Autumn Rememberies: Hot dustiness, warming up to the Whites

 Back to the Whites!
It was the end of September.

The little cricket was singing:

summer's over winter's coming soon it will be cold.

Duly noted, but not on THIS day.

Hot dustiness: sensual and scrumptious.

It was magnificent.

I will go back there.
Too bad September can't last forever.

Autumn Rememberies: To the 'Daks!

 September. It is easy to be happy in September.
If you happen to be coming from Burlington, Vermont (which I was),

you can ride a ferry across Lake Champlain

from Charlotte (shar - LOT) to Essex, New York,

then drive about 2 hours to the high peaks in the 'Daks

(which I did.)

It was twilight

and the water was rough

and it was windy.

I stood at the bow close to the chain

and felt the spray as the bow crashed into the waves.

It was exhilarating.

Then I camped at the side of a remote road.

It rained all night.

The next day I climbed a favorite peak.
The trail was littered with the Signs Of Golden Happiness.

Clouds were rolling in and out.

It would get so foggy we had to grope our way
from cairn to cairn.

I camped out a second night.
The clouds blew off and the stars came out.

I shared a campfire.
We watched stars and told stories.
It was fun.
Yay 'Daks!

The End.

Summer Rememberies: Moriah and a geography lesson

In the eastern U.S. and Canada
the mountains are all worn down and puny

'cause they are O L D.

Relatively speaking of course.

The Appalachian Range runs from Alabama, way down south,

all the way up to Newfoundland in Canada.

It includes many places I hike regularly,

like the Green Mountains in Vermont,

and the White Mountains in New Hampshire,

but NOT the Adirondacks in New York.

The Adirondacks

(which might be my soul's true home, if you recall)

are part of a range running north into Quebec, Canada.

They were formed at a different geological time
in a different geological way.

See google for details.

So what does all that mean to you and me?

Nuthin' really.
I was just digressing.
I am good at that.
Which is sorta sad becuase it makes me boring.
 Self-eval: Kind-hearted, but lacks focus.
I mean, maybe not kind-hearted ACTUALLY,
but the wish to be kind-hearted is in me.
And I practice kind-heartedness,
to try to get it right
and make it a habit,
so someday, someone might describe me as:
"kind-hearted, but lacks focus."

Anyway...

I was saying...

Becuase they are old and puny,
a mountain over 4,000 feet in the east

is worthy of questing after.

So we climb the 46 over 4,000 feet in the 'Daks,

and the 5 in the Greens,

and the 48 in the Whites,
and let ourselves feel all special about it.

I have 9 left in the 'Daks. Long-ass snotty hikes.

And it's a long-ass snotty drive,

so I decided to start questing in the Whites,

which are much closer to me.

The Whites and the 'Daks are the same, but different.

The hikes in the Whites are shorter,

but steeper and more dangerous.

The 'Daks are more wilderness-like,

with longer approach hikes to the high peaks.

All this to say that I hiked my second 4K peak in the Whites,

called Moriah,

on a nondescript summer day,

with a nondescript group of people,

and it was a ho hum sorta hike.

Ten miles. Lots of elevation.

But it wasn't the 'Daks, if ya know what I mean.

Summer Rememberies: Airing The Teens

The Supreme Queen

Of All That Is Good And Necessary

For The Continued Happiness

Of Teenagers

rested comfortably while remaining alert to the antics of her charges.

They made this awesome bowl and spoon.

They caught this snake twice. Poor stupid snake.











Oops. I dozed off, and look what they did. Sigh.

Summer Rememberies: Discovering The Ultimate Retirement Home

You can stay in this place anytime you want. For free. I swear. I am not making this up. You just have to hike to it. It has a wood stove so you can stay during the winter. Which I did. Am doing. Will do.

(Rememberies have complex grammatical tense requirements --

 about which I know nothing.)

The approach.

The view from the front porch.

The front porch.

The loft.

World class porch sitting.

Da ta! (OSM: I don't remember my nose looking so big.)

Ooooo! I am cute!

I am SO cute that I need TWO pics of me.

The Appalachian Trail Figures Into My Daily Life

 Some people walk the 2,200 miles (3540.5 km for my metric friends)
(I SWEAR! I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!!)
from Springer, Georgia to Katahdin, Maine.
Thru-hikers - those addled souls walking all the way through from Georgia to Maine -
stop in the store throughout the summer.
 Most come in looking a bit dazed.
A few come in bouncy and manic.
They all smell.
Geography Lesson

An Example Of The Thru-Hiker Presence 
  This feller hails from just north of NYC.

He left Springer, Georgia 4.5 months ago.

He smelled ripe but looked fairly clean.

He seemed totally perplexed about EVERYTHING. He was so disoriented that it rubbed off on me and I forgot to ask his trail name.

Some come in with esoteric camping/hiking needs that we can't fulfill, like bulk stove fuel. But mostly they look for little things to make the last leg of their trek north feel more comfortable, like corks, odor neutralizer, ripstop nylon mending tape, jar lids, stove fuel canisters, bar shampoo (oh, am I ever ready for THAT request now) and, the thing for which Dan & Whit's is known on the trail, free day-old sandwiches. Those sandwiches don't appeal to me even when they are fresh, because I was a Deli Slave for an entire Year Of Deli Hell when I first started working at the store. But I digress. So... The End.

