Down the Road
That steep, wet, dark, slippery, rocky road
By Milt Gross
Sep 8, 2010 - 12:25:01 AM

Following a steep, wet, rocky, slippery old woods road a week or so ago was what I call corridor monitoring, one of my volunteer tasks for the Maine Appalachian Trail Club.

People ask me if I've hiked the entire AT. No way. I spend my time poking around in the woods, helping in some little way to protect the integrity of the AT so others can thru-hike or just hike.

Sounds noble, like I care for others more taking the opportunity to thru-hike myself. It's not. I can't thru hike for a variety of reasons, and as I get more experience under my hiking shoes, I don't want to thru-hike.

Now that sounds like an excuse for why I haven't ever thru-hiked the AT. I don't think it is, but it could be. At any rate, I got married while in college so needed to spend my time with my new wife. I know, some guys -- and gals -- do their thru-hike after they're married for one reason or another.

I never did. I walked a little of the AT in Pennsylvania, where I was raised. Not much. My parents always told me it was too far to spend the gas to drive to the trail. Ah, living at home, where somebody else is your boss.

On vacations to Maine, we climbed a fair number of Maine's mountains. Some, such as Katahdin, Baldpate, and Old Speck, were on the AT. Those vacations only lasted a week. Tough to thru-hike 2,175 miles in a week.

And when I moved to Maine, I was still married.

Over the years, I climbed this and that mountain along the AT in Maine, and as my experience grew I began to enjoy the lower elevations a bit more.

Somewhere along in there, this guy who slipped in the mud on a side trail, asked me why "they" didn't take better care of the AT. I investigated, found out who "they" were, and joined MATC.

Now I could help take care of the AT in Maine, but still didn't have much time for hiking. I was still married. Still am, to Dolores, my second and very best wife, who drags along with me on trails here and there.

Sometime after I joined MATC, I was for some reason I can no longer remember -- due possibly to all that experience building up in my soft memory system -- staggering up the east face of Moody Mountain in western Maine. I came across a section of trail that had been weather washed and boot eroded into almost not being there. It was part of a switchback, on a very steep part of the mountain.

I found a log nearby, moved it to just below the worn section of footway, and packed it in so it stabilized the path. I don't think I kept that little good deed a secret, but neither did I brag about it. I didn't brag a lot in those days. In those days, it wasn't 'cool' to brag. You were supposed to be humble and let someone else discover you had stuck an old log on the lower side of an eroded trail to stabilize it.

Somebody in MATC did discover I had been the log-moving guy and invited me to become the MATC volunteer maintainer of the AT on that mountain. I did, until I needed a weed whacker along a section at the top of the mountain, which I didn't have nor had the money to buy.

I was a poor reporter, had been a poor teacher before that, and now am just poor.

"They" offered to "fire" me from that chore, and I accepted. Next "they" asked me if I'd be willing to become a volunteer corridor monitor.

No problem. No weed whacker needed. Just boots, a compass, and a willingness to stumble around in the puckerbrush off the Trail itself looking for boundary markers along both sides of the corridor through which the AT passes.

That was 30 some years ago. I think. All that experience also is making that figure hard to remember.

Been doing that ever since.

I moved to the Acadia National Park area to cover the park for a local paper, got to hike almost all its trails -- on company time, no less, was divorced by wife number one, met and married Dolores.

Still married. Still ain't going to thru-hike. Still corridor monitoring.

That weekend on what had been billed as the best-weather day of this summer, I began my little trek down that steep, wet, rocky, slippery old woods road to find a permanent survey marker along the corridor boundary I'd first located last year. Last year I knew I was to photograph the marker, which I did. I later learned I was to have photographed it from close enough to read those tiny numbers, "107-ME-24," which indicate which marker it is and for those who know what those numbers and letters mean, where it is located.

That day, of course, the perfect weather clouded over, even showered a bit while I was driving to Breakneck Ridge Road -- or Taylor Road, whichever name you choose to believe is the real name. I think it should be called The Rocky Road. But then, there are a lot of other roads in the Pine Tree State that should have that name too.

After 45 minutes that lasted about the equivalent of three days, as they indicate the millimeter lens equivalents on digital cameras, which I don't yet have but for which I am now actively searching, I found my marker. Pulled out Dolores' trusty antique Pentax loaded with 400-speed film, and after clearing a bunch of branches and leaves away, took the photo of that marker.

Of course, it was so dark from the blackening clouds brought on by that perfect-weather forecast, that I wasn't -- and still am not -- sure that the photo captured those little numbers.

Which is why I'm now looking for a digital camera, one that takes clear pictures in dim light from close up.

I didn't see any wildlife that weekend, except a few cousins of the red squirrels and chipmunks we have at home and a couple of ravens that tracked me noisily from the air, somewhere just above those wet, dark, leafy and needle-covered branches.

I did see some "evidence" of deer and moose. A smaller bit of deer droppings -- called poopies in our house -- maybe from a doe, a larger bit of bigger deer poopies -- probably from a buck, and a bigger pile of poopies from Mister or Ms. Moose who also left his or her footprints in the mud that was in the middle of my rocky, wet, slippery old woods road after I got to the bottom of the steep hill.

Then I heard the tree. And with hearing that sound, answered the not-age-old-question, if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around -- except a corridor monitor making his way down an old woods road filled with wet, loose rocks -- does the tree make a noise? The answer is definitely, yup. Enough to have startled me, because my first reaction was that a moose was leaping away from me in fright. Then I realized I have never seen a moose leap away from me in fright, they usually instead walk toward me to see what I is. Next I thought it was a deer, but it didn't go any distance. What it did was slowly crash to the wet, soggy earth, probably from the wet leaves from the heavy rain two days before my venture.

So now you know the answer to that question.

Does deep, dark, wet woods scare me? Not any more. Too much experience. Unless that tree had turned out to be a moose, walking toward me to see what I is. (It would have had to be a very noisy moose, and I never saw or heard a noisy moose. They tend to glide silently through thick forest, although one night I heard a twig snap as a big, black bull I had just seen leaned on it as he watched me pass.)

I continued and found the AT itself. Then I found two thru-hikers, who entertained me for a few minutes with some TC (Trail Chat) before hoofing it on east toward Horseshoe Canyon Lean-to.

I also found the confluence of two brooks and the Piscataquis River, which made for a couple of photos I knew would turn out because it was a bit lighter there.

Then I made plans for my next voyage by hiking shoe into yonder woods, after I decided not to stay long because it was dark enough that I thought the sky would fall any minute. That plan includes wading two of those streams, trending farther north on that little woods road, and trying to find a permanent boundary marker on the north boundary line.

I also made plans for next spring, to repaint some of those old faded boundary markers. That's a lot more pleasant than, for instance, painting the house.

I loved the peace, the quiet, being alone, seeing nature at its dampest and would-have-been finest had the weather guy been correct, and not being walked up to by that fallen tree which by a wild stretch of my imagination could have been a moose.

I didn't think a negative thought the whole time I was in the woods, except about that moose.

Didn't have to cut the lawn while there, nor drive a bus, nor answer a tourist's questions.

Just got out there and enjoyed myself.

Which is why I'm a MATC corridor monitor.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2010