Miles: 1,981.2 — Just past Poplar Ridge Lean-To, we found a soft bed of pine needles under towering trees and decided to stop early. Butter tried to convince us to push on, but I wanted to savor it. The cold, clear spring water, the late-summer sun, and the quiet company of Miles made me feel truly content for the first time in weeks. That night, I stood under a star-filled sky, trying to stamp every detail into my memory, knowing moments like this would be hard to come by again.
After a short day of hiking, we stopped shortly after Poplar Ridge Lean-to. A beautiful bed of pine needles shaded by the tallest trees we’d seen with modest view and perfect cerpuscular rays shining through the campsite, I just had to stop. I had a lot of mixed emotions running through my head. I was coping with being close to the end and somehow still very far.
While we sat at the campsite trying to decide if we’d camp there that night, Butter came upon us and tried to egg us on to go further. In all reality, we could have gone further. I think Miles wanted to. But I didn’t. I wanted to savor this experience now. When would we see another beautiful campsite like this? When would I ever feel at home like this again? I struggled to quiet my guilty mind. I should go further, I’m out here to hike not camp. I’m out here to make progress on myself and this trail. I quelled my anxious thoughts and decided to stay anyway.
I got water for the two of us. The water was clear and cold, spring water. Everything about the day made me want to savor it. The sun, the 65-degree warmth, the cold, clean water, the company of Miles. I was content. A feeling I hadn’t felt since that night before Moosilauke when we’d been with Blackbird and Krafty.
Miles borrowed my phone to call Skywalker, who had already made it to Katahdin by this point. While he talked on the phone, I sat in my tent and looked out at the woods around me. I breathed deeply and tried to absorb this as much as I could. To make it stick in mind so I would never forget it. I felt the salt on my skin, the dirt stuck to my calves, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to sit and be.
At 2am, while Miles was sleeping, I woke up to go pee. I stepped out of my tent without my glasses and found a spot. I looked up at the sky. The blurry view above me was so enchanting. The multitude of stars shining and twinkling in the sky was almost more beautiful than any of the mountaintop views I’d seen yet. I breathed in the chilly 50-degree air as goosebumps rose on my bare arms. Back in my tent, I put my glasses on and stepped back out to look at the stars once more. The crystalline shimmering stars captivated me, and I stood staring up at the sky until I got cold.
I climbed back in my sleeping bag, my wool leggings slid into my still warm sleeping bag. I laid on my back on my sleeping pad with my head on my inflatable pillow. I tried my best to really feel how it felt. To really take it in and stamp it into my mind. What if I never felt like this again? Sure, I could go backpacking any time after this. Sure, I didn’t live that far from here, I could come back. But would I? Would I really? With all of the place I wanted to see and people I wanted to meet and the life I wanted to build, would I really come back here? Would it be the same, then? It wouldn’t, I knew. So I took it all in as best I could. The simple, little things. The feelings that made it blissful. Those were the things I wanted to remember.
The feeling of contentness, the feeling of belonging, the concrete knowledge that this is where I was meant to be right here in this moment.