... you don't have much choice if you arrive at the Hertz counter of the
Portland, Maine, airport without your driver's license. The 50-something
taxi driver said "Yup, that's nuth of Banguh. [Pause, thinking.] I've lived
in Maine all muh life. [Second pause.] I've nevuh been north of Banguh -
always wondah-ed what it was like." This was last June, and I was coming
to Maine mostly to see my son Peter's camp, Chewonki, but we arrived a few
days early to climb Katahdin, the holy grail of Appalachian Trail hikers.
It's a mile up - but I sort of imagined it would be like Anthony's Nose, near
Bear Mountain - a nice afternoon walk, maybe a little longer.
After 4 highway hours, Mt. Katahdin suddenly loomed out of the mixed clouds -
the peak was clear, just as it had been two years ago when Peter had reached
it after a 10-day, full-pack hike. "You can see all the way to the Atlantic"
he said shortly after that, his eyes shining, and I was an instant prisoner
of that vision.
So here we were on Saturday, father, son and camping equipment. Sunday
morning we stowed our gear, and set up Abol Trail, really more of a
stationary avalanche than a path, an angled rockslide of good sized, loose
stones, any one of which could break a 50 year old's ankle. Halfway up I was
hot, thirsty, breathing heavily, lagging well behind Peter - who showed no
inclination to slow down. At points I was near panic, thinking that I would
break a leg or sprain an ankle and spend the night above treeline on the
mountainside. It was the first time in my life I felt physically vulnerable,
made worse because I wanted to be climbing with my son, not 200 yards behind
him. The flies were biting my legs bloody.
The view at, say, 2500 feet, was spectacular, out over blue forests
interspersed with splashes of lake. But wispy clouds screened out the ocean.
"Hi, mister!" said the perky college girl who seemed to sprint past me in
street sneakers, but Peter and I were also gaining on two figures about 1000
feet ahead. "Old people" said Peter "moving real slow." I was sure Peter
didn't like traveling with me - patience is a suit he was not dealt - and I
was saddened by the instant poignancy of it: so many years doing things at
half speed for him and then, suddenly, he finds it hard to slow down for me.
We never really had any parity.
After four hours we reach the top, a sudden, fog-encrusted plateau, like the
wasteland over which Frankenstein finally pursues his monster, as Peter
observed. It's a moor-like area, perhaps as big as a small shopping center
(although you can't tell because you can only see 50 feet in the fog) covered
with moss and grass and giant car-sized stones, many shaped like coffins. In
1846 Thoreau climbed to this area - was he carrying extra water and a fleece?
The wind is so sodden with cloud that if you hold your hand up, rain runs
right down your wrist. Another half mile to the top, to the rocky spot of
Baxter Peak - absolutely empty. No opening in the clouds - our optimistic
hopes to do Knife Edge and go down the other side are dashed.
We had passed the "old people" on the way to the top, and they caught up with
us again and we exchanged photo ops - in the picture Peter looks cross, and I
looked exhausted - I really had nothing left.
We retraced out steps past Thoreau Spring, beyond Abol Trail, across a vast
table of smoothed rock, down a knife-like edge called Hunt Trail, three miles
of clambering down boulders with precipitous descents on either side - Peter
hugs the rocks, and I realize he is nervous of heights in a way I am not.
We got below the clouds at about 3500 feet, looking out towards The Owl and
other local promontories. This was also an ordeal, although here the
question was not whether we'd make it at all, but whether we'd be able to set
up camp before nightfall. Just below the tree line (where we saw bear scat
and then the bear that deposited it) it was all hopping and clambering until
the last half mile. We set up the Barkhorn's tent under our lean-to, and
made rice and onions over their Coleman burner. I retired, about near dead,
at 9 PM.
On Monday, I slept till 7 AM - bone- and joint- and muscle-tired. Could
barely move. Top of the mountain looked clear in the morning, but was cloudy
by lunch - maybe seeing the Atlantic from the top is another thing that I,
just 50, can put in the "not in this life" column.
