From One Season to the Next

Recently, a rather vociferous woman on a hiking website posted a notice that her dog was going to finish the 48 4,000-footers on Mount Carrigain. She blew the trumpets and unfurled the flags in her typically rambunctious but friendly manner, inviting all hiking dogs and their humans along. I sent her a note congratulating her dog on her upcoming day. She replied that we were welcome to join her group in their merrymaking.

"Thanks, but no thanks. It’s not our style," I wrote and again congratulated her dog.

She responded one last time saying, “I know, you guys are loners…”

Loners? I’d rather say we are particular about our mountain experiences. Atticus and I hiked our first mountain to see what it was like. After that we hiked for the magic of it.

A lot of people start out that way and they love it. But sooner or later, nearly every one of them forgets that they came up here to get away from society and they get locked into another society – the hiking society. I’m not saying this is a bad thing. I’m just saying it’s not our style.

Joseph Campbell, the mythologist I often read and quote, once said that he felt spiritual nearly everywhere he ever went – other than a cocktail party. Amen, Joseph. I feel the magic of the mountains most when I can walk through the forest or sit on mountaintops alone with Atticus. Or at the very least when others are respecting the solitude we seek. But get in a group hike and that experience is shattered.

And yet it never fails, wherever we go people say, “Let’s get together for a hike sometime.”

My answer used to be, “Okay.” Now it’s “No thanks.” If I want to spare someone’s feelings I soften it a bit, but the message is always the same: do not disturb.

People are always shocked by this. “Are you serious? You don’t want to go for a hike with me?”

And yes, I’m serious. William Blake had it right, “Great things are done when men and mountains meet; this is not done by jostling in the street.” Hiking with other people often equates to ‘jostling in the street’. There’s talk and typically lots of it. I learned this the hard way the winter we did 81 peaks. We started out with others but ended up on our own.

It’s not that other people are wrong to want company, but neither am I. Typically we are old enough to know what we want in life and we simply have to go out and get it. What I’ve wanted from the moment I stood on top of my first mountain was to have that same feeling time and again. Being with Atticus allows me to have it. He’s never been a barker, a chaser or a herder. He seems to get from the mountain what I do. If anything, he enhances the experience for me. Not being human he’s more comfortable where the wild things are than I am and in watching him I’ve become more comfortable, too. He blends noiselessly into the forest and I do the same. No longer do we hear society bleating away, worried about the economy, religion, politics or Jon and Kate. It’s just us and the mountain and we are welcomed home time and again.

I thought of that the other day while we walked up Mount Stanton. It was not a day for views; and even the trees are past their prime colors. The remaining leaves are a drab yellow or hang lifelessly from a mostly naked branch. And yet the forest was very much alive. The sweet smell of autumn – a mixture of apples, wet leaves and the musty scent of the cooling earth – was invigorating. A mysterious fog slipped through the trees and wrapped itself around us, snaking here, crawling there, twisting and turning and dancing slowly about. Whenever she grabbed at us we moved beyond her embrace and the mist vanished like a ghostly hand. The fog creates a silence like nothing else can and the mountain seemed to sleep beneath our feet.

And so it was as I’ve always liked it best, just the two of us making our way up Stanton then down into the col and up to Mount Pickering. We were kept company by the silent forest and by the ever lively fog. We sat on a ledge on Pickering where we sat this spring and watched the valley below come to life. But on this day there was nothing to be seen. But oh, there was so much to be felt.

I turned and looked at Atticus, who was sitting next to me. He looked out just as he had this spring and felt as at ease as he always does. We typically just let each other be at such times but I couldn’t help it. I had to speak.

“Thank you,” I said.

He turned and looked at me.

“Thank you for all of this,” I said.

And man and dog looked at each other for a moment more and then both faced out into the fog. After a minute or two he moved closer to me without either of us taking our eyes from the fog. He leaned into me, and I into him. We sat that way until time disappeared.

These hikes we are on now mean the world to me. In a few weeks it will all change. No longer will it be just Atti and me. We will be three. I’m thrilled by this. Judging by Atticus’ actions this past spring, he will be thrilled when the one we love is here again, too. And yet being Irish and sentimental I cannot help but say how much I will miss what we’ve shared alone over hundreds of mountains.

I would not be here had Atticus not led me here. I would not have climbed these mountains, moved to these mountains and made them our home without him. It’s funny how things can change when you let a friend into your life, even if that friend has four legs instead of two and never talks.

