musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
autumn across america
Late afternoon fence line, Brush Creek Ranch, Wyoming. Photo by Dawn Chandler
When I was a teenager there were two places at home where I liked to do my homework. If I really needed to concentrate — say when writing a paper — I would work at my little desk in my tiny bedroom. At the end of a narrow-book-lined corridor upstairs, it was about as isolated as I could get from my family.
But mostly my favorite place to study was in the downstairs front hall. The hub of the ground floor, it was just a few yards away from the kitchen, where in the late afternoons my mother would be found cooking supper, filling the house with hearty fragrance, always with NPR or PBS in the background. This time of year — if we were lucky and the mood struck her — the kitchen aromas might include a nod to her New England upbringing with the perfect autumnal pairing of apple sauce and gingerbread.
Warmth, good smells, a backdrop of simmering sounds, the front hall had a bit of the ambience of a coffee shop: solitude, but not too much solitude; quiet, but not too much quiet; good energy, but not frenetic.
I worked most school days at the front hall table — some might call it a desk, with its two drawers — which sat beside the stairs, across from the heavy front door. The table hailed from the 19th century and was dinged and scratched with history. Its couple of drawers were crammed with phone books (remember those?), old PTA rosters, county info, pads of ruled yellow paper, and misfit pens and pencils. On its surface sat a phone, and next to that a reading lamp as well as a small miscellany of “nature books.” These books were of absolutely zero interest to me. I don’t remember ever cracking them open, though my parents might occasionally reach for the Peterson’s guide if an unusual bird showed up at the dining room window feeder. To me the books on the front hall table were nothing more than hallway decor.
Memory sketch of the front hall table in my childhood home.
Note the left drawer pull is missing; in its stead is an irremovable rusty screw, (wrapped in tape to prevent injury).
Years later when my parents made the tough decision to downsize and move out of my childhood home, a few hundred books made it to their new apartment, while hundreds more were donated to the local library. I brought back boxes of books to my New Mexico home, but the small collection of outdated nature books on the front hall table were not among them.
But the front hall table was! and it now sits in my own “hall” at the intersection of my kitchen, living room, bathroom and studio. Frequently the site of writing and watercolor explorations, the surface is once again cluttered with my “homework.” The drawers once again contain the accoutrements of communication: pens and pencils, assorted papers and envelopes, and town and county info. Here is where I often work on my weekly TuesdayDawnings and — as now — the occasional blog post.
One autumn day last year as I sat here at the hall table crafting an October edition of TuesdayDawnings and researching autumn verses, I chanced upon a beautiful statement:
Our minds, as well as our bodies, have need of the out-of-doors. Our spirits, too, need simple things, elemental things, the sun and the wind and the rain, moonlight and starlight, sunrise and mist and mossy forest trails, the perfumes of dawn and the smell of fresh-turned earth and the ancient music of wind among the trees.
The author of those words is one Edwin Way Teale, a writer unknown to me although his name seemed vaguely familiar. It seemed the quote had been excerpted from a 1956 book of his titled Autumn Across America.
Intrigued by the appealing title, I decided to look up the book, never expecting that doing so would suddenly catapult me to being 17 again sitting at the front hall table poring over my homework with sounds of my mother emanating from the kitchen.
For the book cover of Autumn Across America was instantly familiar to me, the recognition so immediate and palpable that I it caught my breath: it was one of the books that had sat for some 40 years in the little tabletop library of our front hall.
How many times all those years ago had I looked up with desperation from the cryptic equations in my algebra homework and stared hopelessly at the golden spine of my parents’ copy of Autumn Across America? All those years ago it had kept me company most every school night as I grinded over my homework. Though I’d never read it — never paid it any mind at all — its cover now, 35 years later, seemed to smile at me from my computer screen as though it were an old friend.
I dove into a search for used books — and in a click I bought it.
Autumn 2019 was mostly past when my new old copy of Autumn Across America finally arrived, by which time my attention had turned to the poetry and expressions of winter. So I put aside Teale’s book as something to savor the following fall . . . 2020.
And so here we are, and savoring it, I am! Take this vivid passage from his October travels across Utah:
As it ran east our road paralleled the 125-mile chain of the Uinta Mountains, the only range in the United States that runs east and west. It carried us through canyons, pink-soiled and red-rocked or gray of soil and rock, sometimes with a silver stream of thistledown riding through on the wind. It crossed dry creek beds and rivers of stones. Magpies alighted treetops beside the road, balancing themselves with long tails bobbing up and down like pumphandles. More than once we passed weathered log cabins with sod roofs, some with tumbleweeds rooted in the roof soil. One that combined the old and the new was wired for electricity. Most stood in the shade of cottonwoods, the trees whose scraped inner pulp once provided the hard-pressed pioneers with a confection called “cottonwood ice cream.” Red foliage once more lay behind us. But aspen gold, pure, brilliant, shining, was scattered all around us. It covered the steeps, flowed down the declivities, massed along the creek banks. Then the gold, too, dropped behind us and we were among silvery sage brush and juniper forests so darkly green the trees looked black along the mountain sides.
Isn’t that luscious?
Teale was a naturalist. (In fact, at the age of nine he declared himself so[!]) In college he majored in English and went on to write for many years for Popular Science. Eventually he ventured out on his own to become freelance writer and photographer. In 1945, in part to deal with the grief of the death of their son killed in WWII, Teale and his wife Nellie set out on a road trip to explore the eastern American landscape. That proved such good medicine, that in 1947 they set out again covering some 17,000 miles in their Buick as they wove across the United States.
