Every year my son, husband and I go hiking for a few days. We’ve been to the White mountains for the last two years so decided that it was time for a change. The Green mountains of Vermont seemed the obvious choice, a three hour drive and the weather forecast great.
We booked into the Inn at Manchester and were very impressed. The rooms were spotless and the service first class. We wandered into the town and I was really lucky to find a Kate Spade handbag less 80%! A good start to the holiday! Over our evening meal a hike of thirteen miles was suggested. Seven or eight miles would have been nearer the mark! It’s summer in Vermont. This equals heat and high humidity. We had both!
So, after a fairly hearty breakfast I was told that we were hiking to a waterfall, walking back about half a mile and then on to a pond. This sounded simple and hopefully straightforward! All paths would be marked and the hike was listed as moderate. I can do moderate! I do, however, struggle with snakes, spiders, bears, bobcats, lynxes, coyotes and the many other forms of wildlife not found in the UK!
But, I needed to be brave and not let the side down. If I was that scared I could stay at the hotel! I needed the steps and wanted the experience and to spend some quality time with my son. Biting the bullet I prepared for the journey! We found car parking in the shade. I adjusted my knee straps and shoe laces, sprayed enough insect repellent to wipe out most of the midgies, mosquitoes and ticks within a five mile radius and we set off.
The path to the waterfall was well trodden and easy! I could stay out of the longer grass and only had dead leaves to contend with, hoping I wouldn’t inadvertently tread on any snakes! We passed a few people, some with their dogs, so I began to feel braver and quite excited about the forthcoming adventure.
When we reached the waterfall we took our photographs, my son and husband doing their usual pose at the edge of a cliff (they are so predictable!) and we set off to find the track leading to the pond. It was well signposted so we took a right and began the one thousand six hundred feet climb! The track looked fairly well trodden and the blue markers on the trees visible as we passed them by.
I’m not sure when I noticed that the path was beginning to deteriorate. The dark blue markings on the trees had faded to a light, almost white hue. I was looking down at where I trod, climbing over fallen logs, leaping over stones to avoid swathes of thick black mud and trying to prevent decapitation from low hanging branches. My son remained cheerful, calling out the miles reached. ‘PB, Mom’ he’d shout! Soon going to be a personal best! What an achievement at your age!’
Our first sortie into jungle bashing began as we turned a corner and the shrubs and grass on either side of the trail had suddenly grown way above our heads! We needed machetes to clear a path. Of course, we never had any! I could see almost nothing of the ground and my walking stick soon became a weapon to force my through the thick foliage! However, there were still signs of a track which my son followed, shouting warnings. ‘Log’ he’d yell, or ‘swamp’ as we tried to manoeuvre our way through the mire!
Finally we reached a clearing and took stock. My son’s phone had periodically been our guide and we had been following a marked track. However, we now found ourselves out on a limb, a blue dot flashing in the middle of nowhere! We’d gone off piste! There was a thick impenetrable quagmire on three sides and an overgrown jungle straight ahead. My heart sank. I dared not think of snakes swimming towards us, or bears rushing out of the jungle, followed closely by lynxes, bobcats and packs of vicious coyotes! Then there were the insects š š¦ š·! I could sense them hovering, their battle cries gradually becoming a cacophony of buzzing, chirruping and shrieking!
My heart was sinking, deeper and deeper. Even my positive, pragmatic son and husband were quiet. Suddenly my son shouted ‘Look there, Dad, there are red bows tied on those two trees! Perhaps that’s someone showing us a way out?’ It was worth a try. My son led the way and my husband and I followed. Thankfully we were able to manoeuvre our way out and pick up the rough track we’d been following. With a huge sigh of relief we marched out of the ‘valley of death’ and on towards the pond!
Seventeen miles and eight hours later we got back to the car, still cool in the shade! I had burst blood vessels on both legs due to the tight knee straps, heat and perspiration! We had drunk all the bottles of water and eaten the few packed sweets and health bars. We were ravenous and totally exhausted!
But we had survived! Seen no snakes or wild animals! We didn’t have our fancy planned meal out that night but settled for a takeaway! We had all achieved our ‘personal bests’ and been left relatively unscathed! ‘A lucky escape’ was the general consensus! We lived to hike another day! š
Jenny Burrell 