Walking in Waterfalls, and a Whale's Back
Brigid and I set out around 1 to drop her car at Lincoln Woods on a Friday. I listened to Robert Randolph and the Family Band to get pumped up. Just as her car turned into the massive parking lot, two text messages shot from somewhere in Massachusetts to my phone, and in a finger snap the service was gone. When she parked I glanced down to read the messages. A personal note from a good woman I should call more often, who became a friend as I was leaving another place, remembered the ripple effect during our short time enjoying one another's company. She told me that her dedication to quitting smoking was directly inspired by my thru-hike. If I can decide to hike 2,200 miles one spring, she can choose to overcome an addiction. Then she thanked me, some two years to the day since she'd had a cigarette.
My eyes brimmed over with pride and happiness and guilt. Brigid was throwing her stuff into my car and we were headed for the mountains. The sky was all blue and the air clung to the late summer sun, commingling with the brisk September breeze. I told Brigid about the message, moved to share the generosity of my friend's words, surprised as I was for receiving credit for this remarkable accomplishment that I was fully aware was all hers. We marveled at dedication and the drive that moves us to do grand and difficult things. And I wondered if maybe that is a part of our great bond, that we can say we have accomplished grand and difficult things.
I turned off the highway, onto Gale River Loop Road, which exists for parking lots at trailheads. The road was dirt in perfect New Hampshire condition, like a swept hearth. There were four cars in the first lot. We shared a little disappointment. We repacked our packs and took off. It took a quarter mile for two things to happen: the disruption of fear that I forgot to lock my car, and that little voice to warble messages of my inevitable failure. The trail followed a rising ridge populated by birches, oaks, and certainly ashes, for the familiar jagged leaves settled across the entire forest floor. We conversed easily over heavy breaths, sucking in air to balance the strain on our legs, unaccustomed to our heavy packs. I think about my muscles at the beginning of a hike, twisting and fibrous, tightening and flexing to maintain movement. When they are sore, it feels like cords wrapping my body securely, and I appreciate when they first talk to me, as though the strain and sweat from the backpack grant them voices so that we converse with our work, marveling at the stretches and contractions that walk me through the forest.
Brigid and I packed a tent each, just in case, a sleeping bag, a sleeping pad, dinner, snacks, breakfast, lunch, extra water bottles, warm clothes, extra clothes, treatment for water, gloves and a hat, a map, a book, toiletries, a stove, a pot, a spork, a pack cover or garbage bag, rain coat, and camp shoes. Our bags weighed over twenty pounds. It was the end of September. We were leaving the lowlands and did not know what sort of weather would blow in at our backs.
For the walk up Garfield, the air was calm and cool. Our favorite topics are friendships and relationships; we can spend hours revisiting memories to make sense of them, to celebrate them. I remember little waterfalls, stepping over streams, and counting the people we met along the mountain: two groups heading north, which accounted for two cars in the lot. One set of women we had seen just a few weeks previous hiking Chocorua, but they didn't make the connection. At the top of Garfield a rock garden settled around the granite pate, punctuated by raggedy firs just below the peak. A manmade structure sits on top of the bare granite. All that is left is the square foundation in concrete. The wind up there above treeline is intense. We are the wind's only obstacles, and we are a poor match. A storm was inching ever northward. I became cold, fearful, interpreting the clouds as settling darkness. Brigid reveled in the gray. She seemed to see through the clouds, staring out at the Pemigewasset woodlands and their untouched topography. Still, I urged us onward, and we descended to our packs, and to camp.
The first clue I saw for camp was a small rocky outcrop, where the granite stood straight up to form a ledge at the trail, and to the left a small bench marked a memorial. If we had the cooperation of the autumn sun that afternoon, I've been told the view would have been arresting. Instead we walked to the water source, where two men were surprised to see us. The gentle expression I interpreted from the older man's eyes suggested Lucy from the Wardrobe, upon seeing Mr. Tumnus. They did not return our greeting; when we passed and returned them their solitude perhaps their tongues loosened again.