Teale chronicled their journey in a set of four books: North With the Spring, Journey into Summer, Autumn Across America, and Wandering Through Winter. Reading through a list of his awards and recognition (a Pulitzer among them), it’s clear Teale was well regarded in 20th century literary, scientific and conservation circles.
One of the things that strikes me so about Autumn Across America is Teale’s reverence — his rapture — for the outdoors. His writing is elegant and masterful leaving me in awe imagining what our American landscape looked like in the late 1940s. Reading his descriptions fills me with delight, but also with a wisp of wistful longing, as I imagine what little urban sprawl there was back before malls and condos, fast food joints and big box stores. How much brighter and more dazzling the night sky was. How free from plastic our roadsides and oceans were.
It goes without saying that there was plenty back then not to admire about the era. And as far as nature and the landscape goes, it’s hard for me to imagine a time when killing eagles and hawks was legal, but of course it was back then. Not until the Migratory Bird Act [MBA] was expanded in 1972 to protect raptors would the senseless killing of these magnificent beings come to an end. I wouldn’t be surprised if Teale’s book had a direct impact on those decision makers who expanded the MBA, inspiring them to pay mind — to notice — more of the natural word around them and take steps to protect it.
Teale, writing about Point Pelee near Detroit:
Charles Darwin, when he reached the illimitable pampas of Argentina during the voyage of the Beagle, noted that the average man rarely looks more than 15° above the horizon. The events of the sky above him occur, in the main, without his being aware of them.…
We, that morning, commenced to “pay mind“ to what was overhead when the shadows of hawks, one after the other, drifted along the sand…. The flight of the sharpshins had begun.
During September—with the migration waves reaching their peak in the middle of the month—these hawks pour down from hundreds of thousands of square miles to the north and pile up near the tip of this nine-mile arrowhead of sand. When in 1882 W.E. Saunders, an ornithologist of London, Ontario, first reported the autumn hawk flight at Point Pelee, he was hardly believed. The number of migrants shot there—in days when the hostility toward the swift accipiters was untempered by an understanding of their role in the balance of nature—gives an indication of the extent of this annual movement. One farmer sat in his front yard and shot 56 sharpshins without getting out of his chair. In 30 minutes, on a September day about the turn of the century, P.A.Taverner and B.H. Swales counted 113 sharpshins passing over the tip of the jumping-off place on the northern shore of the lake. Such flights first brought scientists to the area.
Sometimes the hawks we saw came low over the trees, bursting out upon us suddenly. At other times they soared down the point so far overhead they were only sparrow-sized in the sky. The lower migrants circled uncertainly when they reached the spit of sand with the edging of slaty-blue waves tinged with yellow from the mud of the shallow bottom. They mounted in an ascending spiral, beating their wings and gliding, then beating their wings and gliding again. High above us they straightened out at last and headed away across the water. Watching the “blue darters” thus, with hawk after hawk passing by, we noticed how endlessly varied in shading they were. Some appeared extremely light, others abnormally dark. How many hawks we saw that day I do not know. But hour after hour the parade continued…..
On this sunny September morning, under the migrating sharpshins another migration was taking place. It was there, in retrospect, the most dramatic event of the day. Whenever we think of Point Pelee we will always think of butterflies in the wind….
A sharp-shinnned hawk. Photo by Bettina Arrigoni
Last autumn when I was visiting my New Hampshire aunt** she welcomed me with a small dish of warm apple sauce and molasses cookies. Much like her sister, applesauce and ginger and molasses run in her blood.
When I went to pull a couple of mugs out of the cabinet for our tea, I asked her which of the assortment of motley mugs she’d like to use.
.
“I like the old things,” she said, gesturing to a mug that was at least half as old as she.
As I’m recalling that, I’m typing these words on the latest whiz-bang 21st-century tablet. I’m listening to a full orchestra without being in a theater and without a phonograph or radio, yet which is streaming to me seemingly magically.
Yet I’m doing all this while sitting at this banged up 19th century table with a splayed open yellowing old book written when my parents were but newlyweds. A book which, only in middle age have I come to appreciate, yet one which, though I was oblivious to it at the time, had kept me in good company more than three decades ago in my youth.
I’m sitting here in my little hallway working on my midlife “homework.” And though I can no longer hear the sounds of my mother cooking, her fragrance radiates warmly from my own kitchen as applesauce bubbles on the stove top and gingerbread rises in the oven.
And I realize that, much like my aunt, I like the old things, too.
And if I’m lucky and pay mind to the sky more than 15° above the horizon later today, maybe — just maybe — I’ll be blessed with seeing a hawk as autumn moves across America.
** My mother’s sister, who, a few weeks ago, turned 91 — and who, TWICE this summer, with a tennis racket and her still fierce serving arm, killed a bat that was loose in the house.
Moosehead Gingerbread
MY FAVORITE
(from The Fannie Farmer Baking Book by Marion Cunningham)
A firm, dense, dark and pungent gingerbread from Maine, very lively with mustard and pepper. Serve with applesauce, vanilla ice cream, or whipped cream.
Makes one 8-inch square cake
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
8 tablespoons (i stick or 1/2 cup) butter *
1/2 dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup molasses
1 cup boiling water
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease and flour an 8-inch square pan.
Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mustard and ground black pepper, and sift them together onto a piece of waxed paper. Set aside.
Put the butter and brown sugar in a mixing bowl and beat until smooth and well blended. Add eggs and beat well, then beat in the molasses.
Add the boiling water and the combined dry ingredients and beat until the batter is smooth.
Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until a toothpick or broom straw inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then onto a rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.
*I use Myoko’s vegan butter, which, by the way, is superb.
