GA/ME OVER

The night I called it a day.

I'm done, not completed, but finished. I'll be hiking north no more. With 220 miles to Katahdin, in the town of Rangeley, Maine, I've decided to get off the trail.

I'm tired, physically and emotionally spent. If there was something riding on it, I could hike on, but as it stands I can't face hiking into the woods tomorrow. I'm two weeks from the last blaze, happy to be getting off while I still think of the trail fondly and without any serious injuries.

I trip more often than I fall, and recently, I've fallen a lot. My balance, never something to envy, has deserted me. Over the last couple of weeks I've fallen almost every day. Usually with no serious damage, but they add up. I feel I've done ten rounds with a mountain and lost on points.

In the shower, without my glasses, I can't tell the dirt on my toe nails from the blood underneath them. There's a crack in the nail on my big toe that looks like a bullet hole in plate glass.

I'm still standing, but walking is tricky.

Twice recently my hiking friends have had to watch me sit at the side of the trail and freak out. Railing against the mountain, screaming at the trail, it's not been pretty. They've been great, but I'm not asking them to do it again.

No one thing brought about the decision to stop, but with my time off work coming to an end I've been asking myself "Is this where you want to be?", "Is this what you want to be doing?". And a week or so ago those answers started coming back "No.".

I've done scary things, reversed down an Italian motorway, bungie jumped in eastern Europe, the first time I asked a girl to dance. They all pale in comparison to crossing Bald Pate mountain.

Clambering over sheet rock, traversing a slope, the water runoff enough to soak me and render my glasses useless. Cloud so thick that you can't see the trail markers, cairns on this stretch, 20 feet away. Both hands and both feet, very slowly, begin to slip.

I recovered my balance, completed the climb and got over the mountain, but I will never forget the terror I felt trying to find purchase on the rock. Simple, complete, fear. I was shaken, and between the climb and the decent, down what now closely resembled a slick muddy waterfall, it took a lot out of me.

That was a few days ago, my last day on the trail, on the other hand, gave me a send off to be proud of. The weather finally broke and we had some sun to dry out the trail. In nice weather Maine is lovely, with lakes making more commonplace than in the rest of the green tunnel. I swam in one of the lakes, and across another I saw a bull moose with massive antlers.

It was a good day to hike, and a good day to finish.

I'm happy to be getting off. I set out to hike a serious distance, and see some of the America I usually fly over. Having hiked to a little shy of 1900 miles, breakfasted, drank stumbled and hitched in 14 states, I've met those goals.

The people I've met were the reason to be here, and the reason to be sad I'm leaving.

From my fellow hikers, to the young woman yesterday, who ignored society's paranoias to pick up three rain soaked, hairy hitchers (Who must have looked rejects from an axe-murderer convention), and drove out of her way to drop us in town, I've been constantly awed by the kindness and generosity of the people I've met.

In the last couple of weeks I've needed and gotten a lot of support. I don't like naming people on the internet (A strange affectation in the post-Facebook age, I know.) so I'll just say that they know who they are and I wouldn't have gotten this without them.

What now? First challenge is to get out of small town Maine, then it's Boston, New York, Dublin, Edinburgh, and other locales to be named later. If you live in any of those places, be ready for a chat, a nice cup of tea, and maybe even a pint.

I look forward to again feeling the cities breathe beneath my feet.

I'm proud of what I've done, and know I was lucky to have the opportunity to have done it. It's been one hell of an adventure and I hope I'll soon be ready for my next one.

As ever, thanks for listening and talk soon.
T.