Down the Path

Out with the old

2007-05-05T07:27:00.000-05:00

After almost 8 (mostly) loving years with my beloved Subaru GT, it was time to let it go. I've been in denial since my divorce that the cost/benefit just wasn't there. The engine went 5 days after I moved out in 05, weeks before the divorce was final. I wasn't in any shape emotionally to handle looking for a new vehicle, much less financial shape. House wasn't sold, yada yada yada. Most friends thought it foolish to dump that much $$ into an old car then, but it was the decision I made at the time, the body and interior were in great shape and I thought I could buy myself another 150 K miles.

Well, that was most likely a foolhardy thing to do in hindsight, but you do what you do at the time. A month ago when a local service tech with more insight than myself cautioned me that this engine had a limited life and I should just "fix and get rid of" I finally woke up.

As I told a friend yesterday speeding down the highway in my new 07 Outback, my old car looked fine from the outside, but boy did it have issues. Hey I said, just like you-know-who! What a great analogy. He seems to be a great guy from the outside, but don't pop that hood..... there are perils lurking under the surface that you don't realize til further diagnosis is done. And investing time and money may initially seem to fix the problems, but they always resurface again, no training that old dog.........

Yep, issues.... they're there. Who knew?

Strength

2007-05-01T19:17:00.000-05:00

I had an awesome night at the rock gym tonight; best ever. I may have climbed a 5.10 which is crazy! And not just climbed it, I darn near flashed the thing. It's all so mental. I had a pretty good day, been negotiating a deal for a new car by myself, through email. So I was feeling pretty powerful about that.

And I'm finally letting go and giving up with the d***head I was involved with, who doesn't even have the god damned courtesy to call me back when I ask for it. I'm done with all of that. It's too bad, as anger can turn to bitterness and that could prevent a future friendship. His choice now. It's all his issues, his stuff, hard to keep remembering that, but it's true. So take that mental energy and see how it translates into climbing a wall.

I am Woman! Ha!

Oh, and I organized a project at our camp this weekend that is sorely needed, merely by putting out a few emails and finding out that fortuitously my cousin the engineer and project manager who has a very large toy box of heavy equipment is arriving from Atlanta this weekend. My brother is sure to spin this in some negative fashion, but tough poopy, it needs to be done and he's stressing about it, so I just accelerated the process. I'm no engineer but I can organize!!

So shaping up to be a good weekend with a big hike on Saturday for Dalydog and myself, bagging another 100 Highest hopefully, looks like snowshoes are still de rigeur.

Springer Fever

2007-04-02T21:21:00.000-05:00

The seasonal affective disorder of any past AT thru-hiker: Springer Fever . It's real, it hits out of nowhere sometimes, but typically around one's start date. For me that would be 16 days from now - April 18th.

What am I doing about it this year?

Reading TJ of course. The added twist this spring is the knowledge that I am going to meet most of these hikers in Baxter, the ones who make it to Maine of course.

As I type this, I'm listening to Takoma Tedd's Song of the Blue Ridge Runner CD. Taken from the writings and poetry of Earl Shaffer I especially like Track 2, "Walking With Spring"; it brings a heartache of tears to my soul. A longing for a southern ridgetop on which to walk again. There is the feeling of falling in love all over again - in love with the trail, the freedom, the peace of walking.

Damn.

And I plan and dream about another dream coming to fruition this June. The Walker's Haute Route. 180 km of walking in the alps from Chamonix to Zermatt. The latter a spot that has held my heart hostage for almost 30 years. Since I first stepped off the train that summer I was 18. Accompanied by a passle of 30 kids, we spent the next 3 weeks of our tender impressionable lives in that mountain haven. We skied, we bouldered, we drank and ate platefuls of pomme frites @ the Brown Cow, we loved, and we learned to live amongst ourselves drunk in the experience of a foreign and beautiful land. I made a life long friend that July, we've been through 3 marriages between us, and the death of his oldest son who so uncanningly reminded me of a boy I loved that summer in Zermatt. Ahhhh.....Selden. After two weeks of skiing on the Plateau Rosa, we packed up and split into 3 groups to spend a week hiking in the Bernese Oberland.

