Day 49: A Sweet and Easy Day

Summary
June 13th

West Cornwall Rd. to Pine Swamp Brook Shelter

NOBO mile #1484.3

Tolmann’s daily miles 1.1 (record for shortest day!!!)

Tolmann’s total mileage 460.6

The reason Debbie had postponed our visit on Sunday was that she had an outer ear infection; a very painful, tight, blocked condition. She got ear drops from Urgent Care, and was waiting for them to be effective. Her plan was to wait until she felt better before coming out, but when I had my phone emergency, she decided to come out anyway, given I was going to have the motel room in any case. 

So she wasn’t really feeling very good; her ear was still uncomfortably blocked. Still, I was so grateful to be with her. 

This morning I needed to get to business; Deb had filled her car with everything that even resembled my gear, and I needed to work out what combination gave me the best chance at success. I had asked her to bring my smaller pack, as well, with the idea that my hammock setup was bulky enough that by removing it, I might fit everything else into the smaller pack’s 48 liter volume.  

There’s this joke/observation that when a thru-hiker stops someplace, a pack explosion ensues, in that the contents of the pack can fill any space that is available. The resulting explosion as I tried to get a reading on my situation almost hid Debbie from my sight as she lay on the bed. 

Unfortunately, the smaller pack experiment was unsuccessful. I came close to getting everything in, but almost everything is not everything. 

But the larger pack took it all, with room to spare. I was even able to remove the side bags and get their contents in the main pack, resulting in a leaner, better-balanced pack. Sadly, the guitar fell victim to the purge. I replaced it with a Kala Waterman ukulele. It’s lighter, less bulky and more weather-resistant. This will force me into getting more of an understanding of transposition and how to lay melody onto the minimal chords that four strings allows.

So, I managed to get the pack set and we were able to leave the room by check out time at 10am.

Then it was a run to the IGA and pharmacy in Kent to fill some supply gaps. Easily done. 

Debbie had thought to put one of my guitars in the car so I could enjoy playing a full-size, honest-to-god guitar. I asked the woman at the register at the pharmacy if there was a park nearby with a pavilion, so we could sit out of the sun, and she suggested the Macedonia Brook State Park just a few minutes away. So we went in search of a place that would welcome our music. 

The State Park was perfect: a picnic table near the brook with the feeling of being deep in the forest. And bonus points for a new-ish privy nearby for comfort. 

I pulled out and tuned up the guitar, strummed, and the full spectrum of tones rolled out. I had begun to accept the bright, dulcimer-like sound of the backpacker guitar as the norm, but the rich low tones were almost like sipping drinking chocolate. 

So I began to play and sing. Debbie refrained, at first. But then she quietly sang along, and then more confidently, until we were singing our duets with harmonies, and she asked to sing some of her solo songs. 

It turned out that singing was having a positive effect on her ear, even to the point of unblocking occasionally. She was very excited about it; it had been days since she felt like there was any positive change. 

So we sang for a couple of hours, then packed up to go get lunch. We still hadn’t locked down our plans for after lunch, although originally the thought was to have supper together, and then I’d do short miles to a place I could camp, and she’d go home. 

So we lingered over lunch; me, for my part, luxuriating in just being with her. 

Then we discussed the afternoon: she felt like our lunch had satisfied her desire for us to eat a meal together, so now it was just a matter of me finishing getting ready for the trail and her dropping me off. It all made sense, especially as the weather was beginning to get iffy; thunderstorms were brewing, and I wanted a chance to get to the campsite and stay dry. 

As we were driving towards the trailhead, I got that familiar knot in my chest, and felt the choice point: I could continue, get dropped off, and start walking again; or I could just go home now. I give Debbie a tremendous amount of credit: she is helping me stay strong and committed.

And so, it was time for our visit to end. It felt incredibly short, but not like those pre-marriage times together where separating felt like a tearing apart. This was more like what it really was, each of us taking the next step on our own paths, secure and confident that those paths will intersect over and over and over again. 

So the trail became my reality again (with an extra added sense of paranoia about losing my phone; probably a healthy reaction). And part of that reality was that at .3 miles, I would encounter the “boulder squeeze”, listed in the guide as being very similar to the “lemon squeeze” in NY. That’s the place I had to disassemble my pack and carry it through in pieces, taking me 40 minutes to get everything on the other side.

With my new leaner and lighter pack, I was hoping there would be no need to disassemble anything (not that there was anything left to take off the thing!). 

After some semi-strenuous climbing, I reached the bottleneck. And, while I had to move slowly and canted to the left, and I scraped a little bit, I didn’t even have to take the pack off. Score one for the leaner pack!!

And then it was a bit of a race as the thunder grew closer, and I climbed up and up towards the shelter. 1+ miles equals something more than a half hour, especially when ascending steep trail. But as the thunder sounded over head, the sign for the shelter came into view, and I dropped my pack under the lean-to’s overhang. It didn’t start to rain for another 20 minutes or so, and then lasted only a few minutes, so the drama was really just in my head…

At the shelter I met Lobo, a young woman thru-hiker coming up from Georgia. She got her trail name from having worked in a couple of different wolf sanctuaries. Later, I met Billygoat (an older dude) and a young guy named after a character in South Park, maybe “Tweak”? I’m doing better with initiating and staying in the conversations out here. 

Lobo and I took opposite walls in the shelter, since it still threatened rain and I didn’t want to pack and carry a wet tent. There were notices in the shelter that there had been increasing bear activity around the shelter, but since there was a bear box, we weren’t too worried. What worried us more, I think, was the chorus of coyotes that sounded like it was just behind the privy… although was probably much further away. Probably…

That night we were entertained by the coyotes a couple more times, and more than once I heard something (or more than one something) getting at the bear box; chain rattle, something scraping and banging on metal. With that, the closeness and heat of the air in the shelter, and the mosquitos whining in my ears, sleep was a little hard to come by. But not impossible…