I. Vox Clamantis in Deserto
I love how when you’re living outdoors you feel like you’re sleeping and sleeping forever, only to get up and realize it’s not late at all. It rained hard for most of the night—loud on the shelter roof, and the temperature was good for savoring the taste of slumber: nice weather for young ducks, but not for hikers. So I drifted in and out of sleep for what felt like half the day. When I finally sat up and started making coffee, I heard the bell from Dartmouth. It tolled seven.
It was grey and gloomy with a chickadee pee-weeing and a breeze knocking raindrops from the leaves. I sat drinking coffee and munching on hardtack with my sleeping bag over my lap.
I thought of the slight culture shock I had experienced the day before on arriving in Concord from my house in Langdon. In the bus station I heard an Australian accent, saw a blonde and strapping Midwestern college boy, and a Southeast Asian of the same age with spiked hair and a rattail, like he’d walked out of an ‘80s music video.
As we rolled northwest on I-89, I had a faint taste of the feeling one gets on going north from somewhere like Vancouver or Winnipeg—of saying “So long” to civilization, of forsaking the world to head into the bush for a spell. But the illusion was shattered as soon as we got off at Route 120 and drove through Lebanon and Hanover.
Far from being the Vox clamantis in deserto of Eleazar Wheelock’s day, the Dartmouth area today (known in New Hampshire and Vermont as the Upper Valley) is considered one of the largest micropolitan statistical areas in the United States. The term is a new one, and it basically denotes suburbs without an urbs. Think of it as a satellite of Connecticut with a tad more elbow room and a better chance of hitting a moose.
North from Hanover, however, the woods stretch almost unbroken to the Canadian border—a semblance of Wheelock’s “wilderness” begins. And the voice of Dartmouth’s bells crying out into it is not unwelcome.
I love how when you’re living outdoors you feel like you’re sleeping and sleeping forever, only to get up and realize it’s not late at all. It rained hard for most of the night—loud on the shelter roof, and the temperature was good for savoring the taste of slumber: nice weather for young ducks, but not for hikers. So I drifted in and out of sleep for what felt like half the day. When I finally sat up and started making coffee, I heard the bell from Dartmouth. It tolled seven.
It was grey and gloomy with a chickadee pee-weeing and a breeze knocking raindrops from the leaves. I sat drinking coffee and munching on hardtack with my sleeping bag over my lap.
I thought of the slight culture shock I had experienced the day before on arriving in Concord from my house in Langdon. In the bus station I heard an Australian accent, saw a blonde and strapping Midwestern college boy, and a Southeast Asian of the same age with spiked hair and a rattail, like he’d walked out of an ‘80s music video.
As we rolled northwest on I-89, I had a faint taste of the feeling one gets on going north from somewhere like Vancouver or Winnipeg—of saying “So long” to civilization, of forsaking the world to head into the bush for a spell. But the illusion was shattered as soon as we got off at Route 120 and drove through Lebanon and Hanover.
Far from being the Vox clamantis in deserto of Eleazar Wheelock’s day, the Dartmouth area today (known in New Hampshire and Vermont as the Upper Valley) is considered one of the largest micropolitan statistical areas in the United States. The term is a new one, and it basically denotes suburbs without an urbs. Think of it as a satellite of Connecticut with a tad more elbow room and a better chance of hitting a moose.
North from Hanover, however, the woods stretch almost unbroken to the Canadian border—a semblance of Wheelock’s “wilderness” begins. And the voice of Dartmouth’s bells crying out into it is not unwelcome.
I got off the bus alone on the Dartmouth Green and made my way a quarter mile down the road to the Connecticut River, which seemed an appropriate starting point for this walk. On my way I saw a girl hobbling awkwardly along the sidewalk with a shoe on one foot and a roller-skate on the other. Sights like that jump out to me as metaphors, especially when I’m on the move.
After greeting the river, I made my way back up the hill and on the west side of the Green stopped in at the Dartmouth Outing Club’s headquarters. The D.O.C. is one of this country’s most august trail associations and is responsible for keeping up the Appalachian Trail, as well as many other local paths, between the Connecticut Valley and Kinsman Notch, about 53 miles to the north. I looked at a few artifacts on the walls and chatted briefly with a student who was taking a break from studying for exams and strumming on a guitar.
Passing through downtown Hanover with dinner on the brain, each exotic restaurant was a temptation to resist. But resist I did. And in half a mile I turned into the woods and hiked the eight-tenths of a mile to the Velvet Rocks Shelter, where I built a fire, made dinner, and enjoyed the long evening.
After greeting the river, I made my way back up the hill and on the west side of the Green stopped in at the Dartmouth Outing Club’s headquarters. The D.O.C. is one of this country’s most august trail associations and is responsible for keeping up the Appalachian Trail, as well as many other local paths, between the Connecticut Valley and Kinsman Notch, about 53 miles to the north. I looked at a few artifacts on the walls and chatted briefly with a student who was taking a break from studying for exams and strumming on a guitar.
Passing through downtown Hanover with dinner on the brain, each exotic restaurant was a temptation to resist. But resist I did. And in half a mile I turned into the woods and hiked the eight-tenths of a mile to the Velvet Rocks Shelter, where I built a fire, made dinner, and enjoyed the long evening.
I didn’t see anyone the next morning until I had crossed Three Mile Road, where I had ended the previous leg of my journey, about nine miles outside Hanover. Now I started bumping into trail runners. I hadn’t encountered any yet along my route and would not see any again once I got beyond the Upper Valley.
Well beyond earshot of cars now and into the land of spruce and moose, in the afternoon I stopped at a prospect near the north peak of Moose Mountain to take a nap while birds flitted nearby without taking note of me. The wind was in a frisky mood, playing back and forth across the bendable tops of the maples and making the leaves flutter like spinners. My goal for the day, Smarts Mountain, stood in view a long way to my north, easily recognizable by the firetower on its summit ridge.
I made my way down into a valley, where I heard the nervous peepings of little peregrine falcons in their nests hanging high on the rocks. The uncivil curiosity of certain human beings had led them to tear through a fence designed to protect the nesting area in order to get a firsthand look at these sensitive creatures. Close cousins to those who think truth and fact are the same thing, these are the sort of people who cannot be content with postcards or memories but must photograph everything, just to prove they were really there.
At the side of a dirt road in the next valley—where S.U.V.s, Subarus, and trucks with gun racks passed in roughly equal numbers—I sat for a snack and a drink of water. Not long after I had stopped, a skinny man of about thirty with tight brown curls and round glasses tumbled out of a hole in the woods with an endearing fusion of clumsiness and grace in his carriage. His eyes searched his surroundings with avian flittiness, returning every few seconds to the screen of his iPhone, where he evidently had some kind of map. He nodded distractedly and walked past me.
A minute later I got up and followed. The trail cut through a cluster of trees and went into a field, then ran off to the east toward the Dartmouth Skiway before continuing northward into the woods and up a rise. Just shy of this entrance to the woods was a handmade sign advertising conversation and free ice cream for hikers. As I went by, I could hear a conversation starting and, through the trees and grass, faintly see the forms of two men meeting. The absent-minded fellow I had just seen had taken the bait, and, as much as I wanted some ice cream, I knew that he was an Appalachian-Trail through-hiker and so felt like I would be cramping his style by dropping in at the same time. And part of me felt unworthy by comparison. So I pushed on.
There was a small dirt parking lot by a brook at the base of Smarts Mountain where a balding man in his forties was putting his shoes on. “Have you been swimming?” I asked him, because he looked a little wet.
“No,” he said. “I’ve been trail running.
“Oh,” I said. “Did I pass you this morning?”
“Yes,” he replied. And he told me where he had seen me. He had been running for most of the day with his wife, who was training for an ultra-marathon. He told me there were two ways up Smarts Mountain—an easy way and a hard way.
“Which one’s prettier?” I asked.
His smile was answer enough.
I thanked him and made my way up Lambert Ridge, the first steepish ascent of this leg of the journey. A clearing of rock slabs about halfway to the top afforded the first sweeping views—the kind you often get in the Whites—and I stopped for a few minutes to take them in. In the meantime the curly-haired through-hiker caught up to me, and we chatted briefly before setting off on the final push to the summit of Smarts Mountain, which stood within easy view but not so easy attainment, as it was still considerably higher than we were.
As the ascent steepened, my travel companion vanished ahead of me with impressive speed. The color of the air warmed with the approach of twilight. My steps grew heavier and heavier under the great weight of my pack. But relief came at just the right time, the terrain flattening into the long summit ridge.
A minute later I got up and followed. The trail cut through a cluster of trees and went into a field, then ran off to the east toward the Dartmouth Skiway before continuing northward into the woods and up a rise. Just shy of this entrance to the woods was a handmade sign advertising conversation and free ice cream for hikers. As I went by, I could hear a conversation starting and, through the trees and grass, faintly see the forms of two men meeting. The absent-minded fellow I had just seen had taken the bait, and, as much as I wanted some ice cream, I knew that he was an Appalachian-Trail through-hiker and so felt like I would be cramping his style by dropping in at the same time. And part of me felt unworthy by comparison. So I pushed on.
