musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
falling, gratitude & why i want to return to the trail
take a painting or a mirror down and replace it on the wall with my backpack—but not too high or out of reach. Because I want to be able to grab it and head out the door again. Maybe even on a whim.
I set out on September 9th to hike the 274 miles of the Long Trail across Vermont in 32 days.
My knees held out for two-thirds of it. They lasted 19 days—17 days of actual hiking—some 170+ miles.
I have 100 miles left.
A few people have asked me, “How does it feel to fall short of your goal?”
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Fall short?
Fall short?
I beg your pardon, but I believe I fell tall.
I believe I fell long.
I believe I fell wide.
I fell with a lot of tears. And pain. God knows it was painful. That last day especially.
But I believe I fell full — full of Life. And dare I say, full of courage. Because while it takes a lot of courage to press on, it takes maybe even more courage to say, Enough.
That’s what I think, anyway.
And though I didn’t make it the full 274 miles that’s drawn on the map, I most certainly achieved what I set out to do.
For I returned again—as I’d wanted—to the northeastern forests of my childhood, where I was reminded again of the smell of hardwood forests and curling birch bark. I saw toads again—toads! —and newts and moss and ferns and clover.
I communed—as I’d wanted—with the spirit of my parents, footstep after footstep, and felt their presence in and around me more than I have since their deaths too young some years ago.
I marked my 50th year—as I’d wanted—with something big: I tested my mettle, tested my knowledge, tested my body and my abilities and—despite real fear and anxiety—I did it: I set out on a long solo journey on foot ….that just happened to last 19 days.
Yet I gained so much more than that.
I gained an intimate familiarity with a long swath of Vermont mountain forests.
I lived and breathed a small, excellent corner of our beautiful planet in all its dazzling autumn richness.
I gained intimacy with the sound of silence.
And I gained more Family.
Yes, Family.
For the people of The Trail are a cut above.
Rarely have I met such generosity of spirit. Such good humor. Such goodwill.
Such big, welcoming hearts. Such genuine concern for and support of one another.
I want to go back, and finish those last 100 miles.
I want to expand the embrace of My Family—My Tribe—further.
And I will.
Meanwhile
On this day of Thanksgiving, I’m feeling kinda overcome with gratitude.
Gratitude for my good Life.
Gratitude for The Trail.
Gratitude for all you good people who have helped me along the way—on the Long Trail and on the Life Trail.
To all of you:
Thank you.
And here now is more reason why I want to return to The Trail. Crack open a beer or pour yourself a cup of tea or coffee and come back on the trail with me. I’ve put together a little slideshow of my Long Trail journey, and welcome your company. It will remind you of something we can all be thankful for this day and always: This beautiful, glorious country of ours.
As my dear father would say, Allons-y! —
Let us go—
Dawn’s Chandler’s Slideshow: Hiking Vermont’s Long Trail
Happy Thanksgiving.
~ Taos Dawn
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Read more about my journey:
Dawn’s Walk Across Vermont Installment 01
Dawn’s Walk Across Vermont Installment 02
Dawn’s Walk Across Vermont Installment 03
**Special thanks to infinitely gifted musician Timothy Seaman for permission to use his wonderful music in my slideshow. Check out more of his music at www.timothyseaman.com**
where a walk across vermont ends
Where does a walk across Vermont end?
I can’t tell you.
But what I can tell you is where it does not end.
It does not end on the first day in the first hour or two or three or four with gnats spinning dully in your eyes and ears 
during the greatest September heatwave New England has seen in 20+ years.
I’m not used to humidity.
It does not end when you arrive at that first dark shelter echoing with silence.
Here I am: Alone.
It does not end that first sleepless night of anxiety about tomorrow’s 70% chance of heavy rain for your 13-mile day.
It does not end in the late afternoon of your second day on the endless stone staircase descent. It does not end when you slip on a moss covered stone, the LED screen of your camera + a thin veil of fabric the only buffer between you and a wall of granite.
It does not end with the first warning of no water ahead at the night’s shelter.
It does not end on day 4 with the rumor of a strange fellow “off his meds” stealing food and talking morosely at the shelter where you were planning on staying that night.
It does not end when you push-on, though tired, another few miles to find another place to camp.
