Alexandersmap

    Category: Fitness

    • Hiking the Franconia Ridge Trail: Little Haystack, Lincoln and Lafayette

      Today’s epic hike began with a 4 AM wake-up call (late by some hiker’s standards) and a drive two hours north to Lincoln, New Hampshire accompanied by Venus flirting with the crescent moon and old friend Orion pivoting in the sky.  A lot has happened since I last saw Orion, and we have a lot to catch up on.  But I focused on the road and the surprising number of cars driving north with me.  Who are all these people driving at 4:30 on a Saturday morning?  Are they up early or wrapping up a late Friday?  At least one car drifting out of their lane multiple times indicated the latter.

      The reason for the early morning was to beat the swarm of hikers that inevitably descend on the Falling Waters Trail.  This is one of the easiest  trailheads to get to, and one of the prettiest returns on your hiking investment with multiple waterfalls along the trail (even in a dry August) and a beautiful ridge line hike across Little Haystack Mountain to Mount Lincoln to Mount Lafayette along the Franconia Ridge Trail, which is a section of the Appalachian Trail (surely one of the AT’s most beautiful sections).  A short detour takes you down to Shining Rock, which lives up to its name with water flowing down a large granite face.  That detour doesn’t feel short when you turn around to hike the tenth of a mile back to the trail junction, but its worth the time.

      So knowing the trail would be crowded, I had my cloth mask at the ready and utilized it many times on the hike.  The majority of hikers brought masks with them and used them in tight quarters as you were passing each other.  I found myself wishing I’d brought a balaclava instead of a mask just for the ease of quickly pulling it up and down as you came across other hikers, and I came across a lot of hikers on this one, particularly on my descent of Lafayette to the Greenleaf Hut, which is open for business once again but requires a mask when you walk inside.  I was very ready for a cup of coffee when I visited, and a visit to the restrooms before beginning the descent down the Old Bridle Path.

      One thing that annoys me about crowded trails is trail etiquette.  In particular the people who leave their toilet paper after peeing next to or on the trail.  Pack it out with you, or if that grosses you out dig a cathole.  But don’t leave it clumped there for all to see.  A friend tells me that there are three times the normal number of people hiking this year because of COVID-19.   After my experience on Pierce/Eisenhower and now Little Haystack/Lincoln/Lafayette, I believe it.  But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t respect the mountains.  Leave no trace people!

      Mount Lincoln is of course named after Abraham Lincoln.  As peaks go its pretty easy, sitting between Little Haystack and Lafayette.  Little Haystack is 760 feet above the 4000 foot mark but doesn’t qualify because its less than 200 feet to Lincoln, which is 5089 feet. As the taller of the two mountains, Lincoln gets the nod for the official 4000 footer list, but I can’t help but feel hiking Little Haystack and not getting credit for it makes up for hiking Tecumseh (3′ short of 4000) and getting credit.  The 48 giveth, the 48 taketh away…

      Mount Lafayette is named after Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, the French hero of the Revolutionary War and a heck of a singer in the Hamilton musical.  The mountain is 5249 feet and the most prominent of the three.  I lucked out with the weather, which offered beautiful views and a refreshing light breeze.  On my descent it started raining a bit, which didn’t amount to much.  But I bet it made some of the granite and basalt slippery.  Thankfully I was well past that by the time those few drops started falling.

      The loop up Falling Waters to Franconia Ridge Trail/AT to Old Bridle Path back to the parking lot is nine miles.  I’d like to say I did it solo, but I had a lot of company on the trail from my start at 6:15 to the return to the car at 1 PM.  I took a few photos of waterfalls, detoured to Shining Rock overlook, lingered for “brunch” on the summit of Lincoln, for some trail mix on the summit of Lafayette, and for coffee at the Greenleaf Hut and still completed the loop in under seven hours.  Not bad.  I didn’t set any speed records on the trail, and I’m just fine with that.  But I did lose five pounds in a day, even with rehydration and grazing on trail mix the entire drive back.  All-in-all a wonderful day in the White Mountains.

