What good is livin’ a life you’ve been given If 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 before. Add snowshoes and you’re suddenly set free to break off trail to see new places, explore animal tracks that run off into the woods, and to see what’s on top of a rise you might have walked by at another time of year.
There’s a popular pursuit in hiking called red-lining, in which hikers hike every bit of every trail on a map or guide. A popular red-lining pursuit in New England is hiking the AMC White Mountain Guide. The whole point of red-lining is to explore new paths – to get off the crowded hiking trails and try something new. To do it, and to belong to a small group of hardcore hikers who have also done it. And add a measure of accomplishment and camaraderie in the world of hiking. I don’t see myself hiking every trail in the AMC White Mountain Guide, but I’m fully onboard with hiking new trails and seeing the previously (for me) unseen.
On Valentine’s Day I explored trails previously unseen in a forest I’ve spent a lot of time in. Snowshoeing with friends, we walked a trail largely by ourselves to new places. When you’re on a new trail like that, every step is a discovery, every bend in the trail is a curiosity, and every trail junction is confirmation and validation of what the map was trying to tell you all along. There’s magic in taking that image on a map for a walk and making it real.
The day after a long walk on new trails you start thinking about the trails at those junctions that you didn’t take. You wonder at what you might have missed down that way and begin to realize the allure of red-lining. For how do you want to spend your time in this world? Sticking with the familiar or exploring new places and challenging yourself in new ways? There are other paths that warrant exploration. I’ve seen them out there, if only on a map.
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 the last couple of years where they didn’t know at least one person on the trails. And a text from my niece Kellyn offered a nice treat, with her deciding to hike with us as well.
Cannon Mountain is an old granite mound that’s famous for a sheer rock face that once held the Old Man of the Mountain until it collapsed in 2003, and for the tram built to promote tourism and skiing on the mountain in 1938, making it the first passenger tramway in the United States. The Old Man of the Mountain gave this granite mound its first name, Profile Mountain, but eventually its resemblance to a cannon from some vantage points let to what we’re familiar with now.
So the stage was set for four hikers to set out on a cold February 13th morning for a hike from Lafayette Campground. We chose the Lonesome Lake Trail, with three of us starting in micro spikes on the snow-packed trail. Our fourth hiker stuck with snowshoes the entire time. The conditions on the popular trail made either option fine. As with other hikes, you quickly know when it’s time to put on the snowshoes. For us that was when we took the largely unbroken Dodge Cutoff Trail over to Hi-Cannon for the hike up to the summit.
Lonesome Lake is a beautiful lake sitting in the bowl of Cannon and the neighboring mountains of the Kinsman Range. It’s a destination of its own, and plenty of people hike up to see it, walk on the frozen lake for the beautiful views it offers, and then hike back down. But you don’t summit mountains when you turn around halfway. We powered on, snowshoeing through a wonder of marshmallow trees up the steep trail. There’s one ice-caked ladder on Hi-Cannon that I’ll always remember for the limited footing options presented to us, but we all got past it with a little help and a dose of courage.
The thing about summits is they tend to be much colder when you’re exposed to the wind and you stop moving. Sweaty gloves quickly freeze up, making a change a requirement to keep your fingers working. We considered the observation tower for a few minutes and opted to just hike down to the ski resort’s Mountain Station, where I’m told you can buy a beer at 4080 feet. I opted for hot chili and hot chocolate, with extra hot, thank you. It’s a rare day when you can summit a mountain and have hot chili waiting for you. We quickly warmed up and reached a point where if we didn’t get going we might choose to close out the place. Onward.
Crossing a ski trail is akin to crossing a highway. You judge the oncoming traffic, decide whether your speed can overcome the approaching traffic’s speed and go. We quickly crossed over to the trail back to the summit observation deck, crowned the summit and began our descent using the Kinsman Ridge Snow Chute, er, Trail. On the map, 4/10’s of a mile of hiking, but a lot of squiggly elevation lines stacked up in a small space. We butt-slid down large sections, my snowshoes were more telemarking skis on other sections, and we all collected snowy memories that will make great tall tales someday.