There was a small dirt parking lot by a brook at the base of Smarts Mountain where a balding man in his forties was putting his shoes on. “Have you been swimming?” I asked him, because he looked a little wet.
“No,” he said. “I’ve been trail running.
“Oh,” I said. “Did I pass you this morning?”
“Yes,” he replied. And he told me where he had seen me. He had been running for most of the day with his wife, who was training for an ultra-marathon. He told me there were two ways up Smarts Mountain—an easy way and a hard way.
“Which one’s prettier?” I asked.
His smile was answer enough.
I thanked him and made my way up Lambert Ridge, the first steepish ascent of this leg of the journey. A clearing of rock slabs about halfway to the top afforded the first sweeping views—the kind you often get in the Whites—and I stopped for a few minutes to take them in. In the meantime the curly-haired through-hiker caught up to me, and we chatted briefly before setting off on the final push to the summit of Smarts Mountain, which stood within easy view but not so easy attainment, as it was still considerably higher than we were.
As the ascent steepened, my travel companion vanished ahead of me with impressive speed. The color of the air warmed with the approach of twilight. My steps grew heavier and heavier under the great weight of my pack. But relief came at just the right time, the terrain flattening into the long summit ridge.
The old firewarden’s cabin stood at the far end of the ridge, and after dropping my pack there and congratulating myself with my companion, I put on a windbreaker and made for the firetower in hopes of catching a view of the sunset.
I found the tower’s staircase roped off with a sign warning of a fine for anyone who dared climb it. This I hopped over easily enough, and three-quarters of the way up I met a man of about sixty wearing a tuque over a balding head and sporting a thick grey moustache. He stretched out his hand, and with a generous smile across his face, gave me his trail name; I remember only that it had something to do with cake.
All distance hikers on the A.T. (or any of its western cousins) are known among others in the trail community by monikers that they have either been given or have themselves adopted. The man came from Birmingham, Alabama, and had been section-hiking the trail four a couple of weeks every summer for the last twenty years. “I saved the best part for last,” he said. “I’ve done Vermont and Maine already, but New Hampshire’s the pearl of the trail [He pronounced it New Haimpshire.]. I’m taking three weeks and staying in every shelter along the way so I can really enjoy it. This is my swan song.” The way that the words “swan song” were drawn out by the man's deep-southern accent lent the phrase an exquisite richness.
After a minute or two the guy I had been hiking with joined us on the tower steps. He introduced himself to the Alabaman, and I realized we hadn’t formally met yet. “I’m Lunchbox,” he said. I gave him my everyday name, Anders, not thinking to give out the traveling moniker “Nanook” I’d been dubbed with by a friend in northern Saskatchewan.
We all admired the sunset for a while, and when Lunchbox had climbed back down to the ground, I lingered a moment longer with the Alabaman.
“It sure is windy here,” he said.
“Windiest place on earth, New Hampshire,” I said, telling an expired truth. In April of 1931 a wind speed of 234 miles per hour was recorded on the summit of Mount Washington, and until recently this was the highest wind speed ever recorded on the surface of the earth. But a gust of 253 m.p.h. was measured on Barrow Island, off the northwest coast of Australia, in April of 1996 (but wasn’t actually discovered until someone stumbled on the measurement about a decade later while analyzing old data!). The Alabaman didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was going to call me on the facts.
“And I love all the Christmas trees,” he continued. “I keep expecting to see Santa Claus or something.” I looked down from the tower and it did look like Christmas trees blanketed the land. It seemed like such a silly idea and it made me laugh, and I wondered whether I might think of it now whenever I looked out at the vast evergreen woods of northern New Hampshire.
Back in the cabin Lunchbox and I chatted about the final stretch of the mountain we had just come up. “I wasn’t sure if we’d find any water up here,” he explained, “so I was carrying a lot of weight.” As we talked I watched him pull out the water bottles that had made his load so heavy. There were three one-liter bottles, and the fullest had not more than two inches of water in it. I, meanwhile, had been carrying three full liters, as well as eight days’ worth of food. This made me feel like less of a weakling for having fallen behind.
“How much food do you carry at a time?” I asked.
“Never more than three or four days’ worth on the A.T.,” said Lunchbox. “You’re never very far from a town on this trail.” I learned that he had hiked the Pacific Crest Trail a few years before and that in the future he planned to do the Continental Divide Trail as well. “Once you do one,” he explained, “you have to do all three. It’s the Triple Crown!”
I found the tower’s staircase roped off with a sign warning of a fine for anyone who dared climb it. This I hopped over easily enough, and three-quarters of the way up I met a man of about sixty wearing a tuque over a balding head and sporting a thick grey moustache. He stretched out his hand, and with a generous smile across his face, gave me his trail name; I remember only that it had something to do with cake.
All distance hikers on the A.T. (or any of its western cousins) are known among others in the trail community by monikers that they have either been given or have themselves adopted. The man came from Birmingham, Alabama, and had been section-hiking the trail four a couple of weeks every summer for the last twenty years. “I saved the best part for last,” he said. “I’ve done Vermont and Maine already, but New Hampshire’s the pearl of the trail [He pronounced it New Haimpshire.]. I’m taking three weeks and staying in every shelter along the way so I can really enjoy it. This is my swan song.” The way that the words “swan song” were drawn out by the man's deep-southern accent lent the phrase an exquisite richness.
After a minute or two the guy I had been hiking with joined us on the tower steps. He introduced himself to the Alabaman, and I realized we hadn’t formally met yet. “I’m Lunchbox,” he said. I gave him my everyday name, Anders, not thinking to give out the traveling moniker “Nanook” I’d been dubbed with by a friend in northern Saskatchewan.
We all admired the sunset for a while, and when Lunchbox had climbed back down to the ground, I lingered a moment longer with the Alabaman.
“It sure is windy here,” he said.
“Windiest place on earth, New Hampshire,” I said, telling an expired truth. In April of 1931 a wind speed of 234 miles per hour was recorded on the summit of Mount Washington, and until recently this was the highest wind speed ever recorded on the surface of the earth. But a gust of 253 m.p.h. was measured on Barrow Island, off the northwest coast of Australia, in April of 1996 (but wasn’t actually discovered until someone stumbled on the measurement about a decade later while analyzing old data!). The Alabaman didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was going to call me on the facts.
“And I love all the Christmas trees,” he continued. “I keep expecting to see Santa Claus or something.” I looked down from the tower and it did look like Christmas trees blanketed the land. It seemed like such a silly idea and it made me laugh, and I wondered whether I might think of it now whenever I looked out at the vast evergreen woods of northern New Hampshire.
Back in the cabin Lunchbox and I chatted about the final stretch of the mountain we had just come up. “I wasn’t sure if we’d find any water up here,” he explained, “so I was carrying a lot of weight.” As we talked I watched him pull out the water bottles that had made his load so heavy. There were three one-liter bottles, and the fullest had not more than two inches of water in it. I, meanwhile, had been carrying three full liters, as well as eight days’ worth of food. This made me feel like less of a weakling for having fallen behind.
“How much food do you carry at a time?” I asked.
“Never more than three or four days’ worth on the A.T.,” said Lunchbox. “You’re never very far from a town on this trail.” I learned that he had hiked the Pacific Crest Trail a few years before and that in the future he planned to do the Continental Divide Trail as well. “Once you do one,” he explained, “you have to do all three. It’s the Triple Crown!”
Lunchbox wasn’t much of a talker, which under normal circumstances suits me just fine, but I have noticed that on the trail I become inexplicably and uncharacteristically chatty. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps I simply feel in my element, like I have a certain authority and so have no need to feel diffident. At any rate, I spent the whole of the following day leap-frogging my way north with Lunchbox, and each time we met we’d have a little talk. As I walked, I found myself saving up questions for the next time I’d see him, mostly about his hike on the P.C.T.
After accidentally mixing juice crystals and instant coffee, which proved a stimulating if decidedly unappealing cocktail, I took the lead on a five mile stretch over Mount Mist. There was a whole series of such short stretches between roads, and we seemed to be chewing them up and spitting them out. In the last two miles of this particular section my knee started pulsing, feeling the stress. “It just needs the use,” I told myself.
At the bottom I crossed Route 25 and found a fording place for bridgeless Oliverian Brook, near the village of Glencliff. I took off my shoes and socks, crossed the pleasantly cold stream, and on the far side submerged my knee in the water while I had a snack and waited for Lunchbox.
After accidentally mixing juice crystals and instant coffee, which proved a stimulating if decidedly unappealing cocktail, I took the lead on a five mile stretch over Mount Mist. There was a whole series of such short stretches between roads, and we seemed to be chewing them up and spitting them out. In the last two miles of this particular section my knee started pulsing, feeling the stress. “It just needs the use,” I told myself.
At the bottom I crossed Route 25 and found a fording place for bridgeless Oliverian Brook, near the village of Glencliff. I took off my shoes and socks, crossed the pleasantly cold stream, and on the far side submerged my knee in the water while I had a snack and waited for Lunchbox.
It was four o’clock. “This is where we choose if this is going to be a 21-mile day or a 28-mile day,” Lunchbox announced, chewing on an energy bar, when he had arrived. “Do you feel like one more mile, or eight?”
