2016 Harwood graduates Cormac Stevens, Nathan Palmerio and Shane Fekert spent three weeks of their summer freedom confined in the Vermont wilderness.
The three high school graduates wanted to find a unique way to cherish their last summer before separating. Stevens, Palmerio and Fekert decided their time would best be spent hiking the Long Trail. They started their journey on June 26 and finished July 15.
They “thought it would be a good way to say goodbye to Vermont,” Palmerio said.
Stevens asked Palmerio about hiking the Long Trail in the middle of the school year and was surprised when Palmerio agreed so easily. Stevens and Palmerio began hiking more often in the early spring to prepare.
Their day would typically start around 7:30 a.m. with breakfast and they would check how many peaks they had to summit that day. They would walk and hike until lunch, which usually took place around noon, and continue until they reached the shelter they would stay in for the night.
Before heading to bed they would journal, play cards or read.
The real preparation started after graduation when they began to make lists of everything they would need. Stevens already had a pack, which was given to him by a family friend and looked to be from the 1970s, Stevens said. There was not much to buy other than food for the trip.
The 21-day walk through the woods was less difficult than Palmerio had expected, he said, although walking for that long takes a toll on one’s body. “The other two got a lot of blisters,” he said.
For the first 100 miles there were a lot of people from the Appalachian Trail, another trail that spans across 14 states from Georgia to Maine.
Other hikers are not the only community they had a chance to meet. They also came across the Rainbow Gathering in Danby, Vermont. Palmerio and Stevens described it as “thousands of hippies in the woods.” One of them ran over Palmerio’s foot while he was walking back to the trail, he said. Luckily, he was unharmed.
Stevens said that the most memorable part of the trip was climbing Camel’s Hump in the rain. Although the day leading up to the hike was miserable, he said, hiking through clouds, or a “sea of white” as he describes it, is not something that most people get to experience.
This was Palmerio’s first backpacking experience and he says he likes to spend time outdoors. One of his plans is to hike a part of the Pacific Rim Trail, a 2,650-mile trail from Mexico to Canada that travels through California, Oregon and Washington.
Stevens said that he would also pursue long-distance backpacking in the future, although he may opt to travel alone. Three weeks was a perfect amount of time for this trip, but hiking a longer trail would be better unaccompanied.
Since the Appalachian Trail connects with the Long Trail, Stevens noticed that most travelers on the Appalachian Trail were hiking alone, he said, and he assumed the same for the Continental Divide Trail and the Pacific Rim Trail.
For the most part, the three boys were disconnected from the outside world, and it was nice to be out in the woods for three weeks. Palmerio said.
It was weird to come back and hear of all of the tragedies that have happened in the U.S. and France, Palmerio said.
Stevens also thought it was nice to be in the woods and set apart form everyday life for a few weeks, but it was definitely a shock coming back. It was weird to realize that the rest of the world just kept living their lives and that nothing had really changed, Stevens said.
For the rest of the summer Palmerio will be visiting family and preparing for college at Rice University. Stevens will be attending Dickinson College in the fall and hopes to study environmental science and English.
According to Stevens, the trip provided closure and it was a way to challenge himself. “It was a good way to step into the next chapter,” Stevens said.
Fekert could not be reached to be interviewed about the trip.