On one of the butt-sliding sections I lost a water bottle. It wasn’t until we’d snowshoed across Lonesome Lake and I changed to micro spikes that I realized it. My disappointment at losing it turned to delight when we got to the trailhead and someone who’d found it and beaten us down the trail while we lingered at the lake had left it sitting on a post waiting for me. Good hiking karma right there. It was hard to come away with anything but positive vibes after hiking Cannon Mountain on a pristine winter day. A solar halo signaled goodwill to all. A very good day indeed.
Cannon Mountain from Lonesome LakeSolar halo through the frosty treesLonesome Lake with Franconia Ridge beyond
“Nature says thou shalt keep the air, skate, swim, walk, ride, run. When you have worn out your shoes, the strength of the sole leather has passed into the fibre of your body. I measure your health by the number of shoes and hats and clothes you have worn out. He is the richest man who pays the largest debt to his shoemaker.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Those Concord folks were walkers, weren’t they? Ralph and Henry wandered about, wearing out shoes and building big thoughts. There are a couple of versions of that Emerson quote above, but some online research makes me believe these were his words. I like the alternate quotes just fine, but when I start quoting people I’d like to have it right. I love the idea of transferring the strength of the shoes into the fiber of your body. It applies just as well with shoes as it does time and sweat equity invested in other worthwhile things.
I’m wearing out shoes more quickly lately. My feet took a beating last year, ankles and knees too, but they merely paid it forward to my heart and soul. Over time the body adjusts and stops complaining about taking another step and just goes. It’s a bit like writing and washing dishes and making the calls, you just teach yourself that there’s joyful bits in every moment of doing.
I’m a collector of joyful bits. On my deathbed I won’t regret not finishing Breaking Bad, but I’ll surely regret not seeing the Northern Lights or the Southern Cross should I not see each. The last year is a reminder to not take mobility for granted. Wearing out more shoes seems a great goal for our next normal. The correlation seems apparent. Wearing out your gear is an easy measure of your physical and mental health. So lace up; we have places to go.
I promised myself a snowshoe walk in the woods for lunch, and dammit if I wasn’t going to honor that promise. There was more snow drifting down, quietly adding to the base layer in fluffy contentment. Day-old snow welcoming the new to the accumulation. We’re in the weather pattern now, folks. Snow-upon-snow: February in New Hampshire.
I’d walked these woods on Sunday, but felt a return was in order. Conservation land, with trails popular with dog walkers and tree whisperers. At lunchtime on a random Tuesday in winter you don’t expect a crowd but you expect somebody. In this case one car running, its driver staring down at a phone screen, oblivious to me strapping on snowshoes and beginning my walk.
The trail is compacted again, a day after six inches of snow and with more in the air, speaking to the popularity of the trail. I help compact it for twenty steps and then move off trail into deeper snow. This is what I came for after all: the highly addictive, calorie-burning bliss of clumping about in deep snow. I followed an old stone wall that spends its lifetime keeping the woods and fields apart, and wonder at the farmers who built it a few hundred years ago, and the generations that mended it until the woods finally wrested back control of the land. Now it’s my turn on the land, and I quietly honor those who came before me; their hard life on display.
I rejoin the trail and the pace picks up, crossing a bridge over a stream I see a stand of old pines and step off trail to walk amongst them. Just me and the snowshoes, walking an endless blanket of white that covers the features of the land. Fallen trees, dormant vines and brambles, rocks and frozen wetland all lay together under Mother’s white blanket. And one soul clumping about above like a kid at recess. For that is how I feel, being out like this on a snowy workday.