How could I ever be normal again after this freedom? This taste of international travel w/o a parent? Sure, we had "chaperones" in the form of Ted and John, 20 something ski bum types who were our race coaches. Their fraternity like antics at night in the Swiss mountain huts didn't exactly lend themselves credibility as anything more than older versions of ourselves.

So I go back. This time walking there, with the carrot of the Matterhorn dangling in the distance. The few people I have mentioned this trip to are astounded I'm going solo "no guide" "no tour"?

Ahhhh....no.....am I a little too complacent and confident that I can handle this sort of thing alone? I don't think so, it's Europe, it's not even wilderness, sure it's a big hike with alpine size elevation climbs and descents, but I don't see it as that difficult to arrange on your own. Buy my plane ticket. Check. Find a place to stay in Cham the first night. Check. Start walking with Mont Blanc to my back, guidebook & maps in my pack. Stop when you get to the pointy mountain.

At any rate, it's quelling my desire a bit to head to Georgia in a couple weeks. But not by much. A 15 day hike has substance, but it ain't no 6 month thru-hike.

It'll do.

For now.

ICE!

2007-02-21T21:34:00.000-05:00

The job offer came as expected. And once I could visualize myself there, it stopped seeming so scary. I got the paperwork the other day and that really made it real. I'm going to be posted in Baxter State Park for the summer, or rather half the summer and half the fall. At Abol Bridge, basically handling thru-hikers and sections hikers as they enter BSP and navigate the rules and camping registration that our gem "forever wild" demands.

On another note, the rock climbing I've been doing at the gym has just started to pay off in several ways. It's providing great focus and diversion in a time of heartache for me, a time when I'm not sure who I will adventure with in the future. That part isn't so certain. But when I'm on the wall and most recently ICE, there isn't another thought in my brain. Climbing ice scares the shit out of me, but I have found a place there; a home. It's addicting is all I can figure out, the adrenaline, the absolute feeling that you must keep going up, thunk, clink, pft pft with the feet. I never thought it was something I would or could do and look, here I am!

Truly down a path

2007-01-15T23:27:00.000-05:00

I'm waiting to hear on a job this week. A job that I am certain, while seasonal in nature, will send me down a different path. It's the aftermath I'm scared of, I feel a shift. That's the only way to describe it, a shift. Things are shifting, moving, and I know I gotta let them, but there's unknown there. In brief, I would be spending my summer on the AT here in Maine, as a ridgerunner/caretaker of 1 of 4 backcountry sites. It's a dream job I've wanted ever since I returned from my thru-hike, yet up til this year it just wasn't feasible.

I'm still not sure it is this year either.

I'm not 22 y/o and just out of college, I have responsibilities, some of them even adult type. This will require some difficult (maybe) conversations with my brother, my mother, my ex-husband and anyone else of consequence in my life. I have to find a home for my cat for the summer, I have to talk to my landlord and see if a sublet it even possible (doubtful).

There's a high degree of certainty the offer will come in by later this week and then all these things have to align and get worked out. I won't be home much this summer, and never on weekends, which means most usual summer plans will not involve me this year, that's hard to stomach. Last time I did this, in 02, I came back to mostly the same circumstances, but there were new people in friend's lives and I didn't always fit the same way anymore.

That's the shift. It's there, I feel it, I'm resisting it, yet I'm drawn to it. And at this point, it's pretty much inevitable. Change must happen, but change is hard.

Testing

2006-09-26T20:07:00.000-05:00

Having trouble adding photos to my last entry from September. This is a test. Alright, maybe you can't go back and add photos afterwards. That's pretty stupid.

Anyhow, here are some shots of Ski Haven, two of the interior bunks and fireplace and the sagging porch & exterior of the cabin now obscured by trees.

Ski Haven

2006-09-24T19:20:00.000-05:00

I was drawn to do something today. Or rather go somewhere today.

Daly and I were returning from a short hike in Western Maine - Mt Cutler in Hiram. Nice loop in the pre-fall foliage.

