Miles 1795.1 | An easy, joyful day near Mount Moosilauke spent savoring time with trail friends before heading home. Lunch off trail, meaningful conversations with Blackbird, laughter at a stream crossing, and a peaceful riverside camp marked one of the happiest and most emotionally grounding days of the entire hike.
This was one of my favorite days on trail. We caught up to Blackbird and Krafty on this day. Miles and I were getting picked up the next day to go home and they wouldn't be coming with us. I knew I needed to savor my time with friends this day.
The terrain was pretty easy and we didn't go very far. This part of the trail was the gateway to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, my hometown mountain range. It was also where the notorious AT Omelet Man used to set up. He wasn't where he usually was when we got there, though.
A restaurant owner nearby had called the Forest Service and complained that he had been stealing business, so he was forced to stop making trail magic omelets for hikers. I was disappointed but it was okay.
Krafty, Blackbird, Miles, and I ended up going to a restaurant just a quarter mile up the road from a trail crossing just before Moosilauke on NH 25C. To my happy surprise we were close enough to home that they had Tuckerman's beer there! I got one and a large glass of iced coffee with a huge salmon salad. We all laughed over drinks and food and we were joined by a few other hikers.
After lunch Miles and Krafty zoomed ahead on the easy terrain. Blackbird and I took our time: bonding, talking about our post-trail futures, our pasts, and what we think we want from our lives after this journey. It was so nice to bond with another girl my age.
I felt like this trail, as much as there are more women than ever out there, was filled with men. Which was fine, I made a lot of friends that were men. But I wanted to the company of a girl who understood what I was going through.
It was nice to be able to relate on that level and be able to talk about how we could work on relationships with ourselves in a world where we felt like it was difficult to be ourselves. Miles often felt I focused to much on my peers, what they thought, what gender they were (or weren't), and how society perceived those sorts of things. To an extent, he was right, but it was still nice to feel comfortable. To know for certain that I wasn't being judged. That I could say what I wanted and how I really felt to my friend.
In all my life, I realized, I'd only had a handful of friends that I felt this way around. It was nice to have another. It was nice that, even though I hadn't seen Blackbird in a while on trail, we could pick up where we left off like we'd never been apart. We walked together until we caught the boys at a stream, just before the shelter Miles and I had planned to camp at that night.
The stream was wide and shallow with no visible way to get a dry crossing out of it. Miles and Krafty sat at the other side of the stream, dry feet. I was about to step into the stream and just slosh across when Miles yelled, "See!? I told you!"
"Told him what?!" I yelled back, knowing he was talking to Krafty. They laughed together.
"I told him you were totally just going to slosh across without even looking for a dry crossing! You always pick the grossest possible way to do things! That's why your shoes are always wet and your pack always smells!" We laughed together as he yelled this across the stream to me. He was right.
I was the worst at drying out my gear. I was constantly too lazy to take off my shoes and let them dry. Mostly, I just didn't care. Of course, everything I owned smelled bad! I was a thru-hiker. He was right, though, my stuff always smelled way worse than his. We laughed about my silly trail habits and Blackbird and I found a fallen tree to walk across the river on.
On the other side of the stream we strategized. We all decided camping near the next shelter would be preferred. It was the last place with guaranteed water and camping before Mt. Moosilauke.
We were about 8 miles from where my parents were picking Miles and I up. I had service at the stream and I texted my parents to ask them to bring a bunch of McDonald's Dollar Menu items to the trailhead when they came up through Lincoln for all of my hiker friends. My mom, of course, said she would be sure to bring them and then offered to bring Gatorade too. What a hero.
The four of us headed up the hill to the shelter Krafty first, me, Blackbird, then Miles. I couldn't stop smiling. I had had the best day. I was so happy to be with my friends. My positive, deep, and motivating friends. We found some tent sites just before the shelter right next to a raging river. We all set up our separate tents, got water, and made our dinners.
We ate dinner together and talked until the sun began to go down. All of us respected the hiker midnight curfew, for once, and I was in bed, asleep by 10pm. I was finally HAPPY. Not elated, but content. In that way that you get that full feeling in your chest. When you feel complete, understood, like you BELONG. I've never slept better than that night.