Waking up bruised and sore from yesterday’s fall – and finding that everything we owned was drenched – made for a trying morning. It took us until nearly 10:00 to get onto the trail. We found the
same rolling topography and iffy tread we’d encountered the day before. Hiking was slow, but today I could only point a finger at myself for our snail’s pace.
Past small, picturesque North Lake, the trail funneled us into an area that had been logged in the last few years. The grassy trail cut through a stand of young aspens so thick that it was almost like a stockade of slender tree trunks, which I thought was kind of neat until we came across a big pile of feces. I’m no scatologist, but given the size of the specimen, I reckoned this was the work of a bear. If a bear had been around a blind corner on this winding trail, there would have been no way for neither hiker nor bear to have busted out of this aspen fortress. Realizing this, I immediately grabbed for the pepper spray canister in my pocket. Little did I know that the lock mechanism wasn’t engaged, and I accidently shot a stream of mace directly into my crotch. Just like the day before, I was down on the ground in a heap, writhing in agony.
Hearing my screams, Susan turned around startled, and before long she too was down on the ground in a heap – except she was convulsing in laughter. I tried to make clear that this was no laughing matter, but she would have none it. After composing herself, she saw fit to undo my pants and pull them down around my ankles. She found our dish soap and a washcloth and gently wiped the affected area for a good while. It was the least satisfactory episode of this type of business I’d ever experienced in my life, but at least now I knew the pepper spray worked.
The IAT weaved another four rugged miles through the Blue Hills. We scaled an anti-ATV barrier and crossed a single set of railroad tracks before turning onto a leafy, desolate town road that soon cut through farm fields. We spotted a tractor off in the distance as we reached the crest of a hill. We smelled it before we saw it, though – the easterly wind carried a hint of perhaps the foulest odor we had ever encountered, growing stronger as we got nearer. It had the aroma of some kind of fermented manure/vomit mélange. The tractor was pumping a stream of some brown sludge onto a plowed field. Susan and I were gagging as we picked up our pace, hurrying to get upwind of it. Circling his field, the farmer drove near enough to us to wave and grin. What a sick, sadistic individual, I thought, laughing at our agony. Clearly, he could not have been unaware of the noxious stench he was broadcasting.
