Photos from Iron Mountain

I received the following on the hiking website Views From The Top: "Iron Mountain itself has a great view, but it really doesn't get better than simply at the end of Green Hill Road. You'll know what I mean when you go there." Boy, was the poster ever correct.

These shots are simply from the parking area and the meadow just across the way at the start of the hike of Iron Mountain. Well, all except the last one is from the beginning. The last one is from one of the ledge just shy of the summit.

Mount Willard

More housekeeping... Last week we drove the 30 minutes to Crawford Notch and climbed to the top of Mount Willard, a smaller mountain standing below Avalon and the rest of the Willey Range. It is only a mile and a half walk each way and the elevation rises gently. Nevertheless it has a summit affording beautiful views down into Crawford Notch. We reached the summit at 8:00 a.m. and the early morning sun played havoc with my camera lens but here are some of the shots.

North & South Doublehead

Ten days after moving into Jackson, we have an Internet connection at the house. Time for a little bit of housekeeping.

Last week, we took advantage of our proximity to North and South Doublehead (it’s only three miles) to take a late afternoon hike up to the twin peaks. North stands at 3,053 feet and South at 2,939 feet. Definitely not the highest peaks in the White Mountains but the trails to get to them are very steep. They are short but leave you gasping for air. And while North doesn’t have much a view, the view from South Doublehead will also leave you gasping for air, but not out of exertion – simply out of the beauty of the views from three different locations. Here are some shots from the hike.

Photos of Stanton & Pickering Hike By Ken Stampfer

Among the numerous pleasures of hiking with Ken and Ann Stampfer is to be the recipient of some of Ken's photos of the day. Because it's typically just Atticus and I alone on the trails, we don't get many shots of the two of us together. Here are just a few shots from our hike on Saturday. If you are looking for more photos by Ken, stop off at the Mountain Wanderer in Lincoln. Or you can just pick up nearly any one of the Steve Smith's books and you will find Ken's photos.

Sunday Morning From The Met Coffeehouse

It's Sunday morning and Fairpoint failed to turn on our Internet on Friday so updates will be sporadic until they do. I'm sitting in The Met in North Conway using their WIFI while sipping a Rory-borealis (latte with white chocolate and hazelnut). Just stopping off to drop off a few photos from our hike across Stanton and Pickering yesterday. These are two smaller peaks with big views and they are only five miles from the house. It's been a good week as we've explored the Doubleheads, Mount Willard and now Stanton and Pickering. Hopefully the house Internet will be turned on tomorrow.

Monday Morning in Jackson

Our life in Jackson has just begun, but I feel as th ough this is the place we are indeed meant to be. Atticus, I'm quite sure, is thrilled to be on his own again, away from other dogs for the first time in eight months. Life for him, is back to normal.

I'm still awaiting Internet connection at the house so we're down here at the J-Town Deli. It's a quaint hangout and there is an interesting clan of locals who breakfast here each morning and solve the problems of the world. Having done that in my past life, I now leave that to others and Atticus and I instead sit outside, on the small brick patio near the roses.

We start the day at 6:00 a.m. with a stroll – a loop just under two miles long through the heart of idyllic Jackson. It takes us by one dog barking to be let off his leash, the local golf course, a covered bridge, through another covered bridge, by a country store, several stately inns, the tiniest but most perfect library I’ve ever seen, and, of course, by a great old church. (Why picturesque New England hamlet would be complete without a pretty white church?) All the while we are serenaded by sweet birdsong and surrounded by hills and mountains colored a thousand shades of green. The traffic is sparse, even on Route 16. It’s that way in Jackson even at the busiest time of the day, which, I imagine is around 10:30 when the locals gather at the post office to get their mail. Many of the people who do drive by are more relaxed than city folk and they show it with a welcoming wave or a nod.

I hope to get out on some hikes this week and particularly look forward to climbing Doublehead, here in Jackson to get a grand view of the town and of the surrounding mountains.

That's it for now, as we've got to get back to the house and write.

Einstein: I want to know God's thoughts...the rest are details.

The kitchen doors are flung open to the late-morning fog and soft green trees line the Saco River while it curls through the 100-acre field soon to be planted with corn. Varied birdsongs spill into the kitchen.

Many would think the view dreary; I find it mysterious…and comforting. It is nature – soft and alluring. It gently calls to anyone who stops to listen. It whispers to come closer.

