Therese Marie

The following is the story behind a random photograph from my Northbound adventure on 1,189.8 miles of the Appalachian Trail. Today I show you a moment of true friendship atop Bear Mountain in Massachusetts, where I stood with my smelly hiker friends and made jokes in front of clean day hikers. 

Bear Mountain, Massachusetts

I call it, Bear Mountain: Episode Three, because there are so many Bear Mountains on the Trail. 

In this photo, three friends pose haphazardly in the beating sunshine for an accomplishment that sort-of-matters-but-not-really. “How should we pose, what do we do?” “I’m going to pick my nose, so.” What you can’t see is Frisbee telling us to keep posing and all the tired day hikers wearily snacking on gummy bears or Subway.

This day was especially important for lots of reasons, including but not limited to:

1. Watching Bobo run up the rock face climb to the mountain and sit down at the top huffing and puffing, “Oh my god don’t do that,” as I clamored up after him laughing.
2. Learning that Gumby can’t swim
3. Climbing THREE consecutive mountains for the first time since I got back on trail – that’s right, I hiked over Bear Mountain, Mt. Race and Mt. Everett all in one day. A normal feat for people with trail legs, but extremely tiring for this girl. It was my first week back on trail.

But, I think, most importantly is this reason:

4. This was the first day back on trail I felt like I had a group of friends again.

I’m going to be completely honest: I missed having a squad of friends. People think this is crazy, because I “get along with everyone” and am “so easy to talk to” and “so happy all the time,” but (this might not come as a shock to you if you’ve been reading all these blog posts) I’m a nomad and terrible at being in squads and I was really really sad on the inside for a lot of this journey.

My hike had become extremely disorganized and frustrating before this point. I was suffering from lots of different problems and couldn’t focus. I tried to cover it up, for sure. Even looking back on some of my blog posts makes me laugh – I was seriously trying to convince myself that I was ok with losing ownership over my journey.

But I missed Walkamole and Garbanzo and Jukebox, I missed the Bombsquad, I missed the Undertones. I had lost sight of what was important to me: finding a group of friends to support and be supported by in order to fully heal and laugh my life away with good company.

And on this day on top of Bear Mountain, I finally felt accepted and at home again.

I was actually hiking with a group of people who made me feel at home. I felt accompanied on this hilariously long, tumultuous journey through the mountains.

Did these people end up with me for the rest of the hike? No. Which happens! Unfortunately you split ways, find each other again, and then split up again. But the beautiful thing about the trail is that no one is every incredibly far away, and there’s always another best friend waiting for you around the corner.

Gumby, Frisbee, Stubbs, Bobo, Bubuh, Growler and Butterfly (not all pictured, but all there on this day) hiked alongside me and my weak legs for a long time. We didn’t plan it that way exactly, it just kept happening. And I couldn’t have been happier, or luckier. These people are amongst the most unique, lovely people I’ve had the pleasure to meet in my life. With a biting combination of true kindness and blunt honesty, they always provide great conversation and endless jokes; a recipe for a constant good time. They showed me how to be fluid with friendship, how to just accept someone, how to not take anything too seriously.

It’s difficult to put into words the compassion I’ve grown to have for these humans. What we’ve experienced together is truly unique. We share memories that are so difficult to explain. We understand the immense beauty out in the world that is so impossible to convey in a story.

If you came here looking for a review on the terrain of Bear Mountain,

I’ll just tell you that I hear it’s easier to climb going Northbound rather than Southbound. It’s a cool mountain! That whole area is really nice….and steep.

Race Mt. is AMAZING because you walk across .6mi of ridge line. I liked that much more than Bear Mountain, to be honest.

Mt. Everett made me laugh out loud. I hit it at the end of the day when I was already exhausted and was faced with a steep climb. Some kind angel installed wooden steps into the rock face so that you could climb up it without sliding back down. I was still sweaty and sliding and saying, “Oh my god ok, I have to do it, I have to do this but FUCK.”

The hike over Bear, Race and Everett definitely knocked the wind out of some people (myself included – getting into camp that day was just euphoric. There was trail magic right before camp, too, which was so awesome!) but that just makes for a more memorable time, am I right?

So, Thanks for the memories,

they really were so great.

Fly on,

Lil Wayne.