Steve Sherman & Julia Older
Appalachian Odyssey:
Walking the Trail from Georgia to Maine
Excerpted from the final chapter, "Maine"
ROM THE summit of Old Speck Mountain (4,250 feet) to Grafton Notch is a descent of more than 2,600 feet in 1.65 miles. Later we learned that a newly constructed Trail followed a more gradual descent than the one we took. By the time we reached Maine Highway 26, our knees trembled uncontrollably, like unmolded Jell-O. What Mahoosuc Notch did to our arms, Old Speck did to our knees.
No longer were we within a stone's throw of small towns. Bethel, which by the map seemed to be the only town large enough to have a store, was twenty miles away. On the highway we found cars were as rare as towns, but finally we were on the front lawn of a Bethel church and about to spoon into a half gallon of fudge ripple when a man shouted, "You can't sit here. This is private property. It belongs to my tourist home, and I just mowed the lawn."
The man did not know about Old Speck. We jangled our weary knees across the street to the hot asphalt of the IGA market. We tried not to notice another man approaching, although his dapper figure and mustache looked like less trouble.
"You kids on the Trail?"
We nodded with mouthfuls of fudge ripple.
"Wonderful," he said. "You must have legs of iron. Tell you what, I'll take you back to the Trail."
Walter Cherry and his wife, Emily, drove us twenty miles out of their way to the Trail at Mount Baldpate (3,812 feet) simply because we were hikers and tonight was a sunset they simply didn't want to miss. "I've hiked all these mountains around here," Walter said. "I know them and love them. This valley is twenty thousand years old, and sometimes in my more mystical moments I like to think that when I die my soul will be around here."
As we drove, the two of them pointed out the direction of lush waterfalls and little-known campsites screened from the highway. If only we had a couple of extra days ....
"I used to climb up the north side of Old Speck when I was younger," Walter said. "My father and I would follow the flume in the spring and watch the surge of new water crash down that mountain."
Before we stepped back on the Trail, he added, "We envy you your trip. You've seen a lot of wonders."
Those few words remained with us. He was right and he said it right. We indeed saw a lot of wonders in all fourteen states, in fact, every day. The wonders were as magnificent as the 150-year-old white pine tree we slept by two nights later, but also included the four-inch Indian pipes we saw in Virginia. The wonders were as mighty as the Presidential Range, as delicate as British soldier lichens that grew under the umbrellas of scarlet saucer mushrooms. The wonders were everywhere, from the thunderous weather in Georgia to the wispy fog of the Great Smokeys and the brilliance of Mount Greylock in Massachusetts. All we had to do was to see what myriad life forms and shapes and colors we walked through. It was easy, once we unlocked our eyes and resurrected the spirits of our growing-up days. We did this early on the Trail, but Walter Cherry in Maine helped to define the perspective.
("Appalachian Odyssey: Walking the Trail from Georgia to Maine," The Stephen Greene Press of Brattleboro, Vermont, Third printing July 1979. Reprinted by permission of the authors.)
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