Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 13:31:27 +0000

Hey y’all.

Just a note while I have the unexpected bonus of a free computer (the coffee shop guy seemed impressed when I said I’d walked here from Georgia - I will travel for good coffee - and charity ensued, utterly un-yogi-ed. I just strolled 5 miles into Salisbury, CT, from Limestone Spring Lean-To (the shelters in CT are called ‘lean-to’s), past a cemetery crammed with Revolutionary War-era gravestones, for another good breakfast and a few supplies.

I’ve walked 305-odd miles and while much of the Trail has provided the requisite ‘wilderness’ experience (illusory or otherwise - it’s wild enough, don’t you bloody worry), I’ve been enjoying the journey lately as much for its cultural rewards as its encounters with the natural. The towns in this part of America (they all have ‘British’ names: Salisbury, Cornwall Bridge, Great Barrington, Kent) are postcard-worthy - little white churches, ’package’ (liquor) stores, lots of dry-stone walls etc - so no wonder the yuppies and NYC refugees are infecting the region. They must come, also, for the views. There was one just out from camp today that almost brought tears to my jaded eyes (or maybe it was the mosquitos): just gorgeous, wooded ridges and mountains looming above patchwork fields, a great antidote for eyeballs sandblasted by the grit-and-grimace of urban life. It’s wonderful to find that even here, so close to the most densely populated regions of one of the world’s most heavily settled western countries, so much wild forest and mountain and river remain intact.

The Trail here in CT is always clean, the shelters neat and tidy, but they could certainly learn a thing or two about blazing - every day I lose valuable minutes back-tracking or reconning ahead at junctions because they haven’t been properly double-blazed. But that’s a minor quibble. My friend Utah Mike calls CT “the snootiest state in the U.S.”; another friend, Dreamer, said, “Where I come from (PA), we call Connecticut ‘high-ass’”. And it’s true that the lean-tos always come with a broom and a rake hung neatly from their own hooks; it’s true that the ‘privy’ you’ve enjoyed since Georgia has overnight evolved into a ‘toilet’, for God’s sake. And in Kent, at least, where you could smell the money flowing like well-aged brandy through the streets, an unwashed itinierent like myself plainly was not from around here. But nobody shot at me or anything, and not fitting in is part of the joy of travel. I love the way the AT lets you experience so much bio-regional diversity as you slog your way north. Accents, attitudes, beliefs, food, architecture: it’s not just the flora and fauna that vary.

And even in ’snooty’ Kent, most of the locals were friendly. While in the outfitter, one of them approached and asked if those were our packs outside. “I’m ‘Moosie,’ he said, “AT ‘03. I’d like to be your Trail Angel for the day. Is there anything you need?” We were soon at his house, making good use of his washing machine while our tarp and tent dried off in his backyard (wet night camped behind the town church where we enjoyed the hospitality of another friendly native: the local religious practitioner).

Anyway, I’ll be in Massachussetts tomorrow and, according to some, that’s where New England truly begins. I’m looking forward to meeting ‘Paparazzi’, a Trail friend from ‘04, at the Route 7 road crossing tomorrow. He lives in the area and wants to take me to a restaurant, an offer too good to refuse. I also have an offer from Utah Mike to meet up somewhere in Maine when he’s up there on vacation. My snake count has reached 10, with my first rattlesnake of this trip a couple of days ago - a fat, beautiful thing, with a big bulge in his/her belly where some unfortunate rodent was contemplating where it all had gone wrong.

We’re in deer-tick country and every day I have to dig a couple out of my skin - they can transmit Lyme Disease, so prompt attention is vital. My heel blister healed up and every week I have to pull my belt a little tighter. My beard is down almost to my navel - all that testosterone - and I now sleep under a simple rectangular tarp. No real ‘walls’, no floor or zippers or insect netting, so it’s incredibly light and you feel no separation from the woods and the things crawling around in them. Mind you, when you hear tales of bad-ass bears coming right up to the shelter, as I did the other night, you sometimes wish there was some kind of separation.

But then I muse: so a misguided bear rips your face off. There are worse ways to die.

Actually, let me think about that one.

In the meantime, time for a cinnamon roll and another coffee. There are definitely worse ways to die.

mg   x