For the past four years I’ve wanted nothing more than to be here. Each and every step has been taken together with the vast majority of them being by ourselves and that has made a profound difference in our lives.

When we are three, we’ll be hiking at a feverish pace like we haven’t done in a year or so. We’ll try to hike all 48 of the 4,000-footers this winter and it will be fun to watch Atticus lead her as he always led me. Of course you are all invited to follow along, too – by way of your computers, of course, because you see, the three of us are, after all, ‘loners’.

Mount Hale will be Hiked for Simon

Hale is being dedicated to Simon and is given by Tracy Haskell. Here's what Tracy writes about Simon, who is pictured above on a hike:

Simon was an absolute fiend as a puppy and I am so very, very thankful to him for that. He challenged me in many ways and was responsible for adding many new directions to my life. One of those was getting me to hike and to hike a LOT! Simon got me back on the trails and has inspired me to set goals that, four years ago, I would not have dreamed of. We have spent many days rambling around together, exploring places that neither of us have ever been. We have also found that old familiar places continuously offer up new treasures. I am filled with peace and love when I sit side by side with Simon as we gaze out over the mountains and sea. I delight in watching him as he picks up a new scent and experiences life fully in each moment. He has been, and continues to be, a wonderful teacher and companion. One of our goals in the coming year is to start hiking some of the 4,000 footers in the White Mountains and So, Mount Hale first in honor of Simon who has brought many firsts into my life.

Einstein: "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

Tecumseh is Being Hiked in Honor of Larry

Our first dedication has come in. Ann MacMullen has dedicated Mount Tecumseh to Larry. That's Larry above. What a nice shot!

Here's what Ann writes:

Dedicated to Larry, a brindled hound of unknown lineage. He loves chasing squirrels, dreams, and anything resembling food. He is my protector and my best friend. Left tied to a fence in Manhattan 8 years ago, Larry now enjoys a country life in Off-the-Leash-Land, MA, with his own beds on every floor of the house. And he's real life proof that dogs are 'chick magnets': because I married the boy that rescued the brindled hound. Since then, I've had many adventures with Larry, in many woods, during many seasons; and I know I'm lucky to have had each one. Larry has made my life immeasurably better, and this is cause for celebration. We're donating to Angell to help support the most successful inter-species relationship on the planet--Dogs and Humans. May we never be parted! Thanks for all that you do, Tom and Atticus, to illustrate just how strong this bond can be.

Following Atticus Has Never Been Easier: Our Fundraising Efforts for MSPCA Angell

It has been a very good year for us and we’d like to give something back. Therefore, this winter we are back it in raising much-needed funds for MSPCA Angell by attempting to hike each of the 48 4,000-footers during the 90 days of winter.

Winter starts at 12:48 on the afternoon of December 21st and, weather permitting, that’s when we’ll start our hikes. If all goes well, we’ll hike each of the 48 before the first day of spring three months later. This year there will be an added twist to our Winter Quest, but I’m not at liberty to announce it yet. Stay tuned. It will be announced around November 17th. I can assure you, you'll love it and it will add to the entertainment value throughout the winter.

MSPCA Angell has made our fundraising much easier and now it’s easier than ever for you to make a donation, too. You simply click on this link and it will tell you what you need to do to make a donation on-line. If, by chance, you are not into that but still want to contribute, you can do it the old fashioned way by sending a check made out to MSPCA Angell with Tom & Atticus written in the memo line to:

Kathleen Santry/Donations
MSPCA Angell
350 South Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02130

There are various ways to contribute to our efforts.

You can donate a 4,000-footer to the animal in your life, or one who has passed, and we’ll hike that mountain in your pets honor, or in their memory. A donation of $100 is needed to donate a peak, but feel free to contribute more if you’d like. It’s all for a great cause. Make certain to email us at atticusmfinch@gmail to let us know which peak you've chosen.

To dedicate a peak click here to see which of the 4,000-footers is still available.

Make sure you send us a photo of your pet and a bit about him or her and on the day we hike the peak we’ll post your story and the photo on our website. To get an idea of what people sent in two years ago when we last did this, check out this link.

For those who want to contribute but don’t want to dedicate a peak, you can go to the website we’ve set up at MSPCA Angell and click the “Make a Donation” button and submit any amount you want to.

