Dispatch from East Andover, Maine -- July 4, 2004

Happy Birthday, America.

Since my last report in Monson I have hiked another 130 or so miles. I am currently in a hikers' hostel called the Cabin in East Andover, Maine. I have 25 miles left in this state. I have my cigar ready for the border, a most welcome border. Maine is the second longest state on the whole trail, a distant second to Virginia: 282 and 540 miles, respectively.

I could bore my limited readership by chronicling my hike over those miles, but I'd rather not do anything that direct. My hike has had its ups and downs, but major wildlife sightings have been limited. I had not, until the past few days, befriended anyone of note. Tonight is an exception. I've caught up with another wave of southbounders who are a joy to be around. The Cabin is a very open, communal, cordial atmosphere, and Meals are family-style all you can eat; they have zany clothes for you to wear while your hiking clothes are taking their much-needed wash in the machine. Everyone here is instant friends. No barriers, no indiscretions, no jokes too offensive or ribald. The two nights I've spent here we've driven together to surrounding towns and watched the fireworks and eaten funnel cakes. The fourth has to be the best holiday to celebrate in trail towns.

Since Monson I have officially left the flat, wet part of Maine and entered the mountainous, still very wet, Western part of Maine. The Mountains are getting bigger and bigger, the climbs steeper, rockier and longer. On a typical day of 15-20 miles I am gaining and losing over 5,000' if not more. Tomorrow I will hike perhaps the hardest 15 miles in all of Maine -- over the Baldpate peaks and all the way down only to climb 4000 straight feet up into the Mahoosuc Range, home of Mahoosuc Notch, reputedly the hardest single mile on the whole trail. I have not yet heard of anyone doing it in under an hour, average being about 2.

To avoid straight up narration, I will simply offer a few snapshots of my trail life:

• I ford the Kennebec River with Steve "The Ferryman" Longley and opt for my shortest day yet, 3 miles up to Pierce Pond lean-to. By my experience, this is the best swimming hole on the AT in Maine. Glass-clear water. I swim evening and morning, with three moose visitations overnight. The next day, after sleeping like a dead thing, I am up with the sun, eat breakfast and hike the last 17 relatively flat miles in Maine. My feet are swift and assured. The miles hiss by. I sign all the trail registers and burn on. I hit the lean to that marks the end of the flat miles, eat a snickers, refill my waters, and press on 5 more miles over the preliminary peak of the Bigelow range. The sign marks the side trail turn off for Safford Notch campsite. I follow the blue blazes down a streambed clogged with ferns. The trail leads through a short, dark cave and emerges on the other side of the mountain. The campsite is spread out, but sylvan and enchanting. One other fellow is there, not a thru-hiker. His name is Dave, off for a few days from his work in nearby Skowhegan. He has been fishing but decided on moment's notice to climb this far up the mountain to get cell phone reception to call his girlfriend he hasn't seen in a month. I treat water for him and he invites me to help myself to a Busch Light he has stashed in the water source, which like most up this far in Maine, is a finger-chilling mountain trickle. The water is so good and so clean that treating it is almost an offense. We drink the frigid beers and eat bowls of cheerios he's hiked up. He rolls himself American Spirits and we swap fishing yarns as the twilight wanes through all the blues to ultimate black.
  
  
• Third or fourth day in the 100-mile Wilderness, a rather crisp rainy day, I am surprised as a mustached man with coke-bottle glasses bursts out of the bushes with a fishing rod. We exchange greetings and talk of the fish. No trout, just chub. Another comes down the trail. The mustached man introduces him simply as his son in law. He has a Bud Light bottle with two fingers of fluid in the bottom and a fresh one in his flannel shirt pocket. A third, a fat one, waddles down the trail from the other direction. He has found the trout. His left hand swings a stringer of three natives. Burnt red underbellies, yellow-trimmed azure spots still shining. Great fish. At the sight all of us beam. Even the chub-catchers are delighted at the sight. All three are wearing cotton, sweatpants, flannel, Champion duds under Carhardt jackets. Soaked to the bone but smiling through tobacco-stained lips. We part and I am a mile down the trail before I silently lecture myself for not taking their picture.
  
  
• After a night of lightning and the rain I know Maine is capable of producing, a surprisingly dry Maine has finally gotten as green as I knew I could never forget. The last few days have been high, but the lows have been greener than before. The streambeds are awash with ferns so green and so thick and so prominent you would swear you could walk over the tops of them. In the lowland forests, the sun is filtered flatteringly through the newly mature foliage of the birches, maples, oaks, alders, spruces, poplars, moose maples, aspens. Down on the forest floor you can hardly see the soil. Every inch is carpeted in wood sorrel. Almost every mile is one delirious drink of green after another.
  
  At school, my roommate and I would often swap pictures of our favorite outdoor escapes -- always some variation upon the same theme of green, usually with a languid stream of crystal water cutting it in two. And we would say, "See. This is why I hate Texas."
  
  My apologies to the 80% of my readership that is Texan. It's not so much a hatred of that state as it is an understanding of what a soul misses most when green is not around. Green makes me feel at home. It is green here. Elevatingly, intoxicatingly green. I am home.
  
  
• Coming down the final descent out of the Bigelow Range I am well aware that I am retracing my very first steps on the AT from my section hike two summers ago. The slope coming out of Horns Pond goes from gradual to steep to ridiculous. But then as now I am in a mindset that makes the slope, which believe me is harder going down than coming up, a non-issue. Then as now I am caught by this landscape, this vertiginous but wooded mountain side that is perpetually fogged in by passing clouds. On top of that, this giant mountainside is strewn with rocks the size of neighborhood churches, all perched at odd angles and covered proudly in thick, dripping sphagnum moss. Under the rocks in deep black holes that would swallow up anything that fell into them, flows a hidden stream that one can only hear, never access. This echo off deep mountain water fills me with a feeling of strangeness, and right on time, a hermit thrush spins his liquid tendril song that floats and echoes in the almost motionless wet air. And I pity anyone who has never been to a place like this.