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    • Be Less Comfortable

      “It takes many hours to make what you want to make.  The hours don’t suddenly appear.  You have to steal them from comfort.  Whatever you were doing before was comfortable.  This is not.  This will be really uncomfortable.” – Derek Sivers, Where To Find The Hours To Make It Happen

      This phrase, stealing hours from comfort, was  plucked from a blog post Sivers wrote last October and highlighted yesterday by Seth Godin, borrowing for one of his own blog posts.  And so I pay it forward here.  For there’s genius in the phrasing, isn’t there?  We all have the same amount of hours in the day, and those who do exceptional things with their lives do so by stealing hours otherwise spent on comfortable things like binge-watching Ozark or SV Delos YouTube videos (guilty x 2).  In the meantime the great novel in your head slides sideways into the abyss.  The language you might have learned remains a mystery to you.  The belly gets soft.  The community volunteers carry on without you.  The work is accomplished by others, and we look on in awe at what they achieved.

      And the answer, of course, is to be less comfortable.  To challenge yourself more.  To do the work that must be done to get from this place of relative comfort to a better place of greater meaning and contribution.  To stop scraping by at the bare minimum and double down on your effort.  For all that is worthwhile in this world requires an investment in time and a healthy dose of discomfort to earn it.  But we have to remind ourselves of this daily, because comfort is a dangerous temptress.  And before we know it the days, weeks and years fly by and the dreams remain only dreams.  So toughen up, buttercup!  A bit less comfort is the answer to the question of where will you find the time?

      As Jackson Browne sings, I’ve been aware of the time going by…  and so I’m trying to invest my time in less comfortable things.  Hiking with intent, writing more, working more focused hours in my career, and slowly chipping away at expanding the possible of today.  But I’m still too comfortable.  When there’s so much more to do in the time we have left, isn’t it essential we get to it already?  And in some ways the pandemic offers us a reason to make profound shifts towards the uncomfortable.  To break from the routine and tackle the meaningful.  A catalyst for change just in the nick of time – in this, our critical moment.  For if not now, when?

    • Expanding Our “Life Force”

      “When we breathe, we expand our life force.” – James Nestor, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

      I finished James Nestor’s book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art in quick order. Its unnerving when someone highlights something you’ve largely done unconsciously but inefficiently for most of your life and tells you why it’s essential that you change. This is one if those books that will be transformative to the open reader. I found it an informative, quick read. But for those looking for the Cliff notes version, here you go: Get in the habit of inhaling much more through your nose and exhale through your mouth, and then focus on optimizing the timing of your breathing:

      “The perfect breath is this: Breathe in for about 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds. That’s 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 liters of air.”

      Of course, there’s so much more to the book, starting with the science behind breathing, the impact of soft foods on the modern human’s ability to breath properly, the importance of carbon dioxide in the body, and the incredible possibility in what the human body is capable of through controlled breathing. A worthy investment in time that will make you think about how you do something that’s largely an unconscious and automatic function.

      Regarding carbon dioxide, I’ve always thought of it as a waste product and that less of it would be better for the overall health of our bodies. Nestor turns that belief on its head:

      “When we breathe too much, we expel too much carbon dioxide, and our blood pH rises to become more alkaline; when we breathe slower and hold in more carbon dioxide, pH lowers and blood becomes more acidic. Almost all cellular functions in the body take place at a blood pH of 7.4, our sweet spot between alkaline and acid.”

      And consider the compounding impact of softer foods on the overall health of generations of humans:

      “The more we gnaw, the more stem cells release, the more bone density and growth we’ll trigger, the younger we’ll look and the better we’ll breathe.”

      Chapter 10, Fast, Slow And Not At All is the one that resonated most for me. For if everything in the universe is made up of matter, what does it mean for something to be “alive”? Nestor offers insight here as well:

      “Everything around us is composed of molecules, which are composed of atoms, which are composed of subatomic bits called protons (which have a positive charge), neutrons (no charge), and electrons (negative charge). All matter is, at its most basic level, energy.”

