100 Miles to Monson

Lo Hi talks of adventure in the 100 Mile Wilderness. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: Hello world, Lo here, this is Queerly Incorrect. Down the hatch. And then it started getting dark. A man comes walking out of the forest. A man comes walking out of the forest So I thought what the hell? So I set off That was a bad decision. Poppers and weird sex. Poppers and weird sex. Will you close my door? Poppers and weird sex. Who else watches this? 

Speaker 1: I'm not going to stop doing any of the good stuff you love, but I'm going to see you about adding some new things. I'm going to start with a little bit of a story. I'm going to start with a little bit of a story. I'm going to start with a little bit of a story. I'm not going to stop doing any of the good stuff you love, but I'm going to see you about adding some new things. So if you haven't already, do remember to like, subscribe, rate, leave a review, tell a friend. I am excited to bring you 100 miles to Monson. Okay, i can do this. I fucking came out here to do this. I'm going to tell some stories. I'll probably start off with a fun one, but they're not all so fun, but they are pretty damn good stories. 

Speaker 1: So I came out to where I am now with reason. And where I am now is, i think, arapaho National Forest. I didn't pay that much attention, but I am exactly where Judith and I camped that one time, so, if that helps, i even hung my hammock on the same two trees. I like it here and I liked being outside. I love the forest. It also scares the shit out of me because I have terrible anxiety and there is nothing but unknown Whoo. Just looking through it all. It's beautiful and mysterious and terrifying. It's like the ocean. I used to go scuba diving a lot, i went cave diving a bit, but really it was the dives out in the open ocean that scared the shit out of me. But then at the same time, going down 100 feet or so underwater, looking up, seeing the swells and the ripples and that surface from the other side, i just I don't know if I could ever explain it unless you've been there. When you look off in every direction, you see an infinity that goes to green, and out of that infinity all sorts of things will appear, and the calmer you let yourself get, the more things will show up, as you're just floating there away from everything, because they're scary to you too. You're a pretty big damn animal. I've learned that You have to respect how other people see you Or things, not just people If you want to understand how to interact with them. And I don't know if this is on point or topic or if I have one at all, but I'm going to tell you, mosquitoes, i'm going to drink some whiskey and blow my blood at them Down the hatch. Stay away, mosquitoes, i'll whiskey breath you. I didn't think there were fucking mosquitoes in this state. Seriously, whatevs? 

Speaker 1: In 2011, i was a physical science teacher at Bayshore High School. My students, if you're listening, miss you a lot. Anyways, they cut my pay like five times in the first six months there, which was bullshit, and one time it was retroactive Because contracts were in dispute. When I got my job, i didn't have a contract technically, so it was whatever they wanted to change it to, and they just really they went good to me, manatee County boo. So So I thought you know what? I'm gonna join the Peace Corps. I financially justified it because they pay for everything while you're there, you have health insurance, everything. When you get back, you get a few grand to readjust And I thought on this salary I couldn't save $6,000 in two years, so fuck it. So I applied And they wanted to send me to Uganda and that trip was leaving in November. 

Speaker 1: School year ends in May, so I had a little time to kill And I was feeling fucking adventurous. So what did I do? I thought I'm gonna hike the Appalachian Trail. I wanted to have like a great American experience before I went abroad And honestly, i think it was pretty good training for the Peace Corps. So I studied and I watched a million YouTube videos And I got ready. I used a little bit of money that I earned to buy backpacking equipment, much of which I still have, others I have worn into nothingness And my beloved backpack it would become stolen and lost in Uganda, but it's OK. I got the same one in purple now Purple's better. 

Speaker 1: So May 2012, i set out as a southbounder on the Appalachian Trail. So the Appalachian Trail what is called the AT, because you know it's what us cool hiker kids call it The AT starts at Springer Mountain in Georgia and goes all the way to Mount Katahdin in Maine. At the time I was hiking it was around 2,200 miles. I'm not exactly sure, but, as I learned, as the trail goes through all these different jurisdictions, each jurisdiction wants to have a more unique or often a harder version of the trail, and so we'll do things like add switchbacks for no reason, and things like that to make the trail longer. So it does change in length. 

Speaker 1: Now, before I flew off to start this adventure, i practiced a tradition I had seen many a YouTuber do before starting out on the trail, i shaved my head. I didn't bick it, i just buzzed it. I was with Michelle at the time. We were engaged. That was a bad decision, but I had already decided to set off on this trail before I met her and I wasn't going to stop. I wasn't going to limit my adventures. I still had to be me. I still had to do my things. So I said goodbye to Michelle and I headed off to Baxter State Park That's where Mount Katahdin is And I was there with my friend Mike. I lived with him for a while and he decided to come with me. That was more or less a good idea. I mean, down the road it paid off, not the trail. Anyways, mike and I, we get there, camp out the first night. We're just so fucking excited. 