Wilson Applesauce**
(My grandfather’s recipe, as dictated to me by my sainted mother)
1) Put a kettle of water on to boil
2) Quarter 4lbs of apples (my mother always used McIntosh)
— remove indentation at each end (No stems allowed!)
— leave core intact; remove rotten spots
3) shake a few shakes of salt over apples in a big pot
4) Pour boiling water @ 2/3 to 3/4 the way up the apples.
5) Dump 1 cup sugar over apples; don’t stir sugar in right away (or else it will settle on the bottom and burn)
6) Heat on moderately high heat to boiling. Boil until apples are soft and mushy (at least 1/2 hour)
7) Put through food mill.
8) Yummy!
**Or, as I titled it decades ago on y recipe index card: Sweetest Gramps’ Yankee Soul Sauce
(Wilson is my mother’s maiden name)
Thank you for being here and reading my musings. If you enjoy my posts I invite you to subscribe to this, my blog so you catch all my occasional musings. And by all means, if you know others who might enjoy these writings, please feel free to share this post with them.
Meanwhile, find more of my stories, insights and art here on my website, www.taosdawn.com. Peruse and shop for my art here. And please consider joining me for TuesdayDawnings, my weekly deep breath of uplift, insight, contemplation & creativity.
Stay safe. Be kind.
~ Dawn Chandler
Santa Fe , New Mexico
Photo of Dawn by Sylvie Vidrine
cutting a [creative] path to those deep woods
At this point in my Vermont sojourn, my Long Trail journal starts to ricochet. My next entry is five days after I limped off the trail in Manchester, uncertain of my future; I then time-travel and describe the past. My diary continues this way for the duration.
Alas, what I reluctantly realize now as I flip through the pages of my Long Trail diaries, is that after sharing the first week of my journey here with you, I simply haven’t the focus available to be able to continue editing and formatting those entries and photos in such a way as to make it sensible, to you, my lovely readers. An epic amount of deep work is gong to be required in order to bring the rest of it to you, and unfortunately autumn 2020 isn’t affording me that kind of time and clarity.
I’m sorry about that.
I promise you though that I will return to this project again in some way, at some point, and bring you along with me.
For now though, many of you already know how my adventure turned out, but for those of you who don’t — or others of you who just need to escape a little longer down the trail (and who can blame you in this unimaginably crazy autumn of 2020….) — here are links to some of my earlier (2015/16) reflections about my hike, listed in chronological top to bottom:
Where A Walk Across Vermont Begins
Where a Walk Across Vermont Ends
Falling, Gratitude, and Why I Want to Return to the Trail
Lost & Found in the [Un]Real World
Meanwhile…. I’ll reveal to you a little [BIG] dream of mine:
To spend some time at a New England artist residency program editing my journal into a book, and creating a whole series of new paintings with which to illustrate it.
In fact — Shhhhhhh — I already started the paintings.
Back in the autumn of 2017, during a different kind of sojourn in Vermont I was able to get in a little art time, beginning a dozen or so paintings.
But I haven’t worked on them since. Instead, they’ve been wrapped up and hidden away like a secret little prayer. No one else (other than two very close friends back in Vermont) has ever seen these paintings.
I don’t know why I haven’t brought these out before. Surely it has something to do with the energy; that it doesn’t quite align to be painting Vermont when I’m surrounded by such a completely different (and incredible in its own way) landscape here in New Mexico.
And yet….
Covid-19 has prevented me from returning to these New England forests, to this beloved trail.
I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back….
.
. .
. . .
Hmmmm…….
Maybe it’s time to cut a creative path back to those deep Vermont woods again…
Thank you for being here and reading my musings.
If you enjoy my posts I invite you to subscribe to this, my blog so you catch all my occasional musings. And by all means, if you know others who might enjoy these writings, please feel free to share this post with them.
Meanwhile, find more of my stories, insights and art here on my website, www.taosdawn.com. Peruse and shop for my art here. And please consider joining me for TuesdayDawnings, my weekly deep breath of uplift, insight, contemplation & creativity.
Thank you again!
Stay safe. Be kind.
~ Dawn Chandler
Santa Fe , New Mexico
Photo of Dawn by Sylvie “Charger” Vidrine
prayer wrapped in my father’s red bandana
14 September 2015 — Day 6
Solo backpacking the length of Vermont on the Long Trail
So early the next morning I set off — first out of camp. My knee tied with Dad’s red bandanna.
After thirty or forty minutes or so, Flagman caught up with me.
“How’s the knee feeling? “
“You know, I’m trying to just not think about it.”
“How about that bandana, is it helping?”
“I don’t know, but it was my Dad’s bandana… “
“So he’s hiking with you, looking after you. I believe in karma. I prayed for you last night. I can tell you’ve got spirit, and your spirit isn’t broken. That’s what makes the difference..”
We wished each other well, and he was off.
[So far that morning] the trail was more or less level — the downhills weren’t too bad, and my knee, while not feeling great, didn’t feel as bad as yesterday.
The morning was gray and a little foggy. [And the forest was beautiful, absolutely glistening from the previous day’s rain. I conflicted — enchanted by the beauty of the forest, and forlorn with the weight of uncertainty about what to do regarding my knee….]
I made it to the junction of Old Rootville Road and started the two-mile descent down. A nice backwoods road, but relatively steep and felt long. I wondered how/if I could manage coming back up it. At some point I saw headlights and a Subaru passed me coming up. I smiled to the car and trudged downward.
Although I knew the route was 2 miles, it felt longer than I expected.
Several streams ran down from the brown hardwood forest.
Eventually the road became less steep and began to level out, and an occasional little house appeared by the roadside and soon I found myself at a major intersection.
