24 Hours on the Trail...

Hey! It's Lydia here, hacking into Kim's blog to report on my 24 hours on the trail with Kim and Green Lite.

First off, I am in complete and utter awe of those two - as I sit here nursing my blisters and aching legs, I cannot fathom how they have already made it over 1600 miles on foot.

I met up with Kim and Green Lite in Vermont close to the Massachusetts border. I can't tell you how happy I was to see Kim! Despite spending the last three months in the wilderness, Kim looks virtually the same - her hair is a bit shorter and her lean muscles put me to shame, but she's still Kim.

We met up in the late afternoon, so we had a nice 5-mile stroll (read: steep climb) to the spot where we camped for the night, which was a lovely dirt patch called Porcupine Ridge. A couple was also camped there, and it turns out the wife was an '02 Dartmouth grad. The '02 told Kim that she and her friends used to have a competition during sophomore summer to see who could kiss a thru-hiker! Let's just say that tradition must have fallen by the wayside by the time we were sophomores...

Kim and I woke up at 5:30 a.m. yesterday morning to get a head start on our day's hike (we were aiming to be at a road crossing 18 miles away by 2 p.m. for my mom to pick me up). It's a strange schedule out on the trail - breakfast at 6 a.m., lunch around 10:30, continuous eating throughout the day, dinner at 6, and bed at 9 p.m. As Kim said, 9 p.m. is the hiker's midnight.

Anyway, we hiked over Glastenbury Mountain, which has a fire tower at the top with beautiful 360 degree views of the forest. One book on the AT calls the mountain "hauntingly beautiful," perhaps because in the 1940s at least eight people vanished off the mountain at different times. Let's just say it's a good thing we decided not to tell ghost stories Wednesday night, and I was fairly happy to make it off the mountain.

I noted earlier how I am in utter awe of Kim and Green Lite, and I can tell you it is because of how much I struggled out on the trail yesterday! At about mile 14 of yesterday's hike, my ankle was screaming with pain and I pulled off my hiking boot to find a blister on my foot about the size of two quarters put together. When it was apparent we were going to really push it to meet my mom at 2, Kim and Green Lite both took some weight from my pack. At nearly mile 17, Green Lite ran ahead to direct my mom back to a fire access road a bit closer in order to pick me up.

After Green Lite took off, Kim and I spent a considerable amount of time envisioning the exchange between Green Lite - who at this point has quite a bushy beard - and my mom. As it turns out, my mother and my 16-year-old sister (who was also in the car) had never heard of the idea of a "trail name," so when Green Lite introduced himself (and then hopped in the car), they were quite confused. My sister said she thought he must have been the son of a celebrity to have such an odd name, and when we said goodbye to Kim and Green Lite, my mom said, "Goodbye Green Leaf!" She had forgotten his name and thought Green Leaf was a more logical name for a hiker.

The moral of the story is that I feel so honored to have gotten a glimpse of life on the AT with Kim and Green Lite. The people we encountered along the way were so impressed with their speed on the trail. I can tell you, the distance they cover in a day truly is impressive. A man we encountered is planning on covering the same distance in a week that Kim and Green Lite are traversing in two and a half days. In fact, I think Kim and Green Lite are probably just now getting to Manchester Center, VT, which is where this other man plans to exit the trail - in a week!

I'll stop there and let a few pictures tell the rest. But as I said, boy am I impressed.