Last month, Tony got a letter. The real kind of letter that comes through the U.S. mail, handwritten on stationery, in a coordinating hand-addressed envelope with a stamp in the corner.
I knew it was there in our box even before I went to the post office. I subscribe to “USPS Informed Delivery,” and every morning I get an email telling me what I have for mail, complete with photos. Most days, it’s a bill or two and a couple of pieces of junk mail. Although it’s only 200 steps from our door to the post office (yes, I’ve counted), there are days when it’s raining or snowing or slippery, or days when I don’t leave work in time to catch the post office open, so it’s nice to know that I’m not missing much if I don’t make it there every day.
But these days, a real letter is good reason to make an extra effort, especially since I recognized both the stationery and the return address right away.
“You got a letter from Groovasaurus!” I told Tony, and I made sure to pick up the mail and bring it back to camp, where he read it, chuckling a little, and passed it over to me.
“Dear Tony,” the letter began, “Yesterday marked the 18th anniversary of the completion of the Appalachian Trail for me!”
Just one sentence in, and I was instantly transported back 18 years, to the day in mid-June when I grabbed a few whoopie pies from the case at the little bakery I was running out of our front room and headed for Gorham, New Hampshire. There, I was to meet up with a couple of AT through-hikers I’d never met, pick up Hugo, a stray mutt that had been hiking with them ever since Virginia, and bring him home with me for the next couple of weeks.
It was 2007, and our friend Ryan, a.k.a. Guthook, was through-hiking the AT with a goal of summiting Katahdin on June 30, just in time to go home to Belfast, Maine, for a couple of days before he was due to fly to California for a summer job. I’d been following his progress through his online trail journal ever since he’d left Springer Mountain on February 24th, and I’d promised that when he got close enough, I’d pick him up from the trail for a shower, a home-cooked meal, and a night in a real bed before dropping him off in the same place the next morning.
The day before we planned to pick Ryan up at the AT trailhead in Gorham, he called to tell me he had connected with a couple of other through-hikers, and they had a big favor to ask. Hugo, the stray who had adopted Groovasaurus and hiked 1500 miles with him, had suddenly become ill.
Groovasaurus and his human hiking partner, FedEx, got off the trail in Gorham and made an appointment with a vet, where Groov got the bad news that Hugo was suffering from Lyme disease. With painkillers and antibiotics, he would recover, but his through-hiking days were over, and it looked like Groov was going to have to leave the trail, too, falling less than 300 miles short of finishing. Was there any way that I could pick Hugo up and let him crash with us for the two weeks or so it would take them to make it to Katahdin?
So there I was, at the Gorham town common, looking for two unfamiliar scruffy hikers and their even scruffier canine companion. They weren’t hard to spot, and we exchanged quick introductions, loaded Hugo into my car, and made plans for me to pick them up, along with Ryan, at the AT trailhead the next day. Then they headed back to the trail, and I headed home to introduce Hugo to our black Lab, Remy.
As it turned out, all three of the hikers ended up spending three nights with us. We picked them up in the afternoons and dropped them off in the mornings, first at the road crossing near Gorham, then two nights later in Grafton Notch, and then on the East B Hill Road in Andover.
I'll probably never hike the Appalachian Trail myself, but listening to these boys, hearing the awe in their voices as they described the views from Mt. Washington and Old Speck, and the sincerity of their gratitude for the kindness of strangers they had encountered along the trail, gave me a taste of what it must be like—minus the blisters and the bugs.
Hugo and Remy became instant friends, and Hugo seemed happy to have a vacation from the trail. They got to spend two weeks together at camp, where Hugo recovered and the two of them had many excellent adventures (and one not so excellent one, involving a porcupine). Hugo was a sweet dog, and none of us minded that every time he got wet, we were reminded that when he adopted Groovasaurus on the trail, he had recently had a close encounter with a skunk, and that the full name his hiking companions had given him was “Hugo Smells!”
Although he was only 22 years old when we met him back in 2007, Groovasaurus was something of a philosopher, responsible and wise beyond his years. He was also, we learned, already three and a half years into his personal journey with sobriety. He and Tony connected immediately, and had some long conversations about (as Douglas Adams would say) “Life, the Universe, and Everything.”
We stayed in touch; through social media and occasional letters, we got to watch Groov grow up. He’s now married, with three beautiful kids, and head of the planning division of the city of Laramie, Wyoming. (And I’m happy to be able to say that Hugo enjoyed a long and happy life as a beloved family dog.)
Four years ago, Groov and his family took a vacation to Maine, connected up with Ryan, and, 14 years after they completed the AT, we had a wonderful reunion at our camp. (Yes, there were whoopie pies.)
Reflecting on his life in the 18 years since his through-hike in his most recent letter, Groov told Tony, “I have been able to ‘live life on life’s terms’ and have not had a drop of booze or anything else during that time period…I can confidently look back and say I’ve truly ‘lived’ through those years and have felt what needed to be felt and ‘grown’ in times where I needed to grow.”
I’ll always remember the summer of 2007 as the time when just a little bit of AT magic rubbed off on me by association. We put over 300 miles on our car, whipped up enough homemade macaroni and cheese, cinnamon rolls, burgers, salads, homegrown asparagus, pie, cookies, and whoopie pies to feed a small army, and took in a dog we'd never met for a kid we'd never met.
In return, we got three evenings of trail stories, the chance to spend time with the kind of kids who can make you forget everything you've ever heard or thought about the cynicism, laziness, and self-absorption of the younger generation…and a rewarding lifelong friendship. It was a good trade.
Well, this was wonderful!