“The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Last night offered a small chance to see the northern lights as the skies cleared just enough to open up the universe. What are you to do with an opportunity like that but chase after it? With son and daughter as my two co-conspirators we jumped in the truck and drove northward over twisting country roads. Higher elevations, darker skies, reason for hope to witness that elusive sky dance.
We never did find the northern lights. Instead we found the starry dome, the wind whispering a chilly welcome, and time to catch up with each other in a random field far from home. The sky above didn’t disappoint, even as we recognized that it wasn’t going to show all its cards to our power trio. As the clouds rolled back in, we jumped back in the truck for the drive home. We agreed the chase was worthwhile, if only for the billion stars dancing infinitely above and for locking us in the amber of the moment in revelatory quiet below.
We don’t just stumble upon revelation, we must seek it out. Having a spirit of adventure mixed with a sense of place may seem contradictory, as if chasing dreams means leaving home. But the spirit that calls is the universe, and it in turn is our place. You see it more clearly when you get away from the ambient light.
“Suppose we suddenly wake up and see that what we thought to be this and that, ain’t this and that at all?” — Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
The world is full of revelations, for the way we see the world is never really how the world is. Collect enough revelations and you learn to take what people tell you at face value. People have funny beliefs about everything from political or religious affiliation to the subjectivity of the officiating at sporting events. Waking up to the truth in the world requires humility. We all think we’ve got it all figured out. Often what we figure out is that we didn’t really have anything figured out.
There’s been a plethora of articles in business publications recently about The Great Resignation. Millions of people decided to leave their jobs and to leap into another or just get out of the rat race entirely. I know a few of these people, and easily understand their desire to change things up. Millions of people looked around and said, “This can’t be my purpose here, can it?” They finally saw that it wasn’t all this and that.
Every day offers an opportunity to review all those things we think we have figured out. All those beliefs we cling to. Every day offers an opportunity to change it all. But it also presents an opportunity to celebrate what we have. Isn’t that something?
I live in the open mindedness of not knowing enough about anything. — Mary Oliver, Luna
There’s a liberation in knowing your limitations in this world. Understanding what you don’t know offers a fork in the road to either learn more or move on and embrace your ignorance. Which we choose is determined by who we want to be, or who we must be.
I was presented a wine list by a waiter during a team dinner at a high end restaurant. Scanning the list, I quickly found the familiar wines. And hundreds of wines I’d never heard of before, each categorized in general groupings based on the region of the world they came from. Determined to try something new, I welcomed the sommelier who quickly rattled off a few questions that brought us to a bottle. The sommelier and I each met that fork in the road at different points in time. Sometime in his past he embraced learning about each of those hundreds of bottles. When I reached that same fork he was right there to guide me. And every other name and region on that extensive list faded away from my mind.
Not knowing enough about anything and knowing just enough about something aren’t so different. Being open-minded about experiencing what the world brings you offers opportunity. Experience develops the confidence to accept what you’ll never know.
Now I’m a reader of the night sky And a singer of inordinate tunes. That’s how I float across time Living way past my prime Like a long lost baby’s balloon. — Jimmy Buffett, Coastal Confessions
Time flies, and we all go along for the ride. The question everyone asks is how long will the ride be? Fair, but I think the better question is, will I be enjoying the ride to the end? Put another way, how do we get there without the wheels coming off during the trip?
It begins with a sharp mind, and diverse interests. We must find things to do with our time that excite us, make us want to leap out of bed and get to it. I’ve never understood the snooze button, though I love a good night’s sleep. Rest is important–I don’t need any reason for my mind to fog up. When dementia runs in your family, you think about nutrition, exercise and rest more than you might otherwise. Fully living to the end involves being fully aware of yourself and the world when you get there.
Those pillars of good health, nutrition, exercise and rest are the foundation that carry us through the ups and downs of life. When you don’t feel good you can’t fully live. I’ve seen too many examples of health letting someone down just as they set out to finally “live”. What we do today matters tomorrow: Each workout matters. Each bite matters. Each day is a building block. Each should be vibrant, challenging, consistent and fun.
You might think writing about fitness and nutrition means that I’m consistent with each. That would be ridiculous. I’m doing the best I can like most people. When it comes to pillars, two out of three ain’t bad. Three is a very good day. Try to keep the streak alive and do it all again tomorrow. Break the streak? Start a new one. It’s the trend that counts, not the individual highs and lows.
