There’s something uniquely foreign about the experience, akin to visiting an ice palace in a fantasy movie. Humans aren’t supposed to be in such places. At least that’s what we tell ourselves when we look at a waterfall from the front. And when it’s frozen in winter? Well, there’s something chillingly locked away in… there….
What good is livin’ a life you’ve been givenIf all you do is stand in one place – Lord Huron, Ends of the Earth If snow transforms the landscape, then a walk in that snowy terrain transforms the winter walker. Add a new path and suddenly you’re seeing the world entirely differently than you had…
A flurry of texts over the work week from two directions with questions about hiking led to a decision to join forces for a hike of Cannon Mountain. On the one hand were the Perry’s, increasingly famous in the White Mountains for years of summiting mountains and red-lining trails. I don’t recall a hike in…
If you watch a commercial on television, or a reporter out on a city street, or even the cast intro on Saturday Night Live in February 2021, everyone is wearing masks. A year ago you’d have wondered at it, even as the pandemic rapidly descended on the world. Today it’s commonplace, and I’m more often…
“What is left is what is.” – Wendell Berry, The Broken Ground Lingering soreness from a long winter hike and tackling a foot of snow with a snowblower that quite halfway through the task, leaving only shovels to overcome mechanical obstinance. Fatigue, not all of it in muscles, wished me a good morning with a…
The last day of January felt like it should throw up challenging hiking in New Hampshire. In fact the temperature read a solid -4 degrees at the start. But the truth is that if you aren’t breaking the trail it’s comparatively easy. The snow pack on popular trails covers up a lot of the erosion…
Let the record show that on the last day of January, 2021 this author fell in love with a pile of granite atop a ridge in New Hampshire. Mount Liberty rises 4,459 feet with a prominence of 379 feet, making it one of the state’s 4000 footers. I’ve flirted with Liberty for years, but when…
Contingencies. I pack for contingencies. Most of it stays in the bag, bulging against the sides, weighing the pack down directly onto the hip belt, as designed, and a bit on the shoulders, as is the way. First aid kit, extra warm clothing, extra food, and, it turns out, just enough water for this eleven…
“When despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild thingswho do…
“For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able…
