Hiking .175% of the Appalachian Trail
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Payaso grabbing an AT blaze. He'd read Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, a book about hiking the Appalachian Trail. I think one of the reasons he chose our camping spot in the Green Mountains of Vermont was because it was just a few miles from this AT trailhead. Bryson describes A Walk in the Woods as "an account of my attempt to hike the Appalachian trail from end to end in the company of an overweight companion named Stephen Katz." By flashlight in my tent the night before, I'd almost finished reading the book myself. It's funny, filled with facts, adventures and many misadventure. |
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| Here vanishing into the distance is a very serious hiker. He neither smiled nor returned our greetings. His pack is too small for him to be what is called a thru-hiker (those attempting the entire 2168 miles of the trail). But he was using the dual metal walking sticks many of the other serious hikers use. The idea seems to be to pack on the miles as quickly as possible. |
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| Find the toad. |
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| I was crouched on the side of the trail, getting this photo of the toad, when this group of young hikers came briskly down the trail. |
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| They weren't in the mood to chat either. Not that I blame them, carrying a load like that, I wouldn't want to stop either. They had packs large enough to be thru-hikers, but I heard later that they were orienteering. I don't want to give the impression that everyone on the trail was unfriendly, these guys weren't, they were just in the thrall of gravity. And we had friendly chats with other hikers along the way, but being day-hikers we were definitely and rightly of a lower status. |
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Hiking this rocky trail most of my attention was perforce on my footing. A family of sasquatch might picnic slightly off-trail and remain unnoticed by me. But these arrestingly strange plants grabbed my attention. For lack of another name I called them ghost flowers, and thought they were some strange flower-mimicking mushrooms. agarics.org is a website that helps you identify mushrooms, but It didn't help me with this one as it is not a shroom. But Peri Hupsous tipped me off to Indian Pipes. They have no chlorophyll and instead have a symbiotic relationship with fungi to digest and thrive on decaying plants in the shade of the deep forest. |
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| But mushrooms were everywhere. We've had a very wet summer here in the Northeast. |
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| A beautiful cluster of six birch trees, or is it a single tree? |
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| The steel tower at the top of Stratton Mountain. Of course we climbed to the top. It was very windy up there. |
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Visibility was pretty low. This tower view was the only vista we had during our 3.8 mile climb. Otherwise all we could see were trees. That's something that Bryson brings out in the book, that most of the time all you are seeing is tree after tree, with hardly any indication how far you've come, or how far you have to go. The shack in the lower left is for the use of the volunteer "mountain keepers." They greeted us with offers of information and warnings of trail hazards at the top of the mountain. Stratton mountain is used as a ski resort in the winter, but I didn't see any sign of it from where we were. I can imagine myself packing forty pounds of gear, food and water on my back for a few miles to reach a really nice camping spot. But I can't see eating dehydrated rations and trudging along day after day, in rain, snow, mud and blackfly heat just for the sake of accumulating mileage. |
Green Mountain Camping
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2003 Michael Natale
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