Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [103]
As if the lightning and thunder weren’t bad enough, next came the hail.
This was my first hailstorm on the trail, and the marble-sized beads of ice stung me and left raised red welts on my skin. It felt like someone was pelting me with stones. To make matters worse, the slick rocks and icy footing made the path treacherous. I slid over the small balls of ice that collected at my feet, like a child trying to roller-skate for the first time.
There were no shelters nearby, and I didn’t have my tent to set up because I was slackpacking. The closest building was the lodge at the top of the mountain. I was worried about climbing to higher elevations in an electrical storm, but it seemed like my only option.
Just when I came within view of the summit, the storm stopped. As quickly as it had started, the lightning and hail vanished. I slowed to a walk and caught my breath as I walked the remaining two hundred yards to the mountaintop lodge.
When I entered the building, I was dripping wet, and I left a stream of water in my wake as I walked through the lobby. I was chilled to the core, but a wave of warmth came over me when I saw Raptor sitting in a chair by the window.
Looking over at me, he smiled and winked. “You almost had me worried,” he said. Then he pointed me upstairs, where he had placed my pack on a bunk near his in the hiker loft. I was thankful to be reunited with my pack, my tent, and my raincoat. It was incredibly generous of Isaiah to drive my pack up to the summit, but I swore I would check the weather forecast before I accepted another slackpack.
After taking a shower and warming up, I met Raptor downstairs for a lasagna dinner. When we finished eating, we left the lodge and walked over to the lighthouse monument that crowned the summit. Sitting on the gray stone benches nearby, we watched the sun change shapes: from a globe, to a semicircle, to a line, to a dot . . . and then it was gone.
To the south, the large white plume of a thunderhead changed from pink to purple in the dimming sky. Above our heads, there were golden jet streams that pointed away from the farmlands of Massachusetts toward the Green Mountains of Vermont.
Staring off at the green ridgeline, I wondered briefly what awaited me in those mountains. But in that instant, it didn’t seem to matter, and neither did the memories of bugs and hail in Massachusetts. I didn’t want to think about the past or the future. I was on top of a mountain at sunset with a friend. The moment was too full for any other thoughts.
17
OPTIMISM
MOUNT GREYLOCK, MA, TO HANOVER, NH—160 MILES
In Vermont, everything is green—really green—and the trail is often choked by lush, verdant plants. The narrow path leads to an increasing number of mountain lakes, which offer refreshment and recreation in the summertime. The mountains of Vermont grow taller than their southern New England neighbors and double as well-known New England ski slopes. The region is dotted with quaint towns that cater to skiers, leaf-peepers, and thru-hikers. They pride themselves on serving delicious maple syrup and local dairy products to all their guests.
A warning to future thru-hikers: When you arrive in Vermont, you will think that you are close to the end—you’re not. At the Massachusetts/Vermont border, there are still 590 miles between you and Katahdin. That’s over a quarter of the trail, and the fourth quarter is the hardest.
Raptor and I parted ways after spending the night together on Mount Greylock. His wife was coming for a visit, and he planned to take several days off the trail. That meant I entered Vermont alone. And as fate would have it, I didn’t see another thru-hiker until New Hampshire.
Being by myself again was hard. Because I didn’t have any company, I started to focus solely on my relationship with the trail, and that wasn’t going so well either. At this point, I expected some reward from the trail: a gold star, or a medal of honor . . . or something.
I spent my first day in Vermont mulling