Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 20:39:09 -0400 From: Daniel Eisenbud Subject: North Adams, MA Dear All, Sometimes progress is excruciatingly slow. I ended up staying in Boston for five days longer than the 24 hours I had planned (um, I got distracted.) I finally got back on the trail Friday evening, and despite a slow start, hot and muggy mornings, big afternoon and evening thunderstorms, and an almost biblical plague of slugs one night, I was moving along. The night before last, there was a strong cold wind, and we finally had great hiking weather again -- I started out wearing all my long underwear, my rain jacket, my hat, and my gloves, for the first time in a very long time, but that was at 7:00 AM or before, and by 10:00 it was just lovely out. I hiked most of the way up Mt. Greylock yesterday evening. Today I went over the summit, but started to feel really sick on the way back down (the first 3,000' descent we've had in a very long time, given that it was the first peak over 3,000' since the Shenandoah.) I got into town to discover that I was running a fever. The upshot at the doctor's was that I probably don't have Lyme disease, but that they're to give me antibiotics anyway because I've been going through tick-infested grasslands and have found deer ticks on me, and there's no way for them to be sure that it's not Lyme disease. Whatever it is, it's no fun. I'm probably going to hunker down here tomorrow, and hope to cover at least a few miles out of town the day after, to at least maintain the illusion of progress, unless I still feel crappy. Besides that, though, I'm in good spirits, Massachusetts is beautiful, and Vermont, so close but so far at about five trail miles away, is something I'm looking forward to even more once I'm back on my feet. Love, Daniel -- Daniel E. Eisenbud eisenbud@cs.swarthmore.edu