Speaker 1: The next day we head out to climb Mount Katahdin, to get to our start the northern terminus of the trail. Now, mount Katahdin is not a tall mountain. I am pretty sure I'm several thousand feet higher than it right now, but I am at about twelve thousand feet in the Rockies. But anyways, over there that's Bald Mountain. Before we left is it the trailmaster or something? She just gave us like the scariest warning. So when we set off we thought it'd be pretty damn hard And we kind of took our time. But it wasn't bad, it really wasn't, and we were in pretty good shape Young me was And on the way we see two people ahead of us stopped and they're trying to smoke a bowl And Mike and I look at each other and go what a great idea. 

Speaker 1: So we pull out our bowl and then wins Because we are on a ridge line, so many wins. So we would all take turns one person dipping their head down into like a little hole in the rocks and everybody else standing around so they could take a hit. We all took turns And that is how I met Everett and Keegan, who would go on and hike with us. So we make it to the top. They share Jack Daniel's honey with me as a celebration And while we're there we see a lot of people that we didn't know we're going to be seeing later on. So we head down and we make pretty decent time And when we go back to the trail master, they just stare at my head And I'm like what? And they go it's just this incredible shade of red, it's like a vibrant cherry. And I'm like what? And they go does it hurt? And again I'm confused and so I stick my head on top of my head, which I'm wearing a bandana around my forehead, and then the top is shaved. Well, all that virgin skin. I had like a second degree burn on my scalp And my hand came back wet from fluid of the wound seeping. Then I took off my bandana and there was a perfect white ring capped by a perfect red skullcap. And there, that very day, my first day on the Appalachian Trail, i got my trail name Hot Top. I'm proud of it. You see, when you do something like the AT, people give you names or you take one of your own, because it's a different culture, it's a different life and you're trying to respect that. And so I got mine on the first day. 

Speaker 1: After that we set out into the rest of Baxter State Park, heading towards the 100 mile wilderness. On the way, everett and Keegan started hiking with us And we ran into two other people too, josh and Susan. We camped next to them. Josh woke everybody up in the night because he trapped a squirrel and a hole in a tree with the ropes to hold up his hammock, anyways. So the six of us carried on And we just so happened to be hiking along, you know, around the same time, with a man We would come to know as three quarters. We just seemed to be on the same hiking schedule And the first night or two we just camped in the same spots. 

Speaker 1: And then, once we hit the 100 miles I remember so distinctly, it was raining so hard And we get to the lean to and it is just full of people, which is a thing that happened. So bring, you know, stuff to camp. I camped in a hammock. I had a place to sleep every night. So Mike and I just decided to keep going. We'll find a better place, we'll find a campsite along the way. And an hour later it's still raining and we are hopscotch on our way over a stream When I trip and I use my trekking pole to jab down between two rocks as I fall and it bends but does not break, and my face stops just an inch before hitting a rock. But with that my trekking pole was useless and would break shortly thereafter. So now I'm soaked and don't care And we just keep hiking and we come to a clearing on the edge of this beautiful lake And it is just picture perfect. So we set up there And then, after hours of trying to start a fire with a no luck because everything was wet a man comes walking out of the forest, says he might be able to help, pulls a small hiking hatchet out of his backpack, breaks a log in half, gets some dry wood and starts a fire. 

Speaker 1: We would come to know him as the provider because he would simply do this frequently on our journey. He would follow his own path. He didn't stay with us, but we ran into him a lot and it was amazing. Once the dude had crayons Like why would you bring crayons into the 100 mile wilderness He did. The next morning at that spot we were drying out all of our shit When the people we thought we had left behind caught up with us Keegan Everett, josh, susan And now they were hiking with a guy that, yeah, we would start calling three quarters. And no, i don't know his real name, everett, we would eventually call Duckett Keegan, i don't think got a trail name, nor did Susan, and starting actually about this day, josh became swamp ass. Now that one was me. I gave that to him because his camel back kept leaking and so his ass was always wet. It took. I mean, if you really want to give someone a good trail name, make it slightly embarrassing and then everyone will use it. 

