7/6/17--Mile 1891--Gorham, New Hampshire
Dear Andrew, I could tell that the infamously intense White Mountains had taken their toll on me when a small girl clutching her father's hand asked in a surprisingly accusatory voice: "Do you ever shower?" I stopped and laughed. "I haven't in a long time," I told her. I was covered with dried mud flakes, swollen bug bites, and multicolored bruises, not to mention the musty and deeply unpleasant odor that only comes from three straight days of bone-chilling rain. "That's a thru-hiker," her father told her, as if I were a Lobo in a zoo. "That's what they smell like. Maybe that'll be you one day." "Gross!" she shrieked. So here I am, mere miles away from entering Maine, officially known as "gross" by the small children of America. The White Mountains of New Hampshire were indeed the most wholly challenging mountains I have ever climbed. I'm no longer walking -- shocking, I know -- I'm rock climbing vertically up miles and miles of jagged rock. I'm traversing exposed ridges above tree line in 70 mph winds while dodging snap thunderstorms. I'm seeing the highest peaks of the northeast, I'm hiking in the clouds. It's hard. It's the hardest part of the whole trail thus far. I'm tired, everything hurts all the time, and there's never enough peanut butter. The end is close but not close enough, I'm itching to be done so that small girls stop calling me "gross." The immensity of what I've done, the miles I've walked and the sights I've seen -- I wish there were words but I can't find them, I wish there were pictures but my decrepit iPhone 4 can never get the exposure right. And so I come to the same conclusion that I reach at the end of every long, sweaty, arduous day, after I've eaten my crunchy instant rice and before I fall into a deep blank sleep: I'll keep walking. If every letter seems to end this way, it is because every thought ends this way (or with something about peanut butter). Your Gross Sister, Laura
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LettersThese are the letters that Laura has sent her brother over the course of her hike. They are faithfully and painstakingly transcribed in their entirety. They are meant to keep people updated on how many facts she has learned about trees. Archives
July 2017
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