We’re floating across time together. Wondering about the end is fair, but focusing on keeping the wheels from falling off goes beyond wondering. It’s actionable. It seems a worthy goal to work on our daily pillars. If we can influence our quality of life while maybe extending it a bit longer, shouldn’t we try?
Lately I’ve doubled down on getting lost. Now, I understand that deliberately putting yourself into a place where you’re lost might seem counterintuitive and odd. But the thing about being lost is it forces you to find your way out, and this is where learning takes place.
Case in point: I dove into the deep end with learning languages, doubling down on French and German (!) and forcing myself further beyond my comfort zone with each. I’d been doing the bare minimum with French for a couple of years, never really proceeding beyond “Je m’appelle John. Je suis un homme.Où est le toilette?” Barely functional and not exactly conversational.
Something triggered me to dive deeper into lost. With French it was a lingering dissatisfaction with scratching the surface of feminine and masculine terminology, never diving into the nitty gritty because I stuck with the bare minimum to check the box for the day. With German, well, I booked a trip to Austria and Germany and forced my hand to figure it out.
The only way to truly learn a language is to immerse yourself in it. That’s true for a foreign language or the language of your craft. Want to understand the world of finance or a testing laboratory? Immerse yourself in that world and learn the world of pie charts or pipettes. Want to know how to build a house? Join a crew and start hauling lumber. Every apprentice begins completely lost in the world they’ve immersed themselves in. But then something funny happens—your hand is forced and you slowly, awkwardly begin to learn. We’ve all experienced this in school and in our earliest days after graduating and beginning careers. But then we get comfortable and stop challenging ourselves. We stop getting lost. And in our comfort we stop growing.
Taking the easy path slowly kills our learning and kills us in the process. Comfort kills our brains. Kills our dreams. Kills any momentum for big leaps and dramatic turns. In nature we grow or we die, there is no stasis. Yet so many seek stasis.
Maybe diving deeper into a couple of languages doesn’t quite equate to growing or dying. But then again, maybe it does. Challenging our own status quo begins with making ourselves uncomfortable now and then. It begins with stumbling through challenges and finding our way out of it. As with physical fitness, growth comes from stress. There are benefits to being lost. For in being lost we may find our way.
Build a new house down by the sea Get to the place we were meant to be You’ll know it when you smile —World Party, When the Rainbow Comes
Do you ever wonder why people are drawn to the seashore? Is it the taste of salt, or the sound of waves crashing on the beach? These are lovely things indeed. But I think it’s also the place where our world opens up to the universe, where the view is the same for us today as it was for some soul living 10,000 years ago. And so long as we don’t screw it up it will be the same 10,000 years hence. All rivers flow to the ocean, and so must we.
Ah, but what of the source? The rivers all flow from the highest points downward. And we often look up and wonder what we might find when we get there. For the mountains whisper differently than the sea, but no less persistently. When you walk amongst the peaks you feel like you might touch the sky, and the song in the wind feels as timeless as the crash of the ocean. Do we become breathless in the mountains from exertion or from awe? I should think both.
The thing is, we tend to be drawn to the edges; both source and sea. Yet most people settle in between. Is this a compromise between the places we love, or simply a pragmatic nod to efficiency? When you live at one end or the other you necessarily have a longer journey to the middle, let alone to what lies beyond. Crops don’t grow in beach sand or on granite summits. Somebody has to keep things going in the middle. Call it a happy medium if you will. But does settling in the middle like everyone else bring you happiness, or is it just settling?
Life pulls us in different directions, and most of us settle somewhere in the middle. But the magic resides at the edges of our comfort zone. And deep down you know you’ve reached the place you were meant to be when you smile.
The Omni Mount Washington Hotel was built in 1902, making it 120 years old this year. When you walk into this place, you feel the history and grandeur. It’s a time machine of sorts, bringing you back to another era. And yet it’s timeless (if a bit creaky here and there). I’d stayed here before, maybe 15 years ago. When the world seemed different. The hotel has grown since then with more than $90 million in modernizations and additions. The old heated pool is gone, replaced by a 25,000 square foot modern spa, now with a newer heated pool a longer walk away down the hill (dress accordingly).
The hotel was built by Joseph Stickney between 1900 and 1902. He died a year after it opened, but his name is still associated with the place. The hotel stayed in the family until 1944, when the hotel, closed for the war, was sold off. Having stayed here twice now, I can say the place seems to be thriving. For Omni, it’s more than just an old hotel, there’s the Bretton Woods Ski Resort, a couple of golf courses, a large nordic center and a number of other properties to manage. Unlike some owners, they’re actually improving the investment instead of milking it for all it’s worth. It’s noticeably improved in the 7 years they’ve owned it.