I knew that going eight more miles also meant going right over the top of Mount Moosilauke, the southernmost peak of the White Mountains and the first real mountain I’d be crossing. I also knew from experience that I’d be foolish to go on. But there were four hours of daylight remaining, and I was eager to keep pace, at least for today, with Lunchbox. “I’m going for twenty-eight,” I said.
He fed me some statistics from his phone about the elevation we’d have to cover and then shouldered his pack and took to the woods. I followed suit but in just a few minutes found myself lagging, both because my knee had gone from discomfort to pain and because there were so many pretty things to stop and look at along the way—flowers, a waterfall, and an old cemetery I stumbled into quite by accident with headstones slanted and skinny and graced with names like Horace, Tabitha, and Josiah.
When I came out of the clearing that held the burial ground I had to cross a road. Not thirty feet uphill from me a fisher decided to cross too, going the opposite direction. He loped over the road in no great hurry, giving me a chance to have a good look at him—his form sleek and brown—and then perched himself for ten seconds on a boulder to take a long look at me. It was only the second time in my life I had seen a fisher. It’s a rarity, and to get such a prolonged view from nearby is a real treat.
I knew that going eight more miles also meant going right over the top of Mount Moosilauke, the southernmost peak of the White Mountains and the first real mountain I’d be crossing. I also knew from experience that I’d be foolish to go on. But there were four hours of daylight remaining, and I was eager to keep pace, at least for today, with Lunchbox. “I’m going for twenty-eight,” I said.
He fed me some statistics from his phone about the elevation we’d have to cover and then shouldered his pack and took to the woods. I followed suit but in just a few minutes found myself lagging, both because my knee had gone from discomfort to pain and because there were so many pretty things to stop and look at along the way—flowers, a waterfall, and an old cemetery I stumbled into quite by accident with headstones slanted and skinny and graced with names like Horace, Tabitha, and Josiah.
When I came out of the clearing that held the burial ground I had to cross a road. Not thirty feet uphill from me a fisher decided to cross too, going the opposite direction. He loped over the road in no great hurry, giving me a chance to have a good look at him—his form sleek and brown—and then perched himself for ten seconds on a boulder to take a long look at me. It was only the second time in my life I had seen a fisher. It’s a rarity, and to get such a prolonged view from nearby is a real treat.
The great dome of Moosilauke rose to my immediate north. The summit ridge was so high above me that the stubbly spruce and balsams edging it looked as smooth as a razor blade. I had to get moving if I was going to beat the darkness, because my destination was another two miles beyond the faraway crest.
The sun cast a warm and pleasing light down on the meadows I had to cross before re-entering the woods. I have never actively tried to picture the Elysian Fields of Greek mythology, but perhaps they would be a bit like this—rolling down toward the south, transected by seductive footpaths and cleft with salubrious streams, surrounded by woods but not choked by them. The kind of place that makes you want to throw down your load, tie a garland of wildflowers to set loosely atop your head, and skip off in search of a fountain from which a lightening elixir springs.
My knee wouldn’t have agreed with skipping just then, but in my mind I skipped along joyously. Or maybe what I imagined was the easy and graceful glide of the fisher, who seemed—in that peculiar way of all the cousins in the weasel family, from ermine to wolverine—so at home in his movement.
The trail up the south side of Moosilauke started by flanking a stream and continued long, straight, and steep, like a stairway directly to the top. With each step up my knee became sorer and less willing to bend. But I nevertheless took the detour, once I reached the summit ridge, to the south peak, where I was rewarded with views not only to the Whites, but south toward the part of New Hampshire where I grew up and now live. It’s an uncommon view, and just the sort I like, straddling as it does the intensely familiar and the less familiar, and so giving me a distinct but hard-to-pin-down sense of confidence and satisfaction in the power of walking; to know that you can move between worlds with a minimum of material resources—which is perhaps to have expanded one’s own sense of the world to a point where it encompasses several worlds—sometimes seems like a spiritual accomplishment.
The sun cast a warm and pleasing light down on the meadows I had to cross before re-entering the woods. I have never actively tried to picture the Elysian Fields of Greek mythology, but perhaps they would be a bit like this—rolling down toward the south, transected by seductive footpaths and cleft with salubrious streams, surrounded by woods but not choked by them. The kind of place that makes you want to throw down your load, tie a garland of wildflowers to set loosely atop your head, and skip off in search of a fountain from which a lightening elixir springs.
My knee wouldn’t have agreed with skipping just then, but in my mind I skipped along joyously. Or maybe what I imagined was the easy and graceful glide of the fisher, who seemed—in that peculiar way of all the cousins in the weasel family, from ermine to wolverine—so at home in his movement.
The trail up the south side of Moosilauke started by flanking a stream and continued long, straight, and steep, like a stairway directly to the top. With each step up my knee became sorer and less willing to bend. But I nevertheless took the detour, once I reached the summit ridge, to the south peak, where I was rewarded with views not only to the Whites, but south toward the part of New Hampshire where I grew up and now live. It’s an uncommon view, and just the sort I like, straddling as it does the intensely familiar and the less familiar, and so giving me a distinct but hard-to-pin-down sense of confidence and satisfaction in the power of walking; to know that you can move between worlds with a minimum of material resources—which is perhaps to have expanded one’s own sense of the world to a point where it encompasses several worlds—sometimes seems like a spiritual accomplishment.
By now I had fallen into the autopilot mode familiar to many hikers, simultaneously angry with myself for having pushed my aching knee at least eight miles beyond the place where it told me to stop and fatalistically resigned to the fact that I had no choice but to carry myself down from the mountaintop. Once the latter has happened, it’s possible to forget the former for long intervals and to get lost in other thoughts or in no thoughts at all. I remember a stand of balsams, solid and evenly spaced so that the last aura of sunlight, a delicate suffusion, fell through, as it might fall softly through stained glass among the pillars of a cold cathedral.
After stopping to fill my bottles from a spring that drip-dripped slowly off a ledge along the trail, I came stumbling up to the Beaver Brook Shelter (the usual lean-to) in the dark. Lunchbox was looking up the trail, having heard my footsteps.
“I was wondering if you were going to make it,” he said.
“I knew I would eventually.” I told him my leg was hurting.
“Mine too,” he said. “That was a long day!”
Although I slept as late as I could the next morning in hopes that it would do my knee some good, when I got up it was even stiffer. I took my time over breakfast, as it was dreary and raining, but I eventually got underway. The Beaver Brook Trail, which descends from Moosilauke to Kinsman Notch, is not long, but it is said to be one of the most punishing descents in the White Mountains. Descents are usually my forte: I fly fearlessly down over the rocks, my eyes always two or three moves ahead of my feet, and on my lips the mantra “the cultivation of grace.”
But today I felt like an old man, clinging to the sturdy little trees and occasionally even turning around backwards to step gently and carefully down the rain-soaked rocks, one by one. Nevertheless, my spirits stayed afloat, thanks in large part to the great care with which the trail had been built; the Dartmouth Outing Club had outdone itself here, showing off its mastery with the bolting of contoured wooden steps right into the slabs that flanked the cascades of the brook; my sense of admiration worked like a salve.
Looking down into the depths of Kinsman Notch through a frame-like opening in the trees where the brook flowed through brought on a powerful but vague memory of the Whites from childhood that almost made me cry (or perhaps actually did): some combination of the darkness, the depth, the greenness—the smell of balsam. The scene blended nature and story in a way that elegant old Austrian or Italian tourism posters for the Alps do, or perhaps some Maxfield Parrish paintings that have left subtle traces on my mind.
At the Notch I found a walking stick and tossed my garbage into a container in the parking lot. I contemplated hitchhiking into town, even calling it quits for the week. But just then the sky released a violent downpour. I was exposed and quickly getting soaked, so I dashed across the road and back into the “green tunnel” (the perfect nickname for the A.T.), for protection more than anything else. But the force of habit pushed me on, and I soon found myself moving slowly but surely up Kinsman Ridge.
At this point my knee was getting worse and worse—stiff and hurting. It was losing its bend. I told myself I would make it the 6.4 miles to the Eliza Brook Shelter and then stop, perhaps staying for a couple of days’ rest if necessary. The rain got harder and, as I gained elevation, the wind picked up. I was shivering and susceptible, losing control of my emotions—sometimes nearly crying, sometimes swearing. But there was always a part of me that appreciated where I was—grateful to be in a place of my choosing, despite the straits.
Three and a half miles in I came to the cutoff for Gordon Pond and noticed that a mile had been added to the distance to the Eliza Brook Shelter, making it 4.2 and not the previously posted 3.2. And I still had to cross Mount Wolf. So I decided to retreat, the distance back being shorter than the distance forward. Just when I had made my decision, Lunchbox, who had risen early that morning and hitchhiked into Lincoln for provisions, came hiking around the corner.
“Look who it is!” he said.
I told him I was going back to Lincoln and that I might even quit for the week. “Rest is the only thing you can do,” he advised.
