Never Did No Wanderin’

Tell the world you’re going to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail and watch the gods laugh. Like some kind of anti-Odysseus, fated never to wander, I’m back in Millinocket once again because I got Covid.

Everything was going so well. On Saturday Mica and I took a bus from Portland to Bangor and then another bus from Bangor to Medway, where a shuttle from the Appalachian Trail Hostel brought us to Millinocket. Being afoot in the depths of America felt right—it felt like we were truly back on the trail, at liberty and reliant on our own logistical ingenuity. We spent a night at the A.T. Hostel (strong endorse) and then on Sunday we got a shuttle back to Nahmakanta Stream Road, trail mile 41, with Gail from the 100 Mile Wilderness Inn and Shuttle and her assistant David, the same team who’d transported us out the previous week. “The universe put you exactly where you need to be!” declared David the holistic co-pilot, and who could say otherwise? Not me. 

We followed Polly’s advice and hiked like sickly cowards through what proved to be twenty miles of the nicest trail we’ve seen so far. I did slip on a stream crossing and slash open my left shin not even an hour back on trail, but the bleeding eventually stopped and the shin is one of very few places on the human body where Band-aids adhere well. So that wasn’t so bad. 

The trail wound through lowlands and along streams, past Pemadumcook Lake and Lower Jo Mary Lake, then picked up Cooper Brook. We gratefully passed over long stretches of marsh on hundreds of yards of log bridges. Some of the trail was even devoid of roots and rocks, flat and carpeted in cinnamon-colored pine needles. The kind of trail where I could zone out and let my feet find their own way while I thought about other things. I listened to music and worked on an essay about trails and memory in my head. My body felt good, and the air smelled like it contained some extra essence, an oxygen more potent than the usual kind.

Monday we hiked a short eight miles, and arrived at the Cooper Brook Falls lean-to around 2pm. It was still hot enough that I wanted to swim, and there was a perfect swimming hole in the river at the base of the falls, right in front of the shelter. I floated on my back and squinted at the sun filtering through the branches that met overhead from trees on either side of the stream. I washed out my socks, and put on clean underwear, one of the least often appreciated joys of life. I spent a couple hours hunched in the lean-to writing while my legs gradually went numb. I went to sleep looking forward to finally leaving the lowlands and starting up the flanks of Whitecap Mountain the next day.

Of course you know what’s coming, and in a way so did I. Saturday night, when Mica and I were at the hostel in Millinocket, my wife texted me a picture of the consummate 2020s icon: a positive Covid test. My middle son Calvin had just returned from a teen group trip to Italy and Greece, and we suspect he was the original source. However they got it, by Sunday Christina and both of the younger kids were all testing positive. Mica and I felt fine, but we knew that chances were good we’d picked it up too. There wasn’t anything we could do about it, so we just did what we had planned to do. We hiked.

I’m not just trying to draw out the suspense here. I wanted to describe those few days because for the first time, I truly felt like I was on trail. Like I was exactly where the universe needed me to be. And I still feel that way, despite writing this from a motel in Millinocket. Because at 3am on Tuesday morning I woke up in the Cooper Brook Falls lean-to feverish and shivering uncontrollably.

When Mica woke up I told him I probably had Covid, and I think he feels on trail too, because this time he didn’t immediately say we should go home. What he actually said was: “You said if we got Covid we were just going to hike with Covid.” Which is true, I did say that, but faced with the prospect of actually doing it, it seemed foolhardy to head up into the mountains in a state of uncertain health. The fever had abated with some Tylenol, and I felt sniffly and fatigued but not too bad, even with the thunderstorms and torrential rain that greeted us Tuesday morning. So we sloshed the 3.4 miles to Johnson Pond Road and waited with a handful of other hikers for a pre-arranged food drop, where we begged a ride back to Millinocket (again) from the driver. 

I didn’t want to become a superspreader for the whole hostel and potentially the northern part of the trail in Maine, so we had them drop us off on the outskirts of town at the Katahdin Inn & Suites, which is truly one of the strangest hotels I’ve ever seen. Hidden behind the Dollar General, it’s a nearly windowless cement block cube whose rooms overlook a three story lobby that contains a swimming pool, some kind of cabana, a hot tub, several pool tables, and a few elderly video games. It feels like a cross between a casino and a minimum security prison—a kind of store-brand panopticon. I will say the staff was exceedingly welcoming to a filthy and disreputable looking pair of hikers, though, and it offered coin-operated laundry machines. However none of that stopped us from moving a few blocks away to the slightly more normal Baxter Park Inn this morning.

So here we are, back in Millinocket, feeling like Martin Sheen at the beginning of Apocalypse Now. I’m napping a lot but not doing too badly otherwise. I’m well vaccinated and this only lasted a few days for Christina and the kids, so I have good reason to believe I’ll be back in hiking condition in the next day or two. 

I started this trip saying that one thing I needed to learn is how to let go of my own plans and expectations and accept whatever is happening, and right now this is what’s happening. I wouldn’t have minded getting a little bit farther along the trail before I had to learn that. You know, like, maybe past the first town? But this is what’s happening, so I accept it.