MOUNTAIN TEA | THE LONG TRAIL: Massachusetts to Canada
I don't know that anything I am doing matters or is helping me understand how to move through Covid-19. How can a person walk the I Ching? How can a person understand the flow of time? How can a person understand the ways in which they are mirrored from without and from within? Self-examination is the hardest thing on earth to do. I am becoming familiar with the I Ching. I am becoming familiar with Vermont. I am moving through Covid-19. These things are happening despite my insecurities about my project. Despite my inquiry.
Post-structuralists believe literary texts have multiple meanings, that the author is not the primary source of the work's semantic content and that each reader creates a new purpose and meaning for the text. We consult the I Ching. We ask one question. We throw 3 coins 6 times. This event is synchronous with our search for guidance. No one tells us how to decipher the answer. The I Ching shows us the polarities inherent in the world. It all starts with a pair of opposites, the dark and light side of a hill. Yin is represented by a broken — — line, yang by an unbroken ¾¾ line. From these 2 lines, the 8 components of the universe are formed: heaven, earth, thunder, water, mountain, wood/wind, fire and lake. From the 8 components, 64 situations/hexagrams are formed. Each reader and reading is unique.
I proposed “Mountain Tea” in April 2020 as an examination of the connection between our health and the health of our planet. I thought The Book of Changes could be a useful guide through Covid. Then came George Floyd. This work carries within it the origins and ends of Covid. It also carries the origins and ends of white supremacy and racism, including my own whiteness and privilege. It holds in its consciousness the reality of “the other” and the recent victims of brutal racist policing: Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Elijah McClain, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, Breonna Taylor, Cornelius Frederick, George Floyd…
As above, so below. Two parallel pandemics are raging and the silent white majority is just now waking to the realities of a system from which it has been benefitting, recognizing that our laws as our systems are racist, designed to protect one and punish another. Covid and the Amazon fires. Covid and George Floyd. One person’s normal is another person’s obstruction. We have intentionally knelt upon the neck of this planet too long, and on George Floyd’s neck. Until we remove our knee and begin to see ourselves and dismantle our racist systems, and begin to work on healing and unifying our nation by redistributing the wealth we’ve reaped, we will not be able to breathe free.
It is September. I am home from my journey and resting, eating brownies and creamies and burritos. I will take up this mediation again in the autumn, starting where I left off with hexagram #36 MING I䷣ (Darkening of the Light), likely return to the circuit between Wantastiquet and Mount Monadnock. Below is a brief account of this latest series of walking meditations. Thank you for continuing to question our relationship to our environment with me.
Thursday, 8 August, was my first long day. I woke at 5am and began meditating and walking Ya Tu, Wealth. Fire over heaven is the image of possession on a grand scale. Strength and clarity unite. Power expresses itself in a graceful, controlled way. This is the image of the individual rising, the inverse of the preceding hexagram, T’ung Jen, which depicted a process of uniting. Ya Tu is the completion of that process. To have one's inner forces united is possession in great measure. By simply being, we set off a chain reaction of abundance.
I made tea by a beaver pond, sending smoke over the water. Consultation Peak was in the trees, but there were views of Bennington and the Taconic Ridge from a lookout on Harmon Hill. In the late afternoon, I landed at Melville Neuheim Shelter at mile 16. With yesterday’s miles, that’s almost a marathon. There were four others in camp, two northbound LT hikers and two AT hikers. Haiku, from Philadelphia, was in a tent. Captain, from Vermont, was in a hammock. I pointed out a bag of beef jerky in the shelter to Rafiki from Georgia. He did not thank me but pocketed it immediately. Such is hunger on the Long Trail. Crunchy, of Maine, put his candy wrapper in the fire. Captain questioned him, “Plastic? Really?” One cares, one does not. We check one another. I bivied in the woods and struggled with the smoke still clouding my vision and dreamt vivid dreams all night.
Here is a hexagram to pour over humankind—Modesty/Temperance. It is the law of heaven to make empty what is full and to make full what is modest. High mountains are worn down by waters and the valleys are filled. High and low complement one another, equalizing the extremes that are the source of discontent, creating just, equable conditions. “A humble person has an ‘empty or unoccupied’ mind, a mind without prejudice.” –Chung Wu.