Not entirely sure where I was, I crossed over to a single tree in the intersection, pulled out my thermos of tea and my map and tried to get my bearings. Not two minutes later the Subaru [that had been] going up the Rootville Road came back and pulled up to the intersection. It then backed up a little bit and its windows came down: “Do you want a ride?” the driver called out. “I would LOVE a ride!”
He jumped out and cleared space in the back, “Don’t worry about any of the stuff,” he said, shoving aside stacks of old yellow papers that looked to be from the 19th century. “Are you an artist?” for the stuff looked like great collage material. “No, I just photograph a lot of this stuff.” In the front passenger seat was a very elderly but spry woman — his mother — up from Florida to bury her husband. She’d lived in Vermont for some seventy years, and they were out for a drive to visit some of her old haunts. He knew exactly where “Sutton’s Place” is, and in fact Frank Sutton was his high school French teacher many years ago. Drove me right to the door of a lovely New England Victorian clapboard-sided house down a quiet road, at the top of a small hill just a couple blocks from town.
Welcome to Manchester!
Thank you for being here and reading my musings.
If you enjoy my posts I invite you to subscribe to this, my blog so you catch all my occasional musings. And by all means, if you know others who might enjoy these writings, please feel free to share this post with them.
Meanwhile, find more of my stories, insights and art here on my website, www.taosdawn.com. Peruse and shop for my art here. And please consider joining me for TuesdayDawnings, my weekly deep breath of uplift, insight, contemplation & creativity.
Thank you again!
Stay safe. Be kind.
~ Dawn Chandler
Santa Fe , New Mexico
uhh-oh my knee, ‘come to jesus’ & a clash of egos
13 September 2015 — Day 5
Solo backpacking the length of Vermont on the Long Trail
May that remain the most miserable night of my camping life.
Because the TarpTent SUCKS in a 12-HOUR VERMONT RAIN.
Because the rain comes down, hits the ground and bounces up and hits the soffits, splashing up into the tent and creating mist.
Then there’s the fact of the do-it-yourself seam seals. And no matter how carefully you seam-seal your tent, there’s probably a spot you could have done a bit better. UGH. Everything in my tent seemed to be getting damp — including my down sleeping bag. I had brought my plastic ground cover inside though (been using it to sleep on and keep my Thermarest clean), so I wrapped it around my sleeping bag like a big blue plastic cocoon. Safe and sound! Until… an hour or so later I reached between the tarp and my bag only to feel my sleeping bag was wet! NO ventilation under the blue plastic. SHIT. I was in for a damp sleepless night listening to pounding rain.
Justin fared no better under his TarpTent and, after an hour or so dove into Wahoo’s tent to join him and Gracie for the night.
All night long I lay there scheming ditching my tarp tent in Manchester and replacing it with a real tent. GOD DAMMIT! Why had I not just brought my perfectly good Big Agnes tent? Wooed by the UltraLight bullshit, that’s why. I have since talked to a couple of GMC staff who agree with me that the TarpTent isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be — at least not in a cold 12-hour September Vermont rainstorm.
My mantra that night — and throughout the tough times of this journey — was “This, too, shall pass.”
This, too, shall pass.
This, too, shall pass.
This, too, shall pass.
Over and over I repeated that to myself, trying to ignore the moisture dripping from the roof into my face. Somehow, eventually, I did get some sleep, but surely not enough.
Was gonna get up at 5:00, what with a long climb up Stratton Mountain. But at 5:00 it was still raining. If I was going to take down camp in the rain, I might as well wait until I at least had a bit of daylight.
Breaking down camp in the rain.
I don’t know when the last time was I had to do that. But it must be some 35 years ago. Even then, I don’t remember ever having to do it IN the rain — just AFTER the rain. Doesn’t matter. Then, now… It SUCKS.. Got the TarpTent down and stuffed it along with probably 3 pounds of extra water sopped into the sack. Lumbered over to grab my bear bags. I stood there and ate breakfast — a ProBar. Figured I’d just graze on bars and nut butters while hiking.
Shook the fellas’ tent at 6:30 — Wahoo wanted an early start.
“How did you fare Dawn?”
“Well most of my stuff is good and damp. Maybe not soaking wet, but definitely damp.”
“Well if you want WET, come on in here!”
The front lip of their tent was practically in a lake of a puddle.
All morning hiking through wet — if not actual rain — dripping trees and vegetation. I had my rain cover on my pack, my Gore-Tex jacket on, rain kilt and gators. REALLY glad for the gators which kept debris and crap out of my boots — I’d forgotten that benefit of them until I hiked on a sunny day without them.
Crossed the road after about 30 minutes or so, and upward I went. Once entering the forest again, I spotted a grey tarp tent on the right — I bet it was Smoky.
Stratton Mountain is one of the high peaks of my journey, reaching up to about 4000 feet. I was intimidated about it, but Wahoo pointed out that you climb — you ascend — 2000 feet, but over the course of three miles each way. I appreciated that observation. Still, it was a slog, and the trail was hardly a trail, but a brook. (Again, grateful for SNOSEAL).
Concern Concern Concern was coursing through me with the fact that so much of my gear was wet. My spirit was low, but I kept trying to push it aside.
“This, too, shall pass… This too shall pass…”
The air was cool and, though the hard rain finally seem to stop, the sky was flat gray, with no sign of lifting.
My concern was hypothermia….. I looked up to the sky, put my hands together and called upon Mum and Dad:
“Help me keep myself safe.
Help me keep myself safe….”
then set the timer on my watch to go off every 20 minutes so that I would remember to ask myself,
“Am I warm?
Am I dry?
Am I sensible?”