I’m seated on the bench against the wall beside the wooden table. Next to me Atticus has made a nest out of a coat he found on the bench and he’s curled into innocence. He likes to be near me when I’m writing. Perhaps he finds as much comfort in the background noise of my tapping on the keys as I find in his soft snores. Like an old married couple, we’ve grown accustomed to each other’s peculiar noises.

For seven years he’s listened to me do this. For seven years I’ve watched him turn off the troubles of the world and he’s reminded me of the security I once found in innocence. For those seven years he’s been my guide as I find my way back there. He has led me from the tempest in a teapot political strife of Newburyport I used to think mattered, to this life.

From this bench, next to this little dog, that old life is not missed in the least bit. How could it be as I look out on field, trees, river and the lower spread of hill and mountain?

It’s like Einstein once said, “I want to know God’s thoughts…the rest are details.”

The details can be so mundane.

Long ago I started The Undertoad for one main reason: a mayor was taking a beating simply because she was a woman, a newcomer and a lesbian. It just didn’t seem right.

I believed in something and took steps to do something about it. Of course, no journey is so simple. But take on small minds in a city and you become a target yourself. The more I wrote, the more tangled I became in the mundane spools of clinging threads of now-meaningless stuff.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, back then I loved the intrigue. I loved weeding the garden, shining light in the dark places and poisoning the poisoners. Being Irish, I loved a good fight. Being the editor of The ‘Toad, I found myself embroiled in many fights.

I’m sure The Undertoad itself was my own attempt to make an imperfect world a bit better. In some ways I succeeded simply by striving. In other ways I added to the clutter.

On the rare occasion I check in on the political scene in Newburyport through the many local blogs, I cannot believe the life I used to live. Watching as this one or that one goes on and on about the details that won’t matter in the least bit tomorrow – to quote a former girlfriend – it makes my ass ache.

There comes a time to make the world better by fighting for a good cause. Then you realize perhaps the greatest good you can do is by making yourself your cause, but refining what is there. By putting a better person into the world you make the world better in your own way.

A few years ago I realized that after spending enough time listening to small town politicians talk and I grew to appreciate the strong silence of a little dog’s company on a ten-mile hike along a mountain ridge. Watching Atticus summit sit in a prayer of serenity, I learned to do it myself.

I’m glad I put in my time. I learned how to write and tell a story. But I’m also glad I saw the light and moved on. Enough of the details – I wanted God’s thoughts.

So a year and a half after leaving Newburyport, here the two of us sit: me listening to him snore; him listening to me type; both of us listening to birdsongs even Mozart would envy.

Tom & Atticus Move to Jackson, New Hampshire

A baby snake; a small mouse; the gutted remains of a bird – these are the gifts left for me over the past few days here in the house in North Conway. Mineu and Stella, skilled hunters both, take pride in depositing their bounty in the house. Finding creatures, both alive and vivisected, in hiding spots around here makes me wonder just what I haven’t found.

For his part, Atticus does well with the two cats and he and Dawa, the dog we are watching while house sitting, get along just fine. (They get along even better on the trails when we bring Dawa for a hike. That doesn’t always happen, however, as Dawa is 11 years old and gets worn down from time to time.)

Yesterday morning, while hiking Peaked Mountain, it was just Atticus and me and we both appreciated it. That’s the way it will be starting on Thursday night when we move into the house we are renting in Jackson. Once there we will get acquainted to the place, make it into our home, set up a writing place and begin discovering the nooks and crannies of Jackson as we have here in North Conway.

Jackson is only a ten minute ride up Route 16 so it is close enough to all the amenities I’ve grown to appreciate in North Conway after a year in Lincoln and seven months in Tamworth. But at the same time, even though we’ll be living right on Rt. 16, we’ll be off the more beaten path.

The Jackson place is great: three bedrooms, two fireplaces, a combination kitchen and living room space. It is furnished so the only thing we’ll need to bring is my writing and hiking possessions and groceries. The place already has wireless Internet and I’ll take over one of the bedrooms and turn it into my writing room.

As for those of you who just read that and said, “Ooh, a guest bedroom,” think again. I am, as my Newburyport brethren will attest to, a bit of a recluse when in my home. I am social, to an extent, and always at my own terms and love to get to know the people in a community, but I like my privacy. My goal in Jackson will be to write more than I ever have and friends understand that and appreciate it. As for my siblings? I don’t have to worry about them as they are mostly agoraphobic and as distant from each other and me as though we were strangers who once grew up together.