Any resort begins with the people who support it, and you notice a fair measure of joy in the staff working the restaurants, bars, nordic center and hotel that you don’t always see in the hospitality industry. This mix of international and local staff genuinely seem happy to be there, happy to talk to you, happy to represent the Omni Mount Washington Hotel. This set the tone for the stay, as everything seemed so… pleasant. Hard to pull that off with 800 guests staying there on the first weekend of March, when everyone was busy and the guests can be demanding.
The dining options at the hotel are more than acceptable. There are three distinct restaurants with different menus: the main dining room (which used to have a large dance floor in the middle that’s become a popular bar), Stickney’s Restaurant, and for the busy weekends, a third themed dining option in the Grand Ballroom (on our stay a Chinese food buffet with Disney movies playing for families). The food was excellent for each of the meals we had, but with a notable luxury price tag. You don’t stay and eat at an Omni without throwing down some serious cash. So staying here is either a splurge or a lifestyle choice. Reservations are required for dinner at the Main Dining Room and Stickney’s, and I’m told you ought to make those reservations well in advance. We managed a late table at Stickney’s our first night and settled for the Ballroom buffet the second night.
The bar scene is active, with all the skiers and hikers returning to celebrate the calories burned with a nightcap or three. The Cave is an old speakeasy deep in the basement that reminded us of the Cavern in Liverpool where The Beatles once played. The walls are granite and brick, and you enter through a granite tunnel. There are plenty of other places to get a drink beyond this, and we spent a couple of hours talking about life in this mad world nursing glasses of wine in the Observatory.
Naturally, there’s plenty to do besides eating and drinking. We opted to skip the skiing on our weekend and instead went snowshoeing on the groomed trails that originate at the nordic center. The trails are extensive and relatively quiet. There was just enough snow left for snowshoeing or XC-skiing, but the horse drawn sleigh rides seemed to be suspended as the snow cover in this mild winter didn’t allow it in early March.
What do you do after snowshoeing for miles? You go for a swim in the outdoor pool, of course. With the water heated to—I’m guessing—85 degrees it provided the perfect way to soak in the mild winter air with spectacular views of the White Mountains and the Presidential Range. For all the changes Omni has made, I’m glad they still offer the heated outdoor pool. It was memorable fifteen years ago in the old pool, and it surely was this time in the new one.
There’s one more thing to know about the Mount Washington Hotel, and it’s the connection to history. For the hotel was the site of the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, when 44 Allied nations gathered at the hotel to establish the Articles of Agreement for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The hotel justifiably makes a point of highlighting this history, and you can walk around the table where some key discussions happened that impact us to this day.
So there you have it. The Omni Mount Washington Hotel is a glorious destination year-round. Our winter weekend reminded us just how wonderful this place is. You’ll pay for it, but it surely is an experience worth having now and then. I hope it won’t be another fifteen years for me.
The Omni Mount Washington HotelHeated pool with Mount Washington in the backgroundSite of the Bretton Woods Conference
“The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there.”― Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods
The White Mountains of New Hampshire are my destination of choice when I seek “unfinished parts of the globe” close to home. Lately I haven’t summited many mountains, what with life and all. But I still seek them out and hope for more time to pry into their secrets.
I took the easy route for the sunrise picture below, standing beside a large window at the Mount Washington Hotel and immersed in Victorian elegance while looking out at the Presidential Range. Opting for the quick picture instead of hiking up to greet them in person might seem like cheating. Not very daring or insolent at all, really. But then again, the picture wasn’t going to wait for me to exit the building, let alone climb a trail. And so here it is, reflections and all, to remind me that there are mountains still to climb. Should we dare to go there.
I’m told that Iddo Landau once said that we should all “transcend the common and the mundane.” Yesterday I had an opportunity to test that with a drive through parts of five of the United States on my way from New Hampshire to New Jersey. How do you transcend a long and overly familiar drive? Music helps, and I dove deep into a healthy mix of early 90’s grunge early on, mixed in a compelling podcast and made a few calls. I stopped for coffee and talked to two veterans of the Korean War for a few minutes, thanking them for their service and sharing a hope for peace in this crazy world. The commute soon slipped away and I was surprised to see the Tappan Zee Bridge rise up ahead of me. I arrived at my destination right when I thought I might.
If life is short, shouldn’t we seize even these common and mundane moments? Our life path takes us to mountaintops and magical evenings with those we love, but it also takes us through White Plains, New York on a random Monday. What we do with that part of the path is what matters most.