…as I moved up in elevation conditions were only going to get worse.
And… now my knee was starting to talk to me. Not my usual problematic left knee, but my RIGHT knee — a dull ache deep inside, kind of below the knee cap and under the kneecap. Not constant, but rising up occasionally.
Onward, trudging upward… At some point I started to notice the trees were transitioning into higher elevation conifers — a bit more stumpy and windblown. And soon I started to see gray light through the trees and then, suddenly, a gray wooden wall: a shed, or a little cabin. With a pitched roof. And a metal chimney, with smoke coming out: the Stratton Mountain caretaker’s cabin.
I gave a rap at the door and heard a voice from inside — “just a moment.” And then in the door appeared a grandmotherly woman bundled in layers including an obviously master-knitted “scrummy” (Mum’s word [a combination of “scrumptious” & “yummy”]) raspberry wool cardigan in a greeny — slate bluey knitted woolen cap. She had paint all over her hands and on her clothes.
“I’m sorry to bother you. “
“No — not at all. “
“Oh! Are you a painter? “
“Yes I am.”
“I am, too! “
“Oh how wonderful! “
“But I just wanted to let you know the odd guy hanging out at Story Brook is still there as of yesterday afternoon.”
We then discussed him a bit. When she asked if he had said anything threatening to anyone, I said, I had not engaged him. “But I would not have felt comfortable staying there.”
“That’s all I need to know then; you said the magic words. I’ll call the sheriff and alert them.”
We then talked about art and the colors of Vermont versus New Mexico. She seemed quite willing to stand there in the drizzle and converse with me. I could have climbed into that shelter and talked with her all day, she was so warm and maternal and comforting. Seems that she and her husband live up there each summer from about June 1st or 15th to October 20th — been doing it for years. She also knows well Frank Sutton of Sutton’s Place where I was going to be staying in Manchester. She said I’d have no problem catching a ride once I got to the road. “Everyone knows what you’re doing; they’re happy to help.” Reluctantly I moved on — although actually I think she was even more reluctant then I to end our conversation. First though she gave me her card — beautiful paintings — and jotted down my website.
Chiming in now from my New Mexcio home, on the 12th of September, 2020 as I work on transcribing the pages of my LT Journal…. A few details worth mentioning regarding my LT journey of 2015:
— I did not carry a cell phone with me. The reason is because I wanted to be fully present on the trail. I didn’t want the temptation of an easy “escape” by way of the internet. The point was to get away from all of that.
I DID however carry a satelite phone in case of an emergency, and to check in very occasionally with loved ones.
— At this point I knew no one in Vermont. My closest personal connection to Vermont was my friend Heather, whom I’ve known all my life. In 2015 she had a vacation home in Stowe, but lived in Rochester, NY. She graciously volunteered to deliver me to the trailhead at the start of my journey, with the plan to meet me at Journey’s End a few weeks later near Canada.
To reiterate though, aside from Heather, there was no one in Vermont I really knew. This fact added to my worry if something were to go wrong.
— The GMC has a “Trail Mentor” program. If you are planning a thru-hike, they will put you in touch with “mentors” who have hiked the trail. I was put in touch with about a dozen generous people, but the one who really stood out was a gal my age — Sylvie — who, the year before, had thru-hiked the LT in honor of HER 50th birthday — so we had that in common. Trail name “Charger” and a resident of Vermont, she provided me with an incredible about of sage advice, as well as offered up her home to me if I needed a break from the trail. Sylvie/Charger and I had never met though, so I was reluctant to lean on her too much.
— The GMC has a whole army of staff and volunteers who maintain the trails. They also maintain the latrines, many of which are composting or moldering. Maintaining the latrines — being a “shit shoveler” — is a nasty but crucial job.
— In trail parlance, a “Zero Day” is a day of no mileage, a rest day. I had scheduled no rest days. This was stupid. But the truth is I didn’t know any better. My itinerary was based on those of others who had gone before me, and some of them hadn’t had any rest days. So, basing my plan on theirs, I thought my itinerary reasonable — especially as I was giving myself five weeks to hike the trail, and most people seemed to do it in four weeks or less.
— Another source of anxiety was that I was on a tight schedule. Though I had planned no Zero Days, I HAD planned on spending one night each week at a different inn or other accommodation, so that I could clean up, do laundry, sleep in a real bed, and pick up my food drops, which I had shipped in advance from New Mexico. I had booked those accommodations and planned my food carefully per my itinerary, so I was under pressure to stay on schedule.
Okay, back to my journal and my long walk across Vermont…
[After speaking with Jean the caretaker on the summit of Stratton Mountain] … I moved on… It seems to me I walked flat for just a short while when the descent began — down the waterway brook-trail of water, stepping carefully so as not to step on wet rocks, wet logs, wet roots. My knee started moaning and by the time, finally, I was approaching Stratton Pond a couple of hours later, my knee was screaming, and I was struggling to keep from bawling with frustration and exhaustion and anxiety.
Wondering if I should bail.
Thinking I should bail.
Mad at the thought of bailing.
Desperately wanting to bail.
Getting into Manchester and ending it there. I could rent a car and drive around Vermont and maybe even over to Rochester. Visit Exeter [New Hampshire, where I have family]. But I just couldn’t see how my knees could continue…
Stopped for lunch by a lovely brook and assessed my knees: was bent over, ass to the trail, massaging my knees when “WHAAA!”
I shrieked with the sound of someone behind me. “Hello! Sorry to scare you!”
It was a group of eight or so college students from SUNY Binghampton — the Outing Club. Out for a few days during Rosh Hashanah break. Staying at Stratton Pond, hiking for the afternoon up to the peak. (Really? They seemed ill-prepared with only a couple of daypacks among them.) All young men except for their club president who was a young Asian woman. Very friendly though and expressed concern over my knees, and offered me a ride back if I was back at the parking lot by the time they got back to it tomorrow morning.
Sometime later I came upon Emily who was just a bright and competent spirited spot of joy in my day. She’s the supervisor here of several of the caretakers and “Chief Shit Shoveler.” We shared our infatuation of Jean at the top of the mountain, and our concern about “those college kids” from SUNY being obviously ill prepared. (She said not all of them had rain gear! “That’s THE OUTDOOR CLUB! I am NOT impressed!” My alarm went off, and I explained what it was for. “I LOVE that — you’re prepared!” I told her of my concern about my knees and she admitted these trails are tough. “But Stratton Pond is a great place to assess. It’s been my place to have a “come to Jesus moment.” You’re just about a half mile and you’ll be able to get some good rest there. Go find Carly (the caretaker) — she’s got some sangria.”
A bit cheered, we parted ways, and some twenty or thirty minutes later I found myself at a cool, split level, big-porched modern shelter, with no one in sight.
I chose a low bunk near the front, and laid out my gear to dry, draping my sleeping bag upside down over a bunk ladder. Found the composting toilet, and then went to find water, the caretaker (to pay — five dollars at high use sites) and attempt to call Joe and Heather.
Teary call/message to Joe [My Good Man, who was back in New Mexcio]; practical message and conversation with Heather: heartwarming conversation with Carly, the caretaker. The one thing I was comforted by was this: I was NOT going to decide today about my knee. I would wait until tomorrow, see how that descent went, and decide in Manchester whether or not to call it quits.
Back at Stratton Pond Shelter, Justin had arrived as well as an older Ed Harris type former military powerhouse of a hiker, “Flagman.” What a talker! Mainly about himself — always the hero of his own story — but passionate about the trail. He made it his personal mission to “counsel” me, suggesting that it didn’t have to be “all or nothing.” “Give your knee a rest — take a zero day in Manchester. Then slow down and take it easy. So you only make it to Johnson? Not all the way to Journey’s End — at least you will have been out here on the trail. You’ve put aside all this time and resources to make this journey happen. Stick with it if you possibly can. Change it if you have to. But don’t throw in the towel. I hope you stick it out; I hope you stay on the trail.”
When Wahoo eventually showed up, those two egos clashed; you could feel it.
Wahoo had suggested I tie a bandanna around my knee — just below it. He said he was advised to do that back on the AT when he had knee problems, and it seemed to help him. [Wahoo then left for water and Carly showed up.]
Flagman, Carly and I were talking about it and also about the odd dude at Story Brook. I told them how Wahoo insisted on hiking with me through that section.
Flagman said, “then I misjudged him. That right there speaks of integrity. I took him to be a young know-it-all, and here I am an old know-it-all, and when we met there was tension immediately. But that tells me the guy has integrity.” He was impressed.
He also said that the bandanna idea was a good one, and urged me to ice my knees and elevate them in Manchester. “And stay hydrated! Extend your [trekking] polls on the downhill.”
Thank you for being here and reading my musings.
If you enjoy my posts I invite you to subscribe to this, my blog so you catch all my occasional musings. And by all means, if you know others who might enjoy these writings, please feel free to share this post with them.
Meanwhile, find more of my stories, insights and art here on my website, www.taosdawn.com. Peruse and shop for my art here. And please consider joining me for TuesdayDawnings, my weekly deep breath of uplift, insight, contemplation & creativity.
Thank you again!
Stay safe. Be kind.
~ Dawn Chandler
Santa Fe , New Mexico
first light, a sea of trees, a worrisome mystery hiker & a twelve-hour downpour
11 September 2015 — Day 3
Solo backpacking the length of Vermont on the Long Trail
Set my alarm for 5:45 (got up to pee only once — it was raining, but not too hard). Got up well before Justin, but he got up by the time I was finishing my breakfast. Hit the trail with full rain garb on: jacket, kilt and gators, although the rain had stopped — this was mainly to keep dry from the wet foliage. After about an hour I became pretty warm, so started peeling rain gear, and soon after that the sun began to shine through, making the forest shimmer — just gorgeous!
For “first tea,” I found a beautiful overlook spot that looked out across a tapestry of close hills approaching autumn, and distant mountains fading to soft purple — a perfect spot to sketch and enjoy my tea. Grateful.
The rest of the day is a bit of a blur — it was lovely in the sunshine.
At some point I came upon Justin — he must have passed me — but found him relaxing over lunch, so I joined him. Later on we would meet up again at Goddard Shelter, which I got to around 3:00, I think…
When I arrived at Goddard I was greeted by a beautiful small dog barking at me: GracieLou. Her owner — a chubby guy in his mid 30s. ‘She’s friendly.” Turns out this is Tim “Wahoo!” from Florida. My first impression of Wahoo is that he’s an opinionated blowhard. And actually that’s pretty accurate.
But he has a big heart… Details coming.
Next to show up was Rob from Hunterton, New Jersey, originally from CT. Total New York/New Jersey accent. Clean-cut, maybe a few years older than me — mid/late 50s? Upbeat and opinionated — especially regarding people’s gear and the weight they’re carrying. Every item you pulled out of your pack, the first question was, “What’s that? How much does that weigh?” Most times after learning the weight, he’d proclaim, “Too heavy!” He was out just for a night or two, taking a quick couple days off for a bit of New England hiking.
Goddard Shelter is the nicest shelter I’ve yet seen. While the the others have been made of very, very dark wood, Goddard seems filled with light thanks to light gray “bleached” wood. There are a few surprising carpentry flourishes that add a nice touch. Beside Goddard is a surprising patch of rich, verdant grass ± like LAWN grass — dense and thick. Justin and Ron splayed out in the grass when the sun was shining brilliantly.
Wahoo was packing up his gear getting ready to hike on to Kid Gore Shelter. Turns out he’s a late sleeper and late hiker. But he did the whole AT in 2008, so he seems to know what works for him. Eventually Rob headed up to the fire tower atop Glastenbury Mountain, while Justin and I busied ourselves with organizing our gear.
Rob returned a while later to report that the view was incredible; I walked up (.3 mile) to check it out for myself and, indeed, it is pretty wonderful. The top of the peak is densely wooded with conifers, and the fire tower juts up like a huge erector set.
Justin would eventually head up there with all of his gear after dinner to spend the night atop the tower.
Back at the shelter, Rob and I fixed our dinners, he asking about my trip and why I was doing it. At some point he said, “I really applaud what you’re doing. To mark a turning point birthday [my 50th] with a big goal and accomplishment; I think that’s great.”
Around the time we were starting to think about crashing for the night, we heard voices. Who should appear by an “older” woman — tall, slender, with long grey dreadlocks — carrying a pack. Shortly behind her was her hiking partner, a plump, stout woman, maybe a bit older, also with a pack. Enter Susan and Carol, two friends from Burlington, Vermont who decided at 50 they were going to hike the whole Long Trail over the course of their sixth decade (50s to 60s). They started north some years earlier and were now nearing the end of their journey.
When it came time to go to bed, Carol pulled out an air mattress (Sea to Summit?) and a battery powered inflator! Rob rolled his eyes. “Too heavy!” She defended that at her age (58) she was allowed a few toys. I defended her “If a person is willing to carry it, they can bring anything they want!” “Too heavy,” Rob insisted. “I tell you, there are more gear weight snobs in these shelters…!” That shut him up a little bit (I should mention that he initially pooh-poohed my killer bear bags and my Luci Lamp, but eventually came around to deciding he needed both. HA!). As we were easing into our sleeping bags, Carol said that she’s been told she snores.
“Is that right, Susan — don’t I snore?”
“Yes. You snore.”
A few minutes later enter the southbound train horn through a dark tunnel. GOOD Lord!! I’ve never heard such snoring! It was loud and ferocious enough to keep wildlife awake for a 5 mile radius. She’s GOT TO have sleep apnea, that’s all I can figure. Thank God one of my mentors suggested earplugs! I brought two sets just in case I lose one!
12 September 2015 — Day 4
Solo backpacking the length of Vermont on the Long Trail
With all that noise throughout the night, I felt not a bit of guilt getting up at 5:00ish to start packing up. Rob was already up, fixing his breakfast outside on the grass, so he wouldn’t disturb anyone — pretty thoughtful. I tried to pack up as quietly as possible but I know that even the smallest sounds are amplified like a speaker in the shelters. I heated some water to make tea in my thermos and hit the trail — back up to the fire tower — leaving the snoring Susan and Carol behind.
As I approached the summit, the woods were in dark, dark shadow — I needed my headlamp to make out the trail. By the time I reached the tower, the clearing around the summit was softening into gray and the tower top shone orange in the early light. Up the seven flights of stairs to join the fellas — Justin and Rob — atop.
I actually was feeling a little queasy — not from the height but I think from the hiker’s diet — so I sat down on the floor — we still had 10 – 15 minutes until the sun would brim over the eastern mountains. From this spot, more wild Vermont forest can be seen than from any other spot in the state. For it is a sea of evergreen everywhere you look.
And then, “here she comes.”
I stood up and we three watched in silence as a glorious shimmering red orb of light rose over the purple-blue hills. “Red sky at morning…” I said. I waited a few more minutes to watch the color warm the evergreen tops; a small raptor of some sort — striped tail — flew below us.
“Anyone want some coffee?” Justin asked. I gratefully declined, feeling the need to push on, and left the two of them to enjoy their sunrise coffee.
A few hours later I came to Kid Gore shelter. A dog ran out barking — it was Miss GracieLou, happy to see me. Wahoo & GracieLou apparently had the shelter to themselves that previous night. Wahoo said he built a fire that night and burned all sorts of trash he found around the shelter and along the trail.
He went up a few points in my estimation with that.
I went to use the latrine, only to find some graffiti on the door — something about boozing it up, “taking sluts” and living free — attributed to Thomas Jefferson and written in permanent marker. Back down at the cabin I put to Wahoo, “What kind of person decides to pack a permanent marker just so they could write on a latrine door? Apparently there’s a lot of people who think that way, based on the graffiti written with thick Sharpies!”
I will say though, compared to New Mexico, these shelters are pristine — the privies, too. And there’s no graffiti carved into the trees — NONE. That’s one of the most heart-breaking facts of hiking in the Santa Fe National Forest: On the main trails, nearly every sizable aspen within a 3-4 mile radius of the parking area is carved and scarred with names and initials. In fact my favorite aspen grove near my favorite sit spot — I had been there to paint one day, and a week later I brought Joe there and someone had carved their name and date in an aspen right above my log. Bullet shells were pressed into divots in the sit log.
After a snack, I hiked on. The woods were dense with undergrowth and felt “close.” I especially like it when there’s breathing space among the trees and the under-story isn’t so compact. Was it this day when — on two separate occasions — I spotted two toads? Made me smile and think of Mum. She loved toads and so do I. I’ve never seen one in New Mexico.
