Hiking – Page 4 – Grace Mattern

March 28, 2013

Above Tree Line: March

We walked into another world today — the alpine zone on the Franconia Ridge. Waking to a cloudy day that didn’t have a promising forecast, we kept moving with our plan to meet Ellen and hike today, knowing this was our last free day to get above tree line in March. As we drove up 93 towards the mountains, we could see the white peaks of Mt. Lafayette and Mt. Liberty gleaming in spots of sunshine, clouds breaking open to blue sky above us.

The sun was shining through the freshly snow showered trees as we started out on the Falling Waters Trail. But by the time we got to the falling water that gives the trail its name, the clouds had moved back in and soon after that it started snowing. It snowed the rest of the hike.

The trail was well packed under the few inches of new powder, so we had no trouble following the worn depression in the snow. The only trouble was when we accidentally stepped even inches off the track — posthole, a leg lost up to the crotch in snow.

The Falling Waters Trail is a steep climb up the west side of the ridge, but it was stunningly beautiful. Snow and ice on the river, snow on branches, snow on spruce, snow on our hats and our backs. Snow so deep ten foot trees looked four feet tall, and a sign that in summer is at head height was at my knees.

We kept trudging up and up and finally broke out into the alpine zone, above the trees, 3,000 feet above where we started. The view was mostly snow and cloud, with one ridge rising out of the fogginess to our south. Then we turned around and slid, slipped and glided down, another month’s above tree line intention done.

February 28, 2013

Above Tree Line: February

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The winter world on Mt. Washington’s eastern slope was in black and white on Tuesday, when David and I fulfilled our intention to get above tree line for February. We hiked into the alpine zone at the base of Tuckerman’s Ravine, on a wide well-packed trail. Before we left on our hike we could see we’d be hiking into the cloud cover over the mountain. The view above tree line was of snow, cloud, and dark spruce trees below, mounded with white. The monochrome day reminded me of a poem from years ago.

Absence or Everything

Moon laced through cold
curtains, the world
in black and white
since the last storm.

Glass feathers freeze,
skin seeks skin, vision
blurs as if walking
into winddriven snow.

The bedroom pinkens,
yet still, outside,
monochrome
trees, fields, fences, sky.

January 12, 2013

Above Tree Line

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“I’d like to get above tree line once a month,” David said, when I asked him if he had any New Year’s intentions. I didn’t want to talk about resolutions — too resolute. Being intentional about making sure we do things that make us happy is another thing altogether.

Hiking up to an open ridge makes both of us happy, so we began making plans earlier this week for a hike up the Crawford Path in the White Mountains to Mt. Pierce today. We emailed some hiking buddies, got an enthusiastic response, and ended up with 10 people hoping to hike with us. The weather forecast wasn’t promising, but David and I were willing to do the hike in almost any conditions, short of downpours.

Then the forecast worsened, by 8:00 last night it was raining, and the other hikers started to bail out of the hiking plan. By the time we went to bed last night, we were down to 5 of us planning to hike. We got up early this morning and checked a high summit forecast, and looked at the radar. No rain anywhere in New England and a chance for some breaks in the clouds this afternoon. So we drank coffee and started packing up to go. Another set of hikers dropped out via email, and I called the friends who live up north as we drove into the mountains. They also took a pass, but David and I kept driving.

By the time we got to the trailhead, I knew we’d made the right choice. Clouds were lifting all around us, and we could see the range to the south of us. The trail was well-packed powder, making hiking effortless with just microspikes on our boots. “No rocks, no roots, no bugs,” David and I said to each other, the winter hiking refrain. As we climbed the snow on the trees thickened, draping the spruce, and the sun began to break through the clouds.

When we got above tree line, the southern slopes of the Presidential range swept off to the north, occasionally threaded with a piece of cloud. From the summit of Mt. Pierce, we could see the tops of the mountains to our south, dark peaks in a sea of clouds. With unusually warm and still weather, we were able to take a lunch break on the summit, then walk a bit further up the ridge, just to enjoy the view.