He was excited because he had just caught up with three hikers whose names he had been following in logbooks since leaving Springer Mountain in Georgia three months before. From them he had also heard that there was a hostel in Lincoln, which was news to me. And it was news that might come in handy.
“So long,” I said. “Good luck with the rest of your walk.” He wished me well, and we went our separate ways.
III. Lincoln Underground
It took me about two hours to hobble back down to 112, swinging my leg out and around with each step, leaning heavily on my walking stick. The rain had stopped and my spirits had lifted slightly. I decided I would rest in Lincoln if I could find the rumored hostel and then sneak out the back door via a low-relief route that I had taken about 23 years earlier with my father and brother.
At the road this meant I would walk the 6.6 miles to Lincoln, not hitchhike, so that I wouldn’t have to come back later to close the gap. (I had decided I was going to be a purist on this walk, covering every single inch of the line between Massachusetts and Quebec.) The walk on the smooth pavement past Lost River Gorge was easy on my joints, though the repeated shock against the pavement under my weight over time led to a burning sensation in my muscles.
In Woodstock a man in his twenties was taking a break outside the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant. When he saw me he said, “You look beat!” with a smile on his face. I took this as encouragement, because he hadn’t said, “Holy shit! You look broken,” with a look of concern, as I had expected him to.
I asked him about the hostel. “Yes,” he said. “It’s run by an old dude named Chet in a wheelchair. It’s just a bunch of plywood bunks. Cool place.” He gave me directions.
I texted my brother and asked him to track down Chet’s number for me. When I was a few minutes off I gave him a call and asked if he had a bed to spare. “That depends who you are,” he replied.
My answer was satisfactory.
Chet was a talker. He gave me his spiel: “You can work for stay, barter, or leave a donation. Whatever you can afford. If you can only spare a quarter, a quarter’s fine.” Then he fielded my questions about his underground hostel. Most people he’d ever had at once? Thirty-seven. He told me about people who had gotten too comfortable and had to be evicted. He told me about people who had posed as long-distance hikers to stay there. He told me how he doesn’t welcome the downhill ski crowd.
The place itself is a garage into which six plywood bunks have been stuffed, along with a few couches and armchairs, a futon, a fridge, a book-swap shelf, and other shelves full of all kinds of jettisoned gear for the taking. I would leave with a tarp and two non-matching hiking poles.
I was famished, but it took some doing to break away from Chet’s chat. I eventually ended up at Gordi’s, my usual Lincoln eating place, for a steak and their delicious homemade bread and butter.
The next day I spent around town. I sat for a while in Dunkin’ Donuts watching people and eavesdropping, checking my email, and copying poems into my journal so I could memorize them and think about them as I walked along. I went to the post office to mail home a few things I didn’t need, and then to Mountain Wanderer Books to have a look around and get an overview map of the White Mountains.
In the evening I went to a hamburger place next door to Gordi’s. While I was there I texted a friend in the North Country who I had been talking with lately about my journey. I told her what had happened and what my plans were. She informed me that one of the trails I had planned on using had been wiped out by Hurricane Irene and was probably still closed. She rather imperatively suggested that I skip the high peaks altogether and head due north from Thoreau Falls, which is an easy walk north of Lincoln in the so-called Pemigewasset Wilderness. Sometimes it’s nice to have a voice of reason. It wasn’t my own, and this time I listened.
After dinner I walked down by the Pemigewasset River. The thunderstorms that had been coming and going all day, and thanks to which I now looked like a drowned rat, finally gave way to a bit of evening sunshine.
Back at the hostel it was dark and all the through-hikers were asleep. I went inside the house to visit with Chet for a while. He was a nervous and truly strange man, the kind that is fascinating and seductive on the one hand and leaves you feeling disquieted on the other. He wasn’t old, as the kid outside the Chinese restaurant had told me. Maybe forty-five. But he did live his life bound to a wheelchair. Through his glazed and penetrating eyes I thought I could see something powerful and terrifying. Was the glaze from a steady stream of hidden tears? Was he on medication? Were those eyes really windows into his soul? The spirit of his generosity—magnanimity—seemed equal in power to the unsettling quality.
In the living room, cramped and drenched with the odor of his housemates’ cigarette smoke, he looked at me intensely and said, almost in a whisper, “You guys inspire me to do what I need to do to get back out there.” It seemed so impossible. Who knows when he had walked last? It was embarrassing to watch him climb from his house wheelchair into his garage wheelchair, which was a few steps lower and which he used to visit with hikers in the makeshift dormitory. No one dared asked about his disability. But his remark was touching, and now a part of me will always walk for Chet.
I went out on the porch and wrote in my journal for an hour before finally sinking on to a couch for a sweaty and restless night’s sleep.
In the morning we hikers were all up at the same time, as fresh as possible and eager to get back out into the woods. We stood around for a minute chatting and eating ice cream bars from Chet’s freezer. The A.T. hikers were waiting for a shuttle back up to Franconia Notch, where they had come off the trail, and I said goodbye to walk off down the road toward the east.
IV. Amble, Scramble, Gamble
With the metallic clicking of my new hiking poles on the pavement striking my ears at each step, I marched along the side of the Kancamagus Highway feeling like I had finally reached middle age. It was the first time I had ever used poles. In fact, I had long been a vocal critic, a puritanical minimalist on the matter of equipment. When my dad started hiking with these sticks about a decade ago, I mocked him mercilessly.
But over the course of the days to come I had a true conversion experience. I learned to use the poles as extensions of my body. They were like an evolutionary step backward, restoring to my arms a locomotive function. Using them as gracefully as possible—an idea I would have scoffed at only a day or two before—became a mesmerizing challenge.
After stopping for coffee and a pastry at the edge of town, I walked to an area known as Lincoln Woods along the East Branch of the Pemigewasset River, where it flows down from the mountains. The place is familiar to many people in New Hampshire as a setting-off point for a variety of easy and pleasant day hikes. My route would take me up to the North Fork of the East Branch, into the area known as the Pemigewasset Wilderness, and then through remote Zealand Notch to continue northward.
The name Lincoln Woods, so quaint-sounding to our ears now, has roots reaching back to a time when this relatively large area (100,000 acres, or 400 square kilometers) was a huge tract of virgin timber owned by J.E. Henry, New Hampshire’s best-known logging magnate. Lincoln, one of the east’s major downhill skiing hubs today, was once a company town—referred to unofficially as Henrysville—every aspect of whose existence was closely controlled by Mr. Henry himself. The sweeping basin known as Lincoln Woods was razed of its trees, but the logging legacy left behind a network of railroad beds that in their abandonment have found new life as hiking and ski-touring trails. In 1984, 46,000 acres of the basin were protected under the Wilderness Act and, along with much of the surrounding area, have consequently become substantially rewilded.
I can’t say I remember my first trip into Lincoln Woods (there have been so many), but in August of 1992 I began a memorable journey here with my father and youngest brother. By that time I was 13 years old and had been on plenty of overnight trips, but this was the first time we covered what seemed like a really respectable distance. We left Lincoln and hiked up through the Pemigewasset Wilderness to Ethan Pond, then dropped down into Crawford Notch. After that we made a grueling ascent of the Webster Cliff Trail, where we ran out of water on a particularly hot day, and my father was reduced to asking descending hikers if they might spare a sip or two for his parched youngsters. In our personal vocabulary, my brother and I still use “The Webster Cliff Trail” as a byword for agonizing physical hardship. But when we reached the top we were rewarded with a heavenly day-and-a-half-long stroll along the Presidential Ridge, and we hiked it to its northern terminus atop Mount Madison before finally descending the Osgood Trail toward Pinkham Notch. When we were done we spoke triumphantly for years of “The Fifty-Mile Hike.”
It was with this happy memory that I entered the woods, and perhaps it kept my thoughts off my knee. Whatever the reason, it seemed to be doing fine.
The trails in this area, as well as in areas east of here I had originally thought of going through, had sustained a lot of damage from Hurricane Irene, and here too a lot of work was still being done. The southern sections were outside the designated wilderness area. This meant that damaged trails could be repaired, while in the more strictly protected areas just to the north—despite considerable pressure from many in the hiking community to bend the rules—trails, shelters, and bridges that had been eroded, torn apart, or washed out should be left to their fates. Here big orange signs warning of bulldozers at work along the east side of the Pemi (as we call this mouthful of a river here in New Hampshire) told me as much, and I couldn’t really say I disapproved.
The walk north along the riverbed was a gradual uphill, but when I jumped from the East Branch to the North Fork the way steepened. The Thoreau Falls Trail climbed sharply only at the end, where it rose alongside the falls itself. Thoreau was never actually here, but he is such a towering figure in the New England literary landscape that tradition has seen fit to name it in his honor. The falls is impressive, sending its roar down through the woods, and cascades over several steps and slides for a vertical total of 80 feet.
The trail comes out of the woods and suddenly you are there, right where the swift water shoots out over the ledge. There is no bridge, and the ford, thanks to the Wilderness Act's ban on new construction, is surprisingly demanding for our age of liability. You must walk across a foot-deep current that rushes forcefully toward the precipice about ten feet away; there are no stepping stones and little room for mistakes.
