Connecticut and New York: Friends, New and Old (Kreg)

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.” ― Chuck Palahniuk

This is one of my favorite quotes. I think about it whenever I get to spend time with friends and loved ones.

As I write this, my bus inches farther from NYC and closer to Appalachian Trail Mile #805 where I’ll continue my journey. After a day and a half of seeing some of the most important and supportive people in my life, I walk back into the woods, alone.

It isn’t easy. I so badly wanted to stick around to get dinner with Joe and Supriya when they got back. Adam was going to be around in the afternoon, as well. But then I keep reminding myself that the people and places in my life will, for the most part, still be around when I get back.

I have always placed my faith in the idea that learning and new perspective arise out of sacrifice and discomfort. And while leaving behind what is familiar is a small sacrifice, I often think of those I know who have made far, far greater sacrifices, sometimes without their choosing, than I ever will.

I think often of Rocío. She and her family left Mexico behind, not knowing a word of English. She walked into her kindergarten class understanding nothing of what was said, only to graduate top of her class 12 years later. When given the choice to stick around home and attend Stanford or UCLA, she went to Brown, where she didn’t know a soul. In college, when I was using every moment to hang out with my buddies and play video games, she studied abroad twice in places completely unfamiliar to her. When it was time to transition jobs at age 25, she told me in a taxi one night that she was going to South America for five months.

She has always inspired me to take the road less traveled. And after an incredible weekend spent with amazing friends, thinking of her makes me feel grateful for the time spent rather than sad about what I’m leaving behind.

So back into the woods I go. Below are my entries from this past week!

An Unexpected Visit (from Marty) and an Unexpected Massage (not from Marty) (Saturday, September 8)

Today was strange, but in a good way.

First, I somehow crossed paths with this guy:

MARTY KLEINBARD! He was in town for a bachelor party and was clever enough to check my SPOT GPS tracker. He hiked Bear Mountain just 12 hours after me. Other than my family back in NH, he’s the first familiar face I’ve seen in months. We caught up while he and his buddies perused the local grocery store to stock up for the weekend. Even just 10 minutes walking around the store with a good friend was uplifting beyond belief. He’s got a baby on the way, and he and his wife Andrea are going to be amazing parents. I can’t wait to meet the little guy/gal in a few months.

I was 100% sure that this would be the most random encounter of my day, but sure enough, after leaving the grocery store, a woman seated outside asked me if I was a thru hiker. Short, mid-50’s, and seemingly waiting for me to come out, she took me a bit by surprise. “How are your knees? Your joints? Are they holding up?” I replied that yes, for the most part, they were pretty good, but that I’ve had some back pain since Maine. Instantly, she replied, “oh I can fix that.”

“You can?” I wondered how she could be so sure. She told me that she was a massage therapist in Great Barrington who has worked with many thru-hikers in the past. She started to massage my back. Yes – on the bench outside the grocery store in upscale Salisbury, Connecticut, this random woman started digging her thumbs into my upper back. You might think that I would protest out of awkwardness, but I obliged for 2 reasons:

1. My sense of what is awkward has been drastically skewed after spending two months in the woods.
2. Thru hikers don’t turn down free massages.

I was a bit skeptical of her credentials until she checked my knees and pointed out the exact spot on my right knee where I had been injured in New Hampshire. It was the only part of either knee that had been tender to the touch for a few weeks. “You have a tight tendon here. I just released it…can you tell the difference? Do a few lunges.” I kneeled, stood up, and miraculously, it did feel better.

Her name was Ellen, and she greatly admires thru hikers and tries to help out whenever she can with her unique skill set. I snapped a selfie before leaving:

At this point it was 5 pm, and I walked off into the woods with the usual giddiness that I feel when getting back on trail after a day off. I met some cool older guys at Limestone Camp Site – one guy had completed thirteen Iron Man Triathalons. Thirteen! He kindly pretended to be impressed with my thru hike until I got that info out of him.

Two other guys were jet engine engineers. Did you know that it takes 15-20 years to develop a new jet engine? Think about it: one of the engineers is 62, and after an entire career, he’s worked on a grand total of three engine designs. “It’s not a job with much instant gratification,” he said, making the understatement of the century. He would have passed the Marshmallow Test with flying colors as a kid.

Random day. Interesting people.

A Relaxing Day of Hiking (Sunday, September 9)

Today was a fairly uneventful but relaxing day. I got 22 miles in, but they were relatively flat, and I stopped at Toymaker’s Cafe from 10 AM to 12 PM for a cup of coffee and to write a bit. For the rest of the day, I listened to podcasts and just…walked. No humidity or heat. No mosquitos. No big climbs.