The world has taught us that none of this should be taken for granted. We might start out with the intention of getting from here to there, but we can never be sure how it will go or whether we’ll actually arrive until we get there. Making the most of each moment as the miles tick away is a way of living the axiom, “it’s the journey, not the destination”. There’s no better opportunity to prove that than on a rather common and mundane part of life’s journey.
“On every side, the eye ranged over successive circles of towns, rising one above another, like the terraces of a vineyard, till they were lost in the horizon. Wachusett is, in fact, the observatory of the State. There lay Massachusetts, spread out before us in its length and breadth, like a map. There was the level horizon, which told of the sea on the east and south, the well-known hills of New Hampshire on the north, and the misty summits of the Hoosac and Green Mountains, first made visible to us the evening before, blue and unsubstantial, like some bank of clouds which the morning wind would dissipate, on the northwest and west. These last distant ranges, on which the eye rests unwearied, commence with an abrupt boulder in the north, beyond the Connecticut, and travel southward, with three or four peaks dimly seen. But Monadnock, rearing its masculine front in the northwest, is the grandest feature.
As we beheld it, we knew that it was the height of land between the two rivers, on this side the valley of the Merrimack, or that of the Connecticut, fluctuating with their blue seas of air,—these rival vales, already teeming with Yankee men along their respective streams, born to what destiny who shall tell? Watatic, and the neighboring hills in this State and in New Hampshire, are a continuation of the same elevated range on which we were standing. But that New Hampshire bluff,–that promontory of a State,—lowering day and night on this our State of Massachusetts, will longest haunt our dreams.” — Henry David Thoreau, A Walk to Wachusett
Mount Wachusett is a glaciated monadnock, standing 2006 feet tall. Like her neighbor to the northwest, Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire, Mount Wachusett stands watch over the landscape that bows before her. You can’t talk about one mountain without mentioning the other, for they are forever kindred spirits in the landscape. Both mountains are uniquely positioned so that their waters flow to the Merrimack River from one side and to the Connecticut River from the other. The waters from each river run in my blood, which made a hike to the summit a sort of homecoming for me. And yet, for all the hikes I’ve done on Monadnock, I’d never hiked Wachusett.
This was a month where the weather continued to disappoint those who dream of deep snow drifts, while thrilling those who pine for a mild winter. Count me in the camp of the former: I wanted nothing more than to fly across snow plains this winter. A heavy snowfall the day before offered one last chance for the month. But it was quickly apparent that this was a micro spike hike, and the snow shoes were left behind yet again.
From the Visitor’s Center, you can easily summit Mount Wachusett in under 30 minutes. But that wasn’t our goal. Instead we took the Bicentennial Trail around the eastern slope to High Meadow Trail, up through a stand of Hemlocks to the Pine Hill Trail. Fluffy snow over ice creates uncertain footing, and we slowed our pace to mitigate the risk of injury. For a time, the only break in the trail ahead was from a porcupine, who’s distinct tail marked the trail in footprints and swirly plows. It seems most people cut to the chase and scramble up the mountain. We were more inclined to linger with it, to get to know it better. To feel what Thoreau felt when he and Richard Fuller hiked here from Concord, set up their tent atop the lonely summit, and had the place to themselves for a night.
Wachusett’s summit has changed since Thoreau’s time. There’s a ski slope on one side, there’s a mountain road you can drive up in the warmer months to see the view without earning it, and there’s ample parking for those cars. A few towers, including an observation tower, complete the scene. I wonder, reading Thoreau’s account, where did they pitch their tent and read Virgil by the light of a summer full moon?
Winter snow obscures much of the impact of man, but you’re still clearly in a manmade world when you’re on the summit of Mount Wachusett. To return to nature you must seek the trails that criss-cross around the reservation. But the views are largely the same as they were for Thoreau’s 180 years ago. Just as it was for him, Monadnock stands prominently as the grandest feature of the 360 degree view.
Inevitably we left with more to see, trails and old growth forest to explore another day. For this day I found what I was looking for. Time with an old friend hiking trails I’d always meant to get to one day. And a glimpse into a world Thoreau would find both foreign yet comfortably familiar. Wachusett is timelessly accessible, but somehow always felt apart from the mountains I sought out. We finally got acquainted with one another.
Summit tower, Mount Wachusett Distinctive porcupine tracks mark the trailPlenty of exposed granite despite the snowWhich way do we go? Plenty of choices.