Also, if you’d like to sponsor us per peak hiked this winter, simply email us at atticusmfinch@gmail.com and let me know the amount you want to donate per peak hiked. It can be any amount. You choose. Then, after winter ends, you can make your donation.

Corporations can also get involved by sponsoring a peak for a minimum donation of $500. This is separate from making a donation in honor of a pet. Corporate sponsorship gets your logo posted on our blog, along with a link to your company’s website.

The 48 4,000-Footers of the White Mountains

Atticus and I will be attempting to hike each of the 48 4,000-footers in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in the 90 days of winter. We'll be using our quest as a fundraiser for MSPCA Angell once the season starts on the Winter Solstice, which is 12:48 p.m. on December 21st.

Here's a location map for those of you not familiar with the 4,000-footers. This will give you an idea of where each of the peaks are located. (If you click on the map it will enlarge for better viewing.) Our home base is in Jackson this year, just five miles down the road from the trailhead for Mount Isolation and 10 miles northeast of North Conway on the eastern side of the map. (Thanks to Steve Smith for the permission to use the map as it came from within the pages of he and Mike Dickerman's 4,000-Footers of the White Mountains book.)

German Rights to 'Following Atticus' Sold to Piper Verlag

Yesterday at the Frankfort Book Fair in Germany, Piper Verlag aquired the German rights to 'Following Atticus' in a pre-empt deal. The deal was made by Sabine Pfannenstiel at Andrew Nurnberg Associate (London). Ms. Pfannenstiel is a co-agent to our agent Brian DeFiore of DeFiore and Company in New York City.

Foreign rights have now been sold in the U.K., Italy, and Germany.

'Following Atticus' is scheduled to be published in the spring of 2011 here in the U.S. by William Morrow.

We Woke Up To First Snow of the Year Here in Jackson

John Muir: "The mountains are calling and I must go."

Atticus' Dogs 101 Segment Will Air Again Tonight

Several people have contacted me complaining they missed Atticus on Animal Planet's Dogs 101. It originally aired on Saturday night. Not to worry, it will air again tonight at 9:00 and then again at midnight. It will also air various times during the coming weeks, too. And the segment will find its way onto the Animal Planet website within the next day or two. When it does, there will be a link to it from our blog.

Tom & Atticus To Raise Money For Animals In Need This Winter

It’s been a good year for us. It’s the stuff that dreams are made of. What better time to give thanks by giving back?

This evening we came to an agreement with our MSPCA-Angell liaison, Kathleen Santry, to use this coming winter to raise funds for our favorite non-profit organization. Once again Atticus and I will take to the snowy trails in an attempt to hike each of the 48 4,000-footers in the 90 days of winter. However, this year’s attempt will have a new twist added in. That new twist? You’ll just have to stay tuned. It will be announced in the coming weeks.

I won’t go into too much detail yet, but there will be various ways to contribute. One of them is by dedicating one of the 4,000-footers to the animals who hold a special place in your heart. We’ll hike that peak in honor of your pet or in memory of a lost pet. So, start thinking about which of the 48 you’ll want to dedicate to your best friend. When the day comes to sign up, we’ll post it here.

As for the other ways to contribute, we’ll get into that when we spill the beans on the rest of the details. And the best part, all money raised will go directly to MSPCA-Angell to help animals in need.

As many of you know, Angell Animal Medical Center played a big part in our lives when Atticus was sick a few years ago. They gave us the best health care possible and they did it with compassion and understanding. More importantly, we believe in Angell because the one thing they most offered us, and hundreds of thousands of animals a year, was hope and hope is very precious when you are filled with fear.

Just to give you an idea of how special Angel is - when we raised money for them two winter ago, we did some of what we'll be doing this winter: allowing people to dedicate a mountain to their pets. Well, the people who were the first to sign up were many of the folks who work at Angell. Imagine getting paid at your job and turning right around and giving money back to the place you work for. How could we not believe in such a place?

And at MSPCA-Angell the caring for animals starts at the top.

Those who have participated in our other fundraising efforts will tell you how much fun it was to follow along on our progress during those two winters. When you get involved with our winter quest you’ll have something to look forward to every day. It’s almost like you’ll be climbing the White Mountains during their most dramatic season right from the comfort of your computer.

