The Weather is Here, Wish you were Beautiful

Well, the beautiful weather of the last week or so was sure to end, and so it has. It has been dumping rain for the last 12 hours or so without stop, and the winds picked up mid-morning, gusting to around 25 mph. The temp is around 41 degrees as well; not really good traveling weather.

We are in Groveton, NH right now, finally in a public library again. The last three towns we passed through all have libraries, but each one was closed on the day we passed through. We have been moving fast recently, leaving Newport, VT and racing up the Clyde River in about a day and a half. Then we portaged over the Green Mountain divide to Nulhegan Pond and then flew down the Nulhegan River under cloudy skies. Today brought us to the confluence with the Connecticut River.

We hit the Connecticut a few hours ahead of the swell from the rainstorm, but we still made great time as the river is big and fast with no real rapids. Still, it was quite cold out and we decided to stop in Groveton and hope that the rain lets up soon. We are within spitting distance of catching up with our original itinerary, and are almost seven days ahead of our current schedule. We might actually make it to Fort Kent after all. That is, assuming the snow that is predicted to fall tonight does not get out of the mountains and we start seeing some better weather. Snow. No kidding.

We had an interesting run-in in Island Pond, VT the other day. I am sure alot of stories have started like that, incidently. We have gotten pretty efficient at portaging, so when the river does not look like fun, we just hump up to a nearby road and bypass that section. We did about seven miles of portaging along the Clyde due to heavy blow-downs and shallow water, most of it yesterday. As we were pulling into Island Pond, a pick-up truck stopped and the guy driving started chatting with us. He had a but bushy beard and appeared to be about fifty years old. He invited us over for dinner, to stay for the night if we wanted, and to visit his shop in town, the whole nine yards. We had found the Twelve Tribes, or more accurately, they had found us.

The Twelve Tribes are a religious community that has settlements all over the world; their numbers reach about 3,500. The community in Island Pond, VT is one of the oldest, it may be but I do not know. Alot of people call them a cult, but they do not quite fit the description. We went into town and visited their shop, Simon the Tanner, a shop and clothing store. It was just about to close and was full of people from the community, all with the characteristic huge beards and long hair, pulled back and clasped on their necks. They gave us an invitation to visit them; their house was just up the hill. The invitation had a photo of the commune and all its members, and in the corner of the photo it said: "Come for a day, or to stay!"

While they were among the nicest and most accomodating people we've met along the trail, there was obviously something a little bit unsettling about the whole situation, and we decided to camp across the lake.

Time to face the rain again, and see what we can do about getting to Maine. Our halfway point, Mile 355, is about one day's paddle away. Just after Mile 355 is our portage over the White Mountains, which should prove to be interesting.