As we left Hiram, I turned towards Douglas Hill., or more specifically Dyke Mt. in the town of Sebago.

In the late 1930's, my mother was very active in her high school's ski club. They either built or renovated this cabin at the edge of a clearing and spent weekends going there in the winter to ski. There was no prescribed ski tow and the hill where the cabin in perched was nothing for pitch, but Ski Haven was just that, a haven for teenagers from Portland to stretch their wings a bit and bond over a common love of the outdoors, winter and snow.

It all came about because of a teacher named Ted Johnson. Ted was probably in his mid-20s when he came to teach @ Deering HS in Portland, fresh from Dartmouth and the infamous Dartmouth Outing Club (still quite active today, I witnessed their work as trail maintainers on the AT in Eastern VT and Western NH near Hanover) or DOC. He felt that had worked so well for him in college he wanted to replicate it here.

Hence he started the Deering Ski Club, which expanded to include much more than just skiing, they canoed and hiked in the off season and in general turned around my mother's young life, and therefore, many years later, mine.

Every weekend Ted took a group to Ski Haven, but being the 30s, the sexes did not mix. So every other weekend it was girl's weekend; Mom couldn't afford to go even every other weekend, so she would work cleaning houses to make the $1.50 or so that it took in gas and food to participate once a month. But these times in this primitive building were the building blocks that solidifed her as an outdoors woman, a skier, a hiker.

When she met and married my Dad, a native Ohioan, 1st generation Slovak, he hated winter, he hated to camp, having spent 3 years in WWII living in tents and rain. By the late 50s, she had started to teach him and my older brother to ski and when I came along, it was just what my family did. We skied, we hiked some, and canoed the rivers of Maine or even Ohio.

Ski Haven changed her life and it made me who I am.

Seeing this piece of her history and my history today was very powerful. I had been there once before, in the early 90s, picking blueberries in the field out front with Mom and her Ski Club friend Vi. I have driven past the area a few times since, but today I was compelled, absolutely compelled to park the car and walk up the hill and part the fir trees. I could barely see the roof from the dirt road where I parked, the chimney peeking through. It's still this almost mystical place for me, the reverence that Mom always uses when she says "Ski Haven" and the smile that comes to her lips.

But the emotion that caught me today was somewhat surprising. I felt like a visitor to a different time, but I also felt like I was seeing an old friend dying.

And in a way I am. I am grieving tonight the loss of my mother, oh she's still alive in the sense of a beating heart and warmth, but she's not the woman who used to plan her winters around this escape, and I think my feelings of melancholy today were about grieving that piece of her that's gone forever. She wouldn't even be able to ever get up the short hill to see Ski Haven again.

The cabin is falling down, regrettably I didn't have my camera with me today, a real shame. There were old bureaus outside, merely boards scattered now. Did my mother ever put away her long johns or a wool sweater in them? I have no idea who owns this property now, and surprisingly that whoever does, hasn't razed the place.

Bunks are still inside, mattresses are in shreds, chinking is gone from the logs and you could almost crawl between them. The porch didn't look solid enough to stand on, the roof is breaking in half. It was very sad, but I felt the history there. The outhouse must have been somewhere near as there was an obvious break in the stone wall next to the building, a suggestion of a path.

I haven't called my mother yet to tell her I went there today. I don't know if I can bear to hear the wistfulness in her voice and I'm not even sure why it's in mine.

Down a Different Path

2006-09-19T14:58:00.000-05:00

I gave away a comforter today, to Goodwill. Not just any comforter, but the one that Craig and I bought after we got married to match the pretty sheets we got as a wedding gift. It was King size, as all our bedding was. I loved that pattern, it was blues and purples with Delphinium flowers and Lilacs. It fit with our bedroom, the pale yellow walls and the impressionist style wallpaper. I loved my bedroom.

When I moved out last year, I took the Queen guest bed. But it was Fall and I was soon cold at night sleeping, especially alone again. I knew Craig probably didn't want that comforter, it was more feminine so I asked if I could have it, to have something to keep me warm. But it was too big for the bed and I no longer had the sheets to match it, in fact I have no idea what happened to them. So many things scattered for me last Fall, my usual ordered life in disarray.

