On Friday Mica and I made it to Bear River Road in Grafton Notch, a deep, narrow cleft in the Mahoosuc Range between Baldpate Mountain and Old Speck Mountain, about fifteen miles short of the New Hampshire border by trail. After two hundred sixty seven miles of roots, rocks, and mud, we’re almost done with Maine. 

I’ve lived in Maine for twenty three years, and Mica was born and grew up here. Both of us have done the majority of our backpacking here, so the notoriously difficult trail in Maine is mostly just how we expect trails to be. We have heard tell of distant lands like “Vermont” and “Virginia,” where the trails are supposedly paved with dirt and you can walk upon them with the upright stride of a modern hominid. I’m not sure I believe any of that, but whatever is to come I have a hard time imagining the trail anywhere else being much harder than this. 

Over the last thirty one days, as we’ve slipped on slimy roots, tripped on shifting rubble, slid down frictionless rock slabs, and occasionally refreshed our tired feet with an accidental slosh through calf-deep mud, Mica and I have devised a little rhyming mnemonic that captures all of our best advice about hiking in Maine. It goes like this: