I learned a long time ago that making assumptions can cause a lot of erroneous thinking. I also knew the importance of checking my facts, yet as I was walking in an area with quite a few blow downs, I was thinking this trail is too long for the number of people they have to maintain it. I was assuming they hadn’t done maintenance on this section for at least a year.

Then I came out to a road and was sitting there out of the solid poison ivy on the trail, taking a break when a truck and trailer pulled up. Five men got out with a bunch of equipment. They told me they were there to take care of the trail. While talking with them, I learned they came up once a week to maintain one of a number of sections of North Country Trail. They informed me that the section I had just gone through with the blow downs, had been cleared just a week or two earlier. All of those downed trees were relatively new. I realized then I had to really be careful about assumptions. It wasn’t that they were doing a poor job of trail maintenance, rather there are so many trees and so much wind, water and vegetation growth that nature is reclaiming it faster than they can keep up with it.

I thought about how important it is, especially in today’s world, to check facts and be willing to change beliefs when real facts show something other than what I may have been told or read. It reenforced for me why true, independent journalism, separate from the control of any person in power, is so important. I thought of many times in history when state controlled media influenced how people thought even when the news put out wasn’t true.

As I followed this workcrew down the trail, I discovered how committed they are to the trail. Many of them are in their 70s and one was even in his 80s, but they were still all removing brush, trimming back the sides of the trail, cutting blow downs and mowing a path. I enjoyed taking a slower day chatting with them as I benefited from their work ahead of me on the trail. I was relieved when they told me the blowdowns ahead had been recently taken care of. Unfortunately, none of us were able to check our facts in the moment, and I would soon learn something quite different.

Later that day, I again went through an area which had quite a few blow downs. At some point, one of the branches ripped the water tube out of my bottle. I didn’t notice it right away, and while when I first noticed it missing and knew it had been in the last mile, I couldn’t make myself go back and look for it. I still had a mile to go to complete an almost 16 mile day and didn’t have it in me to walk back to look. I was touched later to learn that one of the guys had looked for it after I had texted him telling about the blowdowns and how I had lost my water tube. He wasn’t able to find it, but I was appreciative that he had searched for me.

I was also appreciative later that day when I crossed a road and found a frozen water bottle with a note for me. The trail crew had heard me say how much I was craving something really cold to drink and drove around to leave that frozen water bottle for me.

When I wearily reached my campsite for the night, I was surprised to find someone else there. This campsite was not far from a road and he had driven in, expecting to have it all to himself. He told me he was really disappointed when I first showed up, assuming I would interfere with the internal processing he was trying to do. But again this turned out to be a case of misassumptions. In the end, we had some good conversations. I was able to share with him some old lady wisdom, and he shared with me some food and a battery pack to charge my phone so I didn’t have to use my own. I was grateful for this since I was trying to make mine last for the two weeks until I reached Grand Rapids. Little did I know at the time that reaching Grand Rapids was an assumption, but I’ll talk about that in another blog.

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