Fort Kent Library Vacation!

R-2016-9-28 

So here I am, back in civilization.  I couldn’t have chosen a more relaxing civilization.

It’s day 2 of my glorious Library Vacation!  My first one of these was ages ago, when I stayed over with a librarian friend for a week, went to work with her, and discovered this to be the polar opposite of a bother.  I had forgotten how completely lovely these are. 

Yesterday I wandered around Fort Kent and got the lay of the place, then found myself on the University of Maine’s campus.  It’s rather small: I was halfway across it before I realized it.  But I soon found the library, which seems to be much the same vintage as Frostburg State’s, where I went for a semester.  This library, unlike the small public library in town, has the glorious hours of 0800-2300, and way more visitor computers.  Score.  I have found my haunt for the next couple days, I thought.

So yesterday was devoted to checking in and clearing up the email inbox, going from 1300 unread emails to 60, which entailed about four hours of staring at the screen.  My eyes weren’t used to it, so that was about all I could manage for the day.

I then went for a walk along the St. John and Fish Rivers, which intersect near the Blockhouse, then aimed to finally fulfill my pizza-and-beer fantasy, but hit a snag when they were cash-only.  Gotta love small towns, though, the pizza place accepted an IOU and a promise to come back and pay it off as soon as I got an ATM to agree with me, or my friends came to town to loan me some cash, whatever happened sooner.

So with these adult-issues adventures, I don’t feel like I’m that far off the Trail.  This trail was by no means total wilderness, and there were only a handful of days where I went without seeing another human.  I feel I should be a little more shell-shocked, slightly sad to leave sleeping under my tarp and sitting by the fire and feeling the pulse of the river and leaving the loons and the beavers behind in exchange for a cheap hotel room.  The wilds of the Trail were great, don’t get me wrong, but the part that I appreciated and embraced the most was the freedom, the self-sufficiency, the simple cause-and-effect of your decisions deciding the consequences and, subsequently, your next couple days.  The environment factored in, sure, but if you read the weather or the Trail wrong, you got exactly zero sympathy.  Adapting was the only option.  Scrappiness was the only virtue.

And that principle, thankfully, doesn’t end here at the Trail terminus.

I paddled the miles, which was the surface-level goal.  But more importantly, and fulfilling the larger goal, I feel ready to take on life beyond the Trail.