      “What distinguishes inanimate objects like rocks from birds and bees and leaves is the level of energy, or the “excitability” of electrons within those atoms that make up the molecules in matter. The more easily and often electrons can be transferred between molecules, the more “desaturated” matter becomes, the more alive it is.”

      “The best way to keep tissues in the body healthy was to mimic the reactions that evolved in early aerobic life on Earth—specifically, to flood our bodies with a constant presence of that “strong electron acceptor”: oxygen. Breathing slow, less, and through the nose balances the levels of respiratory gases in the body and sends the maximum amount of oxygen to the maximum amount of tissues so that our cells have the maximum amount of electron reactivity.”

      Optimizing our overall health and vibrancy through measured, considered breathwork isn’t new, but we seem to have forgotten many of the lessons. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art was an eye-opener, prompting me to think about how I’m breathing and what I’m chewing on, to be more concerned about waking up with a dry mouth, to consider a pallet expander for the first time since I was a teenager and counting to 5 1/2 as I inhale through my nose and again as I exhale through my mouth. Perhaps a small step towards a greater life force? One can hope.

    • A Cape Cod Time Warp

      We slipped back into old Cape Cod for a quiet walk on the trails of Little Bay and Monks Park in Bourne, Massachusetts yesterday.  From a perspective of scale this park is of modest size, and the loop is quick, but from the perspective of getting you out of modern Cape Cod and back into a time before the place was built up it served us well.  A time capsule of sorts, onto shady paths of sand and scrub pine needles with surprising variations in elevation from sea level to 70 feet.  Not exactly the White Mountains, but a pleasant departure from the usual flat walks.

      The variation in flora matched the elevation changes, with sassafras, scrub pine, oak, highbush blueberries and a fair amount of poison ivy dominated the landscape, with salt marsh and views of the bay sprinkled in.  In some ways this feels like its always been this way.  But there are hints to other uses in the flora as well.  A pair of large beech trees guard the entrance to the park on Valley Bars Road, planted at some point maybe a hundred years ago.  A holly on the Loop Trail looks to be out of place in the landscape as well, perhaps planted by someone before this became conservation land in 1980, perhaps by someone taking a walk in the woods who wanted a home for a shrub.  The holly keeps her secret from me.

      All of this land is preserved because of the work of the Bourne Conservation Trust, which saw the explosion of development on the Cape in 1980 and decided to do something about it.  This land was once part of the estate of George Augustus Gardner, brother of Isabella Stuart Gardner, giving it a hint of Boston Brahmin.  This area was pretty exclusive back in the day, with President Grover Cleveland summering just up the road.  He bequeathed it to his daughter Olga Eliza, who married a man named George Howard Monks, which is where the name Monks Park comes from.  The family sold the land when Olga passed away, and thankfully it was purchased by the Bourne Conservation Trust.

      The Loop Trail is roughly 1.5 miles, with a few trails that cut straight across the land providing a shortcut of sorts.  If you were to walk this trail in late fall or winter the water views would be spectacular.  In summer the oak leaves obscure much of the view, making you earn it with a walk down steep grade to the beach from the trail, or simply walk under the railroad bridge from the parking lots.  Not the longest trail, but you could walk the loop a few times and try the side trails for variation if you wanted a longer walk.  This place is a gem hidden in plain site on busy Shore Road, and worth a visit.  A quiet connection to old Cape Cod, to the wealthy who acquired the land, and to those progressive people who saved it from ever being developed. Consider a donation to their future efforts, as Little Bay and Monks Park demonstrates just how much good a few people can do.

    • Breathe

      I admit I didn’t think much about breathing until recently when my son strongly recommended a book for the family.  After some due diligence in listening to the author interviewed on a Joe Rogan podcast I was convinced I needed to read the book myself and quietly slid the stack of real and virtual books aside to read Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art before anything else. I’m well into it now, and can tell its one of those transformative books that influences the way you think about many things. And so it was that I hiked two 4000 footers yesterday with these thoughts in my head:

      “In a single breath, more molecules of air will pass through your nose than all the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches—trillions and trillions of them.”

