Weather arrives, Sept 23
Rain came in today. Began early this a.m. as I broke camp from Spaulding. Got the tent packed just in time. Heading north, the Sugarloaf side trail came and went. Much of the trail doubling as a stream bed.
Crossed 27 - not a car in sight. No motorcoach, either. Wet and cooling down, so I cruised another two miles to Stratton Brook. Water here, good place to stop after a mellow wet 14.5 day.
So here it's just past 6. Tented just north fo Stratton Brook to get off beaten feet and take an early evening. Rain dances on the tent - a sound I love. That is, as long as I'm dry in here. And I'll dry off soon enough.
Thoughts of what I do after I leave the trail have visited me -- occupied most of my day today. I have a blind date with this mountain, Katahdin. Haven't seen her, and won't if tomorrow's rainy forecase for Bigalow holds. So here is this great stone monolith toward which I've been doggedly walking toward - and it's less than two hundred miles away. Still, life beyond the rock has only now dawned upon me. It waits, in my imagination, like a lover expectant, and I haven't considered what to do with this new experience beyond the experience itself. Like sex for the first time with a new lover; do we think beyond the cotius - do we consider after the final pressing together, the what-now phase beyond our lustful excitement has abated? We seem to know instinctually the foreplay, the action, the touch or fondle or taste. Yet we are blissfully ignorant that time beyond the time has to come, too.
And so my date with Big-K remains. I know the foreplay of following the white blazes -- hills before her, a river to ford, a town to see, a canyon and miles to trod yet. Beyond that, I return to the jungle, re-enter the feast of the fat cats and breath the intoxication of people and places of concrete. I'll pump fuel into my truck, pay bills and undoubtedly watch television -- not listening to the buzz of a mosquito or the fall of a leaf. Asphalt will replace soil.