July 13, 2024

Fox Farm Pond campsite to White Pine campsite

15.9 miles

The frogs were singing last night. It was cozy. It’s so much easier to enjoy the nature out here when I’m in my tent away from the bugs. There was also something scuttling around my tent that woke me up. Mouse? Chipmunk? Not as cozy. It made me nervous so I listened to Sufjan Stevens until I fell back asleep. I wish I could have enjoyed the stars more out here, but every night when I got up to pee I was so focused on getting back into my tent as fast as possible to avoid mosquitoes that I really didn’t have a chance to appreciate the night sky. Huge bummer, and yet another reason why this is not a summer trail.

I don’t know why I have a hot coffee this morning, because it’s already toasty when I wake up. Habit, probably. Caffeine. Something to get me moving. I sort of miss the disciplined version of me from the PCT who didn’t drink coffee and could just get moving as soon as I woke up, but that hiker is gone for the time being. It tastes delicious but it makes me extremely warm before I even get hiking. I then pack everything up and really go hard with the DEET before I even get out of my tent. The mosquitoes aren’t messing around in this section, so neither am I.

Today is honestly pretty forgettable, scenery-wise. Ugh. I’ve become the kind of hiker I’ve always despised: the one who says “there’s nothing to see!” when there’s forest, who doesn’t pay attention to the small details and notice the subtle shifts in the type of woods the trail moves through. But I’m sorry, there really wasn’t much noteworthy today. I saw the mushrooms and appreciated them, I noticed the little wildflowers and the trees, but it all looked the same through the haze of heat and head net. I’m struggling to even remember anything from the day. We’re in a section now with ongoing forestry work of restoring hardwoods, so there is a lot of leafy undergrowth since the trees are still young. It’s just kind of underwhelming without the big trees and the roaring rivers of farther north. I don’t miss the mud, but the trail was definitely more beautiful up there.

The morning is hot. The whole day is hot actually. We both dive right in with listening to Gone Girl and get lost in the unsettling story. We take a break at a grassy campsite and continue through the thin woods to Heron Pond Campsite for lunch. The benches here are really high, so I sit on the ground and feast upon my hiker spoils. Machine definitely almost falls off the bench when he takes a little post-nap lunch.

After lunch we meander through some slightly thicker woods with bog boards and make a pit (toilet) stop at the Normanna Road Trailhead, which has a Forest Service style privy. Ya girl loves a pit toilet. After this the trail shares many miles of the North Shore State Trail, which is for snowmobiles in the winter and which is extremely overgrown and also boggy in places. I count five ticks on me by the end of the day. There are so many plants touching me and it’s so hot and I flick the ticks off before they can latch. Lovely!

Machine and I both finish Gone Girl and spend a while comparing our impressions. It’s fun! Book club! The ending made me really angry and I’d rate it a 3.5 out of 5 stars overall tbh, but it was a gripping listen. By this point I am so thirsty and there’s no water anywhere, but Machine spots a culvert and gets us some water from it. I feel a little more revived as I walk, until we get to a bridge over a larger creek and I am suddenly just so done. My foot hurts, I’m hot, I’m tired of ticks, and I just sort of collapse in a heap in the sun like a sad panda.

We finish up the last part of the day after a short break. There is a road walk, then a random path through people’s property with a very large and kind of scary dog barking at us, and also some monumental bogs with broken boards in which I take a huge step straight down into muck up to my ankles. I don’t even really react at this point because of course we have decently dry feet all day until this putrid bog half a mile from camp.

Camp, thankfully, is actually extremely beautiful. White Pine lives up to its name, and the tent sites are on soft pine needles. Alright! That’s what I’m talking about! We set up, have dinner, try to cool off, and sort-of-but-not-really reflect on the hike and the fact that we’ll reach the first terminus, Martin Road, tomorrow. Mostly we’re just hoping for some soda and good food.