Rope and Chain

Rope and chain are next to each other on the way out to hardware.

Wretched heat and humidity finally abate

Five (5) weeks of hikes not worth mentioning, through clouds of bugs in sweltering heat and horrid humidity, gave me the resolve I needed to form a new Rule For Hiking Happiness:

Never hike south of the Berkshires.

Ever.

The trauma of the past weeks of heat and humidity also caused me to abandon one of my Rules For Creating Illusions Of Attractiveness: never wear shorts while hiking. Why did I ever care if my old knees showed or not? From what ridiculously self-centered, vain, delusional, self-concept was I suffering? Whatever... it's over now. Thank gods.

So Sunday was a beautiful day.

The kind of day that makes you feel like taking some pics.

(1) Wrong turn in Montpelier so I "oops-ed" past the lovely gold-domed capitol building.

(2) Got to feel like Awesome Scrambler on the rocks. Probably the rope was not necessary here but it enhanced my feelings of uber-ness, false though they were.

(3) Another pic of rope and rock becuase it was that much fun.

(4) Say hello to Camel's Hump, please. Bee tee dubs, I messed up in a previous post -- Camel's Hump is the third highest spot in VT, not the second. Killington is second and I have been up that one 3 x's, so I am not going to be interested in it anytime soon.

(5) Faires live in this col between the 2 mountains I hiked. They maintained a rule a Utter Silence and commanded that a cool wind blow in from nowhere to shoo the bugs away.

The End

Sometimes I Get Fun Messages On Monday Mornings

'Cause Verne still works a couple hours on Saturday afternoons.

Sad Things

Today is HG's Last Day.

Really.

I am not making it up.

He is retiring.

He is over 70 so I guess it is time and all.

Click here to remember HG.

Sigh.
He told me he worked 65 hours a week for the first 35 years.

Then he dropped down to 46 for the last 9.
He said back in the day they used to sweep the floors EVERY DAY,
first thing in the morning
WITH A BROOM -- the ENTIRE STORE!!
I just can't imagine the store without HG.
I went down special this afternoon to heckle him for the last time.
OMG I am going to miss him!!! (there... 6... tada!)

I told HG to look happy and wanted to retake the photo but he said that this was close enough. I told Verne to look sad. I think he did a good job.

Camel's Hump: second highest spot in Vermont, second time

Walkin' Blues by I forget who

Saturday, June 22:
same weather, same pants, different peak, VERY hot feet

Strawberries

They have finally arrived.

We accept the Strawberry family's regal arrogance

because old-fashioned,

local strawberries are

A W E S O M E!!

PSTVD: Long-winded self-aggrandizing self-centered hiking rant

I acquired Post-Swiss Traumatic View Disorder
while going over all the photos from last summer's Swiss hiking trip.

Did I really need 21 pictures of that cloud?

REALLY??

The Matterhorn is nice and all but 56 photos of it????

I DON'T THINK SO!!!!

So I decided I needed an adventure to cleanse my esthetic lens.

I was slow getting started because I also acquired

Post-Swiss Traumatic Hiking Clothes Disorder from looking like

Klutz Bag:

The Incredible Shrinking Hiker

soooooo....

I spent a lot of time rooting though my stuff looking for a pair of hiking pants that made me feel like

Old Lady Sexy Bod Tight Pants.

Note: PSTHCD is frequently confused with an obscure condition acquired from smoking too much Thai stick while on holiday in Switzerland.

OK, back to the matter at hand. I finally found a pair of black, hip hugging, stylishly belled hiking pants that I had dismissed years ago as being "too young" for me. WOO HOO!! Just what I needed for this adventure.

I decided to walk to the highest spot in Vermont. Long time readers with an intact organic google function in their wetware will recall that I had been close to that spot before. All others click here

===>  MOUNT MANSFIELD #1

Mt. Mansfield #2 Salient Points:

(1) Gorgeous Day

(2) GREAT PANTS !!!!!!
(Yes, I know that there are now twelve (12) exclamation points in this post, but so far I have not received any warnings from the Blogger Police regarding profligate exclamation point usage.)

(3) HUGE yummy gluten free cookie to think about on the uphill slog

(4) Enough uphill slog to provide respite from the daily drone of horizontal walking

(5) You didn't think it would be lonely at the highest spot in Vermont on a gorgeous day, did you?

(6) The reason I could get there this time was becuase I came at it from a different direction, so I hiked past the summit until I found the cliff that had stopped me 2 years ago.

I WIN!!

  

You Think You Know A Place But...

One Of The Things I Learned
From Got Dinner
On That Thursday He Took Me All Over The Cellar

Note:  

This information contributes to the development

of a deep understanding

of important stuff.

The cellar closet that was used for

secret banana box lid storage

used to be

THE ONLY BATHROOM IN THE STORE!

This pic serves a two-fold purpose:

(1)
to remind you of the weirdness of having a secret banana box lid storage closet in the cellar of a general store

and

(2)
to show you

THE GRAFFITI!!!!

You didn't know we have graffiti, right?

Well, we do.

Becuase we are special.

It is not the ONLY graffiti either.

But you will have to wait for the other graffiti

becuase this post

IS ABOUT A BATHROOM!

O N W A R D... 

LEFT OVER TOILET PAPER FROM THE OLD DAYS!!

How amazing is THAT??

Imagine this as your only bathroom option.

Not all that much privacy involved.

Those were different times.