Eventually when the forest became tall again, I stopped for a lunch break. Two hikers — a young man and woman, covered in “tats” and wired into Smart phones came Southbound. I greeted them and they stopped to chat for a few minutes. Heavy New York/New Jersey accents, they’re AT section hikers. “If you go to Story Brook Shelter, there’s the weirdest guy there. He’s been camped out there for five days and is bumming food off of people… He says he’s an AT thru-hiker, but when we asked him about some trail details he didn’t really answer. He only has a day pack so he can’t be a thru-hiker! But he was saying things like ‘my family hates me… My friends hate me… My whole town hates me….’ The guy is weird!”
Great. My original plan was to stay at Story Brook Shelter — although I was thinking of pushing on just a couple miles farther to some unofficial sites not far from the road before beginning the ascent of Stratton Mountain. But still, I didn’t want to encounter this guy.
I knew Wahoo was behind me and thought that maybe when he caught up to me I’d ask him if he wouldn’t mind hiking with me past the shelter — though I kind of hated to slow him down. The concern was moot, because when he did catch up with me — GracieLou came running up to me — he asked, “Did you hear about the weird guy up ahead?” He then offered, “Why don’t Gracie and I hike with you through this section?” DAMN THOUGHTFUL. I gushed with appreciation which he waved off. “No problem. That’s what we do on the trail: We look out for each other.”
And so we hiked together with me mainly asking questions and Wahoo happy to talk about himself. In the course of an hour of hiking together I learned that he had been married, “Not to be offensive but my usual joke line is that I got rid of THAT bitch and replaced her with THIS bitch,” gesturing to GracieLou. I learned that he recently had an affair with a married woman; learned that he’s been to over 50 some-odd countries thanks to his former job with something to do with charter planes for the military; learned that his gay neighbors (“which is fine”) use 10,000 gallons of water per month. Yaadaada-yaadaada-yaadaada. At least he was cheerful and, despite constantly talking, relatively pleasant company. And GracieLou was a joy to hike with!
We passed through Story Brook and the guy was there, lying on his back on the floor, looking into a cell phone — not sure if there was anything on the screen or not. We dropped our packs over to the side of the building. Wahoo said something about lightening Gracie’s pack and losing some of the weight, when the guy sprang up, came over and asked us if we had any food to spare. “No, sorry, dude.” Wahoo chastised him a little bit, and the guy said he thought he overheard him say something about wanting to “lose weight.” But the guy seemed rather harmless, just off his meds. We were surprised by how young he is — maybe early 20s. Looked like he had a tent pitched off to the side and some things hanging on a line. We stayed just a few minutes to grab a quick bite to eat, then pushed on. I didn’t engage the guy at all. Though perhaps harmless, I still would not have felt comfortable AT ALL staying there with him, especially were I alone with him. We continued on down the trail — though before we pushed off Wahoo went back and gave the guy two granola bars — and this with Wahoo running low on food.
After 20 minutes or so down the trail, Wahoo and Gracie took off with assurances that we’d likely see each other down the trail — perhaps even at the camping area by the river and the Stratton-Arlington Road.
One thing that encouraged me a bit is that at some point before Stony Brook Shelter, when Wahoo and I were hiking together, we were talking about pace. I have found the estimates in the GMC guidebook to be very aggressive; I need to add at least an hour or two to their estimates — which becomes worrisome, especially on these 9+ hour days I’ve estimated. But he commented that I was “making good time.” This is the second time someone said that. The first time was on my 2nd day when I was leap-frogging with that young man and his mother, and about the 3rd time I came upon them — on Consultation Peak, I think it was — he politely said, you’re making good time.” I said, “I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I sure appreciate it!” I didn’t have a chance to write much about them earlier, but they were lovely. Turns out he just graduated from St. John’s College in Santa Fe. In fact the ENTIRE family — all siblings and both parents — went to St. Johns in SF, and the father/husband is on the faculty. So they divide their time between SF and Washington, DC.
Back to Day 4….
I got down to the river maybe around 4:30 or so, where there were a couple of good campsites on either side of the foot bridge.
Wahoo and Smoky were conversing around the fire ring of the best one. They were both planning to push on. I decided to camp there and set up my TarpTent. This would be my first time using it and only second time ever pitching it. Chance of rain was good for that night, so I took some care in setting it up.
A little later Justin appeared and decided to join me in camping there. Smoky moved on — he’s an AT NOBO hiker and has 500 miles to go to Katahdin — might not make it in time.
Wahoo was undecided whether or not to stay. He’s running low on food for Miss Gracie. I offered him some beef jerky for Gracie (which made Gracie and me best buds for life!)
Wahoo decided to stay, and set up his tent close to the center of the clearing in the middle of the site, where there was little detritus. Funny, had I studied that spot more carefully, I would have realized there’s no debris there because rainfall pools up and washes it away. That would only become apparent the next morning.
We all cheerfully fixed our dinners and then gathered firewood. JB got a good fire going (Eagle Scout), taking over Wahoo’s sorry attempt. Just as the fire was going strong, raindrops started coming down, slowly and infrequently at first, and then of course, a little harder… and harder… and harder.
12 HOURS OF HEAVY RAIN
Thank you for being here and reading my musings.
If you enjoy my posts I invite you to subscribe to this, my blog so you catch all my occasional musings. And by all means, if you know others who might enjoy these writings, please feel free to share this post with them.
Meanwhile, find more of my stories, insights and art here on my website, www.taosdawn.com. Peruse and shop for my art here. And please consider joining me for TuesdayDawnings, my weekly deep breath of uplift, insight, contemplation & creativity.
Thank you again!
Stay safe. Be kind.
~ Dawn Chandler
Santa Fe , New Mexico