Wandering on the IAT

Stardust memories

As the sun rises over Mt. Chase and Shin Pond Village, I am reminded of the particular advantages to older hikers of the IAT. My walk began on the international boundary and, had I walked three more miles to Mars Hill, I could have stayed at the Bear Pond Inn, just across Rt. 1 from Al’s Diner on my first night. We stayed there often in 1995 and 1996 when we were working on the trail over Mars Hill Mountain.

The Bear Paw Inn used to be the Midtown Motel, one of many “cheap motels” that Dick Anderson knew about after decades of working in Maine. At every opportunity, Walter Anderson chides Dick about his choice of words. “It’s inexpensive, Dick, not cheap.” Every once in awhile, however, during one trail-related journey or another, we’ve landed in a cheap place, and we’ve let Dick know that the distinction is — in fact — occasionally apt.

Heading south of Mars Hill, there is a nice B&B in Bridgewater, if memory serves. Ten or so miles south of the Monticello Trestle lean-to, the Stardust Motel has placed a sign on the multi-use railroad bed just outside Houlton; you can walk right to the back door on a convenient side trail. The Blue Moose Restaurant is not too far back up Rt. 1, and the owners allow IAT hikers to camp behind the building, with evening and morning access to the bathrooms.

A dozen miles further along is the Brookside Inn (Motel) and Restaurant, where I spent the third night of this trip. Here the big advantage is a nice tub for soaking weary bones.

Along the way through Smyrna, you could arrange to stay at the Yellow House B&B. It is 3 miles away in Oakfield, but you can arrange for a shuttle to and from the center of Smyrna with the proprietor.

When a group of us walked across County Donegal in Ireland last fall, we spent every night at a B&B or small hotel or hostel, and we didn’t have to carry a tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, or any of the kit for cooking a meal. Walking in the lap of luxury!

There are many advantages to being old and a hiker; first and foremost, you don’t have to feel the least bit guilty or bothered by sleeping in a bed and eating a nice hot breakfast the next morning cooked by someone else.

Boil off

Now, before you get too pushy or argumentative, hear me out, please. I don’t claim my little boil off to determine the better of two freeze-dried dinners was conducted with double-blind protocols and one thousand randomly selected participants. It’s just me. And, just comparing two brands of freeze-dried dinner; not even the same dinner made by two different companies.

No two palettes are alike. This one, however, knows teriyaki almost better than any other Asian sauce. And, this one has been eating vegetarian bean dishes on camping trips for nearly 50 years.

The ‘Made in Maine’ Good to Go brand of Smoked Bean Chili is simply superior when compared to giant Mountain House’s Chicken Teriyaki dinner. The texture, flavor, and aroma coming out of the fancy bags into which all you need do is pour two cups of boiling water, stir, and wait before you eat was superior for the Chili.

The wait before eating was 10 minutes longer for the Chili; the cost was $4 more for the Chili. Did either the cost or the length of wait time influence this sole judge of superiority? Well, sometimes good things come in the fullness of time, and one always gets what one pays for, of course.

Next up; an Alpine Aire Burrito Bean and Rice dinner enters the ring (joins the pot?) tomorrow night. We’ll see how little ole Maine’s Good to Go stands up to another giant of the industry.

Sharing space

Trails are often designed and built for a specific purpose. A ski trail, a mountain bike trail, and an island to island trail — skis, mountain bikes, and boats in these examples.

The first 50 or so miles along the IAT, heading south from the border crossing, has become a multi-use trail, but not by any grand design or plan.

The border is a roughly 20′ swath through woods and wetlands, with quite random placement of concrete, granite, and even steel monuments placed along the centerline. The purpose of the cleared space and the monuments is to alert anyone who might meet the international boundary from an approach perpendicular to the swath, or at some other angle than parallel, that they have should not pass.

When Torrey Sylvester of New Limerick contacted me in his search for Dick Anderson, he spoke about his idea that the IAT should cross over the tallest mountain along the international border in Maine. We asked him to join the board — never let a good one off the hook! Within a couple of months, we had the permission of Torrey’s cousin, who owned Mars Hill Mountain, to put the trail down the spine, where a very old woods road provides access to the top of ski lifts on the south end and communication towers on the north end. Since the northern end of this easy ridge walk along the mountain ends just a fraction of a mile west of the border, we asked Torrey whether or not it would be possible to get permission to use the border swath for the trail. The answer came back in just a few days; so long as anyone intending to cross the border in any direction did so at the Fort Fairfield/Perth Andover stations, and did not stray from the swath at any point along the way, we were free to use the boundary as our trail.

When I walked south from the end of the Sam Everett Road in Fort Fairfield yesterday, a single bird hunter on an ATV passed by me when I was having lunch. We didn’t speak more than hello; I think I surprised him, perched on the side of a monument as I was. He was probably an American, though he could have just as easily been a Canadian hunter.

When I walked across Mars Hill Mountain at the end of the day, 2/3rds of the original path is now gravel access road to tend the 29 wind turbines on their towers. There were mountain bike tracks, truck tracks, and foot tracks along the way.

Part of the route down the hill today was on ski trails of the Big Rock ski area on the west face of the ridge line.

The entire route from Mars Hill town to the lean-to in Monticello where I sit writing this story was built in the 1890s for a steam locomotive hauling passengers and freight (mostly potatoes on the south bound trains). Today, depending on the season, you might encounter people on ATVs, snowmobiles, bicycles, cross country skis, or people simply walking along, of course. In addition to the lone rider I saw today, two hunters in a side-by-side came by late in the afternoon, looking for grouse. They came back an hour later, after dark, and I cannot report that they were successful.

So far, our shared interests in a 50-mile stretch that was originally built for no travelers (the border swath), small maintenance vehicles (the Mars Hill ridge woods road), people on skis (Big Rock Ski Area), and the railroad (the abandoned Aroostook Railroad line) has become multi-use, and has not created problems or conflicts. And, when we pass one another on our separate ways, we have a chance to understand a measure better than before why we make these journeys the way we chose to make them. In this world, right now, that is a good thing.

Wandering on the IAT

Dick Anderson’s voice is unmistakable; a bit raspy and fueled by a love for life and people. When he called me in mid-October 1993 with an idea he had only shared with Patricia — his wife — I listened. “What if we extend the Appalachian Trail to the three highest peaks of Maine, New Brunswick, and Quebec?” I said I’d meet him at the Front Street Deli in Bath the next morning at 9:00 am.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since that morning when I agreed to help. We added Dick Davies and Chloe Chunn to the organizing committee, and after a half dozen meetings we were ready to have Governor Joe Brennan announce the creation of the International Appalachian Trail, on Earth Day, April 22, 1994. We quickly dropped ‘extension’ for ‘connecting trail’ at the suggestion of Dave Startzell, then the Executive Director of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.

We made our goal to complete the trail from Maine to Quebec by Earth Day 2001. In the intervening years, twenty more chapters have joined the project, which now aims to connect all of the ancient Pangean terranes that rim the arc of the North Atlantic Ocean Basin – from Maine to Morocco. The pieces of the trail are coming together now in 13 countries on three continents.

No one has yet walked all of the International Appalachian Trail, and I am not sure that I have the time and energy to do it. Nevertheless, the thought crossed my mind several weeks ago that I shouldn’t wonder any longer, and I might as well get out on the trail, put some miles behind me, and see how it feels.

Tomorrow morning bright and early, Charlie Hudson will drop me at the Sam Everett Road in Fort Fairfield, Maine, and I’ll start walking south on the international border between New Brunswick and Maine. I’ll check in regularly with stories, ideas, thoughts, and maybe even a few images.