I’d imagined hiking the Long Trail alone, focused on my work, but in the first days I fell into a tramily (trail + family) with Haiku, Hot Birch, Captain, Tomato, River and Renaissance. I am Bayarlaa (thank you in Mongolian). Trail names. I found myself bending to the benefits of a tramily—kindness, laughter, caring—stopping to make camp earlier than I would have if I were alone, swimming, climbing towers, smiling, listening.
I climbed the fire tower and felt like a raven looking out over the blue-tipped firs on Glastenbury Mt, green in every direction. By the early 1900s, the forests of Vermont were nearly gone, ruthlessly harvested for timber and cleared for sheep grazing. Thanks to thoughtful policies and federal and state acquisitions, Vermont is 80% forested now and it is the trees the tourists come to see.
In late afternoon, with rain due, our group funneled into Kidd Gore Shelter at mile 28. The trail to the shelter is soaked from a nearby spring. A path of rocks makes it possible for hiker’s to avoid the puddles, but HB’s golden retriever “Koivu” didn’t take use them. He is mud from the belly down. Koivu sat in the shelter, growling and wagging his tail expressing a mix of pleasure and pain. Poor doggy. HB’s mother is picking him up tomorrow. Someone made a bonfire. It started to drizzle. KitKat, a solo nobo AT hiker arrived, telling us about her trail magic—a ride to and from the town, free pancakes and a stop at a local water well.
The view from Kidd Gore promised a sunrise. When the rain let up, I set up my bivy in a clearing below the shelter. I had vivid dreams of running through marble courtyards smearing white frosting on the walls. Then I dreamt some new hikers had arrived. I tried calling out to them from my dreams. Incomprehensible sounds. They said they could hear me from the shelter.
We woke to an impressive clap of thunder at dawn. The percussion continued all morning. Enthusiasm is the reverse of Temperance. In the last hexagram we saw the calm strength of a mountain concealed within the earth. Here we see thunder exploding out of the ground, the strength that was formerly tempered is now released. While every line of Temperance is "favorable,” every line of enthusiasm is negative or cautionary, even the positive 4th line carries a warning of “doubt.” Yu portrays an outlook associated with romantic idealists, self-deception, a figure of deluded buoyancy. In its most positive sense, Enthusiasm suggests the surety of self-confidence. Enthusiasm, repose, movement along the lines of least resistance.
The father of our tramily, Haiku, is a rabbi. He pulls us together in unexpected ways. Haiku and I chatted about our work, about the meditations motivating our walks. He is walking for BLM. He shares a daily prayer. I share my hexagram. In time, I began to my hexagrams as signs on the trail, in charcoal drawings on rocks, on birch bark, in berries and twigs and pinecones.
The climb to Stratton Mountain was our first big gain, 1700’ straight uphill, no switchback. Some days the humidity is 100%. With every uphill, we wipe perspiration from our faces. We took time to enjoy the fire tower. The local horseshoe hare made an appearance. So did the GMC caretaker. Her welcome felt out of place. I prefer the welcome of the trees. Hot Birch left Koivu below and climbed the tower. He whined for her and I went to comfort him.
Stratton Pond is a local favorite. People walk in for the day and camp on the weekends. I slept in shelter with Kitkat. Only two of us in a 2-story, 16-person shelter! Covid. I put the “Home Sweet Home” button I found pinned to the shelter on my dress. The world feels at peace. And is noticeably white. Over the next 24 days, I saw only two black people. In her article “Going It Alone” in Outside Magazine, 2017, Rahawa Haile explains why. Haile chronicles the racist history of our national parks and about her own experience of racism on the AT in 2016. Whites walk and talk and experience the world so differently, even out here on The Long Trail.
Arousing Thunder rests in the middle of Joyous Lake. Thunder in its winter rest, not Thunder in motion. Sui is calm withdrawal, the image of delegation. If a person would rule, they must first serve. I do not like being followed or crowded or sought after. I prefer space and time. Time alone. I am coming to recognizing this as a white American mindset bred into me. It would be no easy thing to dismantle. I watched a couple swim across the lake from where I was filtering water and enjoyed a cup of uncooked oatmeal before hiking north. I cached my pack behind a boulder near Prospect Rock and walked into Manchester for a burger and resupply. Captain and Haiku joined me. We sat under the tall pine trees in the side yard at Hex’s devouring our lunches. I filled my bags with cookies, plums, salad greens and tomatoes and had a vanilla creamy at Dutton’s Farm Stand, after which it was an easy walk to Spruce Peak Shelter (mile 52) where we met Doctor Duck and his mother, Gravity, an academic dean and her 14-year-old son. Doctor Duck had finished high school three years early and they are now hiking the AT sobo in lieu of having him attend college straight away. He seems to have every advantage. Before bed, we all stretched and shared yoga moves around the campfire. It is still dry. I am enjoying my bivy under the stars.
