Saddleback

With my caffeine fix secured I left Rangeley today with a decision to make. The next stop is Stratton, where I have a food drop waiting, plus new insoles and ankle compression sleeve. Insoles flatten out over time and lose support, and I have completely shredded my ankle brace, copper fortified or no. So the question is get there in the evening after two hard days, or get there on the morning of the third and take it easy (relatively speaking.) I asked the guy from the hostel who shuttled us to the trailhead if he knew of any spots between the two shelters, and he told of one on an old railroad bed just under 15 miles, which was right in my wheelhouse for today. “That’s near where they found Inchworm.”

Now, I don’t remember the exact details and I don’t want to guess at them, so if you want the whole story it is online (I have no service so can’t look it up now.) But what I can tell you is that Inchworm is one of the few recent deaths on the trail. She lost the trail and became disoriented, and opted to make camp and wait for help. She kept a journal and apparently she waited awhile. Sad and sobering. It’s easy to think of this as a long vacation, or like a semester abroad, or like a mini-retirement, and forget that this is serious business.

It’s hard to transition well from that. I’ll just say that the three miles of windblown alpine zone on Saddleback and the Horn were phenomenal. My home tonight is beside a waterfall, and I’ve got that goofy stealth spot happiness going (until I wrote this that is.) And here’s a picture of a squirrel eating a mushroom. If you need additional cheering up try to find the chittering sound they make online, very different than the gray squirrels I know from New York and way more adorable.