Live Free or Die!

Sherry
Jul 21, 2019
5 min read

As we exit Vermont, the Green Mountain State, and enter New Hampshire, the Live Free or Die State, with the White Mountain Mountains National Forest looming in front of us, this adventure is taking on quite a different feel. There is an unspoken thought in the back of each of our minds to just get this over with as quickly as possible so that we can get on with our lives and on to our the next “thing”, whatever that may be.

There are two of us off trail now. Lily spent her last day in Vermont vomiting blood. We were in a fortunate location to get her to a wonderful facility, S.A.V.E.S. Small Animal Veterinary Emergency Services. While vomiting blood is never a good thing, they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Her heart sounded great, they did full blood work that all looked fine, and she wasn’t really acting sick. We decided to treat her for a few things as a precautionary measure, including the possibility of stomach ulcers since the last couple of months have been a big change and quite stressful for her. If we let her, Lily would quite literally run herself to death, so we decided it would be best to have her spend her days with me instead of hiking any full days with Jim. (Two down…and then there was one)

Driving into Hanover to get a cup of coffee before sending Jim off for his first 20 miles in New Hampshire, we run into “Taco Money” who should be much further ahead of us by now. Turns out, he cut his hand with his pocketknife, and it became so badly infected that it became septic. Fortunately, he ran into a hiker who was a registered nurse who told him how serious it was and that he needed to get to a hospital to take care of it—why men chose to “tough it out” and ignore potentially serious injuries I will never understand! So, he had spent several days in Hanover to heal and was getting back on the trail just about where Jim was.

They ran into each other on the trail near the end of the day and they hiked to Jim’s pickup point together. We gave him a ride to the hostel where he was planning to stay to an outfitter to replace his water filter system. He accidentally left his at a river crossing, and by the time he realized it he was too far away to hike back up for it. Jim, who was behind him at the time, saw it and faced the hiker dilemma that we all struggle with upon finding something on the trail—particularly something as important as someone’s water filtration gear: leave it, or take it with you in hopes of finding the owner. The problem with taking it is that it only works if the person is hiking the same direction as you, which you have no way of knowing. So, Jim leaves it and feels awful when he finds out it was Taco Money’s.

Jim summited Smarts Mountain and Cube Mountain that day. It is the first time I have ever heard him complain about climbing. Also, he rarely complains about any kind of physical pain, so when he mentioned his quad hurting while descending Cube I took note. Somehow I talked him into taking a zero to rest his potentially injured quad before taking on Mount Moosilauke, which was to be another 20-mile day of steep climbing. Like many climbers, he hiked Moosilauke going southbound on the trail because there is less elevation gain in that direction making it a bit less treacherous. I ended up picking him up early at a spot I found at the 15-mile mark. I knew that he was hurting by the slow pace he set limping towards the car.

The next few rainy days we spent icing Jim’s leg while thinking about and discussing our options. Jim decided he would use KT tape on his leg and see how it felt one more time. His next hurdle was North and South Kinsman Mountain, another 17-mile stretch of steep climbing. At his expected completion time Lily and I hiked a few miles up the trail to meet him, stopping at a river crossing that I didn’t want to tackle. We sat by the river and waited…and waited…and waited. I knew it must not be going well and hoped he would be able to make it down the mountain without doing to much damage to his injured leg muscle. It was really loud where we were waiting because it was such a large river rushing over huge boulders. Lily was either bothered by the volume or her inability to hear anything else around her and was getting antsy, so we decided to hike back down to wait in a quieter spot. We waited…and waited…and waited. Jim made it down the Kinsmans, but it was clear to both of us that he would need several weeks of healing time before he could do any more climbing. There was no way to heal while hiking, but Jim didn’t want to sit around at camp in the meantime. He spoke the unspoken—he was ready to go home and get on with our life.

We had a few more things we wanted to see and do before we left the eastern part of the states, so we decided to take a road trip. We drove to Maine to see what it was like. We went to Niagara Falls. We would have drove up into Canada, but we didn’t have our passports with us. We drove along part of the Erie Canal to Lake Erie, seeing Lake Erie in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. We have some friends and family to visit on the way home, and hope to drive through some southerly states along the way. Hopefully, there will be enough days without rain to see a few more places and things as we wander towards New Mexico. But we are tired, travel weary, and anxious to be home.

The first response people usually have upon hearing we are all off trail now is to be sorry. Don't feel bad that none of us will be completing the Appalachian Trail because we don't feel bad. We celebrate Jim's 800 miles! It has been a great adventure. We weighed our options and made a deliberate decision. There will be more adventures in our future I'm sure. I hope you have enjoyed following along on this one…