Anxious to secure a site to rest, I accelerated. The caretaker emerged from his canvas tent, a student honed from a summer with his books among the trees, and he directed us to the campsites available. As we followed his recommendations for sites 6 or 7, we passed the new shelter. This palace smelled of hand-sanded hardwood and stood, freshly erected that day, as the most beautiful shelter in the Whites. I do not exaggerate: the donor called for a new shelter for aesthetics alone, as the original one lacked functional flaws. Two Y shaped trunk segments were built into a front corner of the structure and halfway across the opening, giving the shelter three and a half walls. Brigid and I drooled as we passed it. When we dropped our packs at site 7, the quiet gentleman and his companion, perhaps a son, appeared and chose the adjacent tent platform. Their awkward presence tipped my decision: we would sleep in the shelter.
We devised a plan to bribe the caretaker while changing into warmer layers. After a protein bar we gathered the goods for water. With arms full of bladders and empty bottles, my Katadyn filter hanging from my right index finger, and cookies safely stored in the right pocket of my Micropuff, we walked up the path toward the water source. Ahead of us the caretaker appeared, lanky and comfortable. He greeted us politely and offered to postpone our paying him once again. I pincered inside of my left pocket with two of my free fingers for the folded ten, five, and one to pay him for our night in his territory, and he thanked us for exact change before generously telling us an entertaining story about the other campers paying with large bills and the difficulty of making change on top of Mt. Garfield. This was obviously the right moment, with us in his favor.
"We were wondering, can we could bribe you so we can sleep in the shelter tonight? We have cookies." I fished out the broken treats from the other pocket with my pincer fingers. Like a kid in charge of his parents' hot tub he smirked,
"You don't have to bribe me, you are welcome to stay in there tonight." He accepted some cookies. As we passed by him he turned and added,
"You don't have to filter the water you know. Here and Guyot have the cleanest water in the Whites. I never treat."
Brigid knew I was a tent fan, but there was something about that shelter. I went from not caring about sleeping in it to writing off the night as a bust if we had to pitch tents. The storm approaching from the west probably played a role, too. So we did a little victory dance. While I plodded along in crocs to the water source - a beautiful clear stream shooting out of brilliant moss, a great sign for direct, naturally filtered, mineral-rich water - memories of the terrible cramps of parasites making a home in my guts conflicted with the caretaker's suggestion. There are two reasons for not filtering water: lethargy and trust.
Over the course of the last 24 hours, the forecast went from sun to storm, first unlikely to inevitable. I foolishly believed inevitable would turn around again, but by then hope was futility. A third and bad reason is impatience. Also, the first day with a pack on is a hard day.
Back at the shelter, I was possessive. I didn't want anyone else to be the first to stay in the new shelter, so I suggested we bring all of our gear in behind the front wall, so that anyone passing would not think to stop and stay in the brand new shelter. This plan went very well until the rain started and we were sitting on the floor, legs dangling over the edge, eating our tuna and Pasta Sides casseroles, when a light began bouncing along on the south side of the trail. The hiker who asked us nicely whether there was any room left in the shelter, to whom we responded that we were the only two inside, but the very first to sleep in it, was polite and conversational. While I brushed my teeth, rain spitting onto my shell from under the eaves, we discovered that we had met on the Appalachian Trail two years ago, probably in Virginia. He remembered my trail name, but we had only passed once, and not stopped to chat. The world seemed very small and it was comfortable.
In the morning we tried to wake up early and it didn't work. When the caretaker had heard our plans for the next day he had warned us that a trek of that length would take us most of the day and maybe part of the night. The only way to be safe was to start by 7 at the latest. We had a very nice breakfast with our shelter companion, in which he cooked and I ate too many Pro Bars and Brigid boiled water for oatmeal to become superhuman, and then hit the trail around 8.
The light mist was tolerable, but within three miles the trail, Garfield Ridge approaching Galehead Hut, becomes a river in the best of times. The night before contained a great burst of a storm. The thunder seemed to shake everything outside save the shelter, and the lightning continued unabated for hours. It rained a lot. It rained new rivers. The trail is a waterfall at times, and it was nerveracking. During those first miles, the rain started to spit a little more so I put on my pack cover and helped Brigid with a garbage bag for the same purpose. When we spied the first waterfall, it conjured the memory of falling down one two years prior, when Ewok caught me tumbling over the slick rocks. There was nothing for it this morning, we were going to get soaked or fall. This is scary stuff. You know the moment at the top of the roller coaster, when you're about to rush down the slope, and the ride pauses just long enough with a little shudder of a jolt to make you question why you've chosen to get that high up? The queasy adrenaline of uncertain ground pulls at my gut and unsteadied my confidence- 'you can die at any time.'