We crested Bromley Mt (3260’) today, a ski resort, then Styles 3394’ then Peru Peak (3429’). Our goal was Griffith Lake (LT mile 65) on the far side of Peru. Walking alone, I got to see the garter snakes sunning on the wooden planks. There are 8 tent platforms beside the lake. I took the caretaker’s spot as it was late and vacant and due to rain. I shouldn’t have laid my gear out so soon. “Wind before rain, comes again.” Captain’s grandmother’s saying proved true.
#19 LIN䷒ (Approach), Earth over Lake
It is due to be in the low 90s. After a morning dip, I performed a tea ceremony on the shores of Griffith Lake. Ceremony is too strong a word. I haven’t yet developed a ceremony, but in its own way the process is a hauling of water and chopping of wood. It is neither gentle nor dignified. I tear birch bark into strips. The bark peeling off the white birches is such an effective fire starter one would never need paper or candles here. I hunch about collecting small dry twigs around the camp. I sit on the ground and feed the stove and blow into the vent holes. The moment I put the pot on it, smoke pours out of my stove. Sometimes the picture the smoke paints on the landscape is reminiscent of old Chinese paintings. Today the smoke spread out over the lake in a sweet low cover. No one else has the inclination to gather pencil-sized twigs littering the ground? Even in the rain, twigs that snap will burn, if the fire is hot. Because my stove is small, I must be vigilant. If I do not feed it for continuously, the fire will consume the fuel and it will take encouragement to get the new fuel burning. When I am distracted, it can take up to an hour to get water to boil. I have switched to filtered water so I don’t need to boil.
It was a 3-swim-day! Each new water source provided a chance to take off our packs and rest. After Griffith came Big Branch River, where we soaked in the carved pools and enjoyed a waterfall massage, then, at noon, came Little Rock Pond, which I swam across. Walking north from Little Rock, we passed a nudist hiker wearing a face mask. That made us laugh. Vermont has no state law against nudity and Vermonters are extremely diligent regarding the Covid precautions. Day-hikers and trail runners puts on their masks whenever they pass. It was magical to come upon an installation of stone cairns in a pine grove on White Rocks Mt where we all dropped our packs and explored and hopped down to look at the views from the cliffs.
The bridge at Greenwall Shelter (LT mile 79) is rotting. The slope to the barely trickling water source is short and steep. A broken picnic bench, sheets of metal roofing and an old crumpled blanket in the woods ruins the picture of wilderness. Places, like people, carry moods. I did not like this one. “The Plague” had his cook station set up on the picnic table and was sautéing onions, asking who had maple syrup. No one did. His elaborate pantry nearly earned the name “Entrée,” but when Haiku started calling him “Renaissance” that stuck. Since rain was once again predicted, half of us opted for the shelter. After trying my bivy and finding too many mosquitoes in the woods, I joined them, but the night was all noise—thunder, snoring, wind, rain and a squeaking air mattress. I was awake for most of it, watching the sky through the silhouette of trees.
#20 KUAN䷓ (Contemplation), Mountain over Earth
I broke camp at dawn and hiked out alone, stopping to make tea at an overlook on Baker Peak. I was hoping to explore Kuan on Killington Mt, but didn’t make it that far. We all met up again at the viewpoints, Domed Ledge, Airport and Clarendon Lookout, where Captain pointed out the valleys shaped by glaciers and “Rut-Vegas” and Rutland airport. Captain lives behind Equinox Mountain near the only Carthusian Monastery in the US, where a group of priests live in solitude and seclusion. I do not think they make chartreuse like they do France though. Kuan looks like a mountain tower in ancient China, from which to contemplate heaven and earth, a place to be seen and from which to set an example. “Contemplation is an invitation for you to consider your situation and especially your motivations in regard to it. One way of doing this is to reduce everything to a brief written statement, including your best conscious conclusions. Then ask for a comment from the oracle – often it will become apparent that you have been undergoing a kind of examination.”