It does not end that night of the 12-hour rain your tent proving inferior it does not end with your down sleeping bag getting wet it does not end with breaking camp in a downpour it does not end with your first serious ascent and the trail is a rushing stream bed with 4 inches of rain in 4 days it does not end with the threat of hypothermia it does not end with the first twitch of pain in your good knee.
It does not end with your first prayer to your parents: Help me keep myself safe.
It does not end with that very long very steep wet descent, your knee balking with each downward step.
It does not end with your first phone call to your Good Man and also to your first friend—your friend of 49 years:
I may have to come in. My knee is killing me . . . .
But I’m not going to decide today. I’ll wait and see how tomorrow goes.
It does not end with you wrapping your father’s red bandanna like a bandage around your knee.
It does not end at Eastern Mountain Sports in Manchester:
Do you have any one-man tents?
No, we sold the last one this morning.
Do you have any two-man tents?
We have one left—it’s a great, light-weight and excellent tent, but you pay for it: $399.
It does not end with you buying a 2-man Big Agnus tent nearly identical to the 2-man Big Agnus tent you already own that you left at home because you decided it was too heavy and instead replaced it at the last minute with an ultralight “tarp tent” which sucked in a 12-hour Vermont downpour and which will now be shipped back to arid New Mexico.
It does not end with ice, ibuprofen, Tiger balm, turmeric, and knee braces.
It does not end with you cautiously limping back to the trail.
Rather, you go another 50 miles, and you feel kind of okay. And you think you’ve got this. You think you’re gonna make 
it. Your knees aren’t 100%, but they don’t feel too bad.
And then you go another 50 miles.
And the trail gets more rugged.
And you’re tired.
And you’re hiking all day every day.
And there’s little water.
And water is heavy.
And you’re knees are not happy.
And your knees are swollen.
And your knees tell you We’ve had enough.
And with the trail getting harder and your knees aching more, you decide, reluctantly, reluctantly, reluctantly that your knees are more valuable than your pride.
And you decide you will come off the trail in 2 days. And you simply don’t know that the hardest 2 days of hiking you’ve ever known will be in those next 2 days. Those next 24 miles.
Because then your leg buckles.
And you fall.
And your left quadriceps slams something hard.
And now you have 2 bad knees and one good quadriceps and you hurt more than you ever remember hurting.
Ever.
And you’re trying to stay positive, trying to stay bright, but all you can really think is
This is hard. This is so fucking hard.
And you are in fear of how rugged the trail is, and how much more rugged it is rumored to be.
And you climb and you climb and you climb and you’re dreading the descents, because the climbs are painful, but the descents are excruciating.
And you call your first friend and you plead How much Ibuprofen can I safely take in one day?
Because you’ve already had a lot of Ibuprofen. A lot.
And you call your Good Man and you cry.
A hike across Vermont does not end there because you still have three, four, five more miles of steep terrain and you want to wail but you tell yourself If that guy could cut off his own hand, I can do this. I can get out of here.
And that 19th day of your month-long hike with two bad knees and one good quadriceps you somehow walk those last miles.
And on your 19h day of walking across Vermont you come off the trail.
And you feel victorious. You feel glorious.
For you have just done something you’ve never done before:
You just hiked 170+ miles of the Long Trail.
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Read more about my journey:
Installment 01: my walk across vermont
Installment 02: where a walk across vermont begins
Installment 04: falling, gratitude, and why I want to return to the trail
where a walk across vermont begins
A northbound walk across Vermont begins with the first footstep upon the trail in Massachusetts.
Well… No… really….that’s not quite right.
Really, it begins a few moments earlier with you and your first friend in life—your friend of 49 years—embracing, choking down anxiety and blinking back tears, one of you expressing intense gratitude, the other, a heartfelt wish:
Fare well.
Though really? It begins two days earlier, with a flight across the country, set off with an even more intense scene of embrace, anxiety, gratitude and a heartfelt wish:
Fare well.
Actually, it begins four days earlier, with the final laying out of gear, the last minute removal of items from your pack and placing them back again. The swapping out of books, the exchange of shirts, the addition of another pair of socks.