Lately, I’ve been seeing no more than 2-3 Nobos per day, and I am looking forward to seeing people in camp more and more. Despite hiking Sobo and hiking alone, I am an extrovert at heart – I thrive off the energy of others. So tonight, I was pleasantly surprised to find the shelter empty save one other Sobo, Little Redcoat. She’s British, if you can’t tell from her name, and she’s one of the few Sobos I’ve met who is close to my age – the one-third-life-crisis crowd. 🙂

Embrace the Suck (Monday, September 10)

When it rains, you will get wet. This might seem like an intuitive statement, but hikers often spend an incredible amount of time, effort, and money trying to keep dry their bodies and, most critically, their feet. People head into the wilderness with full head-to-toe rain gear – heavy, gore-tex jacket and pants – in an effort to keep the moisture out. But rain gear cannot keep you dry. The best jacket in the world can only delay the inevitable.  If it rains long enough and hard enough, you will get soaked from head to toe.

And why do we go through all this trouble? Being wet sucks. Your feet blister at an alarming rate, everything else chafes, and the wetness sucks the heat out of your body, creating the perfect conditions for hypothermia when combined with low temperatures and high wind. So what do you do when you’re comfortably sitting in your shelter at 8 AM and the rain doesn’t seem to be stopping?

“Embrace the suck.” I’m not sure where this saying comes from (military?), but it’s a common saying on the trail and entirely applicable – even I can’t positive-think my way out of certain situations. Some things just suck.

I set out with my rain jacket on, shirt tucked into my pants, and a thin Tyvek rain skirt (yes, skirt) covering my shorts. 7 miles in, I hit my first road crossing with an opportunity to go into town and stay at a hostel. I was still dry underneath, so I pushed on. I somehow slipped into New York for a moment before coming back to Connecticut:

Around mile 10, every article of clothing I was wearing had been drenched. With high winds and 50 degree temperatures, it was time to get off trail. At mile 14, I called it quits and phoned a woman, Karen, who runs a hostel in Kent, CT. She said that she had space in her cabin, and that two hikers were already there.

I got off trail and started walking. It was a mile to her cabin. I hadn’t been on the road for even a minute when a station wagon pulled over and two older men asked if I wanted a ride. Soaked and muddy, they told me not to worry about getting anything dirty as I hopped in. Apparently, they had thru-hiked the trail Southbound in 2015. Their names were Moxie and Bald (a play on Moxie Bald Mountain in Maine), and it took them 11 months to get to Springer Mountain. That’s almost a year on trail. In their 60s (maybe pushing 70), they said the hike was so difficult for them that they were starting out with 3-mile days in the 100 Mile Wilderness of Maine. But that’s the beauty of the trail – almost anyone can hike it. Back in Maine, I even met a family of 8 who was finishing up their 2,195 miles.

The gentlemen dropped me off at the house, gave me 2 pounds of bananas (trail magic is trail magic!), and I walked into the cabin to find Little Redcoat and Steaming, a German physicist (awesome!) who is hiking a long section of the trail. We all took hot showers, and Karen’s husband, Cliff, drove us to pick up pizza and a six-pack after his 12-hour work-day in construction (he’d been up since 3 AM).

While we chomped on a pizza, Steaming explained the ins and outs of radiation cancer treatments, microwaves, binary data transmission in cellular networks, and the particle-wave theory of light.

So I think I’ll change up that little saying from before – “Embrace the suck…but be kind to yourself.”

Magic! (Tuesday, September 11)

I woke up to a text from Karen, our hostel owner, who invited us to her home for breakfast. Her and her husband’s beautiful and brand new wooden cabin sits directly on a large stream with gushing rapids. The hostel is a separate bunkhouse with 4 bunk beds, a small kitchen, an outdoor shower, and a Port-o-Potty.

Karen usually stocks the hostel fridge with breakfast goods, and she felt bad that she’d emptied it because the hiker season is basically over – we were the first people to stay with her in a week. We walked into her home and were greeted by these guys:

I was exactly as happy as I look in this picture.

Karen then proceeded to make us egg and cheese omelettes with sides of toast, bacon, and ham. She had zero obligation to do this, and yet three thru-hikers couldn’t even finish off the amount of bacon that she so kindly prepared for us. She explained that her and her husband had inherited the land from her father-in-law a few years ago, and that they’d built the home as their place to settle down. The main living room and kitchen are a gigantic space with beautiful wooden rafters above and a back porch that overlooks the rapids of the stream. There’s even a loft only accessible by ladder that they specifically wanted as a fort/castle space for their grandkids someday. I looked down at the stream and saw a beautiful eagle land on the rocks.

They rent out one other cabin on Airbnb and then our cabin through word of mouth. Apparently, word of mouth alone filled the cabin every single night for 3 months straight during peak season.

