I Would Drive 2,280 Miles, and I Would Drive 0 More.

I don't even really know where to start to describe what the past 24 days (yes, I counted) have been like. I guess I'll start in the best place to start a story: the beginning. Fancy that.

This whole tornadic period started with a 5.5 hour drive to nowheresville, Maine. The first 4.5 hours of driving brought us out of Massachusetts, through New Hampshire, and into sparsely populated areas of Maine. After being off the highway for about an hour with not much in between, we hit Greenville, ME.

I have a beef with Greenville, Maine.

Greenville's ER, 2009. I am sad.

How can I have a beef with a place as small as Greenville (population 1,646)? Well, I never liked Maine growing up because we always went there (I was a brat, and nothing is as good as New Hampshire, especially not its neighbors). I finally decided to give Maine another shot in 2009 when I went up to Moosehead Lake with Idolyn and her family. On our first day of this Let's-Give-Maine-A-Shot vacation, we set up chairs at a small public beach to enjoy the morning lakeside. Almost immediately I was bit by some heinous bug and within the hour my hand was about twice the size. I spent the day in Greenville's excuse for an emergency room, and the rest of the trip I was couch-bound on steroids and Benadryl. So, eight years later I decided once again I had to give Maine a chance and returned to the scene of the crime. Thankfully, we just passed through Greenville on our way to AMC's Gorman Chairback Lodge. 

It took us 4.5 hours to drive the first 274 miles, and one hour to drive the last 19. Gorman Chairback is nestled on a lake near Chairback Mountain and is only accessible by logging roads. We bumped, swerved, and plodded our way meticulously down roads meant for, well, logging trucks... not low-clearance Saturns. Our beloved Ritz got us to our destination, though, and once I saw it I realized instantly that Maine ain't so bad.... at least it's not Vermont.

We enjoyed the views, took out a canoe, went on a short hike, then indulged in a communal dinner and wine before retiring to our cabin for the night. Our one regret was not being able to stay longer. 

Cabin at Gorman Chairback Lodge

The next day it was back to Greenville to poke around town and meet Adam's new coworkers. To get to Adam's new home, what they call "The Farm", requires a 20 mile drive north of Greenville. Eventually the road turns to dirt and brings you down another logging road for about 6 miles to his new home. It's a stressful place to try to navigate, as there are no names for roads, random criss-crossing roads and forks, and no hope of cell service/GPS. I stuck around to settle Adam into his new home, an 8'x10' canvas tent (same thing as I lived in last summer). The moment we had been dreading finally came, and we had to say goodbye.

I had a quiet but peaceful 4.5ish hour drive to northern New Hampshire. I was headed to Camp Dodge for seasonal staff training, the same training I went through up north last year. The route took me past forests, fields, farms, and tiny towns. Thought most of it was very beautiful, the amount of vacant and crumbling houses made it clear that rural poverty is very prevalent in northern New England. At one point I decided I was hungry and began looking for places to stop. 30 minutes later the only food establishment I had seen was crumbling to the ground and had a "closed" sign crookedly tacked to a door. The next few were in gas stations that simply stated "FOOD" may be inside. Once I saw a sign for Subway, but it was 14 miles in the wrong direction. Finally I resigned to eating a $2 slice of pizza at a gas station.

New beginnings 

I celebrated my one-year anniversary of working with the AMC. Really, I just celebrated in my own head, but it was cool to return to the place I started this journey one year ago. I've always felt at home in the White Mountains, and same as last year it eased the transition I was going through.

In AMC tradition, I got my double-bit axe for my second season leading. I busted out my new work gloves and went to town restoring and hanging that axe, and rehanging my single bit (boohoo). The double bit took 6 hours to hang, the single bit took 30 minutes (AGAIN). Every axe is different, I suppose.

It was a great first week and I got to catch up with old friends and meet new ones. I opted to stay for the first half of the second week when the hands-on trail work training was happening, mostly because I wanted to improve my skills but also because it was a great excuse to stay up north.

