Jacky on the Long Trail

I was meeting Lois in Boston for two weeks, and Jacky, who'd come east with me and who'd been staying with me in Iowa City for the past month or so, decided to make use of the time to backpack on the Long Trail. I drove her through Canada to Vermont and we headed down to Johnson (where Maureen had spent the summer dancing after our first year in Iowa), which was as far as she expected to get on her Long Trail hike. We couldn't get much information in Johnson so continued down to Stowe and then Waterbury.

It was after five when Jacky called the Long Trail Association from Stowe, so they couldn't give her any information. But we passed right by the Association building on our way to Waterbury and found a few people still around. Young, friendly people who'd just come back from a day's work on the trail. They talked to Jacky about the trail, about the possibilities. Breadloaf would be a place to leave a food package, they told her.

She felt better after talking to them. We went down to Montpelier and shopped for her two weeks' food. In a rack outside the store a newspaper announced a plane crash that had killed 191 people. God -- how was Lois was going to feel flying to Boston tomorrow after reading about that?

Jacky packing up her food boxes in the morning after our night at Little River state park. September mornings in Vermont are chilly!

On our way back to Waterbury we passed roadside signs saying "Moose crossing next 36 miles,". and on the bumpy approach to Little River state park, where we were going to spend the night, Jacky allowed that she wasn't too eager to meet a moose while backpacking.

"But I'd really like to see a porcupine," she said. She made up a little ditty. "Porcupine, won't you be mine?", she began to sing, and then she stopped short. "There's a porcupine!"

"Huh?"

"There was a porcupine! It was eating bark off a tree!"

I backed up, but there was nothing there by the time we got back there but a tree with some of its bark missing.

Jacky all packed up and ready to go outside the inn in Sherburne, Vermont. In the photo above you can see my trusty, rusty old Toyota pickup.

In the morning Jacky divided her foodstuffs in thirds. One third she crammed into her pack. The rest she put into a couple of cardboard boxes, one of which we left in the kitchen at Breadloaf, the other at the motorcycle shop in Jonesville.

Half the day had been taken up by getting my pickup's u-joint replaced again -- three days after having the same job done by Mike McNeil in Iowa City. We didn't get to Sherburne, Jacky's starting point, till almost four. It was grey and chilly out and seemed awfully late in the day to be starting out on a two-weeks' backpack.

But there was nothing to do but go on. I kissed her goodbye and left her there at four-thirty, and then drove down to Boston to pick Lois up at Logan Airport.

She paused for a moment for a photo by the Long Trail sign . . .       . . . And then it was off into the woods.

[Nota bene: This page, like all the others in this site, is in progress. The text is mostly irrelevant and hastily written stuff designed just to fill the gaps between the photos -- and the photos themselves are not the best, but simply what I happen to have on hand. Please let me know if you find anything false, misleading, offensive, or intrusive to your privacy. It's hard to maintain privacy on the internet! Let me know too if there's a photo or something in the text that should be removed or something that should be added. I have not set up this site primarily for my own sake but for my family and friends -- and I welcome all corrections, additions, and suggestions about how to improve it!]

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Copyright © 1999 T. N. R. Rogers. All rights reserved. Last revised 8 apr 99.