I take some comfort in knowing that Jackson is not convenient to most people I know and it is fitting that the trailhead for the Rocky Branch Trail is only five minutes from the house. Fitting, because it leads to Mount Isolation, one of my favorite 4,000-footers, and I long for the pleasures of being isolated again.

The house sits just ten minutes south of the heart of Pinkham Notch and 25 minutes from Crawford Notch in the opposite direction. With Bear Notch Road open now, access to the Kancamagus Highway is quick and easy, too.

There’s a television at the house but no reception (it’s used for DVD’s). That’s not problem since other than the year I lived in Lincoln I haven’t watched television for about a decade. I won’t be missing much there. So long as I can follow the Red Sox on the Internet and the radio I’ll be fine.

I cannot tell you how much I’m looking forward to settling into a place and having a home again where we can stretch out and feel comfortable. It will be great for Atticus, I’m sure, as he was not ready to live with Geneva (our friend’s Christine dog) for as long as we did in Tamworth, or with the cats and Dawa here for the past month. For him it will be back to business as usual – just the two of us for a while. Having our own place will allow much more focus to the most important things in our lives right now: hiking and writing.

Over the next couple of days I’ll be dropping a few things over at the house and getting ready to move in. I’m just hoping the Mineu and Stella don’t chip in a get me a surprise housewarming gift. I really have no need for baby snakes or rodents – dead or alive.

Tonight's Mount Washington Sunset

With just three nights left here in North Conway until we move into our new home in Jackson, Mount Washington is treating us to some wonderful sunsets. Here's the latest episode of "As the Sun Sinks Blissfully Into the Night".

The Green Hills Preserve

This morning's hike up Peaked Mountain and Saturday night's sunset hike up Black Cap, took place on land controlled by the Nature Conservancy in the Green Hills Preserve. For a pdf of the brochure available at trailheads, click here. The Nature Conservancy website can be accessed here. Our next hike in the area will be to Middle Mountain. By the photo of Atticus on the summit of Peaked Mountain above, it's clear I'm not the only one who considers the Green Hills to be an underrated treasure.

The Enchantment of Peaked Mountain

While a young boy, I was often cuffed up the back of my head on Sunday mornings while kneeling in the unforgiving pews of St. Joseph’s Church. My father, and everyone else at Mass, hung their heads in prayer; but I looked upward.

In a hoarse whisper my father would say, “Hang your head – now!”

When I wouldn’t he’d slap the back of my head. When I still refused to look down he’d do it again. Again I’d refuse and he’d give me a look that said, “Wait until we get out of here, boy.”

At the end of Mass I would explain to him that I didn’t want to hang my head. I told him more than once, “I want to see God; and I want him to see me, too.”

That never seemed to be sufficient explanation so like all good Irish Catholic fathers mine attempted to beat the audacity out of me. Yet still, the next Sunday, I’d look up again, perhaps a bit more sheepishly, but nevertheless, I looked up.

That’s what I was thinking while walking along the Peaked Mountain Trail this morning. Hope, in the form of light green chutes, pierced the barren forest floor; and new leaves hung from long-gray tree branches. The morning sun backlit the greenery and drew my eyes up through the trees towards the light and I was in church again. Or more like church the way it was supposed to be, the way prophets and holy men envisioned it when they found their religion.

I followed Atticus on the sing-song up-and-down trail for the first mile and raised my head into the beaming light of the forest, “I want to see God…”

It is that time of year when the forest yawns and stretches and is ready to get out of bed. Here in the North Country those first breaths come later than in other parts but that makes it all the more memorable when they do come. Always, winter wanes but hangs on for another six weeks and there is that thought, “Will spring ever get here?”

Today, it got here.
Oh, I know there have been warmer days and wild flowers have dotted forest floors, but this is the first day I felt myself wrapped in green and sensed the warm tendrils of summer carried through the breeze. Summer, after all, like all seasons, has a smell, and a hint of it was carried in this morning’s spring breeze.

The easygoing, gently rolling, somewhat uphill trail ended after a mile when we reached the second information kiosk. (This is where the original Peaked Mountain Trail comes in from the old but now-extinct Thompson Road trailhead.) The trail turned right and it turned up, as steep, at least for a bit, as any trail climbing a 4,000-footer. I was thankful for rocks to plant my feet on and the occasional twists and turns to the trail that broke the uphill struggle. While still cool, a summer sweat ran down my back. Even Atticus was feeling the push up the trail and his pink tongue made its first appearance of the season.

