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The period in the late 1980's and early 1990's was extremely difficult for Rose Marie and me. In 1986 we decided to purchase a house and approximately 39 acres of land in Stowe. The purchase was heavily financed and took a great deal of our time. Our plan was to create 11 home sites on this land in two phases of four and seven sites. Unfortunately, during this period, real estate values were dropping throughout the Northeast. In Stowe the demand for building lots fell and prices dropped substantially. The home sites in Phase I were appraised at $70,000 -$75,000 during the early phase of our work. To repay our Phase I financing we needed to sell the lots at approximately these prices. Instead the lots sold very slowly and then only in the low to mid $40,000 range. During this time our debt load was increasing and the market value of our assets decreasing, to the point where our assets and liabilities were almost equal. At this time there were also serious problems in our marriage which we attempted to address through counseling. When this did not resolve our problems, after much thought I chose to end the marriage and file for divorce. We separated in the fall of 1992. Since we were both working with approximately equal earning power and had no children, it seemed fair to me to equally divide our assets and our liabilities. My wife disagreed with this approach and wanted to litigate. Ultimately, rather than continue expensive litigation or arbitration of this issue, I made the difficult decision to deed to Rose Marie, as part of our divorce agreement, all of our real property assets, subject to their mortgages, plus substantially all of our personal property. Since this left me without any significant assets, but still contingently liable for all the mortgages and other debt which we had incurred to purchase and improve the assets which Rose Marie received, I chose, when our divorce became final in December of 1993, to file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy action which became final in January of 1995. At the time our divorce became final I moved my law practice and my residence to a new rented location about 2 blocks away in Stowe village and began to recover and rebuild my life. My health had always been excellent, but during the stressful times beginning in the late 1980's, warning signs began to appear. My weight increased, my blood pressure increased to measurements of borderline danger and my cholesterol readings were too high. I knew I was experiencing the stress associated with dealing with my marital and financial situation, so I decided to make getting back my health a priority. As a start, I chose to do 6 weeks of long distance hiking on the Appalachian Trail, knowing that this would help me lose weight and begin to bring the other health stats into line. It was a very successful approach. I began hiking at Springer Mountain, Georgia in April of 1992. Six weeks and 568 miles later I ended at Bastian/Bland, Virginia. My weight dropped back to college levels and all of my other problematic health statistics dropped to within normal limits. During the next two difficult years, however, I could not maintain all of these improvements.
Two years later, in 1994 I continued my hike on the Appalachian Trail and covered an additional 1053 miles. Although I had not originally intended to hike the entire trail, I now had completed 3/4s of its length. I thus decided to try and complete the entire 2155 miles. In 1995 I hiked an additional 314 miles and in 1996 I completed the last 220 miles. My friend Sally Howe and her son Seth accompanied me on the final one day hike up Mt. Katahdin in Maine. Later that same summer I hiked a few remaining sections to complete my hike of Vermont's Long Trail. |
