bransonglobe.com Oct. 21 - 22, 2020 • 17 • ARTIST
Continued from page 16
and took back the painting kit. At times, he said the scenery was breathtaking. Unlike paddling, provides a view he can see for miles, showing peaks poking through the clouds at higher elevations, his wife Bonnie Rowell said. She
meets up with him about every five days to resupply him with food. Along the way, Mullen has seen black bears and in a special sighting, a gray fox. And he’s met many hikers who are either hiking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine or, like himself, Vermont’s Long Trail, sharing shelters with them for the night or meeting up on the trail.
Artist Rob Mullen shows one of the paintings he painted during his month-long hike on Vermont’s Long Trail, the country’s oldest long distance trail, in Manchester, Vt. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke)
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“You get these ephemeral friendships,” he said, of the bonds he made with strangers along the way. The hikers look out for one another, share gear and help to fix what’s broken. When two hikers ran out of fuel on a recent night, another hiker loaned them a fuel cannister,
he said. And so-called trail angels leave water at road crossings and other spots for hikers. His monthlong hike was also a reprieve from the polarizing political debate in the country, he said. He hasn’t heard a political discussion in weeks.
“It certainly gives you a little hope that the apparent polarization that comes across when you’re watching the news doesn’t go that deeply into the populace maybe, at least not in many of them. So it was encouraging for me,” he said.
