Ore Hill Campground to Trapper John Shelter – 20 miles
People ask me about my writing process and here’s how it works: most thoughts come, not coincidentally, on steep climbs. I’ll turn over some words in my head and then stop to catch my breath and jot them down in a scattered mess. I usually straighten these out on my phone’s notepad at night.
On this 10-day stretch I’ve been trying to conserve phone battery, so I haven’t been transcribing my notes. Then I dropped my notebook somewhere in the 3-mile stretch between the top of Mt. Cube and Jacob’s Brook at the bottom. It’s nothing critical because these thoughts are already in my head and I can rewrite them, but I will lose the raw, in-the-moment version.
Losing my notebook made me feel very exposed. My unfiltered, stream of consciousness thoughts are out there somewhere on the trail and I don’t know who is reading. There was nothing too juicy; it was all stuff I was going to post online anyway, but still.
When I realized the notebook was missing, I told a few NOBOs to keep an eye out for it until the top of the hill. By bedtime, Family Man emailed to tell me he found it and would drop it in the mail to me from his next town stop. As they say, the trail provides.
12 Ounce 
Trapper John is right around where we did our trail work. And got caught in an epic thunderstorm.
Writing down my deepest emotions with your pen in hand
the piece of paper flew out the window, you watched try to land
You felt so bad as flew out of sight, a part of your heart alone in the night
All of a sudden, you didn’t mind it when you pictured the lonely stranger that would finally find it
Everything your looking for, you know is real you know when you find it by the way it makes you feel
– Jonny Lang