I think about the time. How long have I been out here? 45 minutes? An hour? Hard to say, really, and I don’t want to look at the watch or phone to find out. But I know it’s time to head back towards the car. Clumping along, I join a familiar path, newly blazed but strangely not compacted as much as other trails. I help with that task while walking under hemlock trees – old friends who I speak with now and then across the years. They’d like me to linger awhile, I smile and hint I’ll be back another day. And cross a stone wall and step out on another field of white.
The car isn’t all that far away now. I could be in it and back in my home office in minutes. But the snowshoes want to fly some more, and so do I. Not just yet, world. I step off the path and walk back into the deep snow, a wandering soul in a quiet, timeless field. I spot a tall stone wall on a rise across an unbroken plane, set my course, and fly.
“That’s what makes death so hard – unsatisfied curiosity.” – Beryl Markham, West with the Night
Where does restlessness come from? I believe it comes from that unsatisfied curiosity that Markham references above. What will you regret on your deathbed? The restlessness of the unexplored: unsatisfied curiosity. This phrase from such an accomplished woman, such an adventurous spirit, knocked me back two steps. Because I understand myself more in that pile of words. Don’t you?
Unsatisfied curiosity. I see is in friends buying a bigger sailboat to go farther, to go longer, on their next adventure. In friends collecting mountain summits and filling social media with their seasons of wonder. In family and friends building meaningful businesses and careers out of schemes and dreams. And I see it in myself, writing and searching for more, exploring our history and the world around us. Stretching in new directions and pushing at my own limits.
Unsatisfied curiosity drives progress and growth. Restlessness is a form of being uncomfortable with the limitations we find ourselves living with. The world is out there, should we be bold. Should we leap. And why shouldn’t we? Why be timid and afraid of life? There’s work to be done. Places to go and visions to be realized. Enter Henry:
“Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.” – Henry David Thoreau
It seems impossible, really, when you think about the leap from the Wright Brother’s first flight in 1903 (itself extraordinary) to Markham becoming the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 33 years later, to humans landing on the moon 33 years after that. In our brief time together on this planet, aren’t you curious about what you can accomplish? Bold action satisfies curiosity. What you can see? What can be realized?
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 surprised at the outliers walking into a store without one. I stood in a line for snowblower parts and a mechanic walked briskly through the store unmasked. In a crowded grocery store I saw an elderly woman(!) without a mask on. In both cases I had the same reaction I might have had two years ago to someone wearing a mask. Isn’t it funny how the world has changed our perceptions in such a brief turn of the calendar?
I chafe at restrictions, favoring wandering, crossing borders, friendly conversations with strangers and simply getting out there. But we all sense a light at the end of the tunnel, and we’ll reach a tipping point with vaccinations as we did with mask wearing. With more and more people I know joining the ranks of the vaccinated, a sense of optimism grows. Travel will soon be a reality again, even if a bit different from the travel of a few years ago. There’s plenty of travel available today, without worrying about the complexity of borders, just outside.
“My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours’ walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions of the King of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle of ten miles’ radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the threescore years and ten of human life. It will never become quite familiar to you.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walking
Many times during the past year I’ve thought of Thoreau walking the landscape I know today. There’s plenty that’s changed since his time, but there’s also plenty that remains just as it was then. Much of it remains undisturbed, as if in a time warp, awaiting a visitor. I doubt he ever got up to the corner of New Hampshire where I walk, but I’ve walked in his woods near Walden and note the similarities.
“Walk until your day becomes interesting — even if this means wandering out of town and strolling the countryside. Eventually you’ll see a scene or meet a person that makes your walk worthwhile.” – Rolf Potts, Vagabonding
With a hint of the coming snow in the air, I took my snowshoes out to find new prospects. I quickly moved off the packed trail into virgin snow, crunching along on the snowdrifts through woods and fields. Cold hands soon warmed as I worked up a good pace past old stone walls and silent trees. Snowshoeing offers a slow burn, steady state workout similar to cross-country skiing. There’s a small thrill in hovering over the frozen land while blazing a new trail on snowshoes, and I felt a bit like I was flying as I crunched along.
