Sept 15

Zero

Woke up early to head upstairs for another pancake breakfast this morning.  Just like yesterday, we packed up the leftovers, then went downstairs to start getting ready to leave.  Except we didn't go anywhere.  It looked like rain.  Stay here another night?  Okay.  Pretty easy decision.  We just relaxed all day long.  Rainbow Eyes and Apache put on sort of a movie marathon, watching dvds all day.  I sat down for a couple of them, but I spent most of the afternoon on the computer trying to catch up on some of my journals.  I've been way behind on that.  New Hampshire wasn't conducive to getting that task done.  After leaving Hanover, the few small towns we stopped in did have libraries, but charged for internet use.  I spent a while looking at the upcoming pages in my guide book.  There's not too many of them left.  We have just under 247 miles of trail to hike.  I flipped to the front of the book, and found where the first 247 miles of this hike put us.  Just about 10 miles north of the Smokies.  That's insane.  It's strange to look back with that perspective.  Hiking through the Smoky Mountains seems like an eternity ago, but at the same time it feels like we just did it yesterday.  I've been on this trek for over 5 1/2 months.  The passage of time has become a warped blur.  It's amazing how much I can remember.  A slideshow in my head of people and places.  You experience so much out here in just one day, so 5 months worth is an enormous amount of information to process.   I've been making notes along the margins of my guide book to keep track of the date each day.  If not for that it'd be tough to determine.  My phone rarely has a signal, so I keep it turned off.  Other hikers have had better service with their phones, so that's one way to check.  Also, when stopping in towns.  But over this time I've spent out here, I've gotten used to not needing to know such things.  It doesn't really matter, when I am.  Sometimes, I'm not even to sure, where I am.  Nor do I really care.  It's easy to gain all the information you need just by waking up and opening your eyes in the morning.  Sunny outside?  A little chilly?  Well, I'll just put on my jacket, hike north for a bit, stop to take it off when I get too hot, eat when I'm hungry, drink when I'm thirsty, and stop when I'm tired.  I'll attempt to make plans each day as to how far to hike, to the next shelter or campsite, to a particular water source, to the next town, or whatever.  But that never happens.  Churchill once said, "Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential."  That couldn't be more true of my experience out here.  The only real plan is to keep going north.  As for the 'planning', some came before the hike, but some came during the hike as well.  Each step along the way has prepared me for next one.  One obstacle at a time.  One step closer to Katahdin.  And I've got exactly one month left to do it.  As a very general rule, the mountain closes on October 15th.  The weather can move that date up, or push it back, however.  We've all been doing mileage calculations for a while now.  We don't have a deadline to finish, so we keep throwing out numbers just for arguments sake.  If we want to finish by 'x', then we'd have to average 'y' per day.  Leaving tomorrow, we'd have to do 8.2 miles per day to make it to Katahdin in time.  Yep, I'd say that's doable.  Even though I don't have a real deadline to finish my hike, I've never truly been able to shut my left-brain down out here.  Numbers and averages all always running through my head, but are usually secondary to the experience.  I wonder if I hiked the AT again, could I leave the book behind, and just totally live in the moment.  I wonder if I would be able to get by just remembering water sources and shelters along the way.  With a smartphone, that had a good signal, it should be easy enough to come up with a general estimate of how far it would be between resupply points.  And really, that wouldn't even be an issue until the far north.  Along the way so far, if I absolutely had to get into a town, I've never been more than a day or two's hike away from a decent road.  On this day off, these are the things I think about.  I think about them on the trail too, but it's definitely nice to be able to sort through things with the comforts and amenities of civilization.

At 'The Cabin', East Andover, ME.