Above tree line for January: done!

November 21, 2012

Mountains and Cows and Moving

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Saturday we climbed Mt. Liberty. It was a cold day, even with the bright sun, and stopping along the trail as I hiked to the top of the Franconia Ridge, I chilled easily and had to start moving again. But at the summit there was full sun and no wind, the least wind I’ve ever experienced on that ridge. While we ate lunch I savored the view, and let the sun heat the black jacket across my back.

Yesterday morning we pulled up the shades in the bedroom and the cows in the pasture across the street were staring right into windows. Could they see us? Frisky all day, they kept sniffing and jumping on each other’s rear ends, watching me as I did a final mow of the yard, then trotting again in a circle around the close corner of the field, as close to me as they could get.

Top to bottom, field to forest, long sloping ridge lines to cow eyes tracking my day. I keep moving through whatever is next.

September 14, 2012September 15, 2012

Coincidental Conversations

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Three times in the last week I’ve stumbled into wonderful conversations with people I didn’t know before we started talking, and found much to affirm the almost constant swirl in my own head about what I’m doing with my life right now, what I think I should be doing, what I could do better if I’m not doing things exactly right or according to some indiscernible grand plan, and how I might be doing something different if that’s what I want. Or think?

Sound confusing? It is, but the conversations helped. The first was with a long ago friend of David’s, at a birthday party for another long ago friend. A group of people who had either lived in or been connected to a large communal household in the Boston area 40 years ago had gathered for the celebration, and David and I had a long talk with Barbara, another artist, trying to understand what role art and painting plays in her life. Right now she’s not interested in “having a show,” painting for the purpose of selling her work, or even painting for anyone else. Instead, she’s interested in finding her voice as a painter, and trying to explore and understand the role of creating beauty as a primary purpose of art.

As she talked, I could feel her thoughts resonating with ideas of my own I hadn’t even articulated to myself. Why do I want to write? Why aren’t I writing more? Who am I writing for? Is it enough just to write when I want, however I want, for whatever reason? Does ambition about getting published and read and recognized help in the writing process, or hinder it? And do I even care about any of that? Talking to Barbara helped all these questions come to the forefront, and I’m far from answering them, but I know this is a conversation I want to keep having, however I can fit that into my life.

On Tuesday, with clear days and clear calendars ahead of us, David and I went north to the White Mountains for a couple of days. We hiked first up Mt. Madison and spent the night at the Madison Spring Hut, allowing us to stay above tree line on the grand Presidential ridge. The Appalachian Mountain Club huts provide sleeping bunks and hearty meals to hikers at high elevation locations, making staying in the mountains a truly in-the-mountains experience.

The night at the hut gave David and me time to summit both Madison and Adams, two of the tallest mountains in New Hampshire, and the chance to share dinner and breakfast with two interesting people, extending our own dialogue, both internal and between us, about what we’re doing, what we want to do, what we should do and how do we fashion our lives in the absence of huge jobs and the presence of significant creative urges.

Francois is from outside Montreal, and was on a multi-day hike, peak-bagging, and staying in shape for his central goal, which is to climb the highest peak on each continent. He’s already done 4, including getting to the summit of Everest last May. He’s driven by a singular goal, focused, direct and intent. Talking to him about his adventures was wonderful, because he seems to live with very few questions about what he’s doing. When we asked him why he’s climbing the highest mountains in the world his answer was simple. He loves it, he loves mountains, he loves the process and opportunity for success.

We also spent a lot of time talking to Cathy, the mother of one of the hut crew members, there to visit and spend time with her daughter in the mountains. Cathy is between major projects at this point, her children grown and starting out in their own lives, her own career as a landscape architect on hold for now. She’s interested in writing, community design, food security, urban garden planning, and her family. Talking to her was, again, like talking to myself. What is this later life I’m experiencing for? What’s the best use of whatever time I have left, where should I put my focus? What am I doing?