Went over to visit our co-hikers, two women from DC. Although they had been
moving slowly, they had put a lot more miles on their boots that I ever have
- already done Georgia-to-Virginia on the Appalachian Trail last year,
stopping to go home to visit a dying mother. They have the highest tech
equipment I've ever seen, with a particularly exquisite stove.
I thought I was being helpful when I gave Molly Jones a stamped envelope to
send me the photos she took for us on the top, and was puzzled by her
ever-so-slight hesitation in accepting it.
Later she asked us to mail back two tiny things to her in DC, and it was only
then I realized that they weren't just day tripping, but had started their
southbound journey the day before - we were happy to get back to camp, but
they were aiming for West Virginia, having planned down to the last gram!
And I had asked her to carry an envelope! Aghast, I took it back, and she
wrote my address down - on the Palm Pilot she uses to send out her trip
e-journal to subscribers.
Late Monday PM, Peter and I walked to Daicey Pond following a long, stream
bed trail, over a log-trestle bridge. Saw some moose fleetingly across the
water, strange flowers, rabbits. Beautiful, silent - I got the picture about
Maine.
Tuesday morning Molly came by, heading out for their 10 day passage through
the "100 mile wilderness", with no resupply (even envelopes). We had left
them a big leaf with a written message by their trail on our walk last night,
but I suspect they never saw it.
Our cab showed up on time, 9 AM, and we passed a moose on our way to the
float plane dock (when the cabfare back is $300, $600 to go by float plane
doesn't seem so bad). An old Maine hand, the craggy 60-something
mechanic-helper, had seen everything in these parts, and remembered when
"Chick" started the float plane service in the 1940's. We venerated his
picturesque stories.
While he was talking, a duck with seven young swam out from under the dock.
"Yup, yesterday, they was eight, yup. Eagle swooped down and took one, mother
couldn't get over in time, right in front of my own eyes, yup."
We marveled at his Maine-ness, and he walked away in his ancient stoop,
rounded and craggy like Mt. Katahdin. Then we looked back out to the lake -
the eighth duckling swam out from under the dock to catch up with the mother.
Right in front of our own eyes, yup.
Our pilot announced we would "feel our way down towards the coast" through
the long fingers of fog that rippled over the area. It was a fabulous first
30 minutes - moose looking up, islands with houses and float plane docks,
huge logged areas, ancient and abandoned roads - but then the fog closed in,
and we barely made it out to a clear space to turn around and go back. "Some
pretty near scrapes in these planes" the old Maine hand had said - here was
one we had seen with our own eyes.
Our cab came in 20 minutes, not bad, considering the driver was going to
spend all day behind the wheel. At a rest stop the barrels were marked "In
the interest of public health, no barrel picking allowed.", and indeed Maine
has long stretches of desperate poverty. It's a miracle that some of its
towns had enough money to screw themselves up as much as they did in the
1950's and 1960's. A violent thunderstorm pulled us off for an hour, and we
watched a stamping army of lighting storms moved across the plate glass of
Friendly's, as colossal as anything I ever saw in Missouri summers.
By this time, 3:00, it was getting tight to see much of Peter's camp,
Chewonki - the reason I had actually come to Maine. The only cab to get me
from Chewonki back to the Portland airport was at 4:00 PM. Nail biting
through picturesque towns, we finally got to Chewonki, the object of my trip,
at 3:55. Saw the dining hall, little else. A bitter disappointment not to
walk with Peter down through all his favorite places, like the mudflats and
the yurt he stayed in. He has said this was one place he has ever felt
really at home - how foolish I was not to have come before.
At the airport, my flight was canceled by thunderstorms farther south - I
could have stayed at Chewonki for hours - and I spent a long airport drink
with John Leo, USNWR pundit. On the next flight down I saw the White
Mountains and a streaming yellow sunset between the remaining streamers of
storm clouds.
Best, Christopher
|
