Dirty Girl Hikes

     “Is that coming from the shelter?”  Tater asked around 10pm.  It was.  Someone was snoring so loud the roof was literally reverberating.  In this way the shelter was acting like a guitar body, and the opening was facing our way.  Even seventy-five feet away, and some thirty below the shelter, it was loud enough to startle us out of sleep. 

Tater had earplugs, and once recognized, I was able to tune the sound out and drift back to sleep.  Until another person woke us around eight in the morning.

     “HELLO!?”  

     “Wow, you have to be kidding me.”  I muttered angrily.  A section hiker had just finished speaking with the last stragglers in the shelter.  They spoke in woods voices, he still had his loud city tone.  Now that they were gone, he decided to call home.  Some poor soul on the other line was given ALL the details, and well, so were we.

An accurate reenaction:  https://youtu.be/dhk_OL-5aVo

Tater and I gave up and deflated our sleeping pads.  The rain had cleared, and the sun was busy drying our damp home.  By the time we got up the hill to the picnic table, our section hiker had left.  Off to audibly assault new victims no doubt. 

Slowly the grumpyness left me.  Some muesli and a cup of coffee stemming the flow of expletives.  Besides, today was to be a beautiful day.  We’d be ascending Stratton Mountain, and sleeping near Stratton Pond. 

We broke camp, but before we left the couple with the two labs came in.  I feel bad at not having gotten their names, but the husband is a ranger in the White Mountains, and his wife hiked the AT in 1997.  They are section hiking the Long Trail, and are lovely people.  We talked with them about trail work, and pet their dogs for half an hour.   

We ran into them again at the following shelter, where we stopped for a break.  Another hiker was there when we arrived, smoking cigarette after cigarette and relating his tale from the night before.

     “I packed my shit and left man!  I mean seriously, at twelve thirty A. M. I realized I was never going to sleep.  I think his name was Shoelace, or something like that?” 

The barrel-chested Mainer Tater and I had met before, was our snoring culprit. If snoring is the proper word.  Imitating backwoods chainsaws morelike!

As we neared the base of Stratton, there was an RV in the parking lot.  It had a massive blue and white AT emblem painted on the side, with three kayaks on top.  This was the home of the Icecream Man. 

He grated us with an icecream sandwich each.  Then he proceeded into a rant about organized religion, going all the way back to Genisis and the Tree of Knowledge.  I do not remember his trail name now, but when I spoke it to Cool Cucumber he said it translated to “useful” in either Hebrew or Latin.  My efforts to reverse translate it since have failed. 

The AT is full of eccentric wonderful folks, and the Icecream Man is just one!  We continued our miles.

Overall the twelve miles to Stratton were fairly easy.  The ground was strewn with soft beds of pine needles, and patches of rock, which increased the closer we got to Stratton.   Finally we made the summit, where we met an older hiker named Appleseed. 

He was too timid to ascend the old fire tower, and remained steadfast even after we boasted about the view.  A shy, wiry fellow with thick glasses, he was certainly kind, but perhaps our enegy was a bit much for him?

It was remarkably quiet on top of Stratton that day, with only one more day hiker coming through to check out the tower. 

We decided to push on and complete our last four miles, a gentle descent to Stratton Pond.  We made it to the shelter first, one of those run by the Green Mountain Club.

The caretaker was off, and so we didn’t have to pay the usual $5 fee to stay.  It’s a one-time purchase for a card, giving you access to all the shelters and campsites in the GMC network.  The club puts tremendous effort into trail work, building privies, and maintaining the integrity of natural resources in the area.  I’ve never minded the fee because of this.

This year, one of their big projects at Stratton Pond, was to provide wooden tent platforms.  After seeing Shoelace, our beloved though loudly snoring Mainer, we decided to take one of these for the night.

It took a little hiker trash engineering to pitch the Gossamer Gear on such a surface.  After using nearly all the bear bag line as a sort of load-bearing cat’s cradle, the result was surprisingly taut.

We returned to the shelter to cook dinner, and brought our meals down to the pond when they were ready.  The banks of Stratton Pond is one of my favorite spots on the whole trail.  In 2019 Sage and I sat here with some southbounders, discussing meditation among other things.  I texted him a photo.  He replied nearly instantly with approval, and questions about our upcoming meeting. 

I look forward to seeing him again, and meeting his partner Kelly. 

I stripped to my shorts and took a quick swim in pond.  The bottom dropped off quickly, but the water was warm.  I had hoped to see a loon, but the sunset was stunning.

Tater and strolled back to our tent pad, just in time for an evening shower.  Our first full fifteen mile day was now behind us, and rest felt wonderful.  A few GMC maintainers were camped nearby, and walked by our tent from time to time, but otherwise we had quiet little nest to ourselves.  We both figured we’d hear Shoelace, even fifty yards away. 

The rain came in soft waves, enough of a patter to lull the mind.  Neither of us remained awake for long.