The Portable Percussionist: Day 21: Bromley Shelter to Stratton Pond

The weather's lovely, but I feel kind of tired and slow today -- must be all the chairlift excitement and coyote howling of the last 24 hours. I'm sort of getting not-quite a cold; I'm hydrating hard. The trail's pretty, pretty flat, and pretty wilderness-y. At a brook I take some macro water shots:

I've become very fixated on the LT's white blazes, finding it quite unsettling when I'm on a shelter-spur trail and the blazes are blue instead. The blazes become a Morse-code rhythm of reassurance.

This chipmunk was not into being photographed.

Just occasionally, the green tunnel of the trail opens up for a view.

I stopped for lunch break at Spruce Peak Shelter. Hardly any of the shelters still have stoves intact (probably because shelters burn down a lot). I bet this would be a cosy place to stay:

Cheese of the day is a cream Havarti. I eat it first because it seems potentially most sensitive to not being refrigerated. I score it 6/10 on the scale of amazing cheese. I am very happy to have full food-sacks, though.

My lower back/right kidney is twinge-painful for, usually, the second half of each day. I remind myself this is more tolerable than the atrocious ejaculating blisters I'd been expecting, and use the pain as a compass to guide my posture. Sometimes I just lie back on the pack on a boulder, taking "interesting photographs" as an excuse to rest:

I plod on to Prospect Rock, where I run into the Stratton Pond caretaker again (he'd also rolled up for lunch at Spruce Peak). I apologise for intruding on his solitude; he takes off walking at a normal pace and I'm happily left alone with the view:

Some foliage is kicking in. I walk some way on an old logging road, which is easy going.

At the end of the logging road there's a bridge and a stream -- I stop for snacks and water-refill. I'm tired; I hit my head quite hard on the bridge as I stand up with a full water bottle. I'm grumpy, but it's a good reminder to be careful and responsible for myself as I head into the Lye Brook Wilderness. The first designated wilderness area I walked through was intimidating -- the LT itself is "more challenging to follow in the Wilderness Area due to minimal blazing and brushing" (Green Mountain Club 'Long Trail Guide') and the wilderness entry and exit signs warn that rescue efforts take longer in these areas. Recently I've been busting through multiple Wilderness Areas in a day; today I remember not to get complacent. My ankles do what I think of as "warning rolls" -- little sideways dips on easy terrain -- which remind me that bipeds only really function when ankles are working. I need to take care. I swoosh through the unbrushed dry leaves and use my poles to distribute weight when I can. I feel a bit lonely for the miles through this particular wilderness. It's the price of admission to a glorious stumbling upon Stratton Pond:

The trail circles right by the water's edge. Right by the shore, I notice many tiny swimming lizards! Swimming geckos! I root around in my vocabulary for the word "newt" -- I haven't seen one of those since the 1980s. I love their dinosaury bodies and their reaching, slimy fingers:

photograph by Solvin Zankl

Three girls from Burlington are at the Stratton Pond shelter. They're doing a section of the LT, and carrying rather a lot of food. They mention 50-pound starting packs -- I reckon as a proportion of body weight that's similar to my 60-pound starter. They kindly share leftover beans and quinoa; I plod back down to the pond for water refilling.

As the sun reaches a certain horizon-angle, the whole sky turns rich purple. I decide, for some reason, to go and take a pee in the woods. By the time I'm ready to photograph the purple glory (probably less than a minute later), it's gone back to grey: