Before I write my article, I consult my journal. It never ceases to amaze me, that it is not what is written in my journal but what is left out. As you can imagine, when I got off the trail I told everyone who would listen about my adventures. All my friends and relations each have their favorite tale. This is one of my closest friend’s best loved and it is not even mentioned in my log.

My wife had come to visit us as we hiked part of the White Mountains in New Hampshire. On September 19th we left Three Mile Road after having breakfast and decided to hike to highway NH25A, a distance of 25 miles (40 kms.) This would have been a very ambitious trek at the best of times but not only was this the mean old White Mountains but we would be walking with Isabel. Isabel was a hurricane and she was nasty. Well any thru-hiker is use to hiking in the rain but Isabel was making it a little more interesting. I was in the lead with Curly Dan and Naomi some distance behind. I came to what I could tell was a cliff but we were in the storm, so I could not see the bottom. I joyously yelled at the top of my lungs as I stared into the abyss, “Yheeehaaa!” Then I stood on the root of a tree. Isabel’s wind was blowing so hard that it was lifting me up and down 3 feet (one meter). Curly Dan arrived and he too triumphantly yelled into the wind at the cliff’s edge. It was just so exhilarating!

When Naomi arrived she was not so enthused. In fact she was extremely angry with me. She said that she was disappointed in me that I would risk her life just to reach Mt. Katahdin, Maine before October 15th when it closed. She was in tears. I told her that our lives were not in danger and besides I was having fun. She was not convinced.

Anyway we did not have much of a choice. We continued hiking the rest of the day, Naomi begrudgingly and Curly Dan and I whopping it up while Isabel released her fury on us.

That night we met Kim (my wife) at Hiker’s Welcome Hostel in Glencliff. The hostel was nothing more than a barn but it was dry. There were several hikers there. We met Flying Bear, Laughing Bird, Shrek, (who actually kind of looked like him), Detour and Fat Chap. Kim found it hard to relate to thru-hikers because it was as if we spoke a different language. When we shared our trail magic stories we used words that only hikers understood like Sobos and Nobos and cameling up. A Sobo is a Southbound thru-hiker, a Nobo is a northbound thru-hiker and cameling up is when you come across a water supply you drink as much water as you can hold.

We went to sleep with the sound of Laughing Bird laughing herself to sleep.

We left our campsite early on September 6th. We hiked to Upper Goose Pond.. There was a beautiful cabin there on a lake. It had a fireplace and two stories and was equipped with propane lights and a propane stove down stairs. The  caretaker Mary Pat was a nice woman and very friendly and hospitable. There was a man visiting her which I assumed to be her boyfriend. He looked older than me but of course I thought I was 20.
Naomi and I got ourselves settled in. Later a couple of section hikers showed up. They were a nice couple who were falling in love. They too, looked older. It appeared that they were getting over previous marriages.
Anyways, I lugged about a half dozen pails of water from the lake for the camp. Naomi cooked supper on the stove and I had a coffee.  Mary Pat and her boyfriend built a fire in the fireplace. We all sat around the fire while I sang and played my guitar. I sang just about every song I knew and they all seemed to thoroughly enjoy it even though I felt as if I was somewhat out of practice.
The next morning Mary Pat cooked all-you-can-eat pancakes. I did not record how many I ate but I remember that I stopped well short of being full because I was embarrassed of the amount I consumed. I did not want to keep Mary Pat working. She told us where she parked her truck and said that we could leave our packs in it and she would take them to Dalton, Massachusetts. Dalton was our destination for the night.
We missed the trail to her truck the first time and had to double back. We started hiking to Dalton. By chance when we crossed US 20 highway we met Rob Bird letting off some SoBos (Southbounders). Rob Bird was a “Trail Angel” who opened his home up to thru-hikers passing thru Dalton. We planned on staying at his place for the night.
Ever since we left the state of New York, the forest looked more and more like it does at home but today I knew I was getting close to home because I saw my first moose track. When we crossed a road we stopped at the home of the “Cookie Lady’s”. This woman made cookies and gave them to thru-hikers. There was a “hiker box” on her door step. (A hiker box is  a box full of stuff that hikers did not want but put it into the box because it could be useful to another hiker). I pulled a bag of pink crystals out of the box thinking that I had just scored some delicious drink. Upon sticking my wetted finger into the bag and into my mouth I got a very unpleasant surprise. It was laundry detergent! YUK!
We arrived at Dalton at 7pm and the guy at the Shell gas station gave us directions to Rob Bird’s place. We just missed Rob taking thru-hikers to an All-You-Can-Eat restaurant. “Bear Bait” and “Half Step” were there. Naomi and I ordered a pizza. Later Rob returned with Jeff and Alex (two SoBo thru-hikers)  and had us sign a birthday card for Jeff.  I stayed up until 2am jamming with Jeff and Rob, who was a professional musician. When I sang a song that I had written entitled Trail Magic, one of the hikers said, “I’d pay to hear that song.” This inspired me because earlier in the day when I told Naomi that I was thinking of making an Appalachian Trail CD she posed the question, “Who is going to pay to hear your songs, Dad?”
I went to bed a happy man.