ran past, and then started off along the logging road. We hadn't been walking more than
three or four minutes when there was a noise in the near distance. We turned to see a
cloud of dust heading our way led by an ancient pickup truck moving at great speed. As it
approached I instinctively put my thumb out, and to my astonishment it stopped about
fifty feet past us.
We ran up to the driver's window. There were two guys in the cab, both in hardhats
and dirty from work--loggers obviously.
"Where you going?" asked the driver.
"Anywhere," I said. "Anywhere but here."
So we didn't see Katahdin. We didn't even see Katahdin Iron Works, except as a glimpsed
blur because we shot past it at about seventy miles an hour on the bounciest, most
terrifyingly hasty ride I ever hope to have in the back of a pickup truck on a dirt road.
We held on for dear life in the open back, lifting our feet to let chainsaws and other
destructive-looking implements slide past-- first this way, then that--while the driver
propelled us through the flying woods with reckless zest, bouncing over potholes with
such vigor as to throw us inches into the air, and negotiating curves as if in startled
afterthought. In consequence we alighted at the little community of Milo, twenty miles to
the south, on unsteady legs and blinking at the suddenness with which our circumstances
had changed. One moment we had been in the heart of wilderness, facing at least a two-
day hike to civilization; now we were in the forecourt of a gas station on the edge of a
remote little town. We watched the pickup truck depart, then took our bearings.
"You want to get a Coke?" I said to Katz. There was a machine by the gas station door.
He considered for a moment. "No," he said. "Maybe later."
It was unlike Katz not to fall upon soft drinks and junk food with exuberant lust when
the opportunity presented itself, but I believe I understood. There is always a measure of
shock when you leave the trail and find yourself parachuted into a world of comfort and
choice, but it was different this time. This time it was permanent. We were hanging up
our hiking boots. From now on, there would always be Coke, and soft beds and showers
and whatever else we wanted. There was no urgency now. It was a strangely subduing
notion.
Milo had no motel, but we were directed to a place called Bishop's Boarding-house, a
large old white house on a handsome street of elegant trees, wide lawns, substantial old
houses--the kind of homes where the garages were originally carriage houses with
quarters upstairs for the servants.
We were received with warmth and bustling kindliness by the proprietor, Joan Bishop,
a cheery, snowy-haired lady with a hearty Down East accent who came to the door
wringing floury hands on an apron and waved us and our grubby packs into the spotless
interior without a flicker of dismay.
The house smelled wholesomely of fresh-baked pastry, garden tomatoes, and air
undisturbed by fans or air-conditioners--old-fashioned summer smells. She called us "you
boys" and acted as if she had been expecting us for days, possibly years.
"Goodness me, just look at you boys!" she clucked in astonishment and delight. "You
look as if you've been wrestling bears!"