We camped on Sargent Brook, below Governor Clement shelter (LT mile 193), where we met the much anticipated “420,” a cannabis rep passing out free samples to hikers. The group was quickly enamored of her. Haiku disappeared for hours in her company and later called her back for a day hike. If Haiku and 420 got married, the younger hikers decided, they all wanted to be adopted. 420 was a solid, straightforward woman, busty, feminine and laid back, with an old school, exterior frame pack. I had the chance to talk to her and learned she was an animal lover and photographer, in a long-term relationship of which she spoke not highly. I split an edible with HB and cooked a bunch of soba noodles over the bonfire, adding miso soup and dandelion leaves. For the first time this trip I full. And it seems everyone slept well.
There were two schoolteachers on Killington Mt (4235’) hiking the five highest peaks in VT in memory of a friend who died of cancer. I told them about today’s hexagram—Shih Ho, Biting Through—the lines of which represent an open mouth with an obstruction between the teeth. “To bring the lips together, one must bite energetically.” One of the teachers said she’d bitten her tongue on the hike up. Shih Ho is about an obstruction to unity. It is a combination of clarity and excitement. It calls for just measures, clear laws and swift penalties in an effort to establish unity. The teachers explained to me how they strengthened their classrooms by sitting in circles and emphasizing cooperation. I walked off Killington chatting with 420 who told me about her quarantine art project to fold origami cranes and string them in a maypole and burn them as an offering. She asked her family to witness the offering and record their thoughts. From their responses, she is making a digital, photographic quilt. I expressed my appreciation for her process and openness to the work’s shifting point of view. I arrived at Sherburne Pass (1,880’), at LT mile 104, with one meal in my pack. Our group grabbed the long benches and two tables in the pub at The Inn at The Long Trail and enjoyed nachos and beers and burgers. I was the only one who needed to resupply. Everyone else has friends and family driving in with resupplies. Carbon footprints. I walked a 1½ miles to a deli and got oatmeal, donuts, mac-n-cheese, salami, cheese and crackers. Haiku is sleeping at the inn. He passed his key around for us to take showers. The rest of us slept across the highway in the woods to the tune of semi-trucks cresting the pass. I saw one long Perseid meteor trailing off before hiding under my sleeping bag. Too many mosquitoes! “Crisis,” an AT veteran, introduced us to his baby raccoon, “Ricky,” who he let wander alone in the woods at the night.
#22 PI䷕ (Grace), Mountain over Fire (clarity within, quiet without)
The inn limits their breakfast buffet to hotel guests on weekdays. Sigh. I spent the morning in an Adirondack chair with a coffee, writing, thinking of a zero day, contemplating today’s hexagram—Pi, the fire that breaks out of the secret depths of earth, blazing up to illuminate the mountain. Grace is an ornament and not the essential thing. Tomato & River hiked off first. The rest of us went for lunch at the inn. I had a hot dog and a coffee then hiked with the others to Deer Leap Rock and sat looking over out the trees to Killington. After photos and goodbyes, Haiku & HB’s friend hiked down. The rest of us hiked in 5 miles to Rolston Rest Shelter (LT mile 109). A day that is almost a zero is called a nero day. Haiku took a real zero day at the inn. I stayed with Pi/Grace another day.
To call our sun real and strong, to call the moon and stars ornaments, feels sexist, centrist. Throughout the I Ching, the commentaries have a male bias and the yin lines symbolize negative situations. But being modern, enlightened readers, we jump such hurdles by recognizing the I Ching as an valid system written at a time when women were regarded as inferior. As women and minorities, we know the white patriarchy is still in place and that the air we are breathing and the water we are treading is made of it. We say we perceive sexually prejudiced attitudes as illogical, recognizing it is wrong to have a preference for one pole over the other. We interpret the images as symbolic rather than literal, identifying the lines as "dynamic" or "magnetic" instead of “masculine” or “feminine.” But still there are problems.