      “Nasal breathing alone can boost nitric oxide sixfold, which is one of the reasons we can absorb about 18 percent more oxygen than by just breathing through the mouth.”

      “The greatest indicator of life span wasn’t genetics, diet, or the amount of daily exercise, as many had suspected. It was lung capacity.”

      “Moderate exercise like walking or cycling has been shown to boost lung size by up to 15 percent.”

      “The most important aspect of breathing wasn’t just to take in air through the nose. Inhaling was the easy part. The key to breathing, lung expansion, and the long life that came with it was on the other end of respiration. It was in the transformative power of a full exhalation.”

      With apologies to author James Nestor, I wasn’t going to fully commit to nasal breathing hiking up Crawford Path yesterday. I gave it a try a few times but didn’t feel like I was getting enough air. Something to work on for sure, but I opted for the more familiar mouth breathing for the steepest stretches of the path and reserved the nasal breathing for the descent from Mount Eisenhower. I can tell I’ve got my work cut out for me, but anything worthwhile deserves putting the work in. What’s more worthwhile than breathing?

    • Hiking Pierce and Eisenhower

      201 years ago, in 1819, a father and son team of Abel and Ethan Allen Crawford cut an 8.5-mile hiking trail from what is today called Crawford Notch to the summit of Mount Washington’s summit.  A year later, Ethan Allen would guide an expedition up that trail, which became known then and to today as Crawford’s Path.  That group would name most of the mountains they saw after the early United States Presidents: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. That we hiked on the oldest continuously maintained hiking trail in the United States wasn’t lost on me.  People have been walking or riding horses on this path since many of the Founding Fathers were alive.  The Crawford Path is a bridge of sorts, and 200 years later I hiked part of it to traverse the summits named for two Presidents who came after the trail was first cut: Mount Pierce and Mount Eisenhower.

      Franklin Pierce was the 14th man to be President, and the only one ever born in New Hampshire.  He was President between 1853 and 1857, and was well aware of the threat that the abolitionists from the southern states posed to the young United States of America.  Pierce was a compromise candidate nominated to appease the south, but he wasn’t a particularly popular President, making controversial decisions like nullifying the Missouri Purchase (if we can have anti-slavery Maine be a state we let pro-slavery Missouri be one too) by signing the Kansas–Nebraska Act.  That may be a post for another day, but the act essentially fueled the vigorous anti-slavery movement that led to the Civil War.

      “After the White House what is there to do but drink?” – Franklin Pierce

      Pierce wasn’t a great President when the United States needed one.  He was also a vocal critic of Abraham Lincoln, which didn’t endear him to most northerners then or today.  But he is a native son, and New Hampshire named a 4310 peak in his honor.  It would be the first of two 4000 footers I’d climb for the day.  The second would be the 4780 foot Mount Eisenhower.

      Dwight D Eisenhower was, like George Washington, a great General who became a relatively great American President.  He opposed McCarthyism, promoted civil rights, expanded Social Security and built the nations interstate Highway System.  He was a two-term war hero President who bridged the relatively peaceful decade between the Korean War and American escalation in Vietnam.  When he passed away New Hampshire took an existing mountain in the Presidential Range, Mount Pleasant, and re-named it Mount Eisenhower in his honor.

      “This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.” – Dwight D Eisenhower

      Enough history, let’s get to the hiking.  Hiked up the Crawford Connector Trail to meet up with the Crawford Path, and made a point of stopping for a look at Gibbs Falls. I rarely pass up a visit to a waterfall, and today wasn’t going to be an exception.

