The Endgame

Horns Pond Lean-Tos
Mile 2002.8
183.1 miles left

Today we escaped the town of Stratton, Maine. Towns are like blackholes and suck you in...and are always difficult to leave. This morning we awoke in our room at the Stratton Motel after a restless night's sleep for the both of us. The bed sucked, basically. Now I have a kink in my neck. But we have been in worse places and such is life on the trail. The owner gave us a ride to the diner down the road where we had breakfast. From there we hitched the further 4 miles to the trailhead.

We have 183 miles left to go and every day is a struggle. It didn't seem possible that anything could be harder than the White Mountains of NH, but Maine is up to the challenge of being the toughest state. It is also the most beautiful.

I should backtrack a little bit and explain how we got to Maine in the first place:
    After reaching Glencliff NH on 8/23, we reached the White Mountains, a noted difficult and yet very beautiful section. On 9/5, after 80 brutal miles and a series of delays, we emerged at Pinkham Notch, Gorham NH. We had just gone over the Presidential Range where Wander had twisted her ankle on the way down. She also had a knee that was badly bruised. She said it was the hardest thing she has ever done. We had 75 mph wind gusts as we hiked along, for example. It gets to you. So, we were both in shock from the 4 day traverse of that mountain range, 15 miles of it above treeline with Mt. Washington in the middle. Our spirits were down because we had been hobbled by the Whites and were creeping along, and now suddenly we were worried about having time to finish. While October 15th is the hard deadline when the mountain basically closes, we were shooting for October 6th, Wander's birthday. With still over 300 miles to go it seemed nearly impossible. We gave her ankle a day, and then the next we tried to get back on the trail. It was not to be, however, and we returned to town.
    After a few more days of rest, filled with uncertainty and self doubt, we knew we had to either get back on the trail or go home. By sheer luck Miss Janet happened to be in town, and gave us a shuttle ahead to Andover, Maine on 9/9. Unfortunately this meant that we would skip over the NH/ME state line as well as Mahoosic Notch, two things that I was looking forward to seeing. So yes, after walking a solid 1866 miles, we skipped ahead about 70. This put us within 250 miles of the end, a distance we felt we had enough time to cover. We would find out it was like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

Back to today: So now it is 9/19, and we have been walking through Maine for 10 days now, having our butts kicked every single one of those days. We are still trying to take it easy on Wander's ankle, but have had some seriously tough mountains to go over as well. We are now staged to go across the Bigelow Mountains tomorrow, since we did the hardest part of the climb today. After that, the elevation profile sort of calms down a little, and things don't look so bad up ahead. It looks like we have 4 days to Caratunk, then 4 days to Monson, then the 100-mile wilderness and we are at Katahdin. Piece of cake, right?

For the first time on the trail we have been thinking about the future, discussing how to get home once we are finished, what we want to do when we get there, and basically dreaming of not having to walk all day, everyday, anymore. We are both homesick I will admit, and a part of us is just ready to be done. Sad but true. We are both just too stubborn to quit.

However, Maine, for as tough as it is, is also beautiful. We remind ourselves of this, and that we may never be here again, and that it is OK to slow down. Fall is my favorite time of year, and it is here upon us. The leaves are changing colors, and we have had several frosts up in the mountains. Soon, it is going to get cold.

Tomorrow, we need to walk at least 10 miles toward a mountain that we have still never seen. And the day after that, and the day after that. For 17 more days.

PS - Yesterday was our 6-month anniversary of starting the trail. Today we passed mile 2000.

PPS - The beard says hello and would like to thank its admirers. You know who you are.