We descended a very steep rock wall carpeted in rushing water wearing twenty pound packs. Again I cursed the AMC for never moving the trail, as dangerous as it is. And not only dangerous, but terribly not fun. It's always wet. The trees and roots lining the trail are heavily used, exposing bare twisted wood beneath bark, pulled out of the well-watered earth. My shoes filled up. I stopped to ring out my socks. Then we went on ahead, unsure of our pace.
The clouds overtook the mountains and it was really raining now. The few people we saw were on their way from the hut to the car, or caretakers at the sites. We skipped the peak side trails, because bagging without a view seemed a waste, and we were worried about losing daylight. At 11:30 we were at the intersection of Bondcliff and Garfield Ridge, with many miles to go. We hadn't eaten since breakfast. We weren't drinking much water. The wind was cold and everything was damp. Egressing the forest cover onto the alpine zone, we were exposed and exhilarated. The wind was whipping and we were actually in the clouds, so that our path was still and the rest of our world was moving.
The climb took on a sharper pitch, which warmed our damp legs. Like ocean waves breaking the clouds split against a slope just a few hundred feet away. These are the Bonds, muddled brown and slate in our dull light, grand shoulders flexing out of the gray clouds. Then it disappeared. Farther south another shoulder broke through, and so it continued, a peep show of West Bond. Ahead of us the trail followed the apex ridge of Bondcliff. We marveled at the dropoffs on our sides, and the brief glimpses of brilliant green forest below. Out of the storm just ahead, an awesome rocky spine sliced white, and the gigantic whaleback rose and shrank us. It appeared like a serpent surfacing, offering its back for our safe journey. I think we laughed then.
The trail south to the car meanders an easy grade for about ten miles. I wanted to be the hiker who dilly-dallies and absorbs every moment to make sensual memories. But I went as fast as I could instead. We dipped back below treeline and hurried, racing the clock we didn't have. "It was one of those days," Brigid recalled recently, "when the light was so weak because of the weather, that it could have been 1 in the afternoon or it could have been dusk, and we wouldn't have known until it got dark or didn't." Well it didn't. The dayhikers coming toward us to see the new bridge and the old bridge destroyed by Irene stared at our soaked finery. I don't think we greeted them really. They carried umbrellas. We were speedwalking by then. The last hours, who knows how many, were spent discussing how we will feast and the alien concept of warm and dry. Warm and dry is not always possible. At the car, we changed into the extra layers left behind. Brigid turned the key: 4:45.
My eyes brimmed over with pride and happiness and guilt. Brigid was throwing her stuff into my car and we were headed for the mountains. The sky was all blue and the air clung to the late summer sun, commingling with the brisk September breeze. I told Brigid about the message, moved to share the generosity of my friend's words, surprised as I was for receiving credit for this remarkable accomplishment that I was fully aware was all hers. We marveled at dedication and the drive that moves us to do grand and difficult things. And I wondered if maybe that is a part of our great bond, that we can say we have accomplished grand and difficult things.
I turned off the highway, onto Gale River Loop Road, which exists for parking lots at trailheads. The road was dirt in perfect New Hampshire condition, like a swept hearth. There were four cars in the first lot. We shared a little disappointment. We repacked our packs and took off. It took a quarter mile for two things to happen: the disruption of fear that I forgot to lock my car, and that little voice to warble messages of my inevitable failure. The trail followed a rising ridge populated by birches, oaks, and certainly ashes, for the familiar jagged leaves settled across the entire forest floor. We conversed easily over heavy breaths, sucking in air to balance the strain on our legs, unaccustomed to our heavy packs. I think about my muscles at the beginning of a hike, twisting and fibrous, tightening and flexing to maintain movement. When they are sore, it feels like cords wrapping my body securely, and I appreciate when they first talk to me, as though the strain and sweat from the backpack grant them voices so that we converse with our work, marveling at the stretches and contractions that walk me through the forest.
Brigid and I packed a tent each, just in case, a sleeping bag, a sleeping pad, dinner, snacks, breakfast, lunch, extra water bottles, warm clothes, extra clothes, treatment for water, gloves and a hat, a map, a book, toiletries, a stove, a pot, a spork, a pack cover or garbage bag, rain coat, and camp shoes. Our bags weighed over twenty pounds. It was the end of September. We were leaving the lowlands and did not know what sort of weather would blow in at our backs.
