Whoarghh Long Trail connection side trip eh?

Dear y’all,

I was peacefully hiking along, enjoying this breeze and swatting madly at blackflies, horseflies, and the errant mosquito, when suddenly I was overcome by the awful gut sinking feeling that I always get when something horrible is about to happen because of something I’ve done… am currently doing… or am about to do.

So, in gratuitous terror, I quickly assessed everything I could be doing wrong, should be doing sooner, or could do now, and turned around and walked back in the other direction, then went up the hill off trail a bit. Now, here we are. You, reading this. Bemused. Me, racking my brains, going insane, in the woods.

Happy hiking, amirite?

In no particular order, since I am brainstorming to you, here’s my to-do-list for the next several days:

1) Finish hiking Les Sentiers de L’Estrie

2) Eat dinner of delicious sesame bagels, gifted from a gifted baker in the town below. Eat with goat cheese, pepperonis that may be going bad, and tea, like soldier in Soviet Russia.

3) Pay for hiking Les Sentiers de L’Estrie

4) Tell you all I’m walking north through the Green Mountains in Quebec, back towards where I left off on IAT/SIA Quebec trails.

5) Orite i’m on trails yahooey

6) That was a great break wasn’t it.

7) Overcome my anxiety at the thought of contacting SIA-QC for permissions. Suck it up, [buttercup] and send the dumb email. That was only once, Conover, through a perfectly understandable series of circumstances, some of which was your fault. Nobody’s gonna kick you out of your mountains again* for your own good.

*most likely**

**ARGH KNOCK ON WOOD

and there’s no use getting all pathetically anxious about it.***

***BUT IT HIT ME RIGHT WHERE IT HURTS, IN THE FOREST.

Yup. Such is life. Nobody died, least of all you. It was fine. You have contingency plans. So suck it up, send the nice people an email, use up the last of your phone battery in the woods, and tell the other nice people who read your nice blog what you’re doing in the Appalachians north of Vermont, when the trail you like is waiting to be finished up in the Gaspe.