Main Street News

Sometime around last Christmas, it became apparent that I would have a window of time this summer to dispense with as I saw fit. Things playing out as they usually do during the holidays, I began to plan for the best use of that time that I could imagine: a hermitage far from mankind or any of our contrivances. Those contrivances being as far-reaching as they are, the location of my retreat would require some consideration. In lieu of any financial underwriting, my destination would need to be somewhat nearby, but exotic enough to invite the kind of reflection that is born of novel experiences. Perhaps, in fact, it was a novel experience that I sought as much as isolation.

For many years, I have slipped out of town for the occasional weekend of backpacking, sometimes staying out for several nights to extend the adventure, however limited that time was. With a span of eight or nine days at my disposal this year, I began to think more grandly about a backpacking epic: not enough time to complete any long trail, but enough time to attempt a pretty good chunk of The Long Trail, Vermont’s 273-mile route that runs from Williamstown, MA, to the Canadian border. Although I’d day-hiked sections of the trail over the years, I had never been to its northern reaches, which thread through central Vermont, just to the west of the Northeast Kingdom.

A score to settle

In fact, my lone flirtation with this section of the trail ended ignominiously with a sheepish retreat from the upper slopes of Mt. Mansfield, Vermont’s tallest peak. About ten years ago, on a lark, a friend and I scaled it to the start of its alpine zone before a cool October rain slickened the final approach, and we agreed that discretion would be the better part of valor. It was one of the few times I have turned back from a summit, and although it was the right decision at the time, it left me with a score to settle. 

So preparations ensued. The problem of where to leave my truck for a week was resolved when I realized that I had a friend in Richmond, ninety miles south of Canada, within shouting distance of The Long Trail. Next, a lighter backpack was purchased. Grams were counted. Menus prepared. I waded into the unknown to solicit a stranger in Richmond for a ride to the northern terminus so as not to inconvenience my friend too greatly. It was all coming together. 

Looking back on it now, I am not sure what I was expecting from the trail. Grand vistas? Secluded swimming holes? Disinterested moose munching on swamp grass as I strolled by? The fact that I had packed a trail hammock suggests the mentality I was hoping to embrace on the trail: hike a bit, rest by some majestic view, hike some more, take a nap by some isolated vista. This would be vacation time, after all. The 12.8 ounces my hammock weighed was small penance for daily swaying myself to sleep in a sylvan paradise. As it turns out, I used it once: Day One.

Clouds on the horizon

The trouble started about a week before departure, when I began monitoring the weather for northern Vermont during the week of July 8. As it turns out, this was the one-year anniversary of the catastrophe that turned Montpelier into a lake, washing out roads from there to Burlington. Surely, there could be no safer week than that exact period, one year later, right? Lightning doesn’t strike twice?

I watched the rainfall forecast climb hourly from an inch to two inches, to two and a half inches on the day of my departure. As I ceremoniously stepped on Canadian soil to begin my trek, dark clouds were literally on the horizon. After the novelty of the international ritual, the first twenty-four hours, spent in the company of the region’s innumerable flies, were meteorologically uneventful. Even most of Day Two passed with only a heavy, humid burden. The views from Jay Peak were hazy, but still impressive. But the ominous feeling of an impending thunderstorm ushered me from the summit after just a brief gander.

Within the hour, the skies opened up: a few drops to a full torrent in a matter of minutes. A gusty wind cooled me on the ascents, although I knew it would freeze me when I stopped moving. I negotiated rock outcroppings and picked my way downhill to Jay Camp, a four-sided shelter on the south side of the peak, where I began stripping out of my wet clothes in the company of a stereotypically cheery Canadian who obligingly cleared one of the clotheslines to make room for my sodden garments.

Crossing the threshold

After achieving a level of damp warmth in my sleeping bag, the ambient sound of rain on the hut’s metal roof lulled me to sleep. But the next morning’s fog indicated that the moisture would linger. I’d entertained notions of lounging around camp for a day, waiting for the sun to break through, but it was clear that my copy of Kerouac’s Doctor Saxwould not sustain me for an entire day, nevermind the soggy one that would follow. So with one dry change of clothes, I made the only possible decision: put on your wet crap and get on with it. 

Putting on wet clothing is a kind of threshold moment for a long-distance hiker. It is a matter of acceptance and resignation: such is my lot.  

And yet, that lot is not so bad. Sure, I began to take on the delicate fragrance of a teenager’s unwashed hockey equipment, but I wasn’t any less comfortable than I had been while hiking in a downpour. I strode through the primeval forests of northern Vermont, scaling peaks that offered none of the vistas I’d expected, and when they did, they were socked in with fog. As I entered days three and four of the hike, though, I noticed a shift.

Nothing around me had changed: I sloshed through the mud among the birches, pines, and ferns just the same. Yet the relative asceticism of my situation narrowed my choices to one: wake up and hike. No decisions about what shirt to wear, what to eat for breakfast, what task to tackle first. Without a wireless signal, my phone became primarily a camera, and with no expansive views, I began to capture the much smaller objects that became milestones in the green tunnel. My hike became a meditation on the particulars of this Lilliputian world.

A Lilliputian world

Toads and frogs dashed from the trail just ahead of my footsteps. With each soggy day, I began to notice the bloom of mushrooms that marked every mile of the trail. First, it was the diminutive Hygrocybe miniata that poked through the moss. Their perky caps were like birthday candles along the trail, begging for attention. Next, an unfortunately-named dog slime mold lit up the trail à la Times Square with its brilliant lemon vestment of a decaying birch log. Soon, I had acquired an eye for mushrooms of all shapes and sizes, from those that proclaimed their presence with loud hues to those that hoped to escape notice by nestling in humus in muted anonymity. 

Out of necessity, my attention had shifted from the promise of sublime views to the precious and transient wonders at my feet. Hours passed when I would barely notice the weight of my backpack, and my hip flexors no longer ached at night. By the time I stepped off the trail in Stowe for a planned day off, I felt like a veteran of the trail, habituated to the chores and routines that accompany a life that is contained in a backpack. In fact, I did not sleep very well in that hotel bed. 

The next morning, I stepped back onto the worn section of the trail from Smuggler’s Notch to the top of Mount Mansfield. It’s a great hike, full of challenging rock scrambles and alpine balds. It’s also accessible via ski gondola and access road, which meant that my hours of toiling to reach it on the Long Trail would be circumvented by flip-flopped families toting coolers and Tupperware containers full of potato salad. Like my night in Stowe, it was a strange interlude that I was glad to escape when I slipped back into the monastic isolation of the “forehead” of Mansfield and the wilderness of Bolton Mountain. 

Yet another deluge soaked Vermont that night, this one experienced through the thin protection of my tent. That fifth day of heavy rain seemed somehow personal. Like nature was trying to force me off the trail. 

Admittedly, I’d had enough. As I exited to the Bolton Ski Area trails, I wanted nothing more than a cold Coke and a bag of potato chips, two simple pleasures that I would savor while sitting at a picnic table outside their convenience store, appreciative that I only had to carry them twenty yards. The view from that picnic table wasn’t great, but that Coke was the best one I’d had in awhile.