For the walk up Garfield, the air was calm and cool. Our favorite topics are friendships and relationships; we can spend hours revisiting memories to make sense of them, to celebrate them. I remember little waterfalls, stepping over streams, and counting the people we met along the mountain: two groups heading north, which accounted for two cars in the lot. One set of women we had seen just a few weeks previous hiking Chocorua, but they didn't make the connection. At the top of Garfield a rock garden settled around the granite pate, punctuated by raggedy firs just below the peak. A manmade structure sits on top of the bare granite. All that is left is the square foundation in concrete. The wind up there above treeline is intense. We are the wind's only obstacles, and we are a poor match. A storm was inching ever northward. I became cold, fearful, interpreting the clouds as settling darkness. Brigid reveled in the gray. She seemed to see through the clouds, staring out at the Pemigewasset woodlands and their untouched topography. Still, I urged us onward, and we descended to our packs, and to camp.
The first clue I saw for camp was a small rocky outcrop, where the granite stood straight up to form a ledge at the trail, and to the left a small bench marked a memorial. If we had the cooperation of the autumn sun that afternoon, I've been told the view would have been arresting. Instead we walked to the water source, where two men were surprised to see us. The gentle expression I interpreted from the older man's eyes suggested Lucy from the Wardrobe, upon seeing Mr. Tumnus. They did not return our greeting; when we passed and returned them their solitude perhaps their tongues loosened again.
Anxious to secure a site to rest, I accelerated. The caretaker emerged from his canvas tent, a student honed from a summer with his books among the trees, and he directed us to the campsites available. As we followed his recommendations for sites 6 or 7, we passed the new shelter. This palace smelled of hand-sanded hardwood and stood, freshly erected that day, as the most beautiful shelter in the Whites. I do not exaggerate: the donor called for a new shelter for aesthetics alone, as the original one lacked functional flaws. Two Y shaped trunk segments were built into a front corner of the structure and halfway across the opening, giving the shelter three and a half walls. Brigid and I drooled as we passed it. When we dropped our packs at site 7, the quiet gentleman and his companion, perhaps a son, appeared and chose the adjacent tent platform. Their awkward presence tipped my decision: we would sleep in the shelter.
We devised a plan to bribe the caretaker while changing into warmer layers. After a protein bar we gathered the goods for water. With arms full of bladders and empty bottles, my Katadyn filter hanging from my right index finger, and cookies safely stored in the right pocket of my Micropuff, we walked up the path toward the water source. Ahead of us the caretaker appeared, lanky and comfortable. He greeted us politely and offered to postpone our paying him once again. I pincered inside of my left pocket with two of my free fingers for the folded ten, five, and one to pay him for our night in his territory, and he thanked us for exact change before generously telling us an entertaining story about the other campers paying with large bills and the difficulty of making change on top of Mt. Garfield. This was obviously the right moment, with us in his favor.
"We were wondering, can we could bribe you so we can sleep in the shelter tonight? We have cookies." I fished out the broken treats from the other pocket with my pincer fingers. Like a kid in charge of his parents' hot tub he smirked,
"You don't have to bribe me, you are welcome to stay in there tonight." He accepted some cookies. As we passed by him he turned and added,
"You don't have to filter the water you know. Here and Guyot have the cleanest water in the Whites. I never treat."
Brigid knew I was a tent fan, but there was something about that shelter. I went from not caring about sleeping in it to writing off the night as a bust if we had to pitch tents. The storm approaching from the west probably played a role, too. So we did a little victory dance. While I plodded along in crocs to the water source - a beautiful clear stream shooting out of brilliant moss, a great sign for direct, naturally filtered, mineral-rich water - memories of the terrible cramps of parasites making a home in my guts conflicted with the caretaker's suggestion. There are two reasons for not filtering water: lethargy and trust.
Over the course of the last 24 hours, the forecast went from sun to storm, first unlikely to inevitable. I foolishly believed inevitable would turn around again, but by then hope was futility. A third and bad reason is impatience. Also, the first day with a pack on is a hard day.
