The Long Trail

As the idea of walking a long distance trail burns away in the back of my mind, every path and gateway appears as an opportunity. Earlier in the year I read Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, his account of attempting to walk the entire Appalachian Trail. He gave it a fair shot, but its gruelling 2,160 miles eventually got the better of him. I honestly don't think I would have got as far as he did, but still, the idea of completing a self propelled journey of a significant distance is appealing.

When I decided to come to Vermont, I knew that I would mostly be based in the city of Burlington, but budgeted for a few weekend trips in a rental car. Staring at the map or this relatively small state, it became obvious that you could reach any of its corners easily in a day trip, and that there was a nice obvious walking trail dissecting the state down the middle.

The Long Trail is the oldest dedicated long distance hiking trail in the United Stated of America. It runs 273 miles from the Canadian border in the north, down to Massachusetts, and in the southern part of the state actually joins up with the Appalachian Trail. I had to at least set foot on it.

This weekend, we headed to an obvious access point on Route 125, where the signs quite clearly labelled that we had the right trail. All we had to do was pick a direction: North or south? North had the more adventurous feel, looking like it went 'up' rather than stay on the flat. On entering the trail you need to sign in. It enters a wilderness area at this point, and I suppose the authorities want to know how many people they might have lost on the way. Only one other person had set out that day, but it wasn't too surprising considering that it was a very cold day in November and snow was falling.

We only walked for a couple of hours, due to my fingers feeling like they'd disappeared, but it was enough to re-ignite a sense of wonder. 'What would it be like to do the whole thing?' 'Could I do it?' '273 miles is a long way.' These thoughts bounced around my head as we meandered back down the rocky path towards the road. I did, however, make one decision. Nothing would be able to persuade me to walk that trail in November!