The trail eased when we reached the exposed granite slabs and the stands of red and pitch pine and turning around we had views of Mount Washington, Mount Adams, and the entire length of the Southern Presidentials. That was good enough reason to take more breaks to catch my breath and take a drink of water, and feel the joy of solitude.

The trail was marked well with blue blazes and eventually we reached a false summit. From here on…well, from here on the last quarter of a mile to the top of Peaked Mountain is a little steep in places, but it’s also a special place. We walked through emerald and gold plants and twisted pines and over great slabs of stone working our way towards the summit.

G. K. Chesterton, an English writer, once wrote: “The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment. They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.” Here on this little peak, we found ourselves in such a place.

There are moments in the mountains when I’m alone with Atticus where I feel all the magic of childhood gather within my chest with a sudden breath. I cannot tell you why some places are this way and others are not. There are certainly higher peaks and while the view from Peaked Mountain was fine, there are greater views in the Whites, but still there is something about the summit that weaves enchantment. In two miles we had only climbed 1,100 feet and stood at 1,793 feet but it may as well have been a different world altogether.

Not far below the flat roofs of outlet stores and big box stores and hotels dotted the valley floor, but above them stood the likes of Chocorua, Passaconaway, the three Moats. We may as well have been miles above the hustle and bustle of commerce below for that world did not exist. Instead, we sat alone on the mountaintop with the world at our feet and the magical pulse of nature everywhere around us.

Alone on these peaks with Atticus, I take inventory of my self and catalogue my thoughts. In the struggle to get to the top of even the smallest peak, I find myself renewed. It is my own communion, a return to childhood, a renewal of faith in feeling the magic wisps of nature. And, it is my way of striking out against the mundane in life.

At the end of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s memoir Wind, Sun and Stars he writes about a long journey by train. The train’s first class and the sleeping cars were empty when he took a late night walk the length of the train. Eventually he came to the third-class cars and found them packed with thousands of Polish peasants, asleep, but not peacefully. He walked through this rubble of life and saw the human and the inhumane.

He wrote: “And I thought: The problem does not reside in this poverty, in this filth, in this ugliness. But this same man and this same woman met one day. This man must have smiled at this woman. He may, after his work was done, have brought her flowers. Timid and awkward, perhaps he trembled lest she disdain him. And this woman, out of natural coquetry, this woman sure of her charms, perhaps took pleasure in teasing him. And this man, this man who is now no more than a machine for swinging a pick or a sledge-hammer, must have felt in his heart a delicious anguish. The mystery is that they should have become these lumps of clay. Into what terrible mould were they forced? What was it that marked them like this as if they had been put through a monstrous stamping machine? A deer, a gazelle, any animal grown old, preserves its grace. What is it that corrupts this wonderful clay of which man is kneaded?”

Eventually he came to something that captured his thoughts: "I sat down face to face with one couple. Between the man and the woman a child had hollowed himself out a place and fallen asleep. He turned in his slumber, and in the dim lamplight I saw his face. What an adorable face! A golden fruit had been born of these two peasants. Forth from this sluggish scum had sprung this miracle of delight and grace. I bent over the smooth brow, over those mildly pouting lips, and I said to myself: This is a musician's face. This is the child Mozart. This is a life full of beautiful promise. Little princes in legends are not different from this. Protected, sheltered, cultivated, what could not this child become? When by mutation a new rose is born in a garden, all the gardeners rejoice. They isolate the rose, tend it, foster it. But there is no gardener for men. This little Mozart will be shaped like the rest by the common stamping machine. This little Mozart will love shoddy music in the stench of night dives. This little Mozart is condemned .”

Troubled and sleepless, Saint-Exupery returned to his private compartment on the train and thought about the troubled tangle of men, women and children he’d just seen: “What torments me is not the humps nor hollows nor the ugliness. It is the sight, a little bit in all these men, of Mozart murdered.”

I suppose, my entire life has been a fight not to give in and give up like many have. I’ve been horrified by the idea of being ‘stamped’ or having the Mozart in me murdered.

These climbs to magical mountains – big or small – ensure me that I am still alive and I am renewed time and again.

I’m now 48 years old, I’m still that little boy in church: I want to see God; and I want him to see me, too.