I bought a down comforter and flannel sheets for my new bed for the winter, but the shoulder seasons here in Maine demand more than the homemade quilt I use all summer. So once again, I had this oversized reminder of what was. As much as I loved this pattern, I no longer loved what it represented.

But like so many things in the last year, it was another symbol and another question of what do I do with it? I finally bought myself a new comforter for my bed, fairly feminine, almost frilly for me. Last night I folded up the old one and put it in its plastic cover and in my car. And today I dropped it off. I actually cried as I pulled away, no of course they aren't tears for a 13 year old faded comforter, but tears for what was and is no longer. A life now changed.

This Friday I will acknowledge an anniversary of the opposite, the day of my divorce. The grief comes back around.

Back to The Mountain

2006-09-05T20:38:00.000-05:00

It's been almost 4 years since I finished my thru-hike on Katahdin. I haven't had the urge to go back til just recently. That was an emotional day at several levels - physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally. It was also one of the most empowering and uplifting days of my life. How to revisit that area, that scene w/o diluting the experience? But alas, it's Katahdin, the Great Mountain, and it beckons. Oh, does it beckon....hard.

The Bigs!

2006-08-21T20:28:00.000-05:00

Dayhiked to my favorite mountain on the whole AT on Saturday: Bigelow. I spent the weekend in the small town of Stratton doing my field editing/updating for the ATC Companion. I really love the town of Stratton, compact, friendly and just plain small town Maine at its best. I feel totally comfortable there. Daly and I hung out at my friend Phil's apartment in town, I had breakfast at the diner, sitting at the counter by myself, which finally I'm feeling ok about. Chatted with the guy that sat down next to me, which was interesting and yet not invasive. I left trail magic at the Rte 27 trailhead which was fun: cokes and ice tea, oranges and blueberry muffins.

Saturday Daly and I went up the Horns Pond Trail, which I have never done before! Met the caretakers @ Horns Pond who were getting ready to have a mixing party, as in mixing poo in the composting privy! He and I had a hazy summit on West Peak, but that's ok, it's such an awesome spot. I hadn't been on the Firewarden's Trail since 2000, so it was good to check in with MATC's recent rock work. Very nice! It's no longer a total slip and slide to make it up or down that steep rocky eroded trail.

Though Daly wasn't quite aware, this was a peak bagging mission for him as well, he now only needs 2 more New England 4K footers to get his patch - Old Speck in Maine and Killington in VT. His aforementioned patch is for the NH 48 peaks. I know, very silly to keep track of a dog's hiking, but I'm not the only one!

I was also able to identify and swear at one more time the offending ledge that I fell on in 02 scraping and bloodying my elbow that anxious afternoon, as I hurried along trying to make miles that just weren't happening. The silver lining to that day is that I discovered Safford Notch campsite, which I now maintain. It's a sweet spot.

Summer !

2006-08-13T20:19:00.000-05:00

Spent the weekend up on the AT, hiking from Moxie Bald to Monson with my friend Jim and his eager OFD (obsessive fetching disorder) dog Emily and of course Dalydog! I hadn't rehiked this section since my 02 hike so it was great to see the shelters and rivers again. As per norm, I had almost no recollection of most of this section as I did it quickly in one day, versus the 2 we took this time. Met some nobos (northbound thru-hikers), the new owners of Shaw's - same name, but the carved hiker out front is gone :( , and had beautiful weather to boot!

Oh, and got some got some good thinking done too! There's just something about backpacking that puts my head right back there again. It's so different from even a day hike. It comes immediately and easily.

Daly had a surprise too, the man who he sent an email to last year on the AMC Four Thousand Footer committee was out going southbound with his wife - what a funny coincidence when we figured that out!

Back!

2006-07-24T13:32:00.000-05:00

I've posted my Iceland journal via Trail Journals, click HERE under "2006". Here's a photo to get you jazzed.