Reconnecting with the blazed trail at a frozen stream crossing, I noted the collection of prints of those who had come before me. Snowshoes and fat tire mountain bikes, micro spikes and dog prints spiraling in circles from the trail in patterns of joyful exuberance and the freedom of the winter woods. It occurred to me that my own tracks were more similar to the dog prints than those of the trail walkers. Wandering spirits are rarely contains for very long on defined paths.
A simple walk in the woods, off trail, can change a person. In winter what was familiar ground becomes a voyage of discovery. Perception is how we frame the world around us, and I find it best to turn my perceptions upside down now and then. Every walk suggests something profoundly new, and winter transforms both the landscape and the visitor alike. Pausing a moment, I listened to the sound of silence. My snowshoes and I had walked our way to interesting, embracing the cold indifference of the woods to pandemics and masks and turns of the calendar.
Walking along on familiar trails transformed into strange country, I stopped worrying about the neglected collection of stamps in my passport. Feeling a million miles from anywhere I’d every been before, I came across a border marker deep in the woods indicating I’d crossed over from the town forest of my neighboring town into the undeveloped forest of my own town. I smiled and noted that not all borders are closed. And the unfamiliar isn’t very far at all from home.
Into the snowy woodsSnow blanket on an old stone fence
“‘There’s a Sanskrit word, darshan,’ Jon said as we gazed up at Konka. ‘It suggests a face-to-face encounter with the sacred on earth; with a physical manifestation of the holy.’ I hadn’t known the word, but I was glad to have learnt it. Darshan seemed a good alternative to the wow! that I usually emitted on seeing a striking mountain.” – Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways
Waterfalls and sunrises and mountains and ancient trees are a physical manifestation of the holy. And so is the ripple across a calmly rolling ocean betraying a puff of wind. And the Milky Way on an especially dark and clear night. The catch in my throat when I see these things is spiritual, more than any church I’ve ever walked into, and I go out of my way to seek them out. Admittedly, I haven’t been to the Sistine Chapel yet, but I’m not convinced you can’t find the same thing walking deep into the woods.
I stumbled on the quote above from Macfarlane and immediately identified with darshan in this context. I read this book almost eight years ago and keep returning, skimming over magical phrases and bucket list places. But in the end the book is about standing up and walking out to find yourself in the world. To come face-to-face with the divine requires inspired effort. Sweat equity in your spiritual education. Getting out there and in it.
And yet… One of the most beautiful waterfalls I’ve ever seen is She-Qua-Ga Falls in Montour Falls, NY. It felt like cheating when I arrived, because you essentially drive right up to them. The falls are framed by houses and a concrete lined basin below and an arched bridge above. Like Niagara Falls humanity encroaches on the beautiful, threatening to edge it out in the process. But truthfully I don’t see those things at all; I look at the timeless waterfall captured there, like a rose under glass. And I see darshan.
There’s a tendency for people to see something beautiful and immediately try to put a stake in the ground there. The Eagles wrote about this in The Last Resort. Houses lined up on the edge of the beach grabbing a share of sunset and water views. Homes mounted atop mountains to maximize the view while killing it for those looking up at the mountain they’ve scarred with a box. I visit a house with a great sunset view as often as I can, and would be a hypocrite if I were to condemn those who build for the view. For all the beauty we see from that house by the bay, I know that the view from the water or from the other side of the street is a row of houses. So I take no issue with the people who built Montour Falls for edging up to the falls and wanting to linger there, but wish the land around the falls had been preserved in its original state. Then again, the falls are beautifully accessible for those who can’t hike deep into the woods. Darshan on display for everyone. And maybe that’s enough.