The I Ching says aesthetics and art are artifice. It says the momentary rest the silencing of our desires brings cannot last and cannot ensure redemption. I made tea in camp over my hobo stove then hiked north through the Green Mt Ntl Forest. I spent time today breaking off the eye level branches. Haiku has recently been running into them. What does Grace have to do with what is essential? I thought they were tied to one another. What is essential is in everything we know and do, in high and low. Who does the hierarchy serve? Can we create order out of chaos without it? Perhaps we can, but not in three dimensions. What is an order that we cannot understand control? Ch’ien, The Creative, is precise, elegance in action.
Ansel Adams, founder of the f64 group of realist photographers, “strove to worship The God of Things as They Are” in sharp-focus pictures showing cloud-crowned, yin/yang shadow/sunshine rock/tree finalities. He was striving to capture internal (emotional) events in his landscapes. How does grace battle with what is right? Does what is right require grace? Unmerited divine assistance is a privilege. Who is worthy? Can grace be a gift to ourselves? Is the deity internal or external? How can we feel apart from it or our environment?
Another day in the green tunnel, as people describe the LT, mid-mountain hiking, ups and downs, cooler temps. I met a few section hikers and took in a view to Chittenden Reservoir. The Captain & his brother stopped at David Logan Shelter, the Angler’s knee is hurting. They hope Haiku will catch them there. The rest of us moved on.
When the top line of Pi/Grace is a changing yang line, at the highest stage of development, ornament is discarded. Form no longer conceals content, but brings out its value. Perfect grace consists not in exterior ornamentation of a substance, but in the simple fitness of its form. This sounds like love, simple and unornate.
#23 PO䷖ (Splitting Apart), Mountain over Earth
The lines of this hexagram look like a house, the top line being the roof. Here the roof is being shattered and the house is collapsing. Yin power is pushing up to supplant yang power. A shattering of the patriarchy? The I Ching suggests remaining quiet and submitting to the bad times. Is this a message to our creative energies, telling them to rest so our receiver can rise? I descended to Brandon Gap and up 1,000’ to Mt Horrid and made tea on my hobo stove at Horrid Cliff. What a bellows the wind makes on a cliff! I scribed Po on the rocks with my charcoal. Later, by the ski lift on Worth Mt, I sat reading from the I Ching until the others arrived. I was hoping to make Breadloaf Mountain, 8 miles north. Boyce Shelter was the first with no running water. I hiked on to Skyline Lodge with its sweet beaver pond. When I looked in the lodge, I saw a family at the table wearing facemasks. I slept in my bivy under a tree. I was tired and grumpy and wanted to leave, but I needed water. It took an hour to make my mac-n-cheese. My set-up was all wrong, including my mood. So much smoke!! And my wild dream life continues.
#24 FU䷗ (Return/The Turning Point), Earth over Thunder
I was hiking with Tomato and River. We were chatting about their travels. They have experience hiking in Patagonia and Alaska. We all went straight at the hairpin turn and end up on Breadloaf Mountain. Oops. The blazes on the trees were blue. Tomato noticed it first. River turned on her app. Everyone is using Guthook, an app that locates you on the map and tells you where the water sources are. I have a paper map and a compass. I haven’t had any trouble, except that one wrong turn on day two. I walked ½-mile before turning back when I noticed the lack of footsteps in the mud and white blazes and checked to see I was walking west. At that same turn, Haiku, who has the app, got it wrong. So did AT through-hiker Rafiki, who went west two miles before turning back. The Breadloaf Writer’s Conference and School of English are near here in Middlebury, VT. Robert Frost, etc. I am too feral for such things now. I have given up those ladders. I prefer the dirt and rocks here. I know some people who enjoy both worlds. I am too much all-or-nothing now for that. The ego of a rock is stable. At times I feel lonesome and defeatist here, at times I feel valid and connected. It is my mood that wavers, not the mood of the rock. The seesaw of art in a competitive world is ongoing. Yin/yang. Yin/yang.
I sat atop Sunset Ledges watching clear bolts of white light jag to the ground. Three storm cells, lined up south to north. Camera flashes every few seconds until the wind blew in over my ledge and the heavens disappeared. I raced into the woods with my headlamp on looking for the thickest stand of pines and rolled out my bivy. Within an hour, rain was splatting on my head. Nothing to do but wait for morning.
