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12.11.09
How To Hike The Long Trail In Six Days
Derek Pfeffer hiked Vermont's Long Trail in
just six days . . . and YOU CAN, TOO!!! He tells us how to do it by following
these eight easy steps.
Last year I hiked the
Long Trail in six days. Not the whole thing—just the first 55 miles or
so. I planned to do the whole thing, but I quit. Plans don’t often pan
out. I think Rob Burns said something about that.
(STEP 1: Quit after 6
days.)
It wasn’t worth it. I
didn’t want to be outside anymore. I had something to come home to, so I
did.
You’re not making
any sense. Explain yourself.
There is a trail that
goes through Vermont and it is called the Long Trail. And it is long, by
normal standards, though it’s only about an eighth the length of the
Appalachian Trail. It is 272 miles long.
It goes from
Massachusetts to Canada, straight up the spine of the Green Mountains.
It was started in 1910 by James P. Taylor and the Green Mountain Club
and completed in 1930, making it the oldest long-distance trail in
America. When it was completed, they set the mountains on fire to
celebrate.
Most credit it with
inspiring Benton MacKaye to snap the first fern for the Appalachian
Trail, which was completed in 1937. Some say the Long Trail is harder,
though the two actually meet for 105 miles in southern Vermont before
the AT breaks off to the east.
Nationally, the Long
Trail is part of the so-called “Triple Gem”—three long-distance trails
under 500 miles—along with the John Muir Trail (211 miles) and the
Colorado Trail (483).
Enough.
I planned to hike the
whole thing and I don’t know why. I had some failures to mull over, I
suppose, demons to defeat, and that had something to do with it. I also
wanted to endure in something. Anything. I wanted some adventure. And I
wanted to get away from my girlfriend, whom I loved very much.
I prepared for four
months—
(STEP 2: Prepare for
four months.)
—and I hiked alone—
(STEP 3: Hike alone.)
—and I don’t know
why. I wanted to be by myself, I suppose.
I did everything
right, except foregoing toilet paper, which I did on purpose to save
weight. I used hobblebush leaves and my asshole still hasn’t forgiven
me. But I brought all the right things otherwise, synthetic everything,
ultralite most things, fixed blade hunting knife, iodine tablets and so
on.
Coke can stove.
The backpack weighed
four pounds and held everything.
I started on a cold
mid-morning in the first week of August. The sky was gray and stale, and
would soon be rain. I entered the woods unsure of myself, sad to leave
the world, unable to see the end. Where was the end?
(STEP 4: Look for the
end.)
And I walked. Slowly
at first, miserably. Through the mud. I saw a bear. I picked up a large
stick. I got lost. I got wet. I got tired. I got angry. I got lonely.
I woke from restless
sleep in the morning, every morning; scrambled to make breakfast and
pack up the sleeping bag in the flat, white light of dawn. I was not
comfortable and never would be. I was always clawing my way out, trying
too hard to get somewhere else.
(STEP 5: Don’t
appreciate the here and now.)
The trail was dark
and heartless, the woods all-consuming, deep, haunted. Foggy, muddy,
uneven. I felt no ease—only fear and misery, and the uncertainty of when
(or if) I would make it to the next shelter, the stopping point.
Every rotted stump in
my peripheral vision was a black bear, itching to claw my eyes out and
bury my ugly, panic-stretched corpse under a blanket of wet leaves.
Every hiker I saw was
a criminal, a crazed hillbilly looking for someone to do experiments on
in a dimly lit basement somewhere near the New Hampshire border.
All was worry and
death, malice, mistrust—rolling horror in the middle of nowhere. It was
as if I had borrowed the eyes of a paranoid schizophrenic, a madman with
no hold on what really was…
(STEP 6: Fear
everything.)
Those were the bad
times. There were good times, but they wouldn’t come until the shoes
were off and the pack was hanging from a nail under the wooden eave of a
shelter. (There was one exception: on the third day I found myself atop
a little hill called Harmon Hill, in a rare moment of sunshine and
warmth, surrounded by wild raspberries. I picked a handful of berries
and ate them as sunlight washed over me, and I felt like I had stumbled
onto something sacred, reached my hand into the warm belly of Mother
Earth and held onto—if only for a second—the heart. Maybe you do
belong here, said my thoughts. Soon afterward dark clouds moved in,
and I was chased off the hill by savage thunderstorms that would nearly
kill me two hours later.)
Afternoon was the
time to relax, endorphins still crackling from the day’s work and only
shelter, food and rest to come. Relief. Taking the shoes off was
ritual—shoes were for hiking and bare feet were for resting and really
feeling the dirt, being on the earth. Or on the worn 1940s floorboards
of the shelter. Or in a mountain spring. Cold water feels good on tired
feet.
Five days, then day
six. It didn’t start out as the final day. I hiked to the Big Road, VT
11/30, and found a beer sitting there with the words DRINK ME PLEASE
scrawled on it in blue pen. I sat by the side of the road and drank the
beer, then rode into Manchester Center in a red Saab.
I picked up my
re-supply at the Post Office—a Xerox box packed with non-perishables and
denatured alcohol—and wandered over to a deli to sort things out. I
ordered a roast beef sandwich and a large pickle and sat down at a
table. I cut the box open with the hunting knife and sifted through it.
Beef jerky, dried apricots, pound of instant rice. Powdered milk. Mmmmmm.
I took a bite of the sandwich and scanned the deli.
And that is exactly
when things went wrong.
(STEP 7: Scan the
deli.)
I watched small
children laugh and chase each other, winding between the tables and
chairs. I watched two attractive women in tight jeans wait in line. I
listened to an old couple share gossip. I smelled perfume, laundry
detergent. And I was overwhelmed. Here was a playground, a paradise—my
Valhalla.
I felt my eyes turn
into big, sad moons and my chin shrink. It was all too much. It was all
too nice. Here were good, kind people, clean and rested—contented
members of human society, enjoying their sandwiches, with no worries of
being ripped apart by bears or stabbed in their sleep by toothless
strangers.
And there I was.
Wretched. Covered in mud, foul-smelling. Hunched over a Xerox box full
of beef jerky and dried fruits, clutching a roast beef sandwich with
arthritic fingers and pouring drool onto the table.
It was painfully
clear: I had had enough.
I looked out the
window and saw the mountains, deep and looming, and there were no
doubts. My hike was over. I quit.
(STEP 8: Look to the
mountains for guidance.)
I wandered across the
street to a slow-moving stream and waited for the long ride home. It was
sunny for once, and the sunlight burst through the trees and bounced off
the water and all was bright. I meditated—on failure, on adventure. On
who or what I was.
The time for
reckoning had come. Another failure—what good are you? said my
thoughts. Call it quits for good this time. Drop those boots in the
river. Feed those socks to the millipedes.
But wait—where was
the heartburn? Where was the gut rot, the gurgling, churning regret? A
new response to an old story. Adaptation?
Or maybe I knew
something, though I wouldn’t know what until days or weeks or months
later, or years, when I would tell people how to hike the Long Trail in
six days.
It was more like
months, I think. And here’s what I knew, only without the words: that I
had failed, and that it could not have been otherwise. And that
that was okay.
I won’t try to
justify it. Only a true quitter, a man with his finger on the pulse,
would understand, and few react well to our kind. Stay back, they say.
Keep him away from the children!
So be it. They’ll go
their own way, as will their children, and I’ll go mine—for a little
while, at least.
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Derek Pfeffer
is a freelance writer, hiker and accomplished beer enthusiast. |