The network of trails and rhumb lines that weave across the Earth like a tartan reveal the whispers of those who came before us. There’s very little that hasn’t been seen by someone before us except in the most remote corners of the planet. But who said encounters with darshan must be exclusive anyway? Each human making their way in this world looks for something greater than themselves. Encounters with darshan are uniquely ours alone, even when shared with others we internalize it differently. But what is darshan if not seen through the lens of our mortal human perspective? We seek it out, discover something in ourselves, and try to capture the divine with a few inadequate words and pictures. And honor it as best we can before leaving it for others to discover in their own time.
Coming up on a year of taking French lessons using Duolingo, and I recognize I’ve got a long, long way to go. Nothing impresses that on a person like listening to someone sing softly and rapidly in French, as Lous and the Yakuza did in a remarkable Tiny Desk Concert on NPR. It really wasn’t until Marie-Pierra Kakoma started speaking in French that I picked up on some of what she was saying. The rest of the time I was hopelessly grasping for familiar words while enjoying the cool vibe of the music. Sometimes you just need to concede defeat and make the most of the situation.
To be fair, a second or third language is much easier to understand in a conversation than it is in rapid-fire lyrics in a pop song. Walking around in Montreal most people are just happy that you’re trying to meet them halfway with their own language and help bridge the conversation. Body language and intonation not only help bridge the language barrier, they often serve as the primary way of communicating. People are people anywhere you go. Most want to help others.
For all my talk of learning French, I know it would take immersion to really make it sink in. At the moment I’m at the dog paddle level of swimming in the French Olympic pool. And that’s okay for now (after all I’m locked away in a pandemic), but at some point I’ll face another test and it ought to push me to get better.
Take that hopelessly lost feeling of listening to Marie-Pierra Kakoma singing and flip it around. At one point she spoke English, struggled with it, and returned to her native French. That was the moment when two people speaking different languages would have bridged those gaps for each other. But it was just her and a microphone with her band silent behind her. That struggle is one we all feel with a foreign (to us) language. The encounter with the unfamiliar. The unknown.
Think of the great explorers of history, Giovanni da Verrazzano, Jacques Cartier, Henry Hudson, Samuel de Champlain. The best of them encountered the unfamiliar all the time. Unknown lands, hidden shoals, native people encountering strangers for perhaps the first time, and always, language barriers. Being able to get that encounter with the unfamiliar right the first time was often the difference between life and death for them. Who are we to struggle with a few words and throw our hands up in frustration?
Encountering the unknown informs. We learn what we don’t know and, if we let it, teaches us to be better. Do you throw your hands up and walk away or press on and figure it out? That teaching moment is casually informative for me, but might be urgent for an immigrant lost in a new city with a sick child. Encounters with the unknown offer a lesson in empathy for those paying attention. Figuring out where the restroom is might just be the most urgent thing we ever struggle with. For some it means a whole lot more to figure things out. Read the bio for Marie-Pierra Kakoma and you see that she was a refugee herself. She gets a pass with her struggles speaking English to an unseen audience.
I may never master French, but I’m very slowly picking it up. Should the pandemic end and travel restrictions lift, perhaps a trip to Montreal or Paris is in order to celebrate. We’ll all be ready to encounter something unfamiliar by then. In the meantime, should I encounter someone struggling to be understood in my own language, maybe a bit of empathy and generosity would help in the moment.
Some days nothing much happens. That line a day summary looks very long when you sat in your house all day. Other days you jamb ridiculous amount of activities in a relatively short number of hours. Those days you flop down on the chair, exhale and assess. And that’s where I find myself today.
The morning started with a snow squall and limited visibility that bordered on return home and wait it out intensity. But the radar showed it tracking away from where we were heading, so we pressed on. Sure enough, the snow soon disappeared and we settled into a normal early morning drive. Destination? Mount Agamenticus in York, Maine.
Sunrise on this mountain top has been covered here before, I know. But we were heading to Maine anyway, so a quick hike up an old mountain for sunrise seemed like a good idea. And really, outside of the biting wind chill at the summit it wasn’t a bad way to subtract an hour of sleep from your morning.
