Today we struggled uphill through mud, lots of mud. The last time the trail seemed this muddy was in the Smokies. You can’t walk on the trail. You walk on the sides. Even then, there’s little room to navigate. Your foot would slip and would sink into the mud. As you pulled your foot up, the mud would make a sort of suction noise in defiance. It’s kind of fun really, but it does impede your hiking speed. A lot of Vermont has been this muddy. It’s something I expect will continue since a lot of hikers we cross warn us of it.
Early in the day we hiked up to a fire tower. Warthog even went all the way up it. On a clear day you can see three states from the tower. Lucky for us, it was a clear day. Unlucky for me, I’m directionally challenged, so I couldn’t really tell you what I was looking at. The mountains sure were pretty though!
The mud and all the uphill today made us a bit tired. We are ready for a zero day. We have two coming up, we are just a few days away from them yet. Snow Monkey said something like, “I feel like we walk all day to get somewhere”. I bursted out laughing. It was so accurate! It seems like it doesn’t matter what our mileage is for the day, it’ll take all day to do. The trail can sometimes seem tedious. The amount of miles ahead of you can seem looming. However, there are moments like we had earlier today on the fire tower that fill you with awe and motivation. Or like tonight, when we spent ten minutes watching a wild beaver swim and eat water lillies. It may seem like we spend all day walking to a place. In reality, we walk simply as a way to get from moment to moment, memory to memory. It’s not the walking part that get’s us out of the tent, it’s everything in between. But you can’t have one without the other. So we walk.
And… sometimes we nap. Warthog was exhausted today. At lunch we were able to convince him to lay down for a few minutes for a nap. Everyone was exhausted and could use the rest. So we took a bit of a longer lunch to rest. Warthog and Snow Monkey climbed up into the top bunks of the shelter, Wonder Woman and myself stayed out by the picnic table. It wasn’t a long nap, but it let him relax a bit.
Warthog started a fire and we sat around it for dinner. It was the first time in a long time that we had a fire. Everything was good and cozy here, except Snow Monkey somehow got human feces on his hand. My best guess is he accidentally stepped in it looking for firewood. Then, when he went to break the piece off using his foot as a lever, it got on the stick. Then, when he picked it up, it got on his hand. Again, all of this is because one person didn’t bother to bury their waste. I’ve ranted on this before and won’t repeat myself. I’ll just say… if you are going to use the bathroom in the woods, please, bury the stupid thing.
-ansel