Mount Washington Sunset

On Saturday night we enjoyed sunset from Black Cap. On Sunday I thought we'd have no such views but this was what we saw from the valley floor in North Conway.

Mary Oliver's "The Sun"

Have you ever seen

anything

in your life

more wonderful

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone--

and how it slides again

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance--

and have you ever felt for anything such wild love--

do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you,

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

as you stand there,

empty-handed--

or have you too

turned from this world--

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

South Moat Today

This morning we climbed South Moat and as usual Atticus took full advantage of the ledges for great sightseeing. There's something about this peak that makes him want to linger. The last two times we have climbed it Atti didn't want to go down. As a matter of fact, he pulled sit down strikes on both occasions. But can you blame him with views like this?

New Mailing Address

Please note that we have a new mailing address:

Tom & Atticus

PO Box 651

Jackson, NH 03846

Mount Washington at Sunset Last Night

It was not that the jagged precipices were lofty,
that the encircling woods were the dimmest shade,
or that the waters were profoundly deep;
but that over all, rocks ,wood, and water,
brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy
of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths.

~ Thomas Cole

Cat Watching

Over the next month we are house/dog/cat sitting in the shadow of Mount Washington. I'm not the only one busy with my duties. Atticus has taken it upon himself to mountain watch (upper photo) and when he's not doing that he's honing his skills as a cat watcher (bottom photo). Here he watches Menou, one of the two cats we are caring for. The other is Stella, who was off licking her food dish for the fourth time since breakfast. Dawa, the dog we are sitting, was busy snoozing in the grass under the warm sun dreaming of our next romp in the woods.

Rudyard Kipling: The Power Of The Dog

I stumbled upon this last night and thought I'd share it. Those of you who can relate to the 'power of the dog' will understand. Of course there are many things those of us who love animals, and specifically dogs can relate to. Not too long ago in an email to me, author Sam Keen (Fire in the Belly; Hymns to An Unknown God) wrote: "I once had a Border Collie who loved to walk the hills. She got cancer and was incontinent and all but immoble. One day she wentout on a two hour walk with all the spryness of her youth. We returned to the house and she lay down and died. Atticus would understand."

Ah yes, the power of a dog. How they touch our hearts.

The Power Of The Dog
by Rudyard Kipling

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie--
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet's unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find--it's your own affair--
But...you've given your heart for a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!);
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone--wherever it goes--for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart for the dog to tear.

We've sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long--
So why in Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

Bryan Flagg of the NorthCountry News Weighs In

Bryan Flagg, my editor and publisher at the Northcountry News was kind enough to send over the following note just after I submitted our latest column:

I don't think you know what kind of an affect you truly have on people that read your columns. I hear about it all the time. I am often asked how Tom and Atticus are, what they are up to and how things are going. You and Atticus have become household names in these parts and for good reason. You have allowed the readers into your world and have given them the opportunity to follow you and Atti up mountains that they may have never heard of in their lives. I have advertisers that tell me if they can't go on page three, then they want to be on the page with Tom and Atti. You have certainly made an impression on many folks. And at the cost of making myself sound like the over sensitive emotional fool I am - I am thankful and proud to be able to call you my friend. Thank you -Bryan

The Fat Man of the Mountains

(Dave & Lucas Olson from a photo lifted from their site http://www.fatmanofthemountains.wordpress.com/.)

You’ve heard of the Old Man of the Mountains (boy is he ever missed), well here is a link to Dave Olson’s blog “Fat Man of the Mountains”. Atticus and I met Dave and his son Lucas on the Champney Falls Trail climbing Chocorua last summer. It was a beautiful day enhanced by the chance meeting on the trail. Then, later while Atti and I were on the summit, we visited for a bit with them again and I snapped some photos for them – one of which is used in the banner to the blog.

On his blog Dave writes: I’m a newspaperman and writer living on the Massachusetts coast. I love the ocean, but I’d rather be in the woods. This summer, I’ll be climbing all 48 of New Hampshire’s 4,000-foot mountains to raise money for Kestrel Educational Adventures.

He also writes:

The vast majority of hikers, however, take years, even decades to complete the list, so it would be pretty significant accomplishment if I could reach all the summits in 90 days. A fat but fairly fit guy like myself can pull off a difficult hike every once in a while. A summer-long series of difficult hikes — including a handful of traverses taking several days — is another thing altogether. It’s been a long time since I challenged myself physically, and the longer I wait the less of a chance it’s going to happen. I’ve spent the winter in the gym, getting as ready as I can. I’ll do some training hikes this spring. This summer, all I’ll need is a well-thought-out plan for getting to and from trailheads. The hiking’s the easy part; it’s the driving that takes its toll.