      From there we hiked up to Pierce and then Eisenhower. There was a lot of company on each summit (being a beautiful Saturday) but we managed to find a spot to stop for a quick break at each before moving on. Checked two peaks off the list of 48 and had a great day with three great people. We left Crawford’s Path for the Eisenhower Loop, summiting relatively quickly, had our quick lunch and descended via the Edmands Path, a rocky, wet trail that wasn’t a favorite. But it did the job of bringing us back to the quiet road that led to our car and cold beverages and hot showers. A long day, but a heck of a day. And I’ll publish this and enjoy the rest of a great Saturday.

    • All That’s Beautiful…

      “I heard the old, old men say, ‘Everything alters, And one by one we drop away.’
      … I heard the old, old men say, ‘All that’s beautiful drifts away Like the waters.’ – WB Yeats

      Most people don’t like change.  They want to stay in the same comfortable place indefinitely, go to a time share vacation at Disney World every year or to the same beach to have the same experience they had last summer.  Familiar and enjoyable, so why not do it again next year?  And that’s why people buy time shares and beach cottages and permanent camp sites for their Airstream.  There’s a lot to be said for the tried and true.  Immersion for one: Really getting to know a place by going there often.  I’ve really gotten to know a small corner of Buzzards Bay in this way, and find that I still don’t know it as well as I thought I did last time I visited.  Yes, there’s clearly benefit in returning again and again.

      But as Yeats points out, everything alters.  I look at the neighborhood I live in that once had a roving pack of 50 kids riding bicycles and playing games in each other’s yards (a rare phenomenon in the last 20 years).  All those kids are grown up and moved on.  Some new families have moved in, I don’t really know their names, and have started raising the next generation of kids.  Maybe someday the neighborhood will have those packs of kids playing again.  I hope so – otherwise all that Halloween candy goes in my mouth.

      In general I’m a big fan of change.  I’ve changed jobs when it didn’t feel right staying at a place and longer.  I moved primary residences ten times before settling on the place I currently live in, where I’ve been living for 21 years.  But I’ve painted every room in this house a different color at least twice, and some four times.  Change is part of the deal, whether we move or not.  Embrace the changes that happen around us and adapt in ways that make it work for you.  Nobody misses rotary phones, which made your finger numb when you had to dial a long number.  Nobody misses the days when you had to go into a bank to make a deposit or withdrawal instead of using an app on your phone or Venmo to complete a transaction.  Some change is good.  Its progress – the progression of humanity from one stage to another in our technological development.

      “I see my folks, they’re getting old
      And I watch their bodies change
      I know they see the same in me
      And it makes us both feel strange
      No matter how you tell yourself
      It’s what we all go through
      Those eyes are pretty hard to take
      When they’re staring’ back at you”
      – Bonnie Raitt, Nick of Time

      Then there’s the changes that happen with aging.  The progression of decline in our bodies as we grow older.  Aches and pains we didn’t have when we were kids.  Seeing those around us again as well and recognizing the path we’re all on.  I’ve got a heightened sense of awareness of this now more than ever.  We’ve considered moving to a faraway place just to change things up a bit.  Scotland, Iceland, the Azores, the Faroe Islands, Dominica and New Zealand all remain tantalizing places to relocate to for me.  Sailing around the world sounds attractive when the world is open for business, but what do we leave behind when we slip away from the dock?  I think a younger me might have made the leap had the younger me known the stakes.  The me before kids, before aging parents, and such things.  Now I’m not as sure.  But aging doesn’t mean you have to break down quickly.  Fitness is a way to stem the tide and live well in the time we have left.

      All that’s beautiful drifts away, whether we like it or not.  But its replaced by new beauty, if we only open our eyes to it.  We’re all breathing in the dust of eternity, and exhale a part of ourselves back into the universe, which makes us all connected, really.  All part of the timeless wave of humanity, surely, but also all matter.  We all have our minds wrapped around our own mind and body, but we’re just matter and energy with a soul.  The matter and energy move on in time.  Beauty doesn’t disappear, it just moves on down the chain.  We’re just links trying to jealously hold onto to it as long as possible.  But the soul is ours alone, here today, but where will it be tomorrow?  Time will tell.  Anyone who tells you they have the answer is conning you.