Can't beat it

I took part in and helped lead a rock work training. Non-trails folks give me a funny look when I saw rock work. The short explanation means we're building structures with rock (as opposed to timber or just soil). The two days leading up to the start of the week had been rainy, grey, wet, and in the 40s. Even before the rain came it was regularly low 40s-high 30s at night. We got dumped on for two more days with highs in 40s. The long story short is that my group's work site turned into a total slop pit. I've worked mud, I've worked in bad mud, and this was the deepest mud I've worked in. It was to our calves in some spots. Imagine trying to move a 300+ pound rock in calf deep mud. Sometimes it's so terrible it's comical.

Midweek we got a call that Adam's uncle was taking a turn for the worse. After some running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get in touch with him in the field we finally arranged for me to leave early and go get him in Maine. I retraced my steps back to Maine for a bittersweet reunion.

My favorite backwoods Maine "billboard"

I still had some obligations in MA over the weekend, including leading to days of volunteer events for National Trails Day. Life was kind of a whirlwind, we were happy to be together by grieving a death in the family, but I was excited for these events because we were posting the signs I scouted and ordered over the winter. AMC's sign shop made the signs early this year and they finally went in the ground! It was great to see the tangible result of one of my projects, and get praises from trail users the minute they went in the ground.

Once the weekend ended we drove 10 hours to the Pittsburgh area to be with family and attend funeral services for Adam's uncle. Funerals are great at bringing people together for shitty reasons.  Soon enough we were back in the car for another 10 hour drive to Boston, where I had to come back and work for two days before bringing Adam back to Maine.

Now, at this point we had both just about had it with sitting our asses in the car for long periods of time. I became really good at entertaining myself for long periods of time. I downloaded a bucketload of podcasts, I put lots of thought into the most optimal position to sit in (and tested them ALL), I pondered the meaning of life, the usual. We drove back to Maine on Friday and visited Bangor (not a whole lot to see) before meeting up with Adam's coworkers to see Jurrasic World. I desperately tried to stay awake on our hour and a half drive from Bangor to the Farm (nothing in Maine is close. Nothing) in hopes of seeing a moose. It's been years since I've seen a moose, and reportedly they were seeing them almost daily. Suddenly, Adam roused me from my optimal car-sleeping-position (something I have also studied intently) to see a young but still very large moose in the middle of the road. I was instantly excited but mildly horrified that we might be about to die via moose into the windshield. That moose ran off the road soon after, and 60 seconds later I woke up to Adam slamming on the breaks as we saw an even bigger moose run, skid to a stop, and run back into the woods, almost hitting the car in front of us in the process. 

The next day Adam showed me around camp more before we went into town. Before we even made it 5 minutes down the road, Adam realized we had a coolant leak in the car. I don't know much about cars, but it seemed like if this leak was coming from the wrong place (engine block or something) then we were screwed. I said to myself "Well, Molly, you might live in Maine now". We got to the car parts store 30 minutes before they closed to get some... something, whatever it was, hoping that it would work or else I would have a very interesting drive home. Before I faced what seemed to be inevitable doom in a car fire, we walked checked out a craft fair and grabbed some lunch. My absolute favorite part of the craft fair was this old dude rocking an American flag shirt, camo pants, and a Veterans hat. He made all the walking sticks you see. AMERICA. 

So, it was back to the car, and this time a car that may potentially explode. I put on my zen-long-distance-driving-cap and made it home fine. Whatever quick fix we did seemed to work. 

We drove 2,280 miles since the first time I dropped him off, which is like driving from Boston to the Colorado/Utah border. I'm glad the driving is over, but now I'm back, and back for real. My time at Dodge was like summer camp, and if I got lonely I could just walk 30 seconds and hang out with people. Here I'm living in our apartment by myself, and it's way too quiet. It's been a rough two days trying to transition back, but hopefully it will get easier. My goal is to stay as busy as possible and surround myself with my friends and family as much as I can.