After years of dreaming, months of planning, miles of driving, and an almost 4-mile climb up the Pine Cobble Trail, I finally stood in front of the iconic “Welcome to the Vermont Long Trail” sign. (If you missed last week’s beginning of this adventure, you can read it here: The Adventure Begins…Finally )
At the moment, I felt conflicting sensations of excitement and apprehension. Excitement because, well, I’d seen pictures of this sign scores of times and looked forward to touching it for myself—and here I was! Excitement because of the incredible, yet unknown adventure that lay before us.
Hence, apprehension. What, exactly, was before us?
Over the past couple of weeks, I’d read reports from other hikers about how wet and muddy the trail was…plan to walk through streams on the trail…don’t lose your shoes in the mud! — that kind of thing. And here we stood, my sister and I, next to the sign surrounded by mud. Thus far, we did our best to avoid it and our feet were still dry. Ah, but for how long?
Then there’s the terrain itself.
One site remarks, “The Long Trail is 272 miles of rugged, intense terrain.” Another reports that the total elevation gain over those miles is 63,500’. That’s like climbing the stairs up a 6,300-story building. And while I knew in my head that you just take one step at a time…one foot in front of the other, over and over, and you’ll get there, it’s still an intimidating prospect.
And what about my ability? “Do I actually have the physical wherewithal to do this?” I silently wondered. Standing at that sign, the answer was simply, “We’ll see!” Then my mind briefly returned to Psalm 121:
My help comes from the Lord…
Alright then…it was now after 12:30 and we had 5.4 miles to cover before arriving at the first night’s shelter. Time to head north.
“Help us, Lord!”
Indeed, the reports were spot on. Mud…standing water…streams of water.
Vermont’s drought was a distant memory, and the abundance of recent rain made for slow going. At this point, first day on the trail and all, we thought it prudent to try avoiding the muck as much as possible, which meant carefully watching where each footstep fell.
The mud could be deeper than it appears and might swallow your boot! On the one hand, the rocks offered solid ground to step on; but on the other hand, wet rocks can be slippery. Then there are the roots. Not only are they trip hazards, they, too, are slippery when wet. The Long Trail is notorious for mud, rocks, and roots!
So many different ways to end up on the ground!
Didn’t take long on this path for my mind to return to Psalm 121. The One from whom my help comes “will not let your foot be moved,” the song declares.
And then came the first of a half-dozen falls.
I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but it did quickly! I slipped either off a rock or a root, probably because I was looking too many steps ahead and not carefully enough at the step right in front of me.
There’s a lesson in that, isn’t there? While it’s a good idea to have a sense of the path ahead, need to stay focused on the next step or something can trip you up!
Anyway, in a split second, I had lost my footing, my balance, and my pride! With the additional 35 lbs. on my back, I couldn’t stop the fall. The upside, though, is the pack served as good padding! Nevertheless, because I was using hiking poles, my left hand twisted somehow in the strap as I unconsciously gripped the pole, and I felt a jabbing pain. Seemed to move around without difficulty, so on we go.
Later that evening at the shelter, I noticed some swelling in my hand. By morning it was worse.
“Why did my Helper allow my ‘foot to be moved’?” I wondered. “Did I break something? Is this going to end things already??? Was His way of ‘helping’ to force me off the trail right away?”
Providentially, among the 8 people at the shelter that evening, one was a traveling nurse who had taken 6 months off to hike the Appalachian Trail (the AT and Long Trail share 100 miles in southern Vermont). Before she took off in the morning, I asked her about my hand.
“Can you move it freely? All your fingers move without pain?” she asked.
“Yeah, doesn’t seem to be a problem,” I replied.
“You’re good to go then,” she concluded. “You may have fractured one of those little bones in there, but they wouldn’t do anything about it, really. Just take some vitamin I [trail-speak for ibuprofen].”
Ok, then. My Helper allowed my foot to slip, but didn’t allow it to be a catastrophic fall…plus, He sent a helper who had the skill to evaluate my injury accurately.
The shelter where we stayed that first night was the brand-new Seth Warner Shelter, completed just a week or so before our arrival. I looked forward to testing out the place, but one drawback is there’s no water source around it. That was in the back of my mind as we made our way.
Also on my mind was the threat of rain. It had rained earlier in the day, hiking up Pine Cobble, but cleared up through the afternoon. The forecast called for more.
About ½ mile from the shelter, the trail opened up in a clearing where power lines stretched east to west. The sun’s warmth and the gentle breeze invited us to pause awhile, take off the packs, air out the boots.
In spite of the power lines, the view west delighted the senses.
The other direction, though, brought some concerns. Dark clouds loomed in the distance. The threat of rain approached; we really wanted to arrive dry at the shelter.
And we made it! But the recent construction of the shelter left the ground around it stripped of grass and vegetation, which resulted in an abundance of mud! And the reports were accurate—no water source at the shelter. Our water supply nearly depleted, I needed to find us some.
I left the shelter and again thought of Psalm 121:
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in…
I whispered a prayer that I wouldn’t have to go too far…that I could fill up with water and return to the shelter before the storm hit.
Back to the trail, dark clouds above, I headed north and realized that a stream of water caused by recent rains was flowing down the trail. There was my water source! I soon found a spot where the water trickled abundantly over a rock, filled up the water bags, and quickly returned to the shelter to filter what I had collected. No sooner had I returned, got my boots off, and began filtering and the heavens opened once again.
But we were dry! My Helper kept my coming in!
To be continued…