Back at the shelter, I was possessive. I didn't want anyone else to be the first to stay in the new shelter, so I suggested we bring all of our gear in behind the front wall, so that anyone passing would not think to stop and stay in the brand new shelter. This plan went very well until the rain started and we were sitting on the floor, legs dangling over the edge, eating our tuna and Pasta Sides casseroles, when a light began bouncing along on the south side of the trail. The hiker who asked us nicely whether there was any room left in the shelter, to whom we responded that we were the only two inside, but the very first to sleep in it, was polite and conversational. While I brushed my teeth, rain spitting onto my shell from under the eaves, we discovered that we had met on the Appalachian Trail two years ago, probably in Virginia. He remembered my trail name, but we had only passed once, and not stopped to chat. The world seemed very small and it was comfortable.
In the morning we tried to wake up early and it didn't work. When the caretaker had heard our plans for the next day he had warned us that a trek of that length would take us most of the day and maybe part of the night. The only way to be safe was to start by 7 at the latest. We had a very nice breakfast with our shelter companion, in which he cooked and I ate too many Pro Bars and Brigid boiled water for oatmeal to become superhuman, and then hit the trail around 8.
The light mist was tolerable, but within three miles the trail, Garfield Ridge approaching Galehead Hut, becomes a river in the best of times. The night before contained a great burst of a storm. The thunder seemed to shake everything outside save the shelter, and the lightning continued unabated for hours. It rained a lot. It rained new rivers. The trail is a waterfall at times, and it was nerveracking. During those first miles, the rain started to spit a little more so I put on my pack cover and helped Brigid with a garbage bag for the same purpose. When we spied the first waterfall, it conjured the memory of falling down one two years prior, when Ewok caught me tumbling over the slick rocks. There was nothing for it this morning, we were going to get soaked or fall. This is scary stuff. You know the moment at the top of the roller coaster, when you're about to rush down the slope, and the ride pauses just long enough with a little shudder of a jolt to make you question why you've chosen to get that high up? The queasy adrenaline of uncertain ground pulls at my gut and unsteadied my confidence- 'you can die at any time.'
We descended a very steep rock wall carpeted in rushing water wearing twenty pound packs. Again I cursed the AMC for never moving the trail, as dangerous as it is. And not only dangerous, but terribly not fun. It's always wet. The trees and roots lining the trail are heavily used, exposing bare twisted wood beneath bark, pulled out of the well-watered earth. My shoes filled up. I stopped to ring out my socks. Then we went on ahead, unsure of our pace.
The clouds overtook the mountains and it was really raining now. The few people we saw were on their way from the hut to the car, or caretakers at the sites. We skipped the peak side trails, because bagging without a view seemed a waste, and we were worried about losing daylight. At 11:30 we were at the intersection of Bondcliff and Garfield Ridge, with many miles to go. We hadn't eaten since breakfast. We weren't drinking much water. The wind was cold and everything was damp. Egressing the forest cover onto the alpine zone, we were exposed and exhilarated. The wind was whipping and we were actually in the clouds, so that our path was still and the rest of our world was moving.
The climb took on a sharper pitch, which warmed our damp legs. Like ocean waves breaking the clouds split against a slope just a few hundred feet away. These are the Bonds, muddled brown and slate in our dull light, grand shoulders flexing out of the gray clouds. Then it disappeared. Farther south another shoulder broke through, and so it continued, a peep show of West Bond. Ahead of us the trail followed the apex ridge of Bondcliff. We marveled at the dropoffs on our sides, and the brief glimpses of brilliant green forest below. Out of the storm just ahead, an awesome rocky spine sliced white, and the gigantic whaleback rose and shrank us. It appeared like a serpent surfacing, offering its back for our safe journey. I think we laughed then.
The trail south to the car meanders an easy grade for about ten miles. I wanted to be the hiker who dilly-dallies and absorbs every moment to make sensual memories. But I went as fast as I could instead. We dipped back below treeline and hurried, racing the clock we didn't have. "It was one of those days," Brigid recalled recently, "when the light was so weak because of the weather, that it could have been 1 in the afternoon or it could have been dusk, and we wouldn't have known until it got dark or didn't." Well it didn't. The dayhikers coming toward us to see the new bridge and the old bridge destroyed by Irene stared at our soaked finery. I don't think we greeted them really. They carried umbrellas. We were speedwalking by then. The last hours, who knows how many, were spent discussing how we will feast and the alien concept of warm and dry. Warm and dry is not always possible. At the car, we changed into the extra layers left behind. Brigid turned the key: 4:45.
posted by Sara Haxby at
11:20 PM
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