AWOL on the Appalachian Trail (30 page)

There is a ray of sunlight through a break in the trees, and I lie on the slab of rock that has been warmed. I take out my fleece and use it as a pillow. My body enjoys the rest, but my mind is not tired enough to sleep. Further up the mountain I chase away a squirrel and sit on the log he vacated. He goes up a tree and complains. He comes back down onto the other end of the log to confront me. He makes tiny little lurches toward me with every obscenity he squeaks. I wonder if he will attack and what strategy he may have to overcome the size differential.

After the summit, I make a short descent to thirty-four hundred feet, where Speck Pond is nestled into a flat between the peaks of Mahoosuc Arm and Old Speck Mountain. The trail circles around the shoreline to Speck Pond Campsite and Shelter, where I will spend the night. The pond is large, larger than Dream Lake that I passed yesterday. My walk along half of its shoreline is longer than a quarter-mile. In Maine, it seems that "pond" or "lake" is an attribute ascribed at the discretion of the person naming the body of water.

Ken and Marcia are in the shelter, along with a southbound flip-flopper named Detour. This is an AMC-run campsite, and a caretaker has her semipermanent tent set up nearby. An Outward Bound group is tenting in the campsite area. There is a fee for shelter use, but we all do work-for-stay. Detour and I are assigned the task of scouring the grounds for trash. I find nothing. Detour tags along behind me and confirms my findings. Ken and Marcia get the job of answering the Outward Bound group's questond about thru-hiking.

Usually I lay my head on a stuff sack filled with unused clothes. Tonight I am without a pillow because it is so cold that I wear everything to bed, including my rain jacket and pants, gloves, and my fleece cap.

I start my hike in the morning at the same time as Ken and Marcia, and we make the short but steep ascent up Old Speck Mountain together. The sky is blue, and large ponds, a deeper hue of blue, dot the expansive landscape visible from the rocky mountaintop. Ken and Marcia are on the trail below me, winding through the mix of stubby evergreens and boulders. The speckled gray granite contrasts wonderfully with the deep green of the forest. It is a scene exemplary of Maine, the most beautiful state on the trail.

After a quick descent from Old Speck, I begin a long and arduous climb of West Baldpate. It is increasingly difficult the higher I go. The trail leads directly uphill with no switchbacks, on a slope varying from fifteen to thirty-five degrees, about the same slope range as the average residential roof. It is deeply rutted by erosion. Ruggedness can often be equated with unspoiled wilderness, but in this case, the difficulty is due to the poor trail routing and the trail's popularity. Thousands of hikers use this section of trail every year, pounding away at the firmament that holds the soil in place. Initially, the path would have been difficult due to the steepness, but the terrain would have been smoother and covered by soil, like the land on either side of the trail. Water from rainfall and melting snow channel into this cleared, slightly depressed path, streaming away loose soil. Rock and deadfall lie scattered on the trail, in a snapshot of their slow-motion tumble down the mountain. Tree roots exposed by soil loss form a ledge one foot, two feet, sometimes three feet high. At times soil is washed away below the roots, leaving them suspended like thick trip wires.

From Baldpate's West Peak, I look ahead to the East Peak, which is slightly higher. The top of East Baldpate is a head of stone, rounded if viewed from afar. Trees grow in a ring down from the peak, like the remnants of hair on a balding man. The trail is a visible scar across the saddle between the summits. The clearing atop East Peak, which looked like a smooth mound of stone from a mile away, is full of lumps, cracks, and ledges. Puddles of dirt and pebbles gather inside the irregularities, in which ground-hugging plants take hold. Knee-high trees, some of which may be over a hundred years old, are scattered about taking lonely stands on the weather-beaten mountaintop.

The East Peak of Baldpate.

