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Katahdin looms over the road
on the approach to Baxter Park. |
It turns out that hiking websites are written for hikers, and that a route labeled "Very Strenuous" is in fact "Very Strenuous" for a typical hiker. Around December of 2017 I decided that I should go out to Katahdin in Maine - a mountain in the middle of nowhere - and climb to the top of Baxter Peak, the tallest point on the mountain and the highest point in the state of Maine itself. Henry David Thoreau made the mountain famous by writing "On Trails", but I didn't know that. He and others believed that Katahdin was where the light first touched the United States each morning. I had merely been using Google Earth while bored during night shift at work and found a cool looking mountain in the middle of the wilderness in Maine.
"Maine" was important as opposed to any other state, as it was not only a state I had never been to, but also a state close (enough) to my sister Margaret who lives in Boston with her fiance. As important as spending time with my sister was - reason enough for such a trip - Margaret was familiar with camping, while I hadn't slept a night outside since high school.
