NY, NY, and lower New England

Hello everyone!  I am 4 miles from the Vermont border, sitting in the Williamstown, Mass. public library.  Williamstown is the home of Williams College, a pretty liberal arts school that kinda takes me back to my days at Miami U in Oxford.  Of course, (as I always brag) Miami is still more beautiful... 

I somehow seemed to have survived the Dog Days of summer. Barely. As I told a few of you already, I was on top of a mountain the day that NY/NJ hit record temperature highs.  Struggling across the rocks, with no tree cover to protect from the sun and having recently drank the last of my water, for 30 or so minutes I honestly wondered if I was going to die.  Ha! Sounds quite dramatic, but I assure you I wasn't being overly so.  My eyeballs felt swollen, as did my brain, giving me a massive headache.  I began stumbling and panicking.  I felt my body temperature rise and there was not a thing I could do about it as town (and water) were still at least 2 miles away, thousands of feet down in the valley, nestled against a lake I could (achingly) see off to my right.  Alone, as BC was hiking ahead of me, I very seriously wondered if I would make it to town.  What an odd feeling...  for only the second time in my life I really felt as though I might actually die (the first being when a plane I was in hit "clear air turbulence" over the Gulf and "nearly crashed" as I like to say).  At last I found the side trail off the AT that would take me into town, and almost an entire mile passed before I heard a trickle of water to my left: a small spring flowing from the rocks with just enough room for me to cup a hand under and bring water to my mouth.  I literally collapsed to my knees and began throwing water on my face, into my mouth.  My head cooled instantly... and I knew I would be okay.  How different it is to pass a summer heatwave in a home or air-conditioned building, while there are some of us lapping groundwater from our dirty hands just to stay alive!  When I finally made it to the bottom of the mountain I saw BC in the distance near a ball field with a garden hose.  Needless to say, we both took turns running through the hose water before finally deciding to spend the next couple of days cooped up in air-conditioned bliss in a hotel.  I heard afterwards that a West Point cadet died that same day of heat-related causes not far from where we were.

So, that was really the only bad thing about the last few weeks on the Trail.  New England has been nice, in general.  The people are great and really helpful to hikers.  The towns and homes are gorgeous, and many of them date to the late 1600s/early 1700s.  The terrain has steadily been intensifying, much to our collective chagrin, but we need to slowly ease ourselves back into the mountains as the Whites are only a few weeks away and consideredy by many to be the hardest part of the Trail.  :(  I hope I do well...

I'd sadly like to state that camera #2 is broken (I know, I know... i have the WORST luck with point-and-shoots) and that camera #3 was ordered and recieved last week... so I will continue taking pictures that I'll hopefully have time to finally post once this whole walk is over.  Again, all apologies for not being able to do it now but there is just NOT enough time in the day.

BC and I have been traveling as of late with a lot of people we met early on in Georgia and North Carolina.  There's Velvet, Bumblebee, Guinness and her dog Ally, Swamp Dawg, etc.  It's nice to have old friends back again.  I've been thinking a lot of the end of the trip (which doesn't seem so far away now) and summiting Katahdin.  I wonder who will be with me on that day... I hope it is some of the friends I'm hiking around now. 

The colder weather has started since we've been heading north, and I asked Dad and Becky to send my winter gear back to me.  I finally have my sleeping bag back after a few months without it!  This means no more sleepless cold nights.  Both BC and I are wishing for cold days again, as we do so much better when it's chilly. 

I can't believe we really have less than 2 months left.  BC and I are guessing October 1st or so for our last day.  We will have to take our time in the Whites (of New Hampshire) and western Maine, so that may slow us down more than we'd like... but we see no reason right now that we will not make it to Katahdin by the first week of October.  Hence, much of our daily conversations have revolved around what we're going to do when we get off the Trail.  As for him, he's leaning towards going to college... which I highly support.  I think I will probably move back to Ohio for a while, work near my parents' home in Wilmington, and save money while I send out resumes to various state parks across the country, hoping that one of them will eventually want to hire me! 

We've been seeing southbounders on a daily basis lately.  Most of them left Maine in June or July.  They still have soooo much further to go!  We're glad we're nearer the end than they are.  Also, they smell really bad! HAHA!  I don't know what it is, but us northbounders NEVER smelled like that...  

I'm nearly out of time on this computer, though I had more to say.  I should be taking another day off somehwere in Vermont next week, so hopefully will have prepared a more interesting, fact-filled blog update by then. 

Thanks for reading, and until next time...