Having read both A Walk in the Woods and more recently, Wild, I loved the idea of adding an epic hike to my 40 before 40 list. However, an overnight, weekend, or weeklong hike seemed a little out of reach for me. I didn’t want to buy special gear. I don’t want to lose toenails and have blistered feet. My poor feet are taking enough of a beating during training for a marathon. So in the end, I decided I would add a hike on the Appalachian Trail, or AT. I would love to hike the whole thing sometime, but that’s a life bucket list item. I knew it wasn’t realistic for this list.
I’ve mentioned in other posts, that this list tends to take over my thinking at times. When we were planning our 10th anniversary weekend, I was like “what can I do on my list? Is this haunted hotel near the AT?” But around the same time as the planning for our 10th Anniversary, I had a new boss at work who decided to plan a work retreat in Salisbury, Connecticut. The AT only goes through a tiny corner of Connecticut, conveniently through Salisbury.
We had to be at hotel for the retreat at 11am, so I figured that if I woke up early and left the house, I could get in at least a four hour hike. There are a few great hikes in that area of Connecticut, but I settled on Lion’s Head because it was supposed to have great views, it was challenging, it was in Salisbury, and most importantly, it was part of the AT.
While planning all this, I didn’t once consider the weather (which cooperated) or life (which didn’t). Husband works an hour from home, so he leaves at 7am and comes home at 6pm. This makes it difficult for him to help with getting Son to and from childcare services. But luckily, my Mother-in-Law loves having her one and only grandson come and stay with her in Boston. She is usually free during the weekdays and not the weekends, so in this case, it worked out because the retreat was Thursday and Friday. So Son would go to Grandma’s on Monday and stay until Friday afternoon.
Once I had that settled, I never really considered life again. But stuff happens. This is what happened to me: my dog broke through a glass window and escaped on Tuesday, making our house look like a murder scene and requiring several stiches for Dog. She was okay physically, but mentally? This had been her fourth escape in the past three weeks, many of which happened through windows, but never a CLOSED GLASS window. She was clearly anxious about being home alone (though we’ve had her for four years). It was really hard to leave her on Wednesday and go to work, let alone leave extra early to do something for myself on Thursday. However, I looked on the bright side. Maybe it would be better if I left the house first for a change? It would disrupt our normal morning routine and maybe not cause as much anxiety.
I was an anxious mess thought. I needed this hike because a week that was supposed to be pretty great and relaxing (lots of sleep when Son goes away. He wakes up at like 5:45am every…single…day) turned out to be stressful. What is wrong with our dog? She doesn’t completely fit the profile for either separation anxiety or boredom. She is a working breed dog, but very chill and relaxed. However, this anxiety only occurs on sunny days in the summer. When it rains, she doesn’t want to be outside so she doesn’t care when we leave for the day. When it’s cold (and I’m in New England), she doesn’t want to be outside. So it’s basically just June, July, and August that we’ve had this problem with her. When she gets out, she either hangs in the yard or goes for a walk on the trail. But we live on a busy street, so she could pretty easily get hit by a car when crossing it to get to the trail. Lots of stress!
Needless to say, I did go on the hike and I was very glad that I did afterwards. I got up extra, extra early to walk Dog, then I got ready (including packing a bag which I had to hide from Dog), and left. I got to Salisbury at 7 and it was a perfect morning for a hike. It was about 65 degrees and low humidity.
I was the only one in the parking lot for the trail, which is at the end of a country, residential road. Husband has hiked this trail before and said it was hard, pretty much straight up the mountain, and at the end, I may have to climb on hands and feet because it’s that steep.
The trail was as he said pretty much a straight shot up the mountain. I remember one downhill on the way up and two flat areas that lasted less than one hundred yards. I stopped for water a few times, but I must be in pretty good shape these days because I didn’t find it too hard. I saw one person coming up on my down and he was struggling and looked pretty fit, so I was pretty happy about that. The top of the mountain was steep but I didn’t have to really use my hands at all.
The view was definitely worth the hike. You could see into Massachusetts and it was just beautiful. Words don’t do it justice, so I’ll just share some more photos.
