The Long Trail runs 272 miles from the Massachusetts line to the Canadian border along the spine of the Green Mountains. It is the oldest long-distance trail in the United States, surveyed by James P. Taylor in 1910 and built, mostly by hand, over the following twenty years.
Most people walk it in July and August. A few walk it in September. Almost no one walks it in May.
There is a reason for this. May in Vermont is mud season. The frost is leaving the ground from below, the snowmelt is leaving from above, and the trail, in many places, becomes a trench of cold brown soup the consistency of warm pudding.
Maeve Quinlan, thirty-three, a high school physics teacher from Burlington, walked the trail northbound from May 6 to May 16, 2026. She had walked it once before, in August 2019. She wanted to know what it was like the rest of the year.
She wrote in pencil in a Rite in the Rain notebook every evening. She gave the notebook to a friend in early June. The friend gave it, after a phone call, to this magazine.
Day one, May 6. Massachusetts line to Seth Warner Shelter. 2.7 miles. Trailhead empty. One car, hers. Snow still on the trail in the shaded hollows. Boots wet by the first stream crossing.
Day two, May 7. Seth Warner to Congdon Shelter. 9.5 miles. The mud begins in earnest at the descent from Consultation Peak. She lost a gaiter to a sucking hole at mile four, retrieved it after ten minutes of effort, and walked the remainder of the day with one bare ankle caked in mud the color of dark chocolate.
She heard her first wood thrush at 5:48 p.m. in the alder thicket below the shelter. She noted it in the margin with three exclamation lines, then crossed them out and wrote: first thrush of the spring.
Day three, May 8. Congdon to Melville Nauheim Shelter. 11.1 miles. Rain all day. The trail is a stream. She passed no one. She drank from puddles after filtering and felt foolish doing so, but the puddles were everywhere and the streams were the same water moving slightly faster.
Day four, May 9. Melville Nauheim to Goddard Shelter. 10.4 miles. The first dry day. She climbed Glastenbury Mountain in the afternoon and the wind on the summit, which has no view, dried her socks for the first time in three days. She wrote: nothing more satisfying than warm socks. nothing.
Day five, May 10. Goddard to Story Spring Shelter. 9.6 miles. She met her first other hiker, a southbound trail maintainer from the Green Mountain Club named Ed, who was carrying a chainsaw. Ed told her that the blowdowns this spring were the worst in twenty years. A January ice storm had taken down hundreds of birches on the southern half of the trail.
She had walked over thirty of them already. She had not counted.
Day six, May 11. Story Spring to Stratton Pond Shelter. 10.3 miles. She climbed Stratton Mountain, where Benton MacKaye is said to have first conceived of the Appalachian Trail in 1921, sitting in a tree. There is now a fire tower on the summit. She climbed it. She could see nothing because of the clouds.
Day seven, May 12. Stratton Pond to Spruce Peak Shelter. 12.9 miles. The longest day so far. The trail was finally drier. She passed Manchester Center in the valley below without going in. She had food for the rest of the trip and did not want to break the rhythm.
Day eight, May 13. Spruce Peak to Big Branch Shelter. 9.2 miles. Cold. She found ice in her water bottle at 6:15 a.m., which she did not expect on May 13. She wore her down jacket inside her sleeping bag for the first time and slept poorly.
Day nine, May 14. Big Branch to Greenwall Shelter. 8.7 miles. She crossed the road at Danby and saw a moose, a cow, browsing the alders along the brook. The moose looked at her for what felt like a long time and then walked away without hurrying.
Day ten, May 15. Greenwall to Minerva Hinchey Shelter. 11.0 miles. Hot. Seventy-two degrees by mid-afternoon, the warmest day of the trip. The mud, in patches, had begun to dry. She found morels along the trail in three separate places and left them where they were. She does not trust her morel identification this far north.
Day eleven, May 16. Minerva Hinchey to U.S. Route 4 at Sherburne Pass. 10.5 miles. She walked out at 3:40 p.m., 105.9 miles up the trail. She had originally intended to keep going to the Canadian border. She did not.
Her last entry, written on the afternoon of May 16 from a diner in Killington: I am going home. I have seen what I came to see. The trail in May is not a worse trail. It is a different one. The people who tell you to wait for July are not wrong, but they are missing something.
She added, in pencil, at the bottom of the page: also, my boots are ruined.
The northern 166 miles of the Long Trail, the part she did not walk, are the harder half. They include Mount Mansfield and Camel's Hump and the Jay Range and the long descent to the border. They are not, in May, recommended. She knew this when she planned the trip.
She intends to come back for them in September.