One thing I’m doing is finding interesting people who are happy to talk about what they’re doing, whether they have a clear answer to why they’re doing what they’re doing or what it means, or they don’t. Because it’s really all the same, isn’t it? We’re here and we’re doing the best we can.

July 16, 2012July 16, 2012

Hike-U’s

rocks into north sea — Throwing our rocks from the Irish Sea into the North Sea after 200 miles.

“What are the syllables in a haiku,” Peter asked me, somewhere on the walk between Keld and Reeth. I gave him a fairly lengthy reply, explaining that the 5-7-5 syllable scheme is decidedly Western, as traditional Japanese haiku have 17 on, in the 5-7-5 pattern, but on and syllables are not the same. (What exactly an on is can be hard to explain. Wikipedia says it’s a mora and then tries to explain that.) Traditionally there is a seasonal reference in a haiku, and most critically there is a cutting word, or juxtaposed images, a turn, of some sort, often between the second and third lines.

Several miles later Peter said, “Okay, I have one.” And he recited a haiku he’d written in his head as he walked.

Dry boots, full bellies
Bad weather route to a pub
Bog only to knee. — Peter

So then I wrote one and recited it to him, and we both recited ours to everyone else, probably backed up at another kissing gate (only one person can go through at a time) or a stile up to an almost impossibly narrow gap in the top half of one of the many, many, many 5 foot stone walls, clamped off by a small, springy wooden gate (only one person can go through at a time).

Up and down the line of the 8 of us walking, we started counting out syllables in our heads or with our fingers or our footfalls, then reciting the haikus we came up with. At one point David said, “We’re writing hike-u’s (and spelled it out). Get it?” We chuckled. When we stopped for lunch at a tea room (the pub wasn’t serving food, and we needed food more than pints), I wrote down what everyone had come up with. Here are a couple more (and more to come).

Boggy boots hosed clean
Hair-dryer miracle dry
Next day happy feet. — Anne

Homemade giant fish fingers
With salad and chips 8.50
Walkers welcome. — Betsy

July 12, 2012

Walking in Sunshine

David and I went for our first walk since getting home yesterday. We headed out on the trail across the hay meadows at the top of Blake’s Hill, then down into Northwood State Park to walk around Betty Meadow Pond. As we followed the path through the first meadow, two turkeys flapped up out of the deep grass beside us and flew off ahead. Moments later a dozen small, fuzzy feathered turkeys lifted out of the grass and flew off after the adults.

As we walked, I noticed how similar the plants were to our walks through meadows in England. The same small daisies and Queen Anne’s Lace and toadflax (or butter-and-egg as I called it as a kid) flowers flecked the fields. But there was one striking difference. We were walking in sunshine, it was hot, and there was no mud. We’re back in summer and it feels great.

July 7, 2012

Bi-Coastal Coast to Coasters

Yes, the Bi-Coastal, NH/WA team finished the Coast to Coast walk today at 2:30, far ahead of the other C2Cers huffing up the long steep hill out of Grosmont this morning. It’s not that we were faster, just “sensible” as a woman weeding her garden said to me when we walked by and I told her we’d taken some shortcuts from the Wainwright route.

Wainwright himself encouraged people to find their own alternatives to his original path, which we did today, saving about 7 miles. After yesterday’s dispiriting walk in pouring rain across the moors, we looked at the map last night and decided to eliminate a long loop north on the route to walk back south to Robin Hood’s Bay on the headlands. Good decision, as the coast was fogged in all day and we wouldn’t have had any views, the reason for the loop.

We walked through a rising mist this morning through the lovely Egton Bridge into sun at Grosmont, a village still served by a steam engine train.

England has been hit hard with record breaking rains and flooding, but the villages along the Esk River are clearly used to high waters. We passed two road fords today with water height markers and had to take footbridges to cross.

