Hiking the AT

I headed out for what I thought was going to be a nice 5 day walk from Dalton Mass to North Adams Mass. What I ended up doing was 2 days 2 nights and 10 miles before admitting I was too sick to keep walking.

The first day was great. The temp was mild and the sky clear. I was well fed and made really great time getting to the campsite early in the afternoon. I hung outside my tent in the late afternoon taking my time getting ready for the long night. I tend to be in the tent by dark, reading and recovering. I usually pee around 9 pm and then get good and snuggled in. Even the annoyance of getting back out of the tent at 9 has become something of a comfortable routine and the way I stagger gracelessly out of the tent, think calf being born and taking its first steps, gets slightly less awkward each time.

I

was slightly restless the first night and ended up having to pee again at 2 am in a cold drizzle. I spent a good couple min dabbing up all the water I had let in the tent on my return. I was a bit congested and the right side of my throat was beginning to hurt. I woke in the morning the rain had all but stopped. I packed up and ate a few handfuls of crackling oat bran and some nuts. I meant to do 8 miles that day but the going was slow due to the

trail being slippery from rain. I made it about 4 miles before I started to feel really bad. Not just tired but sort of light headed and detached. My throat hurt more than it had in the morning and I took my temp, 100.2. It was time to go to bed. I wasn’t at an official camp site so I hiked just out of view of the trail and set up camp, ate a hot meal which made me feel a little better and took a couple Aleve. Do to the unsuitability of trees in the area I had to hang my bear bag a little closer to my tent than I would have liked. I knew I wasn’t far from Cheshire, but I didn’t know I was feet from Cheshire and practically camping in someone’s back yard. No one found me and told me to leave or anything I just thought it was kinda funny. I laid down and dozed for a couple hours then kept my 9pm appointment. I slept pretty well and took my temp around midnight, 99.

At 3:30 in the morning I woke up and before I could move I heard a heavy footfall. It was where I had made dinner. The footsteps continued getting closer to the tent. I didn’t move. It sounded like a large animal. The foot falls were heavy and deliberate. Not a scurrying animal. I contemplated whether or not I should make a lot of noise, bang on my pots and turn on my headlamp. If it was a deer or a bear that would probably scare it away, but what if it didn’t? I decided to remain still and hope it would keep walking, It did. It walked within 2 feet of my tent and then over in the direction of my bathroom. It lingered for a moment and then continued in the direction of my bear bag. I tried to remember exactly where I put my multi tool before falling asleep. I really wanted the reassurance of a 2.5 inch folding blade. I waited for the sound of scratching against the tree that held the bag, for the noise it would make as it hit the forest floor and then the sound of shredding fabric and Velcro as an animal, maybe a bear, consumed the contents. Even as I waited I doubted it was a bear I heard no snuffly breathing no grunting. I thought Coyote? Bob cat????

I did not hear my bear bag fall instead I heard an impossibly loud scream that made me cold from the tips of my toes to the edge of my hair line. It seemed so out of place like a noise that belonged in the jungle not in Cheshire Mass. I waited still not moving hoping to hear the noise again but from further away. I did hear it and it was moving away, headed east. I waited a few minutes before frantically searching my pile of crap and finding my Leatherman-esk tool. I decided against the serrated blade and instead chose the straight one laying it on the very top of my piled supplies. I rolled onto my back knowing if I was attacked I would want my hands and knife in front of me. I figured I just needed to cause enough pain to make eating me not worth the effort. Because after the screaming I had a picture in my mind of what it could be, a mountain lion.

The cougar or mountain lion was hunted out of the eastern united states, though a larger variety continues to live in the west. There have been credible sightings of cougars in Mass and New Hampshire for over 15 years. Many attribute their reappearance to exotic pet releases. Before this last trip my brother’s friend Maggie said that some carcasses had been found in trees not too far from Manchester. I said I’d worry when they were human carcasses. A couple weeks before I had been teased about sleeping out in my tent at Upper Goose Pond Cabin. One man saying he had heard the screaming of a mountain lion in the area. I brushed it off. But laying in my tent knife by my side I kept imagining what I would do if the animal returned. I thought it would be impossible to fall asleep but within a half hour I was sleeping better than I had before and I woke at 7:30 thinking my bladder might explode.
I got out of the tent in my normal fashion and looked for signs of my early morning visitor. About a foot from the side of my tent I saw a print. There was a 4 inch area of disturbed ground with some compressed mud in the middle. It didn’t look like much but it also didn’t look like deer, and it was big. I peed, packed and got the hell out of dodge. My fever had creeped back up and I needed to get back to civilization. I caught the bus to Pittsfield then another back to Dalton walking less than a mile back to my car.

After a few days of sleep and drugs I am almost fully recovered. I have spent some time listening to different mountain lion and Bob Cat vocalizations. I am pretty convinced that what I heard was a Mountain Lion because while listening to one of the recordings my toes went cold. Even if my ears don’t remember the call exactly, the rest of me does.

Though I didn’t finish hiking Mass, I am finished with Mass. I have decided that this weather is ridiculous (the foot + of snow currently falling is a prime example) and I need to resume my hike much further south. So I’m going to finish packing my mail drops and pick up the trail again in Greenwood Lake NY continuing south through NJ and PA where the cross sectional topography looks flat except for a few gaps here and there, as opposed to the Berkshires which looks like an EKG.
I can catch a bus from Boston to NYC and then another from Port Authority to Greenwood Lake.

I will, of course, post an updated PO drop schedule soon.