      My wife got a call from her mother yesterday, telling her the bad news about one of their neighbor’s kids who has cancer all over their body and isn’t expected to live more than another 18 months.  I suppose that got me thinking about old Mr. Yeats and his poem.  We’re all drifting away eventually, and sometimes much sooner than we’d prefer.  A good reminder to get on with living already, changes and all.  Life is more than a weekly paycheck and a house with a pool in the backyard and a familiar spot on the beach every summer.  Life is about making the most of ourselves in the time we have left.  Live beautifully alive, changes and all.

    • Hiking Mount Tecumseh on a Foggy Night

      It seemed like a good idea at the time is a beginning statement that might indicate more adventure than bargained for.  And so it was that I hiked solo up Mount Tecumseh at 6:30 PM on a random Thursday, with noble intent to meet the Comet Neowise halfway by climbing a relatively easy mountain and looking at the stars.  Except that the stars were hidden in overcast, and the stakes of a solo hike ratchet up when it gets dark on a steep and wet trail.  But I had a plan B for the descent all the while, which turned out to be an epic adventure of its own.

      Mount Tecumseh is a relatively small mountain that was recently demoted from an official 4000 footer to a just short of greatness 3997 foot.  The mountain is named for the Shawnee Chief who unified tribes against settlement in the Great Lakes region and fought against America in the War of 1812.  There’s no logical connection between Tecumseh and New Hampshire that I’ve seen, but I can respect his name more than some others I’ve come across hiking.  I’ve hiked it before and remembered it as a relatively easy hike save for a steep mile of the trail known as the staircase.  This made hiking the trail as it was getting dark less concerning for me.  But the last time was in winter when Tecumseh’s famous staircase is softened by a heavy snow blanket.

      The ascent was easier than I thought it would be, which bodes well for the trend in my overall fitness level I suppose.  I arrived at the summit at 8 PM with plenty of light to see the view, if the clouds hadn’t dropped down to start blanketing the mountain anyway.  I changed into a long sleeve shirt and began my descent quickly after arriving.  I knew I had a challenging descent to deal with if I chose to hike down the Tecumseh Trail, though I had the gear necessary for a hike in the dark.  But there was that fog to consider, which makes a headlamp beam about as effective as your high beams in your car in fog.  I decided to hike as long as it was safe to do so without using the headlamp.  And after considering the Tecumseh Trail made the decision to hike the Sosman Trail on the descent.  I’ve hiked this one before and knew it was relatively easy for a descent, partially following the ski trail for Waterville Valley.

      But here’s where the story takes a twist.  The fog and darkness made it very difficult to mark the trail, and I lost it in the swirling mist at the summit of the ski lift.  And so I said my first WTF of the night, looked at the ski trail sloping down and decided to just walk down that instead.  I kept to the green trails, which are a combination of gravel road and grassy meadow in the summer.  Skiing down a slope and hiking down are very different things, and I found it slow going.  At one point I spooked a couple of large birds roosting in a tree – likely those turkey I’d been wondering about earlier in the week, and it startled me enough that I thought I might just expire right then and there.  But that would’ve been too easy.  I uttered another WTF and kept descending.

      After walking for what seemed like hours I reached the middle chair lifts at the ski area and looked down to see the lights of the ski lodge depressingly far away.  I said another WTF and made the fateful decision to follow the chair lifts down instead of the gravel access road that would add a lot of time to the hike.  And I discovered just how tall the meadow becomes on the walk down.  By now it was completely dark and I used the beam to illuminate every step and the hiking poles to probe for gopher holes and other hazards.  Eventually I made it down to the base and glanced around at just how lonely a ski area looks at 9:30 on a foggy summer night.  I arrived at my car, used the beam to check for ticks and headed home.  Not your average Thursday night.