My gear is wet. I woke with puddles on my ground cloth to a morning cool and clear. I laid my sleeping bag and bivy out on the ledges to dry and sat reading. Tomato and River walked on Brandon Gap for their resupply. Pepsi Parks of Brooklyn and her Israeli friend arrived soon after. I chatted with them about academia, about how to stay positive in a cutthroat world. Pepsi gave me a nut butter pack and some dried cherries. Once again I am carrying too little food. I packed my things and hiked down to the gap and up to Mount Horrid. I made tea on the Great Cliffs with the wind as my bellows. The breadth of time it takes to do things out here is delicious. Tea takes an hour. Cooking mac-n-cheese on my hobo stove takes an hour. Filtering takes a ½-hour. One makes a detour, drops their pack, pulls out their things, fills the dirty reservoir of their filter or their pot, collects bark and twigs, waits, burps the filter, blows on the fire and eats and drinks. Delicious hunger. Delicious thirst. I’ve tried iodine pills and pumps and straws. I like the gravity system. Easy and light. Except mine has been running slow. I need to clean the filter. For now, I wait and stretch my legs.
#26 TA CH'U䷙ (Taming Power of the Great), Mountain over Heaven
I spent the night with Bellows and The Council of the Elders at Monclair Glen Lodge (LT mile 173), just south of Camel’s Hump (4,083’). There is a wooden Bear-icade bar to lock yourself inside the cabin. We’re all wondering what happened to warrant that. My food is almost gone. I am eating more soba noodles. Then, like magic, I found a half a jar of almond butter and strawberry jam in the bear box. It was left by someone just for me it seems. When the treetops around the cabin glowed with the light of the setting sun, one of the council members wanted to see it and climbed a fir tree. That earned him the name “Treetop.” He described the sunset from his crow’s nest to us ground animals below.
Today was my longest day at 18 miles. I was out of food. I had 6 gummy bears to get over Camel’s Hump. I was on the summit at 8:30am and taking in the peek-a-way views of the valley between scarves of clouds. Then I hit a wall on the way down. My legs were not working. It felt as if they might bend backwards and snap in two. Every step was a misstep. Try as I may, I could not find the energy. I stopped at Bamforth Ridge Shelter on the north side of Camel’s Hump and washed my feet and hands and face in the stream and filtered water and made tea and ate almond butter. When I felt a bit better, I walked out past the caves to Duxbury Window where I could see Stimson and Bolton Mts and wrote the word “nourish” on a rock.
Further down, I stopped at the cascades and washed my hair. Ah! Camel’s Hump State Park ends at the glorious Winooski River! It turns west off the road and traverses a turkey and cow farm, climbing an electric fence, then spills out onto the road again and crosses the Winooski on a suspension bridge. There were kids jumping off the bridge into the water and families on the beach below.
I hitched from highway 2 into Richmond. The ride in was with a shirtless who told me he was more worried about the economy than about Covid. He was the only person in Vermont I have seen in public without a mask. The floor of his truck was covered in trash and recyclables. He was comfortable, he said, and he didn’t have to work since he traded in crypto-currency. He wondered how I, being a woman, hadn’t been picked up sooner. “Vermonters are kind to hikers,” I said. “I’d only been hitching a few minutes.” In town I enjoyed a blueberry/raspberry creamy and restocked at the local market. Just outside the door, a woman asked if I needed a ride to the trailhead. I hadn’t yet packed my things or filled my water bottles. Aliza waited for me and helped me recycle my cardboard boxes and plastic cartons. On the way out, she told me how she’d recently attempted a FKT (fastest known time) on the LT, starting on the day of the hurricane, but had to stop short of her goal. The weather reports kept changing. They went from 1” of rain, to 2” to 3”. It rained 4” that day. I learned the next day, from two trail runners, this was the amazing long-distance trail runner, Aliza Lapierre, sponsored by Maple Gels a strong and humble athlete.
My pack was so full I went to the Winnoski River to eat some of the weight. I walked east to where I could be alone and sat with my feet in the water. I washed up and ate a donut and six samosas. I was considering camping on the river, but the bugs were a problem. Eventually, I crossed the road and climbed Stimson Mountain in the dark. I stopped several times to eat and drink. When finally I needed to put on my headlamp, the white birches turned silver. Such a magical forest and at last a little overlook presented itself. Exactly what I wanted. I laid everything out and ate some more before hearing a family of fox crying out like teenagers over some conquest. After two calm hours, the wind surged up and I knew rain was coming. I acted quickly and rolled my camp under my arm and hiked north in my long johns. It was 3am. The woods were wild with wind and I was getting hot. Buchanan Shelter was not around the corner as I thought it was, but 2 miles north. I had to stop twice to remove layers. I didn’t want to disturb the campers at Buchanan who were behind a sliding wooden door, so I slept on the picnic table out on the cover patio. I wouldn’t call it comfortable.