The hikes will also give me a chance to repay, in a small way, Kestrel Educational Adventures, which started the conservation club that fueled my son’s already strong love for the outdoors and started us on a journey that’s changed both our lives for the better. I’ll have more details in my next post, but I plan to use my hikes as a fundraiser for Kestrel, with donors offering a specific amount for each mountain I climb. A dollar a mountain would mean $48 if I finish them all. Get enough donors and you’re doing some good for a great organization that does a lot of work with a little money. Again, more on that later.

Having the shortest glimpse of Dave and Lucas together last summer, I have an inkling that it will be fun to follow the two of them throughout their summer long adventure. To donate to their cause simply visit their website. Or simply visit it because it will be fun to follow along from wherever you are.

Father and son are about to have one heck of an adventure together.

Tom & Atticus Sign With Literary Agent Brian DeFiore

(Atticus and Dawa at Diana’s Baths. Photo was taken last fall.)

When in North Conway, we often take a morning and afternoon walk out to Diana’s Bath, a tiered waterfall just over half a mile walk from the road. It’s a beautiful place and on spring mornings such as this one during snowmelt it is also a very powerful place.

This morning Atticus and I were joined by Dawa, Marie Bouchard’s dog. We often house/dog/cat sit for Marie and when we do Atticus and Dawa spend their time in the house acting indifferently towards each other. There are no problems, just an understanding between the two to leave each other be. When we head to the car Dawa happily hops into the backseat and Atticus takes his usual place in the front seat. Then, when on the trail (any trail really), you’d think both dogs were best friends. They move together some of the time, apart on other occasions, but the three of us mostly move as a team.

This morning was no different. Our trio made its way through the woods. The dogs moved easily along while I crunched over the ice and crispy snow of the trail. Underfoot, my Microspikes gave me surety of foot as we moved along the icy ledges next to the waterfall. It gushed by us and the three of us took a seat on a boulder and watched winter literally washing away. Just a few weeks ago we were able to walk across the river but not here, not now. The deep snow and ice eroded from the bottom up and now the river is gaping wide open and the current gushes by with an impressive force.

From the falls we joined back up to the trail that leads to North Moat. Just two weeks ago Atticus and I followed it to the top of the mountain. It was a terrific day to climb and to sit on high above tree line. But then food poisoning came on and I was laid low for nearly two weeks now. It finally feels good to be out and about again and it felt great to be traipsing along the trail this morning. So long as I walked in the middle of it there was no problem, but step off to the side just a foot or so and I’d sink in knee deep in the rotting snow.

We moved through the woods and along the river that feeds the falls and were rewarded by a time both simple and sacred: a man, two dogs and the open woods without anyone else around. We walked on until we came to the first stream crossing. Had we been headed to North Moat we would have found a way to cross the stream, which was nearly bridged by a small fallen tree and some snow and ice, but on this day when we were just out of a walk in the woods there was no reason to push it. Neither Atticus nor Dawa had a problem with turning back. They took one look at the deep, fast-running cold mountain water and in unison gave me a look that said, “Yep, let’s head back.”

On the way back we stopped at the upper level of the falls again and looked out to where the river disappears below into the trees. Miles ahead of us, through an opening in the trees, North Kearsage stood peering down at us. We have yet to climb it but it is on my list to do this spring or summer.

How wonderful it was to stop and pause here and think about my writing again. Interestingly enough, I was actually tormented by the thought of writing throughout much of the fall and the winter. Last summer I signed on with a great agent but for whatever the reason it just didn’t work. I felt like I couldn’t be me and each time I wrote something I felt as though I were writing for her. It wasn’t a good situation. I stagnated, struggled and began to resent the book.

Eventually, I couldn’t take it any more. I ended the business relationship and now I’m happy to say I’m thrilled to be writing again. It feels like a gift again, instead of a chore. With the help of Brian DeFiore (about Brian) of DeFiore & Company (about DeFiore & Co.), my new agent, I’m changing the story into something much more than it was and I’m happy to say it still feels as though it is still my story. It is growing, but I’m growing with it.