The AT down the north face of East Baldpate is dangerously steep. Bedrock bulges out from the ground in mounded slabs ten to thirty feet long. Some of the slabs are sloped downward at an angle of forty-five degrees or more, and often are tilted to one side. Even though some of the angles are too steep for me to stand on, I find that I can walk down them if I am gutsy enough to scurry down without stopping. Some of the surfaces end with a drop-off, so this technique is not always an option. I am not too proud to sit and scoot down the rock on my behind; it is better than doing so involuntarily. Mostly, hikers skirt along the edge of the down-sloping bedrock, gaining footholds in the soil at the fringes and grabbing trailside trees to keep from slipping. The trees look abused and wobble at the roots like loose teeth.

Caution is on my mind. I've heard of two people who have been injured in Maine, ending their attempts to thru-hike. In Gorham I received an e-mail from No-Hear-Um, whom I last saw in Virginia before he had jumped up to Katahdin and started hiking south. Now, he is off the trail. He had lost too much weight on his journey; he felt weak and took too many falls on the precarious trail in this state. He decided to end his hike rather than risk getting injured.

The trail levels, and it looks like I should pass the last few miles of the day in relative safety. The most innocuous-looking branch lies across the trail, not more than an inch in diameter, and not more than a few inches off the ground. Stepping over, surely I've lifted my foot high enough to clear, but the branch lurches up to catch my toe. This is a problem, because the foot now caught on the branch is the one I was counting on having in front of me. I lurch forward with my torso horizontal to the ground. My pack has more momentum than my body. It is a slave to gravity and wants to dive into the ground, uncaring that my face will go with it. My free leg is hopping, frantically trying to do the work of two legs, and my arms are trying to keep up by pumping away at my trekking poles. Finally, my foot breaks free and I am spared.

East B Hill Road is a road with little traffic, but a truck comes along just as I reach it, and I get a ride into the town of Andover. I stop to eat at the diner. Ken and Marcia have arrived, and we eat dinner together. A wall of the diner is adorned with pictures of hikers who have completed the pancake challenge. If you can eat three pancakes, you get them for free. It doesn't sound like much of a challenge unless you see the photographs. Each pancake is as big as the plate, and about an inch thick. After dinner, Marcia, Ken, and I visit the grocer across the street. We will make our own pancakes in the morning.

All trail towns tempt me to describe them as "quaint," but Andover seems most deserving of the adjective. The town is centered on the intersection of Main Street and the road on which I arrive. On each side of Main Street there are only a handful of buildings. The largest, a pretty three-story building with white siding, is Andover Guest House. The house has bed and breakfast quality rooms for travelers and a special bunkroom for hikers. This is the cleanest hiker accommodation I've stayed in, thanks to the fastidious owner, "Ladyinnkeeper." "Packs and shoes stay outside," she says. She delivers her statements in bursts, like she is paying for air time, but any time she has saved is lost by me pausing to absorb the flood of words.

In the morning Ladyinnkeeper drives me back to the trail. She will pick me up today at another road crossing ten trail miles from here, and I will return to the guest house for another night's stay. Ten miles is a short day, and I don't have to cook or set up camp. It's just a walk in the woods.

The first six miles are easy, and then there is the moderately difficult ascent and descent of Moody Mountain. I struggle a bit on the climb. I've learned that as I tire my form gets sloppy, which makes matters worse. I tend to get duck-footed and let my weight drag. I can perform more efficiently if I keep my feet aligned with the trail, take shorter strides, and lean a bit forward when going uphill. If there is any science to my claims, it is coincidental; they are based only on feel. If I make a particularly steep step, I may plant both trekking poles and pull with my arms. Most of the time I avoid "ski-poling" and plant only one at a time. If I am on clear and level ground, I will pick up my poles and carry them by their balance point (near the center), one in each hand. My hike has made me a believer in trekking poles. They have saved mfrom a number of falls.

Back in Andover, I speak with Juli on the phone. The temperature in Florida is ninety-three degrees. In the morning, the temperature in Andover is thirty-eight degrees. Ken and Marcia also stayed at the guest house last night, so for the second consecutive morning, we make ourselves a pancake breakfast.