I sat on a boulder at the river’s edge and began taking off my boots. As I untied the first one, I remembered the scene in Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild in which she accidentally lets go of her boot on top of a cliff, only to see it fly irrecoverably into the abyss when she’s miles from a road or town. This made me hold on extra-tight and work with concentration.
When it came time to step into the water, I decided it was best not to carry my poles and boots, because I might need my hands if I lost my footing. So I tossed my first boot across the river. Landing on the far side, it almost rolled into a stagnant puddle. To avoid the possibility of my second boot getting wet, I threw it a bit less hard, but instead of stopping where it landed, it started rolling backward toward the main current.
At just this moment, who should emerge from the woods on the far side but my old friend Lunchbox and the three through-hikers he had been doing his best to catch up with? The next few seconds unfolded as if in slow motion. Our eyes all locked on the rolling boot as it tumbled into the water with a pert splash. Lunchbox leapt briskly across the slab of rock toward the water’s edge and stabbed desperately at my suddenly recalcitrant piece of footwear with his hiking pole. Meanwhile, I made myself wide across the current, hoping to intercept it when it sailed by. The boot spun in the vortex and was eventually released in my direction. Hope jumped in my heart as I managed to pin it against my left leg, but when I reached for it with my hand it was sucked below the surface again. We all watched the churning water in suspense, ready to lunge, when it shot into the air a few feet to my left, then hit the surface again and was swiftly launched over the brink for its rapid descent into the gorge, where it would begin its irretrievable voyage toward the Gulf of Maine.
A collective “Holy shit!” came across the river.
“Oh my god! It’s like Wild!” said one of the four bystanders.
Even as I watched the boot vanish over the edge, I did not appear terribly bothered, and they seemed shocked at this. “Oh, well. My knee will be happier,” I said. “I’ll be forced to walk more gingerly.” Of course, only Lunchbox could have known about my ailing joint.
The drama seemed to have united us, and we four were suddenly as chummy as old pals. “Well, at least when you get out of here you’ll have an adventure to tell everyone about,” someone said.
“No one will believe me,” I replied, trudging the few remaining feet across the current. “They’ll think I plagiarized Cheryl Strayed.”
“You’ve got four eyewitnesses,” another added.
Then Lunchbox commented smirkingly, “You do know you totally set yourself up for that one?”
“I guess I did, didn’t I?”
It took me about two hours to hobble back down to 112, swinging my leg out and around with each step, leaning heavily on my walking stick. The rain had stopped and my spirits had lifted slightly. I decided I would rest in Lincoln if I could find the rumored hostel and then sneak out the back door via a low-relief route that I had taken about 23 years earlier with my father and brother.
At the road this meant I would walk the 6.6 miles to Lincoln, not hitchhike, so that I wouldn’t have to come back later to close the gap. (I had decided I was going to be a purist on this walk, covering every single inch of the line between Massachusetts and Quebec.) The walk on the smooth pavement past Lost River Gorge was easy on my joints, though the repeated shock against the pavement under my weight over time led to a burning sensation in my muscles.
In Woodstock a man in his twenties was taking a break outside the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant. When he saw me he said, “You look beat!” with a smile on his face. I took this as encouragement, because he hadn’t said, “Holy shit! You look broken,” with a look of concern, as I had expected him to.
I asked him about the hostel. “Yes,” he said. “It’s run by an old dude named Chet in a wheelchair. It’s just a bunch of plywood bunks. Cool place.” He gave me directions.
I texted my brother and asked him to track down Chet’s number for me. When I was a few minutes off I gave him a call and asked if he had a bed to spare. “That depends who you are,” he replied.
My answer was satisfactory.
Chet was a talker. He gave me his spiel: “You can work for stay, barter, or leave a donation. Whatever you can afford. If you can only spare a quarter, a quarter’s fine.” Then he fielded my questions about his underground hostel. Most people he’d ever had at once? Thirty-seven. He told me about people who had gotten too comfortable and had to be evicted. He told me about people who had posed as long-distance hikers to stay there. He told me how he doesn’t welcome the downhill ski crowd.
The place itself is a garage into which six plywood bunks have been stuffed, along with a few couches and armchairs, a futon, a fridge, a book-swap shelf, and other shelves full of all kinds of jettisoned gear for the taking. I would leave with a tarp and two non-matching hiking poles.
I was famished, but it took some doing to break away from Chet’s chat. I eventually ended up at Gordi’s, my usual Lincoln eating place, for a steak and their delicious homemade bread and butter.
The next day I spent around town. I sat for a while in Dunkin’ Donuts watching people and eavesdropping, checking my email, and copying poems into my journal so I could memorize them and think about them as I walked along. I went to the post office to mail home a few things I didn’t need, and then to Mountain Wanderer Books to have a look around and get an overview map of the White Mountains.
In the evening I went to a hamburger place next door to Gordi’s. While I was there I texted a friend in the North Country who I had been talking with lately about my journey. I told her what had happened and what my plans were. She informed me that one of the trails I had planned on using had been wiped out by Hurricane Irene and was probably still closed. She rather imperatively suggested that I skip the high peaks altogether and head due north from Thoreau Falls, which is an easy walk north of Lincoln in the so-called Pemigewasset Wilderness. Sometimes it’s nice to have a voice of reason. It wasn’t my own, and this time I listened.
After dinner I walked down by the Pemigewasset River. The thunderstorms that had been coming and going all day, and thanks to which I now looked like a drowned rat, finally gave way to a bit of evening sunshine.
Back at the hostel it was dark and all the through-hikers were asleep. I went inside the house to visit with Chet for a while. He was a nervous and truly strange man, the kind that is fascinating and seductive on the one hand and leaves you feeling disquieted on the other. He wasn’t old, as the kid outside the Chinese restaurant had told me. Maybe forty-five. But he did live his life bound to a wheelchair. Through his glazed and penetrating eyes I thought I could see something powerful and terrifying. Was the glaze from a steady stream of hidden tears? Was he on medication? Were those eyes really windows into his soul? The spirit of his generosity—magnanimity—seemed equal in power to the unsettling quality.
In the living room, cramped and drenched with the odor of his housemates’ cigarette smoke, he looked at me intensely and said, almost in a whisper, “You guys inspire me to do what I need to do to get back out there.” It seemed so impossible. Who knows when he had walked last? It was embarrassing to watch him climb from his house wheelchair into his garage wheelchair, which was a few steps lower and which he used to visit with hikers in the makeshift dormitory. No one dared asked about his disability. But his remark was touching, and now a part of me will always walk for Chet.
I went out on the porch and wrote in my journal for an hour before finally sinking on to a couch for a sweaty and restless night’s sleep.
In the morning we hikers were all up at the same time, as fresh as possible and eager to get back out into the woods. We stood around for a minute chatting and eating ice cream bars from Chet’s freezer. The A.T. hikers were waiting for a shuttle back up to Franconia Notch, where they had come off the trail, and I said goodbye to walk off down the road toward the east.
IV. Amble, Scramble, Gamble
With the metallic clicking of my new hiking poles on the pavement striking my ears at each step, I marched along the side of the Kancamagus Highway feeling like I had finally reached middle age. It was the first time I had ever used poles. In fact, I had long been a vocal critic, a puritanical minimalist on the matter of equipment. When my dad started hiking with these sticks about a decade ago, I mocked him mercilessly.
But over the course of the days to come I had a true conversion experience. I learned to use the poles as extensions of my body. They were like an evolutionary step backward, restoring to my arms a locomotive function. Using them as gracefully as possible—an idea I would have scoffed at only a day or two before—became a mesmerizing challenge.
After stopping for coffee and a pastry at the edge of town, I walked to an area known as Lincoln Woods along the East Branch of the Pemigewasset River, where it flows down from the mountains. The place is familiar to many people in New Hampshire as a setting-off point for a variety of easy and pleasant day hikes. My route would take me up to the North Fork of the East Branch, into the area known as the Pemigewasset Wilderness, and then through remote Zealand Notch to continue northward.
The name Lincoln Woods, so quaint-sounding to our ears now, has roots reaching back to a time when this relatively large area (100,000 acres, or 400 square kilometers) was a huge tract of virgin timber owned by J.E. Henry, New Hampshire’s best-known logging magnate. Lincoln, one of the east’s major downhill skiing hubs today, was once a company town—referred to unofficially as Henrysville—every aspect of whose existence was closely controlled by Mr. Henry himself. The sweeping basin known as Lincoln Woods was razed of its trees, but the logging legacy left behind a network of railroad beds that in their abandonment have found new life as hiking and ski-touring trails. In 1984, 46,000 acres of the basin were protected under the Wilderness Act and, along with much of the surrounding area, have consequently become substantially rewilded.