Well, really… It begins six days earlier with you suddenly deciding that your super-comfy sleeping pad is simply too heavy and you rush to the local REI where you used to work, pick the brains of some of your savvy campy friends and buy a newer new pad that’s half the weight of your other new pad.
A northbound walk across Vermont begins a week before, with the tables in your art studio being buried under mountains of plastic-wrapped energy bars, tubes of nut butters, zip-lock bags of oatmeal and quinoa and chia seeds and powdered coconut milk and New Mexico beef jerky and instant miso soup and pounds of GORP and stacks of metallic-bagged freeze-dried dinners. It begins with you packing up all of that into boxes and shipping them off to places you’ve never been, never heard of, hoping they’ll be there when you run out of food.
It begins twelve days earlier with you preheating your oven, dipping your fingers in a jar of beeswaxy goo, inhaling a smell you haven’t smelled 20+ years and applying layers of SnoSeal to your oven-warmed leather hiking boots.
It begins six weeks earlier with you hankering down with map, guidebook, emails, scribbled notes, your laptop and an 
Xcel spreadsheet to plot out and decide finally on a day-by-day itinerary.
It begins all summer long with a heavily weighted pack and you and your dog hiking each morning across the mountains above Santa Fe. It begins with you pausing for awhile beneath the aspens to paint a little, write a little and make tea if only to test over and over your nifty little stove and your new whiz-bang space-aged collapsible kettle.
A Long Trail walk across Vermont begins two months earlier with a week-long test hike in northern New Mexico with a crew of 14 new old Sole Sisters. It begins with the testing of your sweet new down sleeping bag, and that first new sleeping pad, but mostly with the testing of your 50-year-old knees.
It begins four months earlier in a Taos coffee shop with a map of The Long Trail spread between you and an inspiring young trail veteran, your pen hardly able to keep up as she shares information and insight and memories of her hike along the trail.
It begins five months earlier with the testing of your new internal frame pack in the depths of Utah’s canyon country with good and patient friends.
It begins six months earlier with you tacking up on your kitchen wall Vermont’s Long Trail Map, a brown dashed line of trail meandering its length and a growing collection of post-it notes.
It begins seven months earlier with the commitment from your first friend in life—your friend of 49 years—in managing the travel logistics of getting to and from the trail. It begins with her offer—her insistence—to help.
It begins nine months earlier with writing in ink on your calendar the start and end dates of your hike.
It begins ten months earlier with a barrage of helpful and generous messages from a dozen Long Trail Mentors, in response to your request for tips and insight.
It begins a year earlier, with the commitment from your Good Man to look after your dog while you are away.
It begins two-and-a-half years earlier with the enthusiastic response from your Good Man when you tell him of your desire to solo hike the Long Trail; it begins with his complete understanding when you tell him:
I need to do this alone.
It begins two-and-a-half-years + a day before, when you fall victim to that dangerous equation of a winter day + a warm Taos cafe + a pot of good tea + a laptop + a strong internet connection + your 50th birthday looming + the desire for something big + a memory of a long ago dream. It begins with you falling down the rabbit hole of web trickery and suddenly buying memberships for yourself for the GMC, the ATC and the AMC plus copies of Vermont’s Long Trail Map, Long Trail Guide, The End-To-Ender’s Guide, a copy of A Century in the Mountains: Celebrating Vermont’s Long Trail and a poster of The Long Trail, which you promptly hang on a wall in your bedroom.
A northbound walk across Vermont begins 24 years earlier when you meet a young artist who hiked the Appalachian Trail and she tells you of a beautiful section of it called The Long Trail.
A hike across Vermont begins on a late December day in central New Jersey in 1964.
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Read more about my journey:
Installment 01: my walk across vermont
Installment 03: where a walk across vermont ends
Installment 04: falling, gratitude, and why I want to return to the trail
my walk across vermont
On September 9 of this year I set out to walk across Vermont. My passageway was The Long Trail, the oldest established long-distance hiking trail in the United States. Begun in 1910—two decades before the Appalachian Trail—it courses for 273 miles along the spine of Vermont’s Green Mountains from Massachusetts to Canada.