When the couple sleeping in Buchanan opened the sliding wooden door to the bunk room at 6am to check on me, I went inside for a nap. Later I met Hops and Fireball. Hops re-injured her knee on Camel’s Hump and is ending her trip here. Fireball marches on. I spent my morning tending a bonfire, making tea, roasting sausages, eating donuts, drying my socks. I finally got going and only walked to Puffer Shelter where I came upon Bellows and the Council of the Elders again. It was due to rain. The shelter has an amazing sunrise view. I decided to stay. Curly spilled his cooked noodles and was caught between being distraught and laughter over the matter. His friends videotaped him sucking his dinner off the rocks.
#29 K'AN䷜ (The Abysmal), Water over Water
The sun rose three times, into clouds and out again. K’an represents the soul shut within the body. I lingered at Puffer. When the others were gone, I made tea and cooked sausages and ate donuts. Food, fat, protein, calories! Mount Mansfield is Vermont’s highest peak at 4,393’. The summit is exposed. All around are short, red-leafed blueberry bushes. I used my thumb and forefinger to rolls bunches of berries into my palm. Nothing tastes quite like a blueberry on a misty summit. A gondola and paved road bring children in bright colors to the summit and families and large groups, bigger bodies, cotton clothing, jeans. White blazes direct foot traffic over the fragile alpine zone, where lichens and alpine flowers and bushes live on mist. Day trippers ambling about in face masks. I was lucky to enjoy a blustery, sunny summit, but I did not find a protected place to rest so I kept going. The route down to Taft Lodge was steep and in places wet and green. I met a hiker smoking behind a rock. Her name was “Vermont.” She is saving her unemployment checks to do the PCT. My knees were hurting, back left and front right. I took my time. I let out a breath of relief on the less steep trail below and slipped. That is always the way. I fell on my right knee this time and immediately sat and put cool rocks on it and scolded myself. No slips or trips or falls!! The sun set behind Mansfield too early and it got cold. I did not pack a down jacket. I have a light sweater and a shell. It was in the mid-90s when I started, hard to imagine it ever being cold again, but someone left a bouldering mat in the lodge, a very thick mat. I slept on it. No one else arrived. I spent the night listening to the resident chipmunk run the ridgepole and watched it come in through the chipmunk-sized hole in the heavy wood door. The tin roof amplifies the rain.
#30 LI ䷝ (The Clinging/Fire), Fire over Fire
Li stands for nature in its radiance. I sat coldly in the lodge, wrapped in my sleeping bag, thinking about a zero day. Light rain, off and on. The President of the GMC Taft Lodge division, “Ghost Walker,” came to take inventory. He noted the broken windowpane. He told me about the year he did the PCT, 1998, just 300 people on the trail. He recounted a wet, cold journey through the desert and snow north of Kennedy Meadows. I had a markedly different experience in 2014, with triple digit heat, Santa Ana winds, extreme drought and supposedly thousands of hikers out in front of me. I started a month late and saw few of them, but everyone I met asked the same question. Have you read the book Wild? It got irksome. No I didn’t read it. After Ghost Walker left, Renaissance arrived, dry, from Mt Mansfield. “Heyy!” He read the register and walked on to Sterling Pond. Then Captain arrived from Mansfield, wet. “Well hello!” Then HB arrived from Mansfield, very wet. “Oh heyy!” I hadn’t seen my tramily in 5 days. We exchanged summit stories. Captain and HB were in the thick of the storm. They recounted passing HB’s golden retriever “Koivu” up a wooden ladder in the rain. HB’s parents brought her dog for a visit. HB said she was done for the day, but Captain had plans to meet friends at the gap.
I got the urge to hike to Sterling Pond. I didn’t want another cold night. After what seemed a too long, too steep hike up from highway 108, I arrived to summer campy, pleasant, Sterling Pond. I could feel my fatigue accumulating. I walked barefoot to the lake, enjoyed the sun, washed myself, washed my clothes, filtered water and napped. I was in bed early. It was a quiet night and everyone slept well.