I casually (read: strategically) mentioned how much I wasn’t looking forward to putting wet clothes back on, and Karen immediately offered to throw all of our clothes in the drier. She also told us to take the $5 veggie burritos that she had prepared and left in the hostel freezer for hikers to purchase. “I need to get rid of those…consider it trail magic.” I had dry clothes, a full stomach, and pizza and veggie burritos in my pack as Karen dropped me off at the trailhead. If you see Karen, tell her Carrot Top loves her:

I hiked 21 miles, crossing the border into New York for-real this time, and got to the shelter after hiking in the dark for an hour. As Karen had predicted, the burritos were perfectly thawed, and I didn’t have to do any cooking that night. Over 20 miles away in another state, Karen’s kindness and generosity were still sustaining me at the end of this wonderful day.

Ouch, My Feet! (Wednesday, September 12)

It rained again today, and my feet have been wet since yesterday morning (Karen couldn’t put shoes in the drier). After 23 miles, I could really feel the friction on my toes. I’ve heard horror stories from Nobos who got trenchfoot after hiking in 12 days of continuous rain this year, so I’ll be generously applying mole skin tomorrow morning.

I also bumped into another Sobo that I met in Vermont. His name is Woody, and he shipped up to Katahdin immediately after his high school graduation in June. How cool is that? At 18 years old, I was terrified when I had to walk into the dining hall alone. Woody walked into the wilderness alone without batting an eye.

Familiar Faces, Familiar Places (Thursday, September 13)

Feet still hurting, Woody and I set out today to cross the Hudson. I am so close to my second home – BROOKLYN!

But before the Hudson, there was a mini mart on trail – a full resupply and deli at a highway crossing! Leaving my socks and shoes to dry on the pavement, I stepped into the deli to find three faces grinning back at me.

Smiles, JBird, and Wildlife – all Sobos that I started with back in Maine! I last saw JBird and Smiles in New Hampshire, and my last encounter with Wildlife was on Day 5 of my trip. Apparently, they’ve all been hiking separately during the day and meeting up at the same campsite each night. The reunion lifted my spirits and made me forget about my blisters for a moment:

We caught up for a while before heading out. As I hiked onward, it dawned on me that I was approaching the 25-mile stretch of the trail that I had hiked as a “shakedown hike” back in June of this year. That was my first ever solo, multi-day hike (I day-hiked with a rental car in Arkansas), and it was the test of whether or not my recent running injury would prevent me from thru-hiking. When I arrived pain-free at the last mile of that trip, I crossed over the Hudson on the epic Bear Mountain Bridge, and one thought kept running through my mind: “I’m going to do it. I’m heading to Katahdin.”

I was both thrilled and terrified. Maybe the injury would come back? Maybe I’d hate it? It’d be another 800 miles before I got back to this bridge. EVERYTHING could go wrong in between.

And things did go wrong. Back spasms. A tweaked knee. A week and a half of nausea and vomiting.

But things have also gone very right. Lakes, mountains, sunsets, sunrises. Moose, deer, beavers, eagles, hawks. Unwavering support from family and friends. Endless generosity and kindness from complete strangers.

I crossed the Hudson with tears in my eyes, a smile on my face, and a heart wide open with gratitude.

I felt like a kid hiking over Bear Mountain. And what do kids do?

Friends (Friday, September 14)

I hiked ten miles to the highway where I started my two-day hike back in June. I found the sign reading “Appalachian Trail” that has jolted me with excitement when I got off the bus three months ago. Check out this before-and-after:

I hitched a mile down to Southfields with Jonathan, a man who works with organizations that provide programming and therapy for adults with developmental disabilities. He was on his way to a therapeutic horse-riding ranch. I told him that my sister has Down Syndrome, and that programs like his were an incredibly important part of her life. I thanked him for the ride, and his continued work to better the lives of others, and hopped out at a gas station to wait for a bus into the city.

I was so happy to catch up with Joe and Supriya at their apartment. They were headed out of town for the weekend, but they gave me the keys before heading out to catch their flight.

After showering, doing laundry, and putting on some of Joe’s clothes, I headed to a bar in Union Square, where I had texted some friends to let them know where I’d be. I had hoped that one or two could grab a drink, but EVERYONE came!

First, Linda, Andrew, and Henry came through:

He has gotten so much bigger! Not a peep from him even though he was in the bar well past his bed time.

Then, one after another, my other friends dropped in: Nikhil, Adam, Nicole, Karishma, Sean, Alex, and Josh! I was incredibly tired but overjoyed to see all of them. I was having too good a time to snap pictures, but my buddy Henry will suffice.

Zero in NYC (Saturday, September 15)

I knew I wouldn’t get back on trail today. NYC is too tempting. Started the day off with these guys:

Then, we bumped into Adam Schwartz, AFUP World History teacher extraordinaire, in the East Village. He was, predictably, grading DBQs. 🙂

After parting ways with Alex, Andrew, and Henry, I walked a block to REI to get my poles replaced and buy a number of other supplies. Then, shopping for food.

After grabbing dinner with Max, I felt I had crammed as much as possible into my NYC visit. I headed back to Joe’s place, polished off a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, and passed out.