Penguin Gets UK Rights for Following Atticus

We’re very pleased to announce that earlier today Penguin Books won the UK rights to FOLLOWING ATTICUS. The deal was brokered by Mary Pachnos at Aitken Alexander Associates on behalf of our agent Brian DeFiore. UK rights include: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, New Zealand and Australia.

In the last couple of weeks we also signed with William Morrow here in the U.S. and Italian rights were sold to Sperling & Kupfer on a pre-empt deal.

Atticus on Animal Planet this Saturday

Atticus will appear on Dogs 101 this Saturday. The show airs at 9:00 pm on Animal Planet. I've not seen the segment and I don't know when the segment on miniature schnauzers will air during the hour. I'm not even sure how much of the segment will focus on Atticus. What I do know is that they spent the better part of two days late last winter following Atticus around with their camera crew. We filmed portions of the segment in North Conway while walking down the street, sitting for an interview at the Nereledge Inn and gathering more footage at the Met Coffeehouse. Then we filmed a short hike to the top of Elephant's Head in Crawford Notch. The following day the cameras met us at Angell Animal Medical Center. Other than the interview I sat for, Dr. Maureen Carroll and various members of the MSPCA Angell fundraising staff were also filmed.

For those of you who are like us and don't have a television, you can catch the segment on the Animal Planet website following the airing. I'll link to it when it is up.

Bucophilia

It’s early morning and still dark outside. By the sound of the rain drumming on the metal roof of the house, it’s coming down hard and steady. The little bug always senses when it’s storming outside. On mornings like this he’s in no hurry to get up. While I’m under the covers, he’s on top of them, but fairly covered, the way he’s snugged them around himself and pushed up against my hip. (Funny, when we go to bed at night, he likes his space. But by the time I wake up in the early morning he’s craving contact, his little body pressed against me.)

Late yesterday we did the long loop here in Jackson. On good days we try to do it at least once. Now that we are getting ready for another round of the 48 we sometimes do it in the morning and the late afternoon. It’s 6.5 miles of bucolic bliss. Actually, I stumbled upon a term I like better – bucophilia. It comes from Maxime Kumin’s poem “Highway Hypothesis” and she refers to it as “nostalgia over a pastoral vista”. That’s what it’s like when we are striding along the quiet stretches of Carter Notch Road beyond the Eagle Mountain House, along the entire stretch of Moody Farm Road, and on the higher reaches of Black Mountain Road. On these sections of road it’s so sleepy we often walk in the middle of the street. When a car approaches we hear it long before we see it and we move to the side.

On our loop it’s not uncommon to see great blue herons, moose, bears, beavers, and countless chattering chipmunks. (The chipmunks, like the cars, are often heard before we see them.) Occasionally one will dart across the road in front of us and disappear into a stonewall so quickly it’s as if we imagined him. I always remind Atticus, “Remember, Little Bug, this is their home, let’s respect it.” At that he stops poking around the stonewall and comes back to me. It’s not that I worry about Atticus killing the little creature. He’s learned to be gentle. But the chipmunks don’t know that and I don’t want them to be scared.

The other day when a bear emerged from the woods just 20 feet in front of us, stopped and looked at us, Atti knew he wasn't some oversized chipmunk. He stopped and watched respectfully. When the bear disappeared into the woods on the other side of the road, Atti stopped and gave a look as if amazed at the vanishing act.

When we come to the pond where five beavers live we sit on the shore and the beavers approach us and I feed them apples. They are used to people and don’t bother to bat their tails on the water. Instead they glide up, one by one, and tread water just two or three feet away and wait for me to toss an apple into the water. I always bring five; one for each. Not all of them get an apple every time but the ones that do have no problem holding them in their hands and chomping away on them happily as man and dog sit and appreciate their ease.

As for moose, we see them least of all, but when we do Atticus knows to sit and not move. (I once heard about a little dog who was barking at a moose that had appeared in its backyard. The moose, in a request for quiet, stomped the dog to death. Since then, whenever we see one I whisper to Atti, “Pssst – moose.” And he sits. But now I don’t have to do that, he knows to sit and watch.

As much as I love the wildlife, the bucophilia is more about the silent trees, who on the rarest occasions murmur with the wind; the Wildcat River, which we often sit by and listen to her song; the far off views towards Carter Notch on one road, or towards the Moats, Tripyramids and Sleepers on another road. It’s about the enclave of native Jacksonsians in this quietest, unpretentious part of town – my favorite; and the way the farmland rolls blissfully up towards the base of some nearby mountains. It’s especially beautiful now in autumn when each day seems to outdo the last and whenever I think it cannot get any better, it always does.

