Ethan's walk: The homecoming

Globe correspondent Ethan Gilsdorf has been walking from Massachusetts General Hospital to Lee, N.H., this week in memory of his mother and to raise money for the Brain Aneurysm Foundation. He sent this last night.

Blog Entry 6: Day 3 report

Dec 19, 11:30pm, Dover NH

10 years ago today Sara Lynn Gilsdorf died. The idea was that my three-day, 60 mile (now looking closer to 75 mile) walk would end on this day, Dec. 19, at my mother's gravesite. That was the plan, anyway.

Day 3 began with a taxi ride back to my end-point from the day before: Merrimac, Mass. No sun. Overcast. And quiet, cold roads. First challenge: Bear Hill Road. Obviously called "hill" for a reason. 7am. Ugh. Up I went.

But I felt good -- even strong. The back-up shoes helped -- not clunky hiking boots this time, I decided, but insulated walking shoes.

I crossed into New Hampshire at 7:45. I looked at my map. I had been doing 4 miles an hour. I was on a tear -- at this rate, I'd walk an extra mile per hour than I had the first two days.

NH meant the end of suburban homes, and the beginning of farms, wood stoves, baying hounds, banging carpenters, and lots of "No Trespassing" signs. I actually saw a chicken cross the road. I kept cruising: Newton, East Kingston, the lower-left corner of Exeter. My planned route along the B&M/Amtrak rail line was stymied by the snow. I went around. That added another couple miles to my day. I pumped my arms and walked faster.

Still, I couldn't get warm until noon --- despite temps in the 20s and low 30s. My water bottle frozen over after a couple hours. Hot water at a convenience store broke through the ice. The state motto should be Live, Freeze or Die. But the Granite State is my home state, and I appeciated the modest farmhouses, auto bodies and beauty salons in doublewides, a welcome
sight after all the McMansions of Massachusetts.

Around 1:30 pm, as I marched through Brentwood, I hit "the wall."

Aching legs, crunched toes, throbbing fatigue. I didn't think I could go on. I had a moment, somewhere on Pine Road, I think, where visions came to me. I'd like to say they were of my mother. I'm not sure. I do remember singing The Doors "Break on through to the other side." I tried to focus on Mom, on her struggle to regain her life after her aneurysm and stroke in 1978. She'd hobble a quarter mile to the
corner store to get cigarettes, with a cane, slow as can be. But she did it.

I rested on someone's overturned recycling bin, popped four ibuprofen, had a bit of chocolate, wiped something from my eyes, and soldiered on.

The day was lovely -- hard, painful, lovely. The highlight was a one-mile stretch on a snowmobile trail through a hemlock grove. Me alone, the woods, collecting my scattered thoughts.

When I crossed the town line from Epping to Lee, I was visited by a burst of energy. When I arrived at my sister-in-law and brother's house, I was beyond pain. I walked the final three miles with my brother (who pushed my nephew in a stroller). Dark enclosed us. Snow began to fall. We almost sprinted to the cemetery, trying to beat the end of dusk, and we crunched through the snow to the family plot, where my sister awaited.

10 years ago today Sara Lynn Gilsdorf died.

I lay down in the snow, on the snow angel my sister made on top of my mother's grave.

Then my nephew covered me in snow, burying me, and with me perhaps some spirits and thoughts haunting my mind.

Mom, I made it.

I was restful at last, and thankful, and finally home.