      Lessons learned on this one.  Hiking solo in the dark wasn’t the best idea I ever had.  Even though I knew the trails I was hiking, they always look different in the dark, and especially when there’s fog.  I would’ve been better off descending the Tecumseh Trail.  Even if it was slow going its clearly defined and I would have arrived at roughly the same time as taking the Sosman Trail.  The point of this hike was to see the night sky, and I might have been better off just bagging the hike when I saw the overcast at the summit.  But I don’t panic when I hit WTF moments, I assess.  There were things that could have gone wrong but I took it slow and easy and got back safely.  I’m glad I hiked it, and all the extra drama of darkness and fog and overgrown ski trails made it memorable, if slightly reckless (but calculated reckless). Another 4000 footer completed, and a story to tell.

    • Cloud-Hidden, Somewhere on the Mount

      “I asked the boy beneath the pines.
      He said, “The Master’s gone alone
      Herb-picking somewhere on the mount,
      Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.”
      – Chia Tao

      Inevitably I had to arrive at Alan Watts.  I’ve circled around his work for some time, and finally landed on Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown, which is as much personal journal as philosophical work.  And so it was that I lingered on these lines from Chia Tao that open Watts’ book.  I thought about my hike yesterday, cloud-hidden myself, with my whereabouts largely unknown on a solo hike.  It seemed appropriate to borrow this translation for my own observations.  For yesterday’s post was all nuts and bolts detail on hiking Mount Garfield, but it didn’t convey much about hiking solo largely in solitude.

      There’s a part of me that wants to knock off the 48 New Hampshire 4000 footers as a solo hiker.  Not because I’m anti-social, but because I feel the mountains differently when I’m alone with them.  Perhaps I’m more attuned to the ripple of water and the breeze in the trees, but mostly I’m more attuned with myself.  Slipping or tripping on a solo hike feels more consequential than it does when you’re with hiking buddies.  Sure there are other hikers on the trails, especially on a 4000 footer, but if you’re injured you’re relying on the goodwill of strangers and blowing up their own moment with the mountain.  Who wants that memory of your last hike?  I’d just as soon take the extra millisecond to be especially sure of footing.  To that end, I find hiking poles to be especially valued on a solo hike for the reassurance they provide on the descent.  It took me years to conclude that there was any value at all in hiking poles.  Now I find them invaluable.  I was reminded of their worth when I slipped on a hidden muddy root on my descent yesterday and my right pole bore the weight of my slide, keeping me from a hard fall and now shows evidence of bearing the brunt of the force in the form of a slightly bent shaft.  Thanks for your sacrifice, friend.

      The summit of Mount Garfield is a knob of granite with an old fire tower foundation set into it.  I arrived at the summit feeling a bit like a character in that Chia Tao poem.  Cloud hidden and whereabouts unknown.  There’s something about being alone in swirling clouds that is otherworldly.  I’ve felt this before, most notably when the fog rolled in as I stood alone on North Head at Signal Hill in St. John’s, Newfoundland.  My time on the summit lacked the drama of foghorns waking up to blare warnings to all that would hear, but made up for it with wind gusts that implied a threat of their own.  Normally the summit is a place to linger, but the mountain suggested I should move along.  When you’re on the mountain listen to the mountain.

      “The solitary is as necessary to our common sanity as wilderness, as the forest where no one goes, as the waterfall in a canyon, which no one has ever seen or heard. We do not see our hearts…” – Alan Watts, Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown

      I’m not sure what I’d do if the rest of the world woke up early.  I suppose I’d go for long walks alone in the woods, or quietly slip a kayak into the bay or a river, or some such pursuit of solitude.  But the world tends to sleep in, or otherwise keep to itself, and so must I in the early hours.  Hiking offers a measure of solitude, even when you’re with others.  For who doesn’t listen to the mountain when they hike?  Sadly I’ve come across such people – loud talkers you hear from a mile away, or worse, people who play a soundtrack through their phone speakers as they tackle the trail like they’re on a treadmill at the gym.  There are people who never hear, because they never really listen.  I choose to listen.