I can’t say I remember my first trip into Lincoln Woods (there have been so many), but in August of 1992 I began a memorable journey here with my father and youngest brother. By that time I was 13 years old and had been on plenty of overnight trips, but this was the first time we covered what seemed like a really respectable distance. We left Lincoln and hiked up through the Pemigewasset Wilderness to Ethan Pond, then dropped down into Crawford Notch. After that we made a grueling ascent of the Webster Cliff Trail, where we ran out of water on a particularly hot day, and my father was reduced to asking descending hikers if they might spare a sip or two for his parched youngsters. In our personal vocabulary, my brother and I still use “The Webster Cliff Trail” as a byword for agonizing physical hardship. But when we reached the top we were rewarded with a heavenly day-and-a-half-long stroll along the Presidential Ridge, and we hiked it to its northern terminus atop Mount Madison before finally descending the Osgood Trail toward Pinkham Notch. When we were done we spoke triumphantly for years of “The Fifty-Mile Hike.”
It was with this happy memory that I entered the woods, and perhaps it kept my thoughts off my knee. Whatever the reason, it seemed to be doing fine.
The trails in this area, as well as in areas east of here I had originally thought of going through, had sustained a lot of damage from Hurricane Irene, and here too a lot of work was still being done. The southern sections were outside the designated wilderness area. This meant that damaged trails could be repaired, while in the more strictly protected areas just to the north—despite considerable pressure from many in the hiking community to bend the rules—trails, shelters, and bridges that had been eroded, torn apart, or washed out should be left to their fates. Here big orange signs warning of bulldozers at work along the east side of the Pemi (as we call this mouthful of a river here in New Hampshire) told me as much, and I couldn’t really say I disapproved.
The walk north along the riverbed was a gradual uphill, but when I jumped from the East Branch to the North Fork the way steepened. The Thoreau Falls Trail climbed sharply only at the end, where it rose alongside the falls itself. Thoreau was never actually here, but he is such a towering figure in the New England literary landscape that tradition has seen fit to name it in his honor. The falls is impressive, sending its roar down through the woods, and cascades over several steps and slides for a vertical total of 80 feet.
The trail comes out of the woods and suddenly you are there, right where the swift water shoots out over the ledge. There is no bridge, and the ford, thanks to the Wilderness Act's ban on new construction, is surprisingly demanding for our age of liability. You must walk across a foot-deep current that rushes forcefully toward the precipice about ten feet away; there are no stepping stones and little room for mistakes.
I sat on a boulder at the river’s edge and began taking off my boots. As I untied the first one, I remembered the scene in Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild in which she accidentally lets go of her boot on top of a cliff, only to see it fly irrecoverably into the abyss when she’s miles from a road or town. This made me hold on extra-tight and work with concentration.
When it came time to step into the water, I decided it was best not to carry my poles and boots, because I might need my hands if I lost my footing. So I tossed my first boot across the river. Landing on the far side, it almost rolled into a stagnant puddle. To avoid the possibility of my second boot getting wet, I threw it a bit less hard, but instead of stopping where it landed, it started rolling backward toward the main current.
At just this moment, who should emerge from the woods on the far side but my old friend Lunchbox and the three through-hikers he had been doing his best to catch up with? The next few seconds unfolded as if in slow motion. Our eyes all locked on the rolling boot as it tumbled into the water with a pert splash. Lunchbox leapt briskly across the slab of rock toward the water’s edge and stabbed desperately at my suddenly recalcitrant piece of footwear with his hiking pole. Meanwhile, I made myself wide across the current, hoping to intercept it when it sailed by. The boot spun in the vortex and was eventually released in my direction. Hope jumped in my heart as I managed to pin it against my left leg, but when I reached for it with my hand it was sucked below the surface again. We all watched the churning water in suspense, ready to lunge, when it shot into the air a few feet to my left, then hit the surface again and was swiftly launched over the brink for its rapid descent into the gorge, where it would begin its irretrievable voyage toward the Gulf of Maine.
A collective “Holy shit!” came across the river.
“Oh my god! It’s like Wild!” said one of the four bystanders.
Even as I watched the boot vanish over the edge, I did not appear terribly bothered, and they seemed shocked at this. “Oh, well. My knee will be happier,” I said. “I’ll be forced to walk more gingerly.” Of course, only Lunchbox could have known about my ailing joint.
The drama seemed to have united us, and we four were suddenly as chummy as old pals. “Well, at least when you get out of here you’ll have an adventure to tell everyone about,” someone said.
“No one will believe me,” I replied, trudging the few remaining feet across the current. “They’ll think I plagiarized Cheryl Strayed.”
“You’ve got four eyewitnesses,” another added.
Then Lunchbox commented smirkingly, “You do know you totally set yourself up for that one?”
“I guess I did, didn’t I?”
Had the weather been cold and rainy I might have been upset, but it was so lovely that it scarcely put a ripple in my day.
“If you want,” one of the through-hikers offered, “I can make a movie of you hurling your other boot over the falls.”
“I’d love that,” I said, laughing, “but I’m afraid it might be a violation of the Wilderness Act.” I put the remaining boot in my pack.
I brought out my lunch. The through-hikers smoked a joint. We all took in the sweeping view of the Pemigewasset Wilderness from the lip of the falls. Then they pushed on toward Ethan Pond, and I made my own way north toward Zealand Notch.
When I got to the base of Zealand Falls, a couple of miles from where I had lost my boot, I hopped up the mountainside to the nearby Appalachian Mountain Club hut to ask the staff there if they happened to have any old shoes in their lost-and-found pile.
“No,” said a young kid after making a quick search. He had a troubled look on his face.
“What are you going to do, go to North Conway for a new pair?”
Why on earth would I go to North Conway? I wanted to ask the kid while giving him a good firm shake. I didn’t, of course. But I did feel like pulling a map out to give him a quick geography lesson. Too many people from points south seem to think North Conway is the only town in New Hampshire north of Lake Winnipesaukee. I hate North Conway and everything it stands for: it is a bastion of American suburban consumerism in the mountains, a Bos-Wash satellite beyond its legitimate turf. Keep me away! If I was going into any town, it would be Littleton, but I would do my best to maintain my northward trajectory, shoes or no shoes.
“So…really you only need one boot then, right?” the kid said.
Well, I again imagined myself saying, if it happens to be the correct boot, and if someone happens to have abandoned a single boot at your hut, then, yes, technically you are right.
But he was nice and he meant well, so I thanked him and bought a glass of lemonade. Not knowing what to do, but still visibly disquieted by the thought of me going back on the trail with no boots, he gave me a scone on the house.
“If you want,” one of the through-hikers offered, “I can make a movie of you hurling your other boot over the falls.”
“I’d love that,” I said, laughing, “but I’m afraid it might be a violation of the Wilderness Act.” I put the remaining boot in my pack.
I brought out my lunch. The through-hikers smoked a joint. We all took in the sweeping view of the Pemigewasset Wilderness from the lip of the falls. Then they pushed on toward Ethan Pond, and I made my own way north toward Zealand Notch.
When I got to the base of Zealand Falls, a couple of miles from where I had lost my boot, I hopped up the mountainside to the nearby Appalachian Mountain Club hut to ask the staff there if they happened to have any old shoes in their lost-and-found pile.
“No,” said a young kid after making a quick search. He had a troubled look on his face.
“What are you going to do, go to North Conway for a new pair?”
Why on earth would I go to North Conway? I wanted to ask the kid while giving him a good firm shake. I didn’t, of course. But I did feel like pulling a map out to give him a quick geography lesson. Too many people from points south seem to think North Conway is the only town in New Hampshire north of Lake Winnipesaukee. I hate North Conway and everything it stands for: it is a bastion of American suburban consumerism in the mountains, a Bos-Wash satellite beyond its legitimate turf. Keep me away! If I was going into any town, it would be Littleton, but I would do my best to maintain my northward trajectory, shoes or no shoes.
“So…really you only need one boot then, right?” the kid said.
Well, I again imagined myself saying, if it happens to be the correct boot, and if someone happens to have abandoned a single boot at your hut, then, yes, technically you are right.
But he was nice and he meant well, so I thanked him and bought a glass of lemonade. Not knowing what to do, but still visibly disquieted by the thought of me going back on the trail with no boots, he gave me a scone on the house.
Half an hour later, nourished, refreshed, and heading north again on the Zealand Trail into the valley of the Ammonoosuc River, I saw a teenaged girl with skin-tight short shorts and a tank top. She walked in a sloppy gait with hip-hop blaring from her iPhone. Behind her came the boyfriend, who was also wearing a tank top. His baggy shorts rode low around his waist and a backpack hung from his shoulders about a foot below where it was meant to. He saw from a distance that I was barefoot and announced, as if to a large audience, “Aw man, this brothah’s doin’ it up!”
“I’m not barefoot by choice,” I clarified, lest I be taken for a hippie trying to make a point. “I lost my shoes over a waterfall.”
“Aw maaan,” he repeated, smiling broadly and intensifying his tone in light of the new information, “he doin’ it UH-up!,” making two syllables where I had thought there could only be one. The accent was more Compton than Campton, or any other New Hampshire place. But he made me chuckle (and didn’t suggest that I go to North Conway!), so who was I to begrudge him his adopted idiolect?
“Peace,” I said, and gave him a high-five as I cruised by.
“I’m not barefoot by choice,” I clarified, lest I be taken for a hippie trying to make a point. “I lost my shoes over a waterfall.”
