Saturday, July 23, 2011

Katahdin's Summit (July 23, 2011)

"This trip is the culmination of years of dreaming, and maybe weeks of planning." Me, 2/19/2011, In the Hotel in Georgia the Day Before I Started Hiking
 "Dick's Dome is too small." Teddy to Me in Conversation, 5/3/2011, Jim and Molly Denton Shelter
 "A lot has happened since I summited Katahdin on 6/25. I relocated from Chicago to Charlottesville, VA and moved in with my new fiancee, 15, whom I met on a mountain back in the ME wilderness. A pretty amazing + life changing journey this has turned out to be." The Rambler and 15, date unknown, Paul C. Wolfe Shelter
"I came I saw I took a dump." Denver, 4/21/2011, Punchbowl Shelter 
"Today is my graduation day...Life on the trail has renewed my faith in myself and taught me what life is about...Goodbye for now AT." Abel Nightwood stopping 1300 miles into a SOBO trip, date unknown, Paul C. Wolfe Shelter
"Who needs porn when you have naked pictures of Eric McQuade, even if Eric McQuade is yourself?" Yikes, Yikes responding to me when I offered to sext her some pics of myself after the hike, 8/6/2011
Top Left to Right, Windscreen, Yikes, Sensei and I. Spam, bottom. (July 23, 2011)
I slept amazingly well since I was so tired from our day of drinking. We were all up
pretty early but Windscreen and I were the first ones to head up.

I was so full of adrenaline that I summited in 2 hours, 10 minutes. Windscreen was right there with me. I wish I could say the very end was dramatic, but it certainly wasn't. The initial summit push was intense and wonderful but then it plateaued and everything was pretty calm for a mile. Then we were there, suddenly.

At the summit I found myself unprepared for a celebration performance. Normally, I thrive in moments like these (moments of braggadocio and ostentatious celebration). But I really didn't know what to do so I went up and extended my hands up, behind the Katahdin sign, and posed for a picture. Then I hugged Windscreen. Was this it? Yikes arrived next. It was hard to believe that 5 months worth of work seemed to end so prematurely. Maybe I had no one to blame but myself for my lack of celebration preparation.

Yikes opened some champagne and Windscreen a bottle of red wine. Things were looking up.

Breeze, the guy we had just met at our all-day drinking session, arrived at the top shortly after us and seized control. He had a handful of close friends with him to celebrate. "America wins again!" he shouted, waving an American flag above his head. He dry-humped the Katahdin sign. He screamed and pointed. He cracked champagne and smoked cigarettes. This is how it was supposed to be done.

I felt better.

Sensei summited next and he had a swagger about him. The summit of Katahdin is not all that big. It's hard to visualize unless you are up there. Whatever space was there, we'd taken it all over at this point. We were chatting and laughing--telling our story to anyone who didn't know where we'd come from to get there. Many people had no idea we'd done anything more than summit Katahdin that morning, so it felt important to tell them what we'd accomplished. This wasn't a day of hiking; it was 150 days.

Finally, Spam and his parents came up Katahdin. It had taken a while because Spam was walking with his parents (almost 6 hours). We were pretty restless up there but when he arrived Sensei stood up. He looked at the 60 or so people at the summit.

Everyone, Sensei said, that guy just walked 2000 miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia to get here! Let's give him a round of applause!


And everyone did just that.




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