Yesterday I spoke with Brian and it was liberating. I feel like an athlete who has in many ways been held back, but now I feel like he’s stretching me out and urging me to be what I can be. He’s got a gift for being comfortable and making me comfortable.

So this morning that’s what I was thinking about as Atticus and Dawa marched along ahead of me, two mismatched dogs – one small with only a stub of a tail and the other big with a feathery plume of a great tail. All three of us were in our elements. They were playing along at the base of a mountain while I was playing along with words and possibilities in my head.

I’m now dedicated to writing again. You’ll notice it in the coming weeks as I blog more than I have been since last summer. Writing just didn’t feel comfortable anymore. Suddenly, it feels like it always used to. In short, it feels like I’m now writing letters to a friend again and that was always my best writing – easy, flowing, simple.

William Wordsworth's Mountain

(Photo is of Mount Washington this afternoon.)

Last summer I discovered the poetry of Mary Oliver. Her contemporary words hit home as much as any written in the days of old by Muir, Emerson or Thoreau. Each time I find one of her poems, I read it again and again until it lingers with me. Many of them refuse to let go.

Then, just this past week, I encountered some of her prose. It is from her book of essays called Long Life: Essays and Other Writings. The essay which will not let me go is “Wordsworth’s Mountain”. It hits me for I too have had experiences like Wordsworth in facing a mountain in darkness. Mine came on a January night after traversing across Middle Carter, South Carter, Mount Hight and Carter Dome before dropping down into Carter Notch and then climbing back up again to travel along the numerous peaks of Wildcat Mountain. When Atticus and I reached the ski slopes – our exit from the mountain top – and started our descent, even in the still of the night I could look across Pinkham Notch below and up at the looming shadow of Mount Washington. It was as if that great peak was breathing, watching us descend, stalking us in such a way that at any moment it could reach out and lunge with all its might at us.

It was an experience both frightening and thrilling. I can remember being foolish enough to turn off my headlamp as so not as to be seen so easily by Agiocochook and feeling my heart beat as if I was being hunted.

It is an experience I will never forget. It appears William Wordsworth, the great English poet who embraced Romanticisms call to nature and individuality instead of to the church, had a quite similar experience as a child. Mary Oliver writes of it here:

“And now I am thinking of the poet Wordsworth, and the strange adventure that one night overtook him. When he was still a young boy, in love with summer and night, he went down to a lake, "borrowed" a rowboat, and rowed out upon the water. At first he felt himself embraced by pleasures: the moonlight, the sound of the oars in the calm water. Then, suddenly, a mountain peak nearby, with which he was familiar, or felt he was familiar, revealed, to his mind and eye, a horrifying flexibility. All crag and weight, it perceived him; it leaned down over the water; it seemed to pursue him. Of course he was terrified, and rowed hard, fleeing back across the water. But the experience led him, led his mind, from simple devotion of that beauty which is a harmony, a kindly ministry of thought, to nature's deeper and inexplicable greatness. The gleam and the tranquility of the natural world he loved always, and now he honored also the world's brawn and mystery, its machinations that lie beyond our understanding — that are not even nameable. What Wordsworth praised thereafter was more than the arrangement of concretions and vapors into appreciable and balanced landscapes; it was, also, the whirlwind. The beauty and strangeness of the world may fill the eyes with its cordial refreshment. Equally it may offer the heart a dish of terror. On one side is radiance; on another is the abyss.”

Wordsworth has been on my mind as of late because he plays a prominent part in the most recent John Muir biography, A Passion for Nature. So when I came upon the Mary Oliver piece it excited me even more. Since then I have found Wordsworth’s own poem, or a segment of it actually, describing that night from his childhood and that looming mountain. It is from his “Prelude” (1850) and it follows below.

One summer evening (led by [Nature]) I found

A little boat tied to a willow tree

Within a rocky cave, its usual home.

Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in

Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth

And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice

Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;

Leaving behind her still, on either side,

Small circles glittering idly in the moon,

Until they melted all into one track

Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows,

Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point

With an unswerving line, I fixed my view

Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,

The horizon's utmost boundary; for above

Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.