“Aw maaan,” he repeated, smiling broadly and intensifying his tone in light of the new information, “he doin’ it UH-up!,” making two syllables where I had thought there could only be one. The accent was more Compton than Campton, or any other New Hampshire place. But he made me chuckle (and didn’t suggest that I go to North Conway!), so who was I to begrudge him his adopted idiolect?
“Peace,” I said, and gave him a high-five as I cruised by.
V. Into the North Country
North of the Zealand Falls Hut cutoff is where you really start to feel like you are in the North Country: beaver ponds and bogs dot the boreal forest; the relief becomes gentler, as if the mountains, no longer a camel, were now a dog lying down.
As evening approached, I took a short trail down to the Zealand River and found a nook to make my camp in. I strung up a tarp and cut a few spruce boughs for a mattress. I built a fire and made supper.
Sitting on a rock along the edge of the river to eat as dusk was going down to dark, something made me turn my head to the right. It was then that I noticed that about a quarter of my field of vision in that direction was black. Nothing particular registered for a few seconds, and then movement made me suddenly say to myself, “A bear!”
I was startled for a moment but then realized that I was looking at his hind end, and that he hadn’t seen me, despite the fire and the strong scent of food. But he was drawing closer, wading his way backward across the narrow river as he fished or drank. He stood not eight feet from me, so I stood up as tall as I could on my rock and shouted, “Hey! Get outta here!”
As if he had barely heard me over the rush of the river, he looked over his shoulder and considered me for a brief minute. Then he made an expression that said “Fair enough,” and trotted off into the woods on the other side of the stream.
I sipped a little bourbon, fed my small fire, and watched fireflies and what stars I could see through the breach in the canopy above the river. When I was satisfied I hung me bear bag and went to bed. It rained that night and was windy, but under my tarp I was dry.
North of the Zealand Falls Hut cutoff is where you really start to feel like you are in the North Country: beaver ponds and bogs dot the boreal forest; the relief becomes gentler, as if the mountains, no longer a camel, were now a dog lying down.
As evening approached, I took a short trail down to the Zealand River and found a nook to make my camp in. I strung up a tarp and cut a few spruce boughs for a mattress. I built a fire and made supper.
Sitting on a rock along the edge of the river to eat as dusk was going down to dark, something made me turn my head to the right. It was then that I noticed that about a quarter of my field of vision in that direction was black. Nothing particular registered for a few seconds, and then movement made me suddenly say to myself, “A bear!”
I was startled for a moment but then realized that I was looking at his hind end, and that he hadn’t seen me, despite the fire and the strong scent of food. But he was drawing closer, wading his way backward across the narrow river as he fished or drank. He stood not eight feet from me, so I stood up as tall as I could on my rock and shouted, “Hey! Get outta here!”
As if he had barely heard me over the rush of the river, he looked over his shoulder and considered me for a brief minute. Then he made an expression that said “Fair enough,” and trotted off into the woods on the other side of the stream.
I sipped a little bourbon, fed my small fire, and watched fireflies and what stars I could see through the breach in the canopy above the river. When I was satisfied I hung me bear bag and went to bed. It rained that night and was windy, but under my tarp I was dry.
“Where are you coming from?” asked a man the next day, as I washed some clothes and myself in the Ammonoosuc River beside a picnic area, not far from Route 302 and the town of Twin Mountain.
A few minutes earlier I had been jolted from the persistent effect of the previous evening’s wilderness idyll. An S.U.V. with Massachusetts license plates (which will not surprise readers from northern New England) arrived at a stop sign where a mountain road intersected 302. The driver lowered his window to speak to a cherry-red sports car with New York plates behind him.
“Hey!” shouted the man from Massachusetts. “Did you see that moose? Big one!”
“No way!” replied New Yorker, incredulous.
“Fuckin way, guy!” came the Mass man’s reply. At this, the red car U-turned sharply, spraying dust and engine sounds in all directions, and tore off back up the valley.
“See ya latah!” shouted the Massachusetts friend, as if he could be heard, and smeared a few ounces of rubber on to the asphalt of Route 302, leaning on his horn all the while.
Thirty seconds of salutatory cacophony ensued as the urbanites gave their unforgettable rendition of “Dueling Klaxons,” making sure that even if the moose had been waiting patiently for the New Yorker’s return, he would not be now.
The sound of the river had reclaimed some of the sense of peace when I heard the man’s question, “Where are you coming from?”
“From Hanover,” I said. But feeling that more explanation was needed, I peppered in a few intermediate details, including the irresistible story of the flying boot.
“Oh my god!” cried the man. “I would have called 911. I would have requested a heli-vac! What did you do?”
The drama of his response had me reeling. When I had got my laughter under control, I told him I had walked. “Your cellphone wouldn’t have had reception,” I teased.
“And what are you going to do now?” he asked.
Back in Lincoln, the night I had to talked to my friend in the North Country, we had agreed that we would meet in Jefferson, about 12 miles north of where I was now. She lived in Lancaster, a few miles west of my route, and I would spend the evening with her and her friends listening to a Mahler symphony and sipping wine, a Thursday-night tradition of theirs. If I wanted to, she said, I could sleep there, or she would drive me back to Jefferson so I could sleep along the trail somewhere. Since losing my boot, I had also decided that I would find some replacement footwear while in town.
“I’m walking to Jefferson to meet a friend. I’m sure I’ll be able to find some kind of shoes when I get there,” I assured the man by the river.
“But that’s over ten miles,” he said. “You can’t do that.”
I tried to tell him that walking barefoot was easier on my legs, believe it or not. But he would not believe it, and he insisted that I get in his car and drive two miles down the road to a gas station, where I might at least be able to buy a pair of flip-flops.
What I ended up finding was a pair of cheap aqua-socks, those rubber-soled slippers that surfers and boaters sometimes use. They would probably protect the bottoms of my feet from the long gravel road I would spend much of the rest of my day on, so I agreed that purchasing them might not be a bad idea.
Back at the picnic area I packed up my things, thanked the man, and followed an old road over the eastern flank of Cherry Mountain and into Coös (pronounced KOH-auss), New Hampshire’s largest, northernmost, and least populated county.
A few minutes earlier I had been jolted from the persistent effect of the previous evening’s wilderness idyll. An S.U.V. with Massachusetts license plates (which will not surprise readers from northern New England) arrived at a stop sign where a mountain road intersected 302. The driver lowered his window to speak to a cherry-red sports car with New York plates behind him.
“Hey!” shouted the man from Massachusetts. “Did you see that moose? Big one!”
“No way!” replied New Yorker, incredulous.
“Fuckin way, guy!” came the Mass man’s reply. At this, the red car U-turned sharply, spraying dust and engine sounds in all directions, and tore off back up the valley.
“See ya latah!” shouted the Massachusetts friend, as if he could be heard, and smeared a few ounces of rubber on to the asphalt of Route 302, leaning on his horn all the while.
Thirty seconds of salutatory cacophony ensued as the urbanites gave their unforgettable rendition of “Dueling Klaxons,” making sure that even if the moose had been waiting patiently for the New Yorker’s return, he would not be now.
The sound of the river had reclaimed some of the sense of peace when I heard the man’s question, “Where are you coming from?”
“From Hanover,” I said. But feeling that more explanation was needed, I peppered in a few intermediate details, including the irresistible story of the flying boot.
“Oh my god!” cried the man. “I would have called 911. I would have requested a heli-vac! What did you do?”
The drama of his response had me reeling. When I had got my laughter under control, I told him I had walked. “Your cellphone wouldn’t have had reception,” I teased.
“And what are you going to do now?” he asked.
Back in Lincoln, the night I had to talked to my friend in the North Country, we had agreed that we would meet in Jefferson, about 12 miles north of where I was now. She lived in Lancaster, a few miles west of my route, and I would spend the evening with her and her friends listening to a Mahler symphony and sipping wine, a Thursday-night tradition of theirs. If I wanted to, she said, I could sleep there, or she would drive me back to Jefferson so I could sleep along the trail somewhere. Since losing my boot, I had also decided that I would find some replacement footwear while in town.
“I’m walking to Jefferson to meet a friend. I’m sure I’ll be able to find some kind of shoes when I get there,” I assured the man by the river.
“But that’s over ten miles,” he said. “You can’t do that.”
I tried to tell him that walking barefoot was easier on my legs, believe it or not. But he would not believe it, and he insisted that I get in his car and drive two miles down the road to a gas station, where I might at least be able to buy a pair of flip-flops.
What I ended up finding was a pair of cheap aqua-socks, those rubber-soled slippers that surfers and boaters sometimes use. They would probably protect the bottoms of my feet from the long gravel road I would spend much of the rest of my day on, so I agreed that purchasing them might not be a bad idea.
Back at the picnic area I packed up my things, thanked the man, and followed an old road over the eastern flank of Cherry Mountain and into Coös (pronounced KOH-auss), New Hampshire’s largest, northernmost, and least populated county.
On the far side of the mercifully little-driven Cherry Mountain Road was a broad agricultural floodplain that in New England we call an intervale. The intervale in question spreads out from the banks of the Israel River in Jefferson, and in June when I was there, the new green of its dancing grass under the bright blue sky was the perfect foreground for the thrust of the Presidential Range behind it.