My desire in walking 270+ miles across Vermont was to unplug from the mechanized world; to withdraw from the crazed speed of 21st-century life and slow down to a 19th-century kind of pace. I wanted to experience the woods again—the forests of my childhood, filled with eastern hardwoods. I wanted to see, smell and walk among red and sugar maples, beech and birch, hickory and oak trees….
I wanted to see green again—the vivid, verdant real green of ferns and moss and deciduous leaves. And I wanted to see those leaves fall, in blazing festoons of shimmering red and orange, gold and bronze.
I wanted to commune with the spirit of my parents. For it was they who taught me to walk, taught me to hike, 
taught me to love forested trails and mountains. And I just knew they would be there, in the coral glow of peeled paper birches, in the tender shoots of fiddleheads and clover, in the gold-brown sawtoothed edges of crackling beech leaves. I wanted to feel my parents close, and knew the New England hardwoods would bring them to me. And I to them.
And maybe most of all, I wanted to find myself there. I wanted to test my mettle. See if I could do it. See if I was still the skilled woodswoman I once used to be.
For back in my teens and early college years, I was quite the backpacker, having taught backpacking skills for many summers. But those days were long ago. And the truth is, I’d never been backpacking alone. Despite all of my experience hiking trails, I’d never spent a night alone in the woods.
Some months before my trip, one of my brothers asked me if I was going to do an overnight test hike.
No.
I did not want to get out there and find I didn’t like being alone in the woods. I’d rather leap into this big thing full on, and, if I found I didn’t like being alone in the woods, then just buck up, deal with it, and walk my way through it. I didn’t want to take a chance of backing out before even trying.
My dream for this journey came to me the summer of 1991. Entering my second year of grad school at the University of Pennsylvania, I spent that summer living with my aunt on Mount Desert Island in Maine, where I worked in an art gallery. There I met artist Rebecca Cuming. She, like me, had a passion for the outdoors. But her passion was exceptional: Sometime in the 1980s she had hiked the Appalachian Trail. The whole thing. Solo.
I was (and remain) in awe of that achievement. I wondered if I could hike the AT…. 2000+ miles and six months? Wow. That’s a h e l l of a commitment. Barely conceivable. I expressed my wonder… and my doubts.
Hike the Long Trail, she offered. You can do it in a month.
I’d never even heard of the Long Trail—didn’t know it overlaps with the Appalachian Trail for 100 miles through southern Vermont, before the AT branches eastward to New Hampshire and Maine.
Intrigued, I went out and bought a small, green-covered publication, Guide Book of the Long Trail.
I don’t know if I ever even opened the book, but it traveled with me as I moved my life across the country from Philadelphia to New Mexico and carved a living for myself in the dusty mesas of the Southwest.
Over the years the book moved in my library from a place of honor at eye-level to a bottom shelf to eventually being shoved 
to the back, a fur of dust and cobwebs growing over it.
Then six or seven years ago as I purged possessions in preparing to move from Taos to Santa Fe, I found it again, and realized it was now more than two decades out-of-date.
I flipped through it, scanning the pages.
So much for that dream.
I tossed it in the wood stove, and the dream turned to ash.
A couple more years dissolved away, and one winter morning I found myself in a cafe in Taos, pondering tea leaves and the fact that my 40s were slipping by with the crest of a half-century of life burning like a question-mark on my calendar and psyche. I wanted to do something—something big—to mark my 50th year. Burning in me, too, along with that calendar mark was the memory of a wistful comment my father made sometime in the last years of his life:
None of you kids is into backpacking anymore. I find that a little sad.
And I remembered my ashen dream of hiking The Long Trail.
Read the next installments about my journey:
Installment o2: where a walk across vermont begins
Installment 03: where a walk across vermont ends
Installment 04: falling, gratitude, and why I want to return to the trail
an aspen sanctuary
A couple days ago I rose before daybreak and drove up into the high mountains above Santa Fe. I’ve been doing this every few days lately, to escape the blistering heat wave that’s enveloped town, but also to exercise My Pup and me. With two backpacking trips coming up, it’s critical that I build up my stamina, strength and endurance.
But I’m also going up there to paint en plein air. And maybe most important of all, I’m going for church time in the cathedral of aspens and evergreen.