Speaker 1: So the seven of us set off with a good 90 something miles to go. I have one trekking pole and what I am soon realizing to be a sprained ankle from that fall, the 100 mile wilderness. It's the longest stretch without resupply on the Appalachian Trail. There is one place you can stay in there, but it's pretty close to the north end, so I had like 30 pounds of food with me and it took us like 12 days to get through there. It's only a hundred miles. Anyways, it was just phenomenally beautiful. There's all these little spots where the trees are growing crooked and you can't quite tell which way is up, so it looks like water is flowing uphill. You do cloud hopping, which is when you just go from peak to peak to peak following the ridge lines. Beautiful, you meet so many people. But the seven of us, we just stayed together and we started sharing food and we'd have little potlucks. Everybody eat everybody's dinner together. We did that every night for the first. Well, every night for those two weeks going through the hundred mile wilderness, we very much became a clan and we just took care of each other. And outside of groups of two, no one had known each other before this. 

Speaker 1: As the days went on, sometimes them, it seemed like the trail got harder and harder. Cherbac Mountain was a bitch. Now I was reasonably fit going into this. There is no way to train for backpacking on this level. You just have to do it and then you'll build it up, especially being from Florida where there's no altitude or hills. So after 12 days I was, i was spent. That sprang left ankle had turned into a very shoddy right knee and I've been hiking on both of them because there's really just no way out. And there we were about 12 miles left after hiking about eight to ten earlier than that morning. So I ate a quick lunch, i packed my stuff up and just ran into everybody else that was in our little hiking group and told them that it seemed in Monson and they're welcome to come, and they all said no, that they were done hiking for the day. I just, i was just done with the hundred miles, so I set off. 

Speaker 1: Ten minutes later it starts to rain, not like little rain either, like that crazy rain that like just falls suddenly thick and full. And so I kept hiking. I climbed a mountain and down into a valley where there was a river that was now gushing, overflowing with water. Normally there's a log you could walk across. It's now underwater, so I go just downstream of it And I just dive in the fucking river and I swim and just pull myself through the rapids and across this river and I may be a hundred feet down from the trail. When I get off, i take my one good trekking pole and I scratch hot top with tear in a rock. 

Speaker 1: I then get back on the trail and I start running Not hiking, not jogging, running in the rain, uphill, downhill. I didn't care. There were two other streams. They might have been streams, but at this point they were rivers, they were raging rivers and the only chance I had was to dive in and swim across, backpacking on. So I fucking did it, coming across a huge quartz in the trail, got it probably weighed eight pounds. I picked it up, i put it in my backpack God, i was stupid, michelle, i think you have that. I hope you still do. 

Speaker 1: And then it started getting dark And I was pretty far from the last campsite and a few miles from Monson. Then I see a sign that says Backpackers Haven.2 miles left. Now at the time I was hiking in water that was about up to my knees And to go left meant getting deeper in that water. But I thought you know, that sign also says Burgers, beer and Lodging. So I thought what the hell? I'm fucking soaked. And so then I head into the deeper water and then hike those.2 miles up to my waist And I see a cabin And I walk up to it and through this window on the side I can see into the kitchen is a man in there cooking a hamburger, drinking a beer. I smile And I walk up to his porch and I strip down to my underwear And I just leave my soaking shit on the rails, set foot into his house. He looked me up and down, told me beer's in the cooler. He'll throw another burger on the grill. 

Speaker 1: That night I slept alone in a cabin with a big iron furnace thingy. There was porn, there was booze. It was awesome. And, as I would find out, my friends that night will remember that terrible storm. They all thought I was like dead in this storm, on the side of the mountain Because nobody had seen me, because nobody else was out there hiking. And I woke up in the morning relatively refreshed, made it to Monson I was technically in Monson at the time, you know I made it. 

Speaker 1: I go to the guest house in Monson, i get myself settled, i ask where to grab a bite to eat and send me down the road, which happens to be right next to where the trail comes into the town. And I'm sitting there eating a roast beef sandwich, drinking a beer, showered and clean. One of my six fellow companions come up looking like drowned rats that hate me. It was great. Oh my god. I love that memory, just the looks in their faces. They all come up to me and say we thought you were dead And I was like just beaches. 

Speaker 1: All After that I had to take a break from the trail. Between my ankle and my knee Walking was actually exceptionally difficult. So I spent a few days in Monson and then I flew back to Florida and I would make another attempt later that season. But it wasn't the same. It wasn't the same fun, it wasn't the same family. It was a hell of a time, and that was 100 miles to Monson. What did you think If you made it this far? I'm going to assume you liked it. So thanks for listening, and send me some feedback, clearly and correct, at gmailcom. Until our next adventure, friends.