From this northwestern vantage, you observe two things about the Presidentials: first, that this range might better be called the Mount Washington Massif, as all the subordinate peaks build up to the big mountain’s summit from all sides in a great slow pyramid; and, second, that no matter how much westerners like to knock our eastern hills, the Presidentials, at least, are respectable mountains by any standard. Kim Nilsen, in his guidebook The Cohos Trail, points out that if Mount Washington stood in the foothills of the Rockies, rather than in its low eastern valley 70 miles from the ocean, it would be 12,000 feet high.
But who’s counting?
Walking along the road up a hillside to the town of Jefferson, I came to a golf course. A fleet of white carts piloted by oversized drunk men with beers in hand came flying over a knoll doing duty as four-wheelers, speeding much faster than I ever knew golf carts could. The men hooted and hollered and sloshed their drinks all over themselves and the grass. A fifty-something woman dressed for golf in pleated khaki shorts, a polo shirt, and a visor saw them headed for the green that she had just lobbed her ball on to.
“Stop!” she began shouting, jumping up and down and waving her arms frantically. “Stoooooop!” The men swerved in her direction to tease her, and then swerved toward her ball lying on the fairway. They laughed uproariously and then tore off toward another part of the course. Never having learnt to take golf very seriously, I couldn’t help laughing too.
VI. The Kilkenny: Gateway to the Secret Places
After a relaxing evening of visiting with my friend Elizabeth in Lancaster, and a night in a bed on which I lay awake for an hour before falling asleep, listening to the sounds of a small town in summer rising on the sultry air, I found myself again in Jefferson. Since my friend teaches and had to leave home at six, there had been no time for breakfast. So I sat on the porch of the Jefferson store and sipped coffee, ate homemade doughnuts, and wrote.
When I felt I had savored the morning sufficiently, I tightened up the sneakers my friend had lent me, shouldered my pack, and started walking up Mount Starr King, the first peak in the Pliny Range. This little range and its northern neighbor, the Pilot Range, have recently been stitched together by the 25-mile Kilkenny Ridge Trail that traverses the roadless expanse of trees and mountains between the towns of Jefferson and Stark, and are now often referred to singly as The Kilkenny. This is where the Cohos Trail, a new hiking route that leads from the central White Mountains to the Canadian border, really comes into its own.
From this northwestern vantage, you observe two things about the Presidentials: first, that this range might better be called the Mount Washington Massif, as all the subordinate peaks build up to the big mountain’s summit from all sides in a great slow pyramid; and, second, that no matter how much westerners like to knock our eastern hills, the Presidentials, at least, are respectable mountains by any standard. Kim Nilsen, in his guidebook The Cohos Trail, points out that if Mount Washington stood in the foothills of the Rockies, rather than in its low eastern valley 70 miles from the ocean, it would be 12,000 feet high.
But who’s counting?
Walking along the road up a hillside to the town of Jefferson, I came to a golf course. A fleet of white carts piloted by oversized drunk men with beers in hand came flying over a knoll doing duty as four-wheelers, speeding much faster than I ever knew golf carts could. The men hooted and hollered and sloshed their drinks all over themselves and the grass. A fifty-something woman dressed for golf in pleated khaki shorts, a polo shirt, and a visor saw them headed for the green that she had just lobbed her ball on to.
“Stop!” she began shouting, jumping up and down and waving her arms frantically. “Stoooooop!” The men swerved in her direction to tease her, and then swerved toward her ball lying on the fairway. They laughed uproariously and then tore off toward another part of the course. Never having learnt to take golf very seriously, I couldn’t help laughing too.
VI. The Kilkenny: Gateway to the Secret Places
After a relaxing evening of visiting with my friend Elizabeth in Lancaster, and a night in a bed on which I lay awake for an hour before falling asleep, listening to the sounds of a small town in summer rising on the sultry air, I found myself again in Jefferson. Since my friend teaches and had to leave home at six, there had been no time for breakfast. So I sat on the porch of the Jefferson store and sipped coffee, ate homemade doughnuts, and wrote.
When I felt I had savored the morning sufficiently, I tightened up the sneakers my friend had lent me, shouldered my pack, and started walking up Mount Starr King, the first peak in the Pliny Range. This little range and its northern neighbor, the Pilot Range, have recently been stitched together by the 25-mile Kilkenny Ridge Trail that traverses the roadless expanse of trees and mountains between the towns of Jefferson and Stark, and are now often referred to singly as The Kilkenny. This is where the Cohos Trail, a new hiking route that leads from the central White Mountains to the Canadian border, really comes into its own.
Here, too, the Great North Woods can be said to begin. Boreal vegetation becomes the norm at low elevation in these parts, and soon I would be walking over the spongy aromatic duff that blankets the ground from here northward to the other side of the taiga belt in northern Quebec. Hikers from now on would be few and far between, although I did see a pair of peak baggers doing targeted strikes on the summits of Mount Waumbek (in the Pliny Range) and Mount Cabot (in the Pilot Range), the state’s northernmost mountains that reach above 4,000 feet.
Moose sign was everywhere, but no moose, as I rambled north along the trail’s gentle up-and-down. It was quiet and I took my time, since my knee was still hurting a little bit. I made a point of taking the spur trails to the top of every little peak along the way to enjoy the views. Whenever I saw water dribbling across the muddy trail, I followed it up to look for the spring. And when I found it, I sat and drank.
Moose sign was everywhere, but no moose, as I rambled north along the trail’s gentle up-and-down. It was quiet and I took my time, since my knee was still hurting a little bit. I made a point of taking the spur trails to the top of every little peak along the way to enjoy the views. Whenever I saw water dribbling across the muddy trail, I followed it up to look for the spring. And when I found it, I sat and drank.
The only hitch during the day and a half I spent in the Kilkenny was the blowdowns. It was early June, and many of these had not been cleared yet. I often found myself taking off my pack and threading it through downed trees, and then crouching or climbing, spider-like, to do the same thing with my own body. My socks, and hair, and the inside back of my shirt clung with sweat and little bits of balsam sprigs, and needles, and other forest detritus. That’s life in the northern forest.
Mt. Cabot is the highest point along the twin ridges, and on top of it sits a cute little cabin, like a cherry on an ice cream sundae. Inside I found a row of empty whisky bottles on a shelf. At the head of the row was a half-full bottle, left by some thoughtful traveler. Never much more than a sipper of alcohol, I smiled at the tradition anyway, and made a mental note to pack up a bottle of booze next time I came.
Mt. Cabot is the highest point along the twin ridges, and on top of it sits a cute little cabin, like a cherry on an ice cream sundae. Inside I found a row of empty whisky bottles on a shelf. At the head of the row was a half-full bottle, left by some thoughtful traveler. Never much more than a sipper of alcohol, I smiled at the tradition anyway, and made a mental note to pack up a bottle of booze next time I came.
The building was dingy on the inside, but it offered protection from the wind and rain, and from its porch there was a splendid view down into the Connecticut Valley.
Rain came hard that night while I chewed on my supper and drank hot juice. I read and wrote and stood on the porch to listen to the drops on the stunted trees. It felt good to be alone on a mountaintop in the dark and to see nothing of the world below.
Next morning the sun had returned to the heights, but below me I could see that the valleys and intervales were still under a quilt of white clouds that looked like they might support my weight. But I walked north on the ridge and was afforded views to the east and the west. I especially enjoyed looking at the rugged Mahoosuc Range that stands between Gorham and Grafton Notch, in western Maine.
Rain came hard that night while I chewed on my supper and drank hot juice. I read and wrote and stood on the porch to listen to the drops on the stunted trees. It felt good to be alone on a mountaintop in the dark and to see nothing of the world below.
Next morning the sun had returned to the heights, but below me I could see that the valleys and intervales were still under a quilt of white clouds that looked like they might support my weight. But I walked north on the ridge and was afforded views to the east and the west. I especially enjoyed looking at the rugged Mahoosuc Range that stands between Gorham and Grafton Notch, in western Maine.
The ridge eventually petered out for a long slow descent toward the Upper Amonoosuc River. But first I had a drawn-out cooked lunch on Rogers Ledges and lay back to admire the ridge behind me, and then I went to explore the green, damp gorge known mysteriously as the Devil’s Hopyard. While working my way back into its narrow confines, I felt a thrumming from beneath the ground and heard a rush of water. Captivated by the underground river, I walked right into a massive tree that had fallen across the trail. I hit my head against it so hard that I fell and was nearly knocked unconscious.
Back in the valley, done with this section of my hike, I stuck out my thumb for a ride down to Gorham, where I planned to catch a bus to Concord and my waiting car. It was nice to talk with the young farrier who picked me up as we drove along in the shadow of the ridge whose length I had just walked—an agreeable way to ease back into the company of people.
As usual, I could hardly wait to come back.
Back in the valley, done with this section of my hike, I stuck out my thumb for a ride down to Gorham, where I planned to catch a bus to Concord and my waiting car. It was nice to talk with the young farrier who picked me up as we drove along in the shadow of the ridge whose length I had just walked—an agreeable way to ease back into the company of people.
As usual, I could hardly wait to come back.