Next stop was breakfast at a family restaurant called Lucky Loggers in a Saco, Maine strip mall. This is the kind of place that Google searches are made for, and with 4 1/2 stars it was a no-brainer for a half dozen frozen early risers. Mission accomplished: they thawed out the group, filled our tanks full of goodness and bolstered the spirit for the next highlight in a packed morning: waterfalls.
Hidden away amongst the touristy businesses lining the roads in Saco is a small parking lot in a stand of hemlock trees. This is the parking lot for Cascade Falls, a 20 foot wonder wedged in between granite and forest. There’s a sign that says this particular spot doubled as the Yukon in a 1930’s silent movie. It’s a lovely spot, even with large fallen trees partially obscuring the falls. On a cold January morning, ice lined the edges of the falls and the brook downstream. If you didn’t know you were in Saco you’d think you were deep in the White Mountains.
After Cascade Falls, we drove up to Portland to see Jewell Falls in the Fore River Sanctuary. As advertised, it sits right in the middle of the city, and is a pretty little waterfall that must be really impressive when the water is running high. I’m grateful for resources like New England Waterfalls for pointing out this little gem I’d never have found on my own. For all the trips I’ve taken to Portland, I’d never known about Jewell Falls. Waterfall number two in the books, we turned westward for our third and final waterfall of the morning.
Jewell Falls
Waiting behind door number three this morning was Steep Falls in Standish, Maine. This was the toughest of the three to find, but featured the powerful waters of the Saco River dropping six feet into a churning pool on its way to the sea. This is where a resource like New England Waterfalls really becomes invaluable. Without it I’d never have seen this place in my lifetime. Even with the book it took a few minutes to figure out where the falls actually were. But upon arrival, we were all thrilled with the performance.
Steep Falls, Saco River
So there we are, three waterfalls in a small triangle in coastal Maine. We happened to do them in the order they were listed in the book, but that was coincidence. Having visited a number of waterfalls from the book before and since purchasing it, I can confirm the value of the book and recommend picking it up if you want to start your own New England waterfall adventure.
So how do you cap a morning like that? With a beer with friends followed by a visit with a new puppy in the extended family. Driving back home we saw the sun setting over the Merrimack River and realized it was a very long day indeed. But so full of small adventures and memories. Another day in New England winter, but packed with more than the average.
In the place that is my own place, whose earth I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing, a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself. Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it, hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it. There is no year it has flourished in that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it that is its death, though its living brims whitely at the lip of the darkness and flows outward. Over all its scars has come the seamless white of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection in the warp and bending of its long growth. It has gathered all accidents into its purpose. It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate. It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable. In all the country there is no other like it. I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by. I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it, and is fed upon, and is native, and maker. – Wendell Berry, The Sycamore
I’ve both loved and resented the roots I’ve grown. A wandering spirit, I’ve chafed at being caught in place for too long. Yet I’ve been deeply nourished by the community I’ve planted myself in. I reach towards the sky, trying to fly. While rooting deeper and wider still. Such is the way.
Roots are built on routines and responsibilities, done with love and established over time. You don’t have to feed the birds where you live, but when you do they reward you with movement and song. They bring life in return for your investment in time, money and persistence. And so it is with a community. When you help nourish the community you’re rewarded in ways you might not have anticipated when you first set roots there.
Old growth trees come in many shapes and sizes. Some grow impossibly high. With others, thick trunks support wide canopies. And those in the highest mountains remain low to the ground, clustered tightly together and shrinking in on themselves, constantly buffeted by the harshest of winds.
The pandemic abruptly stepped into our lives about a year ago and still informs. I’ve learned to appreciate the firm ground I’m rooted to all the more when the storms blow. For here in this place I’ve grown more than I might have otherwise. Here in this place the worst of the winds blow over. Here in this place we’ve built lives for ourselves. Bonded to this place and each other, roots interwoven together.