In the morning, I was the first to the pond, making a stove fire for tea, when a young moose emerged from the woods, 40’ away. It sniffed the air. It didn’t seem to mind my smoke. I let my fire burn out. It was a young moose with two, single, foot-long antlers. I supposed its mother was nearby, but she never materialized. It took a step towards me. I imagined having to retreat into the woods. After two steps, it turned into the water. The bottom is thick with mud. A second step took the moose calve deep. By the fourth step, only the back and head of the moose was visible. It ate the lily pads and green grasses marking the surface, chewing as horses chew, side to side. When Captain, the Angler and Renaissance arrived in conversation, I hushed them. I was so glad the others came down. After half an hour, the moose shook the water off his back and disappeared into the forest with a rustling of leaves. I started up my stove again and made tea.
When HB and Haiku arrived, our reunion got underway. We took a walk around the lake and marveled at the rocks and mosses. Later, friends of HB hiked in with a camp stove and a cast iron skillet and made Pad Thai and blueberry cobbler for her. I bivied at the top of the ski slope nearby with Haiku and Tomato and River and some other nobos. The wind was wild and the stars were brilliant. Lightning and thunder to the west. No rain til morning.
#31 HSIEN ䷞ (Influence/Wooing), Lake over Mountain
One by one we hiked off, in the rain, to Madonna Peak and Whiteface Mountain. It was a steep, wet, difficult day with a rainbow’s end — a pay-as-you-wish farm stand with garden tomatoes and pickles. I found HB’s phone at Whiteface Shelter and caught up to her at Bear Hollow Shelter. She’d reconciled herself to getting a new one. No way was she walking back. Just to weeks ago, when she left her water bottle on the trail, she dropped her pack and hiked two miles to get it. I walked with them to Johnson where we sat together on the lawn eating tomatoes and pickles. I left them at the road. I needed another resupply. I walked east to the hardware store and the dollar store in Johnson where I bought hotdogs and popcorn and cocoa and oatmeal and cheese and cookies and nuts and snickers bars. Cheap, fatty sweet foods. I got to a 36% charge on my phone and used 10% of that immediately after. The lazy Lamoille River runs through Johnson. I washed my feet in it. My shoes are falling apart. The toe is peeling back and there are holes on both sides in the toe box.
#32 HENG ䷟ (Duration), Thunder over Wind
It was a long, steep climb up Laraway Mt, under a series of impressive overhanging cliffs, to the summit. The day hikers with their small packs pass smiling. After Laraway, I made a big push up Butternut Mountain, breathing heavily. It does not get easier, but the recovery time gets quicker. I sat smoking my stove on Devil’s Perch looking out to Belvidere Mt from Spruce Ledge Camp. A team of two were camping at the lookout where a wooden sign warned of a sheer cliff. I moved the sign two feet to the right so it was on level ground. One of the women, on the phone at the time, moved it back. Omm. Up at the shelter, The Hustler led our team in yoga before we played two rounds of hearts. Haiku was back at Sterling Pond resting, waiting for his daughter.
#33 TUN ䷠ (Retreat), Heaven over Mountain
There was 100% chance of rain between 7-11am and again between 1-3pm. I know this because my camp-mates checked their apps. The rocks were wet and the trail muddy. It being the last day, we decided to hike together. We saw a few groups just beginning their hike south. We made Journey’s End by 1pm after ascending two easy uphills. Hail Canada!!! No wall. No border police. No detainment camp. Just a border cut. We ate our last bits of food at the Journey'd End monument, a small obelisque. Hot Birch and Captain left us at Journey’s End Camp. I removed my shoes, put on my long john, got out my sleeping bag and slept an hour before walking out the last mile.
Renaissance’s father met us at 3pm with garden tomatoes, farm fresh blueberries and sandwich wraps. So grateful for his thoughtfulness and for summer fruits and fresh vegetables. Before we got into the car, we put our packs into trash bags so they wouldn't soil the interior and donned face masks. Outside of my three resupplies, I hadn't worn a mask in 24 days. Then we drove 3 hours in what it took us a month to walk, through a glorious, green, wooded, billboard-less landscape. Time to eat and rest my knees.