Last autumn I discovered a little meadow along a mountain stream just a 15 minute hike from the parking lot. I’ve been to the meadow half a dozen times and only once have I seen other hikers. Likely that’s because I’m up there so early — always I’m one of the first in the parking lot — but it could be, too, that the very steep and rocky trail down to the meadow — and therefore very steep and rocky uphill back to the car — discourages a lot of people.
What I’ve been doing on my outings is weighing my pack with more paint and accoutrements than I really need (paint is heavy), and then hiking down the trail the 15 minutes to the meadow, and then continuing further down another 15 minutes. Then I turn around to return to the meadow, to paint.
santa fe forest clearing ~ by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel (en plein air) ~ 8″ x 10″
This morning though I decided to go a little farther down the trail before turning around. I could use the added fitness. But I’d also never been past the 30 minute mark and was curious to see if maybe another inviting meadow awaited me farther down. If so, we’d stop there to paint; if nothing after 15 minutes, we’d turn around.
And so we hiked down down down down 15 minutes more….
And.
No meadow.
Oh, but I really wanted to find one.
The trail thus far was lovely, ambling along the stream through aspen and spruce and fir. But it was narrow, wedged in between the stream on the left and the steeply sloped forest on the right — a little too crowded if someone were to come down the trail while I was painting.
Hmmm… what to do. The truth is I didn’t have all day to hike.
Five more minutes. Then, if the trail didn’t open up, I’d turn around and return to the higher, familiar spot.
And wouldn’t you know it on the dot of five minutes later the trail leveled out and, though no meadow presented itself, a gorgeous grove of widely-spaced aspen beckoned from the far side of the stream.
Home for the next hour or two.
The long grasses were deep green and dotted with dew. We made our way to a fallen tree and set up our temporary home. I lay down The Pup’s blanket (she’s short-haired and skinny, and starts to shiver waiting for me to finish up painting, especially if I take her pack off; the blanket helps keep her warm on the wet earth) while she munched on grass. I then set about making tea, having brought my wee little backpacking stove and kettle. I pulled out my paint box, lined up my brushes, looked around at the dazzling beauty and pinched myself, overcome with good-fortune. Just as I started to paint The Pup walked in front of me to the foot of my painting view and…… barfed.
~~ sigh ~~
So much for painting paradise.
A few choice expletives muttered, then — regaining focus — I continued with my painting. Usually the panels upon which I paint have a bit of a texture or “tooth” to them. But I accidentally bought smooth panels and have been using them these last couple of times. At first I didn’t like the smoothness at all — it’s a bit like trying to paint on a greased cookie sheet. The paint smears really easily; it’s hard to get solid opaque paint on them. But the more I use them the more I’m kind of digging the way these smooth panels make the paint kind of streaky.
aspen sanctuary ~ by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel (en plein air) ~ 8″ x 10″
Pleased with my painting, I finished the last few sips of tea and packed up.
We headed back up the trail and saw no one else. That is, until we passed through the high meadow and entered the steep woods again. Then, coming down the trail was a procession of about 20 people. We stepped aside to let them pass and I noted several people were quite elderly, being escorted by the arm down the rocky trail. One person being led appeared to be blind. Only a few people had packs.
A couple was bringing up the rear and stopped to admire and pet The Pup. Noting our packs, they assumed we’d been out for the night. I explained that no, I’m merely an artist carrying around a heavy paintbox, and that we went down past the meadow. The man asked what it’s like past the meadow, for he’d never been beyond it. I described the grove of aspen, and encouraged him to hike down there.
But what is this group you’re hiking with, I asked.
It’s a memorial service for someone who died: we’re going to the meadow to scatter their ashes. Otherwise you never see this many people on this trail.
We wished each other well and continued on.
As I hiked upward, after a few minutes something pink on the ground caught my eye.
I hiked on and there was another one…. and another….
and more….
A couple more people passed me.
And it occurred to me that the rose petals must have been a trail for the friends of the deceased: “Go to the juncture where two trails meet, then follow the rose petals — they lead to a meadow. You’ll find us there.”
Go a little further past the meadow and you’ll find me there, in the aspen grove.
[ Note to my subscribers: Apologies if you’ve received a couple variations of this post; been having some issues with WordPress]