to see broken up or in any way removed from society. In fact, they seemed to be running the only decent restaurant in Rutland, so well done there. What I'm referring to with the word “cult” is the life-consuming aspects of the Twelve Tribes. The members all left their families to move in with the group. They sold all their possessions and donated their life savings to the group. From our conversations with the members, we gathered that they got out very little and spent the vast majority of their time working and living with the group. Thus, members of the Twelve Tribes were members of the Twelve Tribes only, nothing else, they had no other components to their lives. This is the basis on which I call them a cult. I also refer to the lack of individuality that many of the members seemed to possess. Talking to them, one got the impression that they did not do much in the way of thinking or acting for themselves. Despite their claim to have no “leaders” or “hierarchy,” there were definitely a good number of members that exhibited very little ability to think and act on their own and seemed to mostly do what they were told. On this basis also I call them a cult. I hope that I have not portrayed an excessively negative or biased picture of the Twelve Tribes, once again I do not want my use of the word cult to be taken in ways other than that which it was meant.
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