Aug. 10: The two month anniversary!

In the morning I realized, in my groggy stupor on the wood floor of the Firewarden's Cabin, that it was August 10: Two full months on the AT.

In the month since my one-month anniversary, I have hiked 355 miles through New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire to get within 406 miles of Katahdin.

I had lunch sitting on the side of the trail itself with the Divas group and Mustard joined us. There it was decided that a lot of us would go that evening to the Dancing Bones village, a place my guide book calls "an independent community" that is hiker friendly, located a mile off the trail. We got a lot of mileage out of speculating on what kind of cult we'd find.

The hike went up, gradually, over nice trail.














[Rocky slope going up, Aug. 10, 2009]

In the afternoon everyone met up again on the rocky top of Mt. Cube for snacking and gazing around at the mountains. Personally, I wrung my shirt of sweat.














[Me, Nutmeg, O.G., Col. Mustard, Prairie Dog and Angry Beaver on Mt. Cube, Aug. 10, 2009. Four people in the photo are from Ohio.]

I lost the Divas when I stopped for a lake swim with the other hikers. The beach was otherwise deserted but for a father who read Popular Science while his young daughter swam alone. I waded out. The girl was like, "Can you do a handstand? Do a handstand!"

I was relieved as hell to see the Divas clustered in an outdoor kitchen at the Dancing Bones village. I thought they might have chickened out.

We ate a bunch of the food from the help-yourself fridge on the front porch. Daal, cous cous, rice, beans, salsa and cheese sauce - we ate it right next to the porch.

The woman in the house came out to chat with us, after two other guests left, and that's when we got an idea of what the commune is all about: PanEuRythmy.

Basically, it's a circle dance that's part hippie, part moving Tai Chi that hails from Bulgaria. Nutmeg asked for a dance lesson that night, and the woman, Bekah, headed up the drive to fetch the music.

Meanwhile, I had the first shower I'd had since Rutland, nearly a week earlier. A row of shower stalls lined the back porch. The hot water never ran out.

The woman taught a few of the girls in a dancing pavilion where we later camped out. They circled a vase of sunflowers doing slow arm movements.














[Bekah teaching Billyhoot, Nutmeg, Rocket and Storm to do PanEurythmy moves, Aug. 10, 2009]

I slept in my tent under the pavilion. Later, the acorns made a lot of noise falling on the shelter. It rained hard early in the morning.