Day 1: Journey's End to Shooting Star

Minutes after the taxi driver’s beaten-up Subaru leaves me at the trailhead, I’m floundering on my back in the dirt – limbs flailing – like an upended tortoise. My backpack, which weighs in around 60 pounds (27ish kg, or an average 9-year-old) pulls me back down to earth every time I try to stand. Eventually I roll and slither, worm-like, onto my belly then all fours then carefully crouching I grab my hiking poles and hoist myself unsteadily to my feet. I sign in at the trail register and begin the mile-and-a-half approach trail to the LT.

It is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. The pack's weight and backwards-downwards momentum is almost unbearable. Twenty minutes in, my heart is doing blastbeats and sweat is streaming. I put the pack down next to a stream, sit next to it and swear for a few minutes. In the mud, I wriggle back into the straps then inch, groaning, uphill to the Canadian border.  The blazes turn from blue to white and the Long Trail begins.

The silver post is the U.S.-Canadian border. I almost couldn't be bothered to go and prod it.
 

The LT begins. I high-fived the welcome sign with my left and the first white blaze with my right. 

Immediately, the LT kicks my arse. Up and down, I’m wobbly over roots and slippery boulders on minor, forested mountains. Pushing the pack-weight uphill makes every step a battle. It’s sort of like moving house, all day. Carrying a 13-lb. tent, I suppose I am moving house.

I average something less than one m.p.h., and a few hours in I arrive at the first road crossing – VT Route 105. I sit in a layby and have a quite serious think about calling home and asking to be picked up. Purely because I’ve made a big public fuss about this trip, going on barely wins out over going home. I cross the road and continue south, uphill. Despite the physical challenge of carrying an over-heavy pack, the sharpest, most urgent pain I’m feeling is homesickness. I’m walking alone into the woods, when within a couple of hours’ drive I have a warm bed and three furry creatures I love dearly. I start taking regular crying breaks in addition to my leaning-on-my-hiking-poles-or-a-tree breaks. I keep telling myself: it’s tough, but at least it’s not raining.

It starts raining. I crawl to the top of Burnt Mountain, set my pack down, cry, and send a text home to say I’m within a mile of the shelter (cell phone service is pretty spotty around here, so I tend to check in from summits). Another hiker appears through the trees, strides purposefully to the view, and joyously proclaims “wow”. I hadn’t even looked at the vista. 

I slip and slide down boulders to Shooting Star shelter, where Nathan (the other hiker) already has a tent set up in a clearing. He’s three days past finishing the Appalachian Trail (2,200 miles from Georgia to Maine), and seems to be doing the other half of the Long Trail as a kind of cool-down. His pack weighs 35 pounds. Non-creepiness is quickly established, and he suggests I could put my tent up inside the open shelter (as there’s no flat piece of ground big enough for this 3-4 person abode). I pitch the tent; the shelter is now full. I put all my clothes on, including hat and gloves, and tell myself I’ll see how I feel about the LT in the morning. If I still feel this homesick and defeated, I give myself permission to turn around and go home.

In the morning I tie my boots tight, strap an almost-unbearable weight to my back, and stumble south.