Continuing north, my hike starts with a long climb to the summit of Old Blue Mountain. The stunted pines, which cap nearly every mountain in Maine, are particularly dense and green on Old Blue. I've found a perfect chair-height lump of granite where I sit and write until Ken and Marcia come along. I hike with them, and we pass the miles talking. The trail stays fairly high on the ridge after Old Blue, and the weather is wonderful.

I reach State Road 17. Nearby there is a pull-off occupied by a handful of cars. Their owners are looking out to the mountain range and to a sprawling blue lake with an island of trees in the center. From there I hitch a ride into Rangeley, a small resort town, and stay at Gull Pond Hostel.

"Hello, Awol," Crossroads says as he steps out of the bunkroom to greet me.

I last saw Crossroads in the Shenandoah National Park. He wrote a register entry in New York saying he left the trail to return to his job. Now I eagerly listen as he tells the rest of the story. He worked only for one week before deciding it was more important for him to finish the trail. He quit, went up to Katahdin and has been hiking south. He'll have to find a new job when he finishes. Crossroads seems very happy, and I'm happy for him.

I update him on my progress, telling him of my sprained ankle and my struggles with the heat in New York and rain in Vermont.

"Geez, I thought none of that would bother you," he says.

"Why would you think that?" I answer.

"You were such a machine back when we met in North Carolina. I thought you were some military type, like a sergeant."

My recollection is of Crossroads powering up Standing Indian Mountain. He is younger than I am; he was hiking faster and was on a more ambitious schedule. At the time we first met, I was mired in doubt about my ability to thru-hike. We all perceive that the other guy has it easier than we do; we all assume that others know our inner doubts.

Bob, the owner of Gull Pond Hostel, takes me and Crossroads to the trailhead in the morning. He drives cautiously, explaining the hazards of driving roads through the woods where there is a moose population. Bob hit a sixteen-hundred-pound moose a couple of years ago. It came through his windshield, fractured his eye socket, and broke his hand. Four drivers have been killed this year in collisions with moose in Maine.

Crossroads and I part ways after our brief reunion. He will go south, and I head north. A short way up the trail, I find trail magic. Bottles of Gatorade are perched on rocks about fifty feet apart. I take one with me to have later with my lunch. I will return to Rangeley tonight from State Road 4, thirteen miles from where I started this morning.

The AT since Gorham has been as challenging as the trail anywhere. I feel sluggish and worn down. The trail is a bit easier today, as if it is cooperating with my lesser capabilities. The elevation goes no higher than twenty-seven hundred feet. I never get above tree line, and I stay submerged within a fst of spruce and birch. There are a few ponds and stretches of level walking along their shorelines. I do not see another hiker until returning to town.

I hitch back to Rangeley, having finished my hike early in the afternoon. I have time to mill about the downtown area. Rangeley is a resort town, similar to Gorham, with hotels and restaurants dominating Main Street. There is a full-sized grocery store, so I wander the aisles marveling at the abundance. I buy a package of cookies and a Coke and sit on a bench out front, blissfully eating away. Down the street at the laundromat, I use the bathroom to change into a fleece jacket and my rain pants so I can launder everything else. Everything else is just a fraction of a load. Ken and Marcia show up, as their clothes are nearing the end of the wash cycle. I sit with them in the laundromat, and among the smell of soap and the sound of tumbling clothes, we catch up on each other's days. I eat dinner with Ken and Marcia and then visit the Rangeley Inn, where they are staying. An enormous moose head adorns the lobby.

Bob again gives me a morning ride to the trailhead, this time at the intersection of the AT with State Road 4 where I ended my hike yesterday. The air is chilly, and there is a hazy cover of fog. Most of the first six miles of my day are uphill, since the trail is leading to the summit of Saddleback Mountain.