Getting Closer

2006-06-04T11:43:00.000-05:00

I have a scant 10 days left before I leave for my little Icelandic adventure. Thanks to a friend who is also traveling internationally for a hike (the GR20 in Corsica) around the same time, I've had a ready set of lists to go by and details already thought out by him. My pack is half packed, if it would stop raining in Maine I might be able to pack up my rain jacket and forgettaboutit, but no....another monsoon this weekend. I should buy a boat! Wait! I did buy a boat - a sweet 16.5 foot Perception Shadow sea kayak two weeks ago. Uh oh....more gear required. Photos to follow.

NEW GEAR

2006-05-18T20:56:00.000-05:00

What hiker doesn't love new gear? My friend had a new sleeping bag last weekend that he couldn't stop crowing about. An REI SubKilo 20 degree down bag. Less than two pounds and packs as small as a football! I had to have one - especially when I found out the women's version comes in PURPLE and is rated 15 degrees!! Ordered on line Sunday night, just in the nick of time to get the sale price, delivered to my doorstep today. I think this is winner for future long distance trips, and is certainly going to Iceland. My backpack could use a little extra space.

Little Moose

2006-05-15T20:16:00.000-05:00

Another weekend spent in the woods. Another weekend sleeping in a tent, mmmm.....another weekend spent walking and using my body to propel me. We hiked into a Maine Public Lands area called Little Moose. There were several remote ponds with backcountry sites - we picked the primo one of course, since we were literally the only people on this acreage; I doubt it sees much overnight traffic.

Yesterday we walked to the Big Moose Mt. trailhead and climbed that. Substitute Squaw for Moose everywhere here and then maybe you'll recognize where this is in Maine. The PC police made the state change the names a few years ago.

At night we heard loons and owls calling and a beaver slapped his tail just feet from our heads in the little cove we were camped beside. Strangely though there were at times more moose prints than human on the trails, we did not spot Alces alces. The Greenwood trail into the ponds has not been cleared this season and made me appreciate all the more the important work we accomplished on the AT last weekend.

Trail Maintaining

2006-05-08T21:41:00.000-05:00

Spent last weekend on the AT here in Maine, deep in the woods off logging roads, camped in a gravel pit with friends. Somebody got a new chainsaw and that was the focus of the weekend pretty much. We had high winds this winter and spring and the trail was a mess of blowdowns. Cleared 149 on a 1.5 mile section alone! It's always a good feeling, and immediate gratification to walk a section you just helped clear, which was almost impassable a few hours before.

Reservations

2006-05-02T14:48:00.000-05:00

After much back and forth with some very patient Icelanders (is that what natives of Iceland are called?), I have secured (and paid for) 6 nights at huts along this route. The last night was the most precious-at a hut that I can't begin to spell, pronounce or reproduce using the Western alphabet - and took the longest to get a response from. But finally Bjarney signed me up for the night of June 21st, which also happens to be Summer Solstice this year! I can't think of a better place to spend the Long Sun than at this high mountain hut on an Icelandic glacier. I have to pick up the key after I land in Reykjavik (ha! I can finally type that w/o 5 backspaces and a look up) from their office and give a hefty deposit. Let's hope in the 10 days after reaching Skogar and traveling around the island I still have that precious key in my pocket!

My hostel card arrived the other day; I haven't been a member of HI for years. And I realized the only addition to my backpacking gear needed was a body sized pack towel, not the mouse chewed one I took on the AT 4 years ago that could only dry one forearm at a time.

I fear the bus schedule will not allow me to hit every park and hike on the eastern coast that I would like to, here's where the travel Gumby in me must prevail. Flexible...be very very flexible.

The Path to Iceland!

2006-04-27T13:15:00.000-05:00

I'm a hiker, a traveler, an adventurer. And I'm about to embark upon another segment of life where I hope to be combining all three a lot more again.

Iceland, the land of Fire and Ice. Northern places fascinate me, draw me and ever since hearing about this exotic land, I have wanted to visit.

I'm leaving mid-June for 18 days of backpacking the Landmannalaugar to Skogar hut hike and then traveling by bus around the island hiking and camping and staying @ hostels. It's a full schedule as usual, but life is short, you gotta pack it all in while you're here and healthy!