Good morning from Mount Bushnell in southern Massachusetts. The peal of thunder rolls across the auditory landscape in the dark of predawn morning as I sit in a tent During the rain. Today is the second morning of my fall 2018 Hike.A personal car, two planes, six trains and a taxi delivered me to the trailhead in Salisbury, Connecticut on Monday evening. After repacking to fill up my water and add the propane that I could not carry in the airplane, I was hiking about an hour and a half before sundown. 3.5 miles to the first shelter seemed easy enough on the map. In reality, during a rainstorm And fog, climbing up Lions Heart in the dark of a moonless foggy rainy night turned out to be more challenging than I’d planned. I fell in on two sleeping southbound hikers at 8:30 pm in the Mount Riga shelter and Slept fitfully through a cold rainy windy night.The sense of aloneness and being a tiny creature in a big creation was overwhelming during that night hike climbing up Lions Heart. The fog wrapped me in silence, broken only by the moaning of trees as their branches rubbed together. I was reminded of the Ents in the Lord of the Rings as the trees spoke to me. It’s very easy to get yourself lost in foggy night woods and I won’t be doing that again soon. Nevertheless, the awesome sense of dark and human frailty was an amazing experience as, headlamp turned off, I stood on the open peak at Lions Heart and immersed myself in the dark swirling fog. Everyone should experience that once in life.Up early the next morning, My first full on the trail was an exercise in frustration. I’m used to making 16 miles of progress a day, but yesterday was 11.5 miles of slick rock climbs and descents along the spine of a mountain on the southern end of Massachusetts. Climbing Mount Racer and Mount Everett would have been more rewarding with a view but I was wrapped in a cloud. I camped last night at the northern end of the chain on Mount Bushnell. These are short mountains compared to what is coming in New Hampshire. Only 2800 feet or so, but quite challenging for their rocks.Many hikers met me in their sojourn to the south. The southbounders (SOBO’s) are moving through, through hikers who began in Maine in July. My daughter’s fiancee was one of these SOBO’s a few years ago. I am the only northbounder (NOBO) whom I’ve seen. All of the SOBO’s are happy for the easier hiking as they go south. Nevertheless, I am learning Day by day that it gets progressively harder each day as you go north. Life is like that. We all pass through the same trials and for some people each trial is a little less severe as you move along… or at least it seems that way. Others of us encounter increasingly tougher trials as we progress. Yet in many cases we are each climbing the same mountain. Keep that in mind sometime when you feel like like a “lone ranger” in overcoming life’s challenges.Today I walk off this mountain and cross the Housatonic River valley and scale the next line of peaks. More rain today with even more headed my way in the approaching hurricane and low pressure system. It will be a wet week or so. My goal is Rutland Vermont. We will see how close I get, one slick rock at a time.Remember that, when wrapped in the fog of a rainy night, you are not alone. When scaling a painful peak and faced with a daunting challenge, remember that others have climbed this mountain too. Every step of the way, you are in God’s hands, whether you see Him there hiking beside you or not.All my best to each of you,Austin (“Hawkeye” trail name)
