The Cave of Evil

Otherwise known as Vermud

There is a lot to unpack about my culture shock of entering Vermont soon after having left the glorious Roan Highlands of NC.

First, though, I want to give you some beautiful pics from my few hours of hiking in Massachusetts. Here are some pics in the area of Cheshire cobble:

Mt Grelock is Massachussett’s great peak, coming in at a humble 3,489. Since Mt Greylock has a monument on it that can be seen from far away, and since one starts such a hike on the AT from far away, the following pic can serve as a pictorial representation of an afternoon’s walk. My destination was 1.5 miles beyond the tower on top of the far mountain, pictured just to the right of the tall tree in the middle of the photo:

Did you miss the tower? Did you think the right hand hill was the far mountain? Let me zoom in 5x for you; you’ll now maybe see both of them just beyond the dip between the closer hills.

The AT goes left from that photo, to the base of the left hill, rather than through the short route, of course. Mt Greylock has an attractive mountain pond:

Here’s the monument at the top.

I have no idea of its significance — something war-memorially?— because it started to rain and I was running out of daylight for the rest of my journey.

On the way out of Massachusetts, there was a boulder field, placed there to ensure only those who really wanted to enter Vermont would do so. I was too busy getting over it — in multiple senses of the term — to take a picture of it.

Since the following sign is covered in shadow, I will sum it up for you: “Here you enter the Cave of Evil.”

They call the AT the “Green Tunnel” and nowhere is that more true than in Vermont, where it is seemingly darker at the forest floor than elsewhere. As a result of the coverage above, the trail looks like this on a good day:

Indeed, it is so intensely muddy that often the path consists of walking over two-inch caliper trees placed across mud-ponds. (I’m so glad that I practiced walking on a balance beam with my pack, thanks to watching Dixie’s videos at Homemade Wanderlust.) Here is a mud-pond on a good day with larger trees placed across it

Sometimes there are bog boards placed across muddy areas:

Yet the bog boards are only provided as necessary, perhaps to “manage” the trail according to the standards of “primitive recreation” — lazy forestry, if you ask me:

When the Forest Service says, “Be prepared to meet increased challenges,” they mean the rain can turn the trail into this:

Vermud! Also, take a look at this map of some nice rolling downhills:

I looked at those rolling downhills and thought, “Finally, I can make up for the time lost in those muddy patches!” Then those and other such rolling downhills turned out to be snarls:

It’s slow-going in Vermont, folks. Well, it’s slow-going for me. Most young people fly past me, some even “trot” (a young hiker’s self-assessment) down the boulder steps without hiking poles. As for me, it has been so slow-going, for I’m not that strong, nimble, flexible, or apied (it’s like adroit for the feets, folks). I have twice needed to tell myself in the evening, “People like me can make it to their destination by the end of the day.” How do Fr Cassian’s fallback plans fail, you may ask? Well, that happens when townies leave food for several days in an unlocked bearbox at the old shelter, when hikers complain of townies coming at night via ATVs to fire off firearms near that same old shelter, and when I can’t bring myself to use the emergency-only ski shelter when it is only raining. The combined result was that I needed to face my fear of the dark, which manifested itself as my fear of night-hiking alone in a new situation where I didn’t know anyone on the trail near me. Thankfully, I’ve always managed to make it up the mountain and/or down the rock steps before dark, but I’ve been anxious a couple of evenings recently.

An old friend, Sr Marie Fe, called to catch up, and she asked me whether I was excited about the northern hike. The word “excited” made that question much more pointed, like a spiritual dagger. (It’s another providential conversation.) My truthful answer at that point, before Vermont, was “no.” I was more anxious than excited about the Whites and Maine, even though they are supposed to be “life-changing” (according to one hiker with whom I discussed the matter recently). You see, Vermont has always been just the necessary evil before them, as the necessary training ground and strength-building area.

Two things have made me feel better. The simpler one is that I have met several mature hikers who have recently completed those sections and who set me more at ease that I can easily complete the Whites and Maine. Dandelion (left) and Bandaid (2nd to right) were among those who helped me out a lot in that regard, talking to me at the amazing trail magic they provided at the end of a mile-long, 1000-ft boulder staircase:

The second point is more spiritual. In Vermont, even before the rain soaked everything, I really did question whether to quit, especially given my response to Sr Marie Fe. Yet there was a recurring thought that would bubble up to my consciousness, as I was methodically trekking down the path; it was of Luke Skywalker training with Yoda in the swamps of Dagobah. Look at the set; it is Vermont with some dry ice put in the mud:

The thought has some teeth, too. I have been been listening to the book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland to get a better sense of how normal men can turn into the worst of beasts in order to gain a more complex sense of the fallenness of ordinary man. There is a great line in the introduction of the book, when Christopher Browning is describing his need to have empathy for its subjects, something like “to explain is not to excuse.” I’m looking forward to learning more about the dark side of my fellow human beings.

I’ve also been doing my own digging in this area, to learn more about my own complexity and how to grow.

My spiritual reading of the moment, The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day, which I’ve been wanting to read for years, surprisingly opens with a lot of similar considerations. So, it seems it is my moment to go into the Cave of Evil, just as Luke encountered his own dark side in the Dark Side Cave towards the end of his training in Dagobah. So, as annoying as the AT may be in Vermont, it may be providing the right locale for my training, physically for the Whites and Maine, psychologically for healing and growth, and spiritually towards a greater transformation. So, I’m excited now that it provides deeper purpose.

Now for the good stuff in Vermont. I enjoyed hiking with Janet, who was my Yaddle-like hiking partner for a day.

She’s hiked Everest base camp, Kilaminjaro, Machu Picchu, 3/4ths of the Pacific Crest Trail (recently), and the AT to this point (in progress). She’s also a beach lifeguard in Australia and swims daily in the ocean.

I enjoyed hiking with Paul, a daily hiker and most impressive octogenarian hiker, and Conductor his son, with whom I shared about 10 miles of a long day.

There are great little ponds, some built extraordinarily well by beavers:

And great little flowers:

And many ferns:

And nice places to hang out. At Kid Gore shelter, you get to this eastern view from bed — alas, it was raining at dawn.

If you ever want to become a leafpeeper, go to Thies’s hostel at Wicked Waystation, close to Stratton mountain outside Manchester, Vermont. She is so good to hikers and offers great hospitality at her hiker house. If you are hiking through, consider stopping both there and at Jeff’s Green Mountain hiker house in Manchester (backyard pictured below). It should be dryer in the fall, right?!

Well, it won’t be dry this week. We have over 1.5 inches forecasted for the next three days alone!