We here in New England are the luckiest people in the world when it comes to this time of the year. No place is more beautiful or more longed for. In those years I lived in other areas of the country my heart would sing a melancholy song this time of year and I’d have done anything to get back here where the trees save their best for last.

And how does it all happen? How do the trees give us such a show? Rudyard Kipling, he of the Jungle Book fame (and many other things), once lived in Vermont. He wrote:

"A little maple began it, flaming blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a pine-belt. Next morning there was an answering signal from the swamp where the sumacs grow. Three days later, the hill-sides as fast as the eye could range were afire, and the roads paved, with crimson and gold. Then a wet wind blew, and ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army; and the oaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull and bronzed cuirasses and stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf, till nothing remained but pencil-shadings of bare boughs, and one could see into the most private heart of the woods."

This route is a road walk for us, and yet the elevation gain is significant enough to get my heart racing and force me to breath deeper. I feel it in my legs and my low back. And the views, well, they are better than on some mountains. And like those mountains, whenever we crest a hill near the top of Black Mountain Road, Atticus skips up and brushes my hand with his nose. Once he gets my attention he stops and sits. The first time I didn’t know what he wanted. Then I realized the views we had of the various far off mountains (and the Doubleheads, which are right there for the touching) and I knew this seemed like a summit to him. Now I know to pick him up and he sits up in the crook of my arm as he does on any summit and slowly pivots his head to look at the views. It never fails. It’s his routine on a mountaintop and his routine at this exact place on the walk.

We walk this way for a quarter of a mile or so. I can only imagine what the drivers think as they pass by and see a grown man carrying a little dog like this.

“Is he hurt?”

“Is the dog tired?”

“That dog sure is spoiled!”

If only they knew the truth – the little dog who was once blind simply wants a better view.

When I put Atticus down it’s not too far off from where two bulls stand in a field. He always approaches them with curiosity and I remind him, “This is their home, Bug, remember to respect it.” But those words are never necessary as he stands outside the wire fence and watches them. Sometimes the bulls look up. Sometimes they keep chewing the grass as if we don’t exist. Sometimes Atticus stands and watches them. Sometimes he sits for a spell.

The other night he decided to sit. He was about five feet from the fence. One of the bulls ambled slowly over and started to sniff the air. He pushed his large snout against an opening in the square of the fence. Atticus looked at me and I told him, “Okay, but be gentle.” Slowly the little black and white dog approached until both creatures, so different in size, so similar in color, curiously looked at each other and then with the softest of intentions touched noses.

I stayed back and watched. Why interfere with such innocence?

Animals and nature get it. It’s the humans who don’t. We’re the only ones who have to be reminded time and again how to act human. But you never see that in another creature. A bear knows how to be a bear. A dog knows how to be a dog. Mountains sure as heck know how to be mountains. It comes naturally them. Us, well, we need these little reminders from time to time and they help us to be human. Perhaps we find it climbing a mountain or sitting in our kitchen watching the birds at the feeder (as my father used to do) or taking a walk with a daughter and granddaughter as a friend recently wrote of doing.

It takes Atticus and me around two hours to do this walk. Sometimes, if we are sitting with the cows or feeding the beavers or listening to the song of the Wildcat River, it takes longer. The time doesn’t really matter, what matters is the experience.

Italian Rights to Following Atticus Sold

Within a week of getting a deal here in the United States, I’m pleased to announce that the Italian rights to FOLLOWING ATTICUS have been sold in a pre-empt deal to Sperling & Kupfer by Daniela Petracco at Nurn- berg Associates. Ms. Petracco is one of Brian DeFiore’s co-agents and she represents him in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Latin America.

Thoreau: “You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.”

A Little Calvin & Hobbes

I'll never cease to be amazed where following this little dog takes me. I'm told Publishers Marketplace called our book deal for 'Following Atticus' with William Morrow their 'Deal of the Day'.

A Good Start to the Day

My father woke me up this morning. It was 4:00 a.m. and the world was still. He was talking to me, wanting me to get out of bed.

