Healing Up

So we made about 40 miles of the Long Trail in one fell swoop.

Actually, we made about 40 miles of the Long Trail in a bunch of very small, hobbling steps.

I cracked a toenail on Thursday. Hurt like hell, but we kept going. We'd started late -- had to run into Brattleboro and get some last-minute supplies -- and didn't get on the connecting Pine Cobble trail around 3:30p. It was pouring rain. We hiked about 7.1 miles to the Seth Warner shelter. It was full, so we rolled out the tent.

Woke up around 530a and were out of the shelter area before anyone else. The toenail was making me walk funny. Around noon, I felt a nice-sized blister on my heel. Not so bad until about 4p, when we stopped just above Route 9 and broke out the first-aid kit. I cut a chunk of toenail off, which helped, and wrapped the blister in gauze, which didn't help so much. We made 13.1 miles to the Melville Nauheim shelter.

Slept like a dead thing -- didn't even hear someone else put my pack up on a rack. Mouse had been trying to get into the gorp. Woke up around 6a Saturday and checked the heel -- nasty, dime-sized, infected hole in the heel with red and purple streaks running up my calf. We took it a bit easier and went 8.6 miles to the Goddard shelter and the Glastenbury Mountain fire tower. The view almost made the heel better. Did another 3.5 miles to the Kid Gore shelter, which had the best view (so far) of any of them. A little meadow looking out over hemlocks and spruces, with a bright blue lake about 15 miles away in the background.

Spent a good chunk of Saturday evening trying to decide what to do about the heel. Had a discussion with some Appalachian Trail through-hikers about the risks of cellulitis. The purple and red streaks weren't going away, despite half a tube of Neosporin. One of the hikers said it looked like a friend's foot, shortly before he went into seizures somewhere on the AT in North Carolina. John said it looked like gangrene. A helpful child. I checked his feet, and they were OK, but his boots were starting to shred in a couple of places. So we woke up Sunday morning, walked about 6.2 miles to Kelley Stand Road and caught a ride (good old Trail Magic!) into town.

John was a little disappointed, but we'll be back on the trail as soon as the heel is better. Another reason why he's great: I was limping along with a stick/crutch for a dozen miles on Saturday, and he offered to take everything out of my pack and put it into his pack. Sigh. His pack weighs about 30 pounds, which is just right for a 15-year-old. My pack weighed about 45 pounds.

And -- all modesty aside -- I think the hiking is good for him. We had lots and lots of long-ish talks, mostly about stuff you can talk about with a teen-age boy. His hair is over his eyes, but when we chatted with other people on the trail, he'd pull it back so he could see them, and so they could see him. I told him a few times that if he wanted to pull off any time, just let me know. He said no, he's really enjoying being out on the trail; can't wait to get back to his small school and tell the other kids about it. Which, for John, is enormous.

So we're back until the heel is better. It helps that the last Harry Potter book came while we were gone. He's getting a bit long in the tooth for it, but he blew through it in two days. His dog, Cleo, the not-so-Great-Pyr, was just delighted to see him. Little Brother Will appeared to be (secretly) impressed by the weight of his pack. And he told me a couple of times that he was worried about my foot getting worse on the trail, so it was OK that we're home. For a while, anyway.

I'm still hobbling, so I'm not going to be swimming, biking or running for the next week or so -- about all I can do (aside from an occasional foray to the bathroom to feed the baby chickens) is sit at the desk and get caught up on the day job. Worked from 8a until nearly midnight last night, from 9a until around 9p tonight.

Which isn't all bad. But it does make me think: If I'm this insecure about getting back to banging away on the day job after taking two vacation days -- plus the weekend -- what in the world is going to be my frame of mind after wrapping up the trail in 10 days or so?

Scary, scary thought.

Here's what we'll be going back to doing, hopefully sooner rather than later:



I do believe I'm looking forward to it.