Andrew's "Journal": Day 82

   Hey Friends and Fam!
   These days I'm so exhausted at the end of each day that I've all but stopped writing in my daily journal, thus the quotations in the title. So now I'll try my best to give coherent anecdotes about the last week or two:

   Almost through Vermont!! We've discovered unpasteurized apple cider during apple season in VT: Ambrosia, people, look it up. We've learned that the A.T. is MUCH easier south of New Hampshire (despite what Northbounders have told us)!! We've cranked up the mileage and learned to overeat (a staple of the N. American skill set). And we've hiked over 1/4 of the entire trail!!! Every day my list of things to be grateful for grows by at least one, so the official subtitle of this post is: Grattitude: +1

   We walked into Bennington, VT shortly after my air mattress had started to come apart, ballooning up on one end. It started out like one of those floating lounge-chair things that you might use in the pool, with a nice built in pillow. But the bubble grew beyond pillow size and the whole thing became unsleepable.
   So I got a new one shipped to Bennington. +1
   I did this from the top of a mountain (because I have a magical box that can show pictures of bubbly mattresses to people in Seattle, send my voice along with the pictures, and find addresses in Vermont... from the top of a mtn! Some people call it a 'phone'... I call it magic to be grateful for). +1
   After I had it sent, I noticed (in our little travelers' companion book) that the place I had the package shipped would accept packages 'for guests.' And the next two days were spent worrying that they would see my name on a box, check the guest register, and send it back, via FedEx, to Seattle :( BUT when we walked out of the woods and onto VT-9 (5 miles east of Bennington) hungry, cold, and tired, Lysandra's cousin picked us up in a larger magical box (+1) that held heat inside it's glass walls (+1), and carried our delicate human bodies faster than they were ever designed to travel (+1)... on a strip of oil (+1)... fueled by oil... (+1)
   When we arrived at the Autumn Motel it was still morning. I was still hungry and tired, and saw three possibilities:

1. Maybe they denied the package.
2. Maybe they'll charge me a 'handling fee' of ten bucks or so.
3. Maybe they'll refuse to give me the package unless I get a room for sixty bucks. 

   ...The fourth possibility, that I had not anticipated, is that there would be no one behind the counter, that the door would be unlocked, and that my package would be right there out in the open with my name on it (+1).    As we drove away with my package I considered the possibility that (more than being rude) I had just crossed some fine line of mail fraud and/or theft. But all in all, as we stopped for coffee (+1), it was shaping up to be a pretty good morning.

   Moving on: There's SO MUCH TO WRITE!!!
   We've had our first really long stretch of rain on the trail. After three days of hiking in the rain, you're feelin' pretty good if your boots are dry. After 7 days your boots have no chance, and dry socks (+1) lose their special something (-1). You're so excited to put them on your feet in the morning, then you stick your feet in your boots and wonder, 'What was all that warm fuzzy business, about 10 seconds ago?' You get the point.
   So the weather is harsher: the last two mornings it's been raining cats and dogs (or 'frogs' if you're french) and the temperature has been close to freezing.
   BUT The terrain is WONDERFUL!! (+1)
   The Vermonters are GENIUS!!! ... they've done this thing (some kind of fancy new trail maintenance perhaps?) where they've taken dirt and filled in all the cracks between roots and rocks! They call it: Topsoil. If the word feels foreign on your tongue, check quick! ...odds are good you live in Maine. Some of my more geologically savvy friends and family might already know what I have only recently learned: Glaciers ripped off all the topsoil from Maine! It's true! Like a thief in the night (or maybe like an unnamed backpacker behind the front desk of a small motel in rural Vermont?) glaciers took all the dirt from Maine, straight down to the bedrock, to the coast.

{Sidenote: If you live in Cape Cod: The dirt you live on was stolen from Maine, please give it back.*}

   So the rain is rain. And it's challenging and uncomfortable, and all that you might expect. To sweat in rain gear or walk in the rain? But Fall is absolutely gorgeous and we have things like hot chocolate, and fires, and views, and foliage to make it all worthwhile. Walking through the woods for 10 hours a day gives you so much time to think about things, and with all the distractions of life, that can be a precious thing. Time to think! Without the constant barrage of marketing, good intentioned but misled advice givers, temptations and distractions. Granted, too much time alone can result in false conclusions and unibomber-esque self editing loops. But too much time alone is hardly the rarer of the two commodities... at least in my experience of the world.

Anyway. I'm done rambling. Here are a couple cool things I found that I'm sharing: 
An interactive map of the Appalachian Trail (basically this should be the 'scenic route' that comes up if you choose 'walking' as your mode of transportation between Georgia and Maine): AT interactive map
And here's a cool comic I found that probably took an astounding amount of drawing time at a computer:  Click and Drag (this XKCD comic)

{*...unless, like a certain (still unnamed) backpacker, you feel a bit like that 'stolen' thing is yours, you know, kind of, in a way, and well, possession being 9/10 of the law and everything... let's just let bygones be bygones.}