She was an elfin pinnace; lustily

I dipped my oars into the silent lake,

And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat

Went heaving through the water like a swan

When, from behind that craggy steep till then

The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,

As if with voluntary power instinct

Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,

And growing still in stature the grim shape

Towered up between me and the stars, and still,

For so it seemed, with purpose of its own

And measured motion like a living thing,

Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,

And through the silent water stole my way

Back to the covert of the willow tree;

There in her mooring-place I left my bark,--

And through the meadows homweard wen, in grave

And serious mood; but after I had seen

That spectacle, for many days, my brain

Worked with a dim and undetermined sense

Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts

There hung a darkness, call it solitude

Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes

Remained, no pleasant images of trees,

Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;

But huge and mighty forms, that do not live

Like living men, moved slowly through the mind

By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.

This is one of the reasons I love the mountains as I do. They inspire thoughts in us so powerful and provocative that we feel a close kinship with the likes of Emerson or Thoreau or Muir or even some of the great White Mountain painters like Benjamin Champney or Thomas Cole.

90 Minutes In Heaven

Before Monday I’ve never stood atop North Moat before but I can now verify what I’ve long been told: of the three Moats the view from the northern triplet is the best.

Stunning, simply stunning! And what a day we had for views, too: just the slightest whisper of a breeze; a warm sun; day-dreaming blue skies without a cloud in sight.

Standing there I thought of something Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Our faith comes in moments…yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.” (I often find myself revisiting Emerson atop a scenic summit.) And that, I thought to myself as Atticus meandered around the edges of the small summit looking out this way and that, is what makes life worth living. It’s all in the magic we find here and there – not unlike stars poking through the vast darkness of the blackest night.

That’s the great thing about these mountains of New Hampshire; they deliver us from the mundane, time and again. You can park your car, and in the case of North Moat, walk into the woods, first keeping company with a ‘little poem’ of a brook (to borrow a term from John Muir), move through a sunlit forest carpeted in untouched snow, climb ledge after open ledge of steep pitches and then reach a place where you can turn your back on the troubles of this life and find a reason to smile, no matter what ails you. And literally, by turning your back to the east and the outlet stores of North Conway below, you face west directly into the wilderness.

At 3,196 feet, the summit of North Moat is more than 3,000 feet shorter than the summit of Mount Washington. But bigger is not always better. I can tell you that simply by looking at my diminutive hiking partner. When planted firmly atop North Moat as we were on this stunning day, try convincing yourself it is anything less than Washington. There’s a good chance you will lose the argument. In many ways, the view is far greater, simply for the proximity to the Sandwich Range to the south and the Pemi Wilderness to the West. It’s as though you can reach out and touch Chocorua or dip yourself into the waters of the Pemi where mountains break from the earth like wild waves.

The climb from Diana’s Baths to the summit is at first easy for two and a half miles, then difficult for the last two, but it is well worth the effort. While summit sitting I had to remind myself it is still winter. But it was so pleasant we stayed for 90 glorious minutes and all I wore over my shirt was my summer windbreaker. No gloves. No hat.

Watching Atticus summit sit – Buddha like – on the various outcroppings, I recalled something I was asked during the Animal Planet interview. I had forwarded the producer my book proposal so he would know about our complete story. In it I wrote about how Atticus sits and takes in the views. He reminded me of the term ‘Buddha-like’ and asked me if I thought of Atti as my spiritual guru of sorts.

At first I laughed. For whenever I think of gurus I think of how in “Eat, Pray, Love” Elizabeth Gilbert went traipsing around the world for a year in search of a guru when all she really needed to do was sit on a mountaintop with a little dog. But the answer I gave was simply: No, but by watching Atticus and following him over these mountains for the last few years I remembered what I long ago forgot. It is all about the primitive. Somehow, we lose it. We grow up and leave much of the magic behind. But by watching him, I was reminded time and again of the best part of myself – the child within. I’d lost him. It took four decades and a little dog but what was once lost is now found.

And so it was that on Monday morning while much of the world was at work, Atticus led me back to the primitive once again and to one of those beautiful Emersonian moments.

Summit Snoozing

What a perfect summit for a little nap. No wind. No cold. No hurry. We stayed on the summit of North Moat today for 90 minutes.

A Picture Perfect Day On North Moat

Today we hiked North Moat. What a glorious day atop this wondrous peak! I'll have more on this later. But for now, here are some shots to tide you over.

An Animal Planet Update From Powderhouse Productions

This from a comment left to one of the posts just down the page. It's from one of the good folks at Powderhouse Productions...

Tom, we're not sure when the show will air. it may not be until september or october of this year! but the piece is being edited and looks fantastic so far. again thanks for your participation. give atticus a pat - and keep in touch. we will do the same.