When we got to Little Beck we decided to also skip a long vee of path to the south through a supposedly beautiful forest (we agreed we all have beautiful forests at home) and cut across the top of the route on a back road through farmland. It led us to the road that reconnected with the Wainwright route with the added delight of swaths of wild orchids blooming on the shoulder.

Another trek across a boggy moor brought us to the road into Robin Hood’s Bay, a delightfully quaint town perched on the cliff side above a tiny beach. We still hadn’t caught any of the reported possible sightings of the North Sea as we approached the bank of fog over the water.

We walked the very steep road and steps down to the water, alleys and staircases leading to stone shops and houses on both sides. And there we were, on the beach ramp with rocky low tide flats stretching off to the North Sea.

Brilliant!

July 6, 2012July 6, 2012

Walking the Moors

Yesterday morning we set out from Osmotherly, “the prettiest village in England” one of our guide books had said.

It was lovely, but after the day we’d had what mattered was the good pub and bed. We walked up the road for a couple of miles and crossed into North York National Park, an immense expanse of moorlands and the world’s largest area of heather.

It rained a bit, as usual, and as we started the steep ascent up Live Moor we walked into a cloud. All we could see was each other spread out on the track (mostly an amazing path of set stones and steps – who did all that work?) and the heather stretching off into the fog. We all stopped to admire one blooming patch – mostly heather blooms in August.

Up and down we went, climbing next up Carlton Moor. I was resigning myself to a long day of walking on misty moors, climbing and descending very steeply over four moors (over 3,000 feet of elevation work total for the day) with no view to reward us. But as we reached the top of Carlton Moor the sky brightened, the mist lifted from the valley to the south and we could see back over the lowlands and distant Pennines from our previous days of walking.

The clouds were still piled into the valley to the north and for several miles we walked along the lip of the mist, coming up to the crest of the moor then threading away over our heads.

Eventually the sky cleared completely and we had a long walk along the vast sweep of Urra Moor, walking in sun for hours on a blessedly easy track with no mud. For the first time in a week I walked without gaitors and the outside of my boots dried.

I’ve never walked in such hugeness, heather and peat in long open slopes for as far as I could see, valleys of pastures far below.

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When we finally saw the red roof of the Lion Inn we were very happy to be at the end of such a glorious stage of this journey. After a hearty pub meal Anne, Peter, David and I got picked up by the owner of the August House B&B (not enough rooms at the Lion when our trip was booked) and driven to Rosedale, a beautiful moor valley. It was our first time in a car in almost two weeks.

Now there is a big storm moving through, thunder and lightening and heavy rain. Luckily we don't need to leave early today and can enjoy our "loo with a view" as the owner said last night when she showed us our bathroom. The view from our bedroom is just as lovely.

July 4, 2012July 4, 2012

Bad Ass My Ass

“You know, doing the Coast to Coast in 13 days is pretty bad ass,” I said to Cathy and Sue as we strode into Richmond yesterday afternoon. You quickly learn on this path that first questions you ask when you meet up with people (a whole other post I’ll write when I have a keyboard, about the community that develops among C2C walkers) are where have you come from today, where are you going tonight, and how many days are you taking to complete the route. Some people do it in stages, some do parts of it, the fastest ever was 39 hours, and many do it in 13 or 15 or 18 days. Our 13 day trip is on the fast side of the non-extreme.

Well I don’t feel so “bad ass” right now. Today was a long exhausting trudge through muddy fields and along back roads, ending with a thunderstorm, a dash across a very busy highway, and a half lost scramble up a steep hill through a patch of nettles that left my bare knees screaming. They’re still on fire, none of us can walk straight and we all stumbled back from dinner and into bed.

In fact, we’re so clearly hurting a local couple coming down the road said, “You’re doing the Coast to Coast aren’t you? We can tell by the way you’re walking.” And we’re walking again tomorrow? Bad ass? More like busted ass.

Some more photos, so you can see how worth it this is.