Day 63: Bennington Zero, and The Demise of the Two-Month Beard

Summary

June 27th

Autumn Inn, Bennington, VT 

Zero day

Couldn’t sleep last night, so I queued up A Walk in the Woods on my iPhone. I’ve watched it a number of times before. Now I was watching with the eye of someone who has seriously considered ending a trek. I remember thinking that originally I felt the film ended too abruptly. And that the scene with them trapped on the cliff had been added gratuitously to add some at least perceived life or death struggle. But last night/this morning it occurred to me that that’s how a hike ends: abruptly. And there’s no real knowing what may trigger the decision. 

And I don’t remember crying before when Bryson returns home and is reunited with his wife. But that was probably due to the movie running until 2:30am. I was exhausted. Yeah, that’s the reason. Not missing Debbie and Home. Tired. Yeah…

Still, even with the extremely short night’s sleep, I woke up around 7am, thinking my only window of opportunity for doing my laundry was when the laundry room opened for the morning, so I actually went down there 20 minutes before it was supposed to open. And it was open. And unoccupied. Yay, clean laundry! 

The other thing I wanted to do this morning was revisit the center of town, where I saw a closed barber shop yesterday. It was time to get cleaned up. I had a significant wait, but didn’t mind because I could catch up on some internet business. It cost me $30, but I look more like acceptable company now. 

I got an email from Deb this morning with some suggestions for moving forward; foot wear, and food, and slackpacking. It means so much to me that she supports me in this, this wild and crazy adventure. 

So, it looks like a strategy for dealing with wet feet is to use a water barrier wax or lotion to help keep the feet from absorbing water. And it turns out that my foot lubricant is just such a product. It just recommends applying more of it and a couple times a day, as opposed to my current regime of applying it once in the morning. So I will continue to use the stuff and see how the feet hold out. I also picked up some anti-fungal ointment for between my toes. 

The other thing I did today was plan out the next three to five days, getting me past Manchester. It’s important to have vision of the short term plan to keep oneself motivated. So, if I can control the damage to my feet, AND if I can get past the feeling of soggy socks and shoes, AND if I can find a way to hit the coming climbs with enthusiasm and strength, then the game’s still afoot (in a manner of speaking). 

I’m crossing my fingers that I can fall asleep  fairly quickly, and that I get a reasonably early start on the day.