Artist Hikes Length of Vermont, Painting Along the Way: Autumn Splendor [View all]

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- Artist Rob Mullen walks down Long Trail, the country's oldest long distance trail, in Manchester, Vt., Tues., Oct. 13, 2020. Mullen was nearing the end of his 272-mile month-long hike down the length of Vermont, painting along the way.

- 'Artist Hikes Length of Vermont, Painting Along the Way,' by Lisa Rathke, AP News, Oct. 17, 2020.

MANCHESTER, Vt. (AP) — After hiking over 200 miles (320 kilometers) on the country’s oldest long-distance trail, Rob Mullen had just 3 miles (5 kilometers) to go in the rain to meet up with his wife and father for a break. He kept dry with his foul weather gear as he walked down the trail with a backdrop of trees sprouting fall’s orange and yellow leaves and carrying trekking poles and a big stuffed blue pack on his back that held his precious painting kit.

Mullen, a 64-year-old wildlife and wilderness artist, is hiking the 272-mile (440-kilometer) Long Trail that runs the length of Vermont and over its highest mountains from the Canadian border to the Massachusetts state line and painting sights along the way. He was nearing the end of his monthlong journey and planned to finish as soon as Saturday afternoon with half a dozen paintings and several thousand photos from which to paint. He’s also coming away with sense of hope about the country from the people he’s met along the trail.

“I’ll be painting from this trip for a long time,” he said during his break off the trail in Manchester on a Tuesday.

Mullen, who has done a number of wilderness canoe trips in Alaska and Canada, had planned to paddle in the Northwest territories of Canada this year with three others. But then the coronavirus pandemic hit. He decided to do the entire Long Trail as a painting trip and to raise money with his art for the Vermont Wildlife Coalition, of which he is a board member, and the Green Mountain Club, which maintains the Long Trail.

..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. “You get these ephemeral friendships,” he said, of the bonds he made with strangers along the way...

More, https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-mountains-vermont-hiking-painting-87a14c6d91f1f2ce088b7caa33bc58ed



- Rob Mullen shows a painting he did during his month-long hike on Vermont's Long Trail. A wildlife & wilderness artist, Mullen was nearing the end of his 272-mile journey down the length of Vt., painting sights along the way.