The Green Mountains of Vermont stand apart from the Appalachian ranges we have walked thus far. Even the colors seem somehow more vibrant here. Here the trail is full of muddy pockets that will swallow your feet. Wet moss blankets fallen trees and stones edging our squishy, brown path. The mountains continue growing taller, foreshadowing the climbs to come.
We trudge our way up these mudslides. Vermud is like an inverse Pennsylvania: there is nowhere good to place your feet. There sharp rocks cut into your arch but here your whole foot sinks down and is swallowed by dark, moist earth.
The Vermont Long Trail walks alongside the Appalachian Trail for 100 miles, and you can really tell what some state funding can do when it’s put to work. The shelters and campsites are clean, the trail is well kept and maintained, and there are even fire towers on several of the mountain peaks from which one could possibly see the most epic sunrise/sunset they have so far on the trail.
The trail towns of Vermont are friendlier than most of the other states in New England. Everybody waves at us or gives us thumbs up. One of our hitches turned into an afternoon tour of several small towns in Vermont and ended with some delicious slices of wood-fired pizza.
In fact, that very afternoon we got back to the trail and climbed Bromley mountain. In the winter it is one of Vermont’s many ski resorts, but it is mainly vacant in the summer, save the random mountain bikers blazing down its slopes. The Appalachian Trail hiked up one of the resorts green slopes. Bell and I were commenting on how what we were climbing had to have been a black diamond only to find out at the top that it is a green labeled ‘easiest way down’. I guess perspective matters in mountain climbing.
That night we climbed up into the top of a ski lift and hung out on the lift chairs with the other thru hikers. At sunset, Bell and I set up a little picnic with our sleeping bags on the side of slope, eating fried chicken that we packed out from town and watching this sunset unfold right before our eyes.
Then we headed back to our tent that stood directly underneath a ski lift. The Milky Way armed so luminous and vast that night from atop Bromley’s peak. I’ll leave you with a picture of our tent under the next morning’s sunrise.
From the other side,
Pan and Bell
PS. Sometimes this blog makes it all sound very peaceful, but in reality there are some days (and nights) that are far more chaotic. Like today, for instance, Bell and I hustled out of town too hastily. We were anxious to get back on trail and it was already the afternoon so we hurried through resupply and forgot a few things. Toothpaste and bug spray to be exact.
The mosquitos out here are an absolute terror. There are swarms of them. Unless you have experienced this horror for yourself you wouldn’t understand the hysteria. If you stop moving, even for a second, there are at least five of them on you within seconds, but you are too distracted by the three of them constantly hovering around your ears, buzzing like tonitus. By the time you get one of them on your legs the others are gone. And they are hard to kill. You have to clap them to death. They are like evil faries. . . Tomorrow we are covering ourselves in mud like animals to avoid them. In the words of our friend, Edge, ‘we are living like savages out here, God help us.’
And yet it is on days like this that I find it was easiest to write smooth prose about beautiful vistas and breathtaking moments. I wonder what that says about myself. . . Just another unresolved postscript, I guess.
from the other side 