      The morning after such a hike is filled with reminders: muscle kinks and soreness that grumble, memories of moments of lightness and wonder, gear to store away after a night of drying.  This is the afterglow of time on a trail, and some of that glow stays with you for a lifetime.  I still wonder at moments spent hiking from the Colorado River up Havasu Creek to the lower falls, or watching a meteor shower late in the night on Old Speck Mountain in Maine with college friends.  Hiking doesn’t always fill you with wonder, but it generally puts you in the neighborhood.  The rest is up to you.

       

    • Hiking Mount Garfield

      As U.S. Presidents go, James Garfield is barely remembered, but he seemed like a decent guy.  He fought for the Union primarily to eradicate slavery, and is the only President to be elected from a seat on the House of Representatives.  So he should be viewed favorably and as an American success story.  Unfortunately, his tenure as President lasted a mere six months, as he fell victim to an assassination attempt, dying a few months after being shot from complications.  That you and I don’t remember much about Garfield has as much to do with his short and tragic life more than any flaw in his character  His mother Eliza was born in New Hampshire, so it seems fitting that there’s a mountain named after him.  This morning I climbed that mountain.

      Mount Garfield is known for the view from the summit.  There would be no view this morning, as rain and low cloud cover announced from the start that this wouldn’t be one of those days when you could see for miles.  I decided to hike it anyway, and to do it solo. The Garfield Trail is a relatively easy hike, and I was able to get to the summit in 2 1/2 hours.  As a wet hike, the Garfield Trail leaves a lot to be desired.  You feel like you’re hiking in a stream in stretches, and on the verge of getting bogged down in mud in some others.  But it’s a classic New Hampshire hike, with a cathedral of mature trees lining the ridge in the first third of the hike, and rocks for much of the rest of the way.  This is the type of hiking I’ve grown up with, and I quickly settled into my rhythm for the climb up.  For all its wetness, there were no bugs for the duration.

      Beginning at 7:30, I found little company on the trails.  I passed one father and daughter pair early on, and was in turn passed by a woman who flew past me after the first hour of hiking.  I’ve long checked my ego at the door when it comes to my pacing on hikes, and when I go solo I’m very deliberate with footing.  I’d see her again as she flew down the mountain at almost the same pace.  And that was it for company on the ascent.  It seemed most people were saving Garfield for a sunny day.  But the descent proved me wrong, with a steady parade of hikers streaming past me, most wondering about the view at the summit.  Not much of one, I’d tell them, but even as I spoke those words the day was beginning to change, with sunlight burning through the cloud cover and warming up the forest.  I was grateful for having done the ascent in the cool rain, even if the view didn’t cooperate.

      Mount Garfield is considered one of the easier climbs of the 48 4000 footers, but with that big payoff of a magnificent view waiting for you on a clear day.  If I wasn’t pursuing the 48, I might have saved this hike for better day, but I don’t view it as a waste at all.  20,000 steps later, I’d finished another 4000 footer and began my drive back home.  Garfield is a mountain I’ll do again a few times, certainly in autumn but also in winter when it becomes a longer hike as they close the gate on the access road.  Maybe my timing wasn’t good for a view, but it was an excellent 4 1/2 hour round trip anyway.  I’ve got my second notch on the 48 (I started over again from the beginning this year, since I rarely logged hikes previous to pursuing this goal) 4000 footers, and I got a decent workout in before lunchtime.  I’d call that a great success.

      A side benefit of hiking the 48 is learning more about the people the mountains are named for.  Other than knowing he was President and that he’d been assassinated, I didn’t know much about James Garfield until I chose this hike.  I’m glad I took the time to look back on his life a bit.  He only lived to aged 49, but managed to accomplish quite a bit in that time.  He was a classic rags to riches story with a life cut short too soon.  The White Mountains are dotted with more famous Presidents, but that doesn’t make Garfield a bit player.  Just a guy who ran out of time before he could do more.  I think he’s had a lot of company in that club.  A good reminder to get busy already, time waits for no one. And with that in mind I’m considering a peak bag for my next hike, which involves summiting multiple peaks in one day’s hike. I have another couple of former Presidents in mind for that one.