Bright Lights, Big City: A Dispatch from Stratton

I'm sitting here at the shared computer in the the Stratton Motel, a hiker hostel located in the bustling metropolis of Stratton, Maine. (pop. 685) Directly across from me a is a full length, three foot map of the entire trail, with a tiny arrow pointing to the a point three inches from the top. Next to the arrow is a handwritten note that says "you are here". I'm trying not to look at it.

Life is still good. Long distance hiking is a complete shock to the system, and the only way to truly prepare for it is to, you guessed it...hike extremely long distances. So I like to think that I am out of the "shocking" phase and my body is slowly beginning to adapt to the rigors of this task. As previously stated, my blisters and knee pain have mostly faded, leaving me free to concentrate on climbing hills and enjoying the natural beauty all around me.

Cold Beer and I have hooked up with two other hikers named Patches and Six String. We took an light hiking day into town (six miles) and are staying the night at the hostel to rest ourselves before we tackle southern Maine--a rugged place regarded as the second most difficult section on the entire A.T.

Yesterday I climbed about three thousand feet in the rain to the top of Bigelow Mountain, my first four thousand foot peak since Katahdin. Visibility was completely zero and the wind was blowing...well, honestly I don't know how fast it was blowing, but lets put it this way: I tried to pour water into my mouth and the water went sideways. I may be able to post a video of this summit in a few days.


(side note: I just had to stop and slap an elephant sized mosquito that is somehow inside this building. He probably tunneled under the house, I thought I felt the foundation shaking a few minutes ago. No worries. I have a plan to solve the ever present bug problem, and when I introduce it to trail life, nothing will ever be the same again. More on that in about ten days.)


There are so many things I want to talk about: life on the trail, what Maine is like, the people I am meeting. I think I may concentrate on those sort of things a little more from now on...I think those topics are more interesting than how many miles I have done in any one day.

So, to start out with: Hiker culture. I could go on and on about this but I think what I want to concentrate on most right now is generosity. As a group, long distance hikers are the most generous people I have ever met. If you are short on food, seven people offer to give you some. Need a shoe lace? No problem. Somebody will unlace his own boot and cut one in half for you. Short on cash? Here's a dollar.

This may not seem very awe inspiring to you but for this one important fact: Food, shoelaces, and one dollar is basically all these people  have. Most of them don't even have jobs or a house anymore (sound familiar?). When you carry your entire life on your back, for six months, from mountain to mountain and shelter to shelter, offering a total stranger the literal shirt off your back is a huge thing, a gigantic thing. And yet I see it every day. Most of the I see it more than once a day.

Relationships form instantly on the trail, and I do mean instantly. I don't want to cheapen the experience of war and the bonds formed between soldiers by comparing it to something as pedestrian as walking over mountains--and yet...and yet there is something close there.

The sense of a shared experience, the idea that at the end of the day all of us have hiked up and down the same unforgiving terrain, fallen into the same bogs, had our very living essence drained away by the same ocean liner sized bugs...it brings us together in a way that I could never have imagined "back in the real world".

Anyway. I think that is enough for the night. More on the nitty gritty of hiker life later. Reminder to self: Talk about home made gear, cooking in camp, the way northbounders look down on southbounders, and the way I Frankenstiened two different pairs of shoe soles together to form one ultimate pair of hiker soles. (I call them Sam and Dave, respectively. Eh? Eh? I'll be here all night.)

I have to go sort through my resupply food and get my bag packed for tomorrow. Send your happy thoughts out to Rachael, she is planning a wedding and trying to move to Ohio at the same time. All I have to do is hike for fifteen hours a day, and that is easy by comparison.

Also, here is the blog of a guy I keep running into on the trail. His name is Chris and he is a super cool dude.
www.ghettohiker.wordpress.com

Until next time,

Happy Trails

--Pawn