Typically, if I’m ever awake that early, Atticus cocks an eyebrow in my direction, realizes the sun isn’t up yet and he’s not about to get up either. He then rolls over and goes back to sleep. But not this morning. This morning he sat next to my head and looked down at me, willing me to get moving.

The ghost of my father and my dog both couldn’t have been wrong so I was up and getting dressed. I stepped outside and stars prickled the night sky, a few planets were even brighter as we walked down the road. I put on my headlamp and we walked and walked until my body warmed under my heavier clothes. We made our way up the rutted road to the base of Iron Mountain where the trail crosses a field and enters the brush.

It was still dark but the hint of predawn was making its way along the eastern horizon. But in the woods it was dark and deep and the beam from my headlamp cast shadows. When we moved, they moved; swaying at first in front of us and then falling behind until we came to the next set of shadows. We moved further into the woods, up the eroded trail and into rich scent of autumn. Occasionally I grabbed a tree branch or an exposed root to pull myself up to where Atticus was waiting patiently for me.

As is nearly always the case, the confluence of my body working, my mind clearing out everything, and the simple desire to put one foot in front of the other and climb, I hit that wonderful Zen-like rhythm and there was my father again. He was moving with us, silently, save for the same grunts I had, the same pursed breathing.

When my father was still alive and I dedicated that first summer of doing the 4,000-footers to him, he often appeared in my dreams. He never looked old or broken in body or spirit like he was in the end. Instead he was my age and we walked through the forest together sharing a like mind, heart and passion. It was the best he had to offer and I had a glimpse of what his life must have been like before all went wrong. But while he appeared in my dreams back then, he rarely was as close to me as he was this morning.

Eventually we reached our destination – a ledge with a view towards Mount Washington. Atticus sat down and looked at the silhouette of the great peak in the distance. When I sat with him I had to zip up my jacket to keep from getting chilled. And then we just sat there and waited for the sun to rise.

The darkness filtered away. Slowly the season revealed herself in the rolling quilt of early autumn colors: soft greens and yellows, an occasional red, some orange here and there. When the trees get like this, even before the peak of foliage, they pulse, and the rolling landscape before us looked like it was rising and falling as if the mountains themselves were alive and breathing.

The rock were on was cold and Atticus snugged his body next to mine. When that didn’t work he nudged me with his paw and I picked him up and sat him on my lap. He leaned back into me and we watched the birth of a new day.

The sky turned blue, the clouds were white and bobbing along, and shadows deepened the hollows of the forest spreading out below and away from us. We watched together as this living painting came to life: my dog on my lap, my father in my heart and seemingly right next to me. I turned as if Jack Ryan was actually there and I said, “Well, we did it, Dad.”

In my mind he smiled. It was warm and content and the way a man would smile in heaven even though he didn’t smile much in life.

One of my favorite memories of my father was when we were kids and he took us to the White Mountains. We’d set up camp next to a river or pull over so my brothers and I could swim or rock hop. Dad would sit at a picnic table above us and let words spill from his pen across a pad of paper. He was happy, peaceful and content. So were we. We’d do this for hours and never get restless.

The only place my father’s writing appeared was in the letters to the editor in the local daily paper or in letters to friends and family. But when he wrote in the mountains I could tell he was writing something else. None of us ever knew what my father wrote in his pad of paper on those days. He never shared it with us. But it was clear the mountains moved him to write and allowed him to touch things he hadn’t glimpsed since he was young and full of promise.

A father leaves many things to a son. Some are good, some aren’t. The best things my father left me were his love of the written word and his reverence for the mountains. As the years passed we were not always close but we always shared these things.

This morning, while the White Mountains came to life I held my father in my heart, I told him what happened this week and tears formed in his eyes. His dream had become my dream. You see, I thought of him a lot this week when William Morrow, a publishing imprint of Harper Collins, outbid three other publishers for ‘Following Atticus’.

A father found peace, magic and inspiration in these grand and wondrous mountains. He passed it onto his son. Now the father who wondered where his dreams went as he got old and eventually died will have those dreams celebrated in a book that will see to it that he and those dreams shall live forever.

And so our morning started with Atticus sitting on my lap on the side of Iron Mountain while my father sat next to us. In my head I heard that last verse from Harry Chapin’s song, “Cats in the Cradle”...

I've long since retired and my son's moved away.
I called him up just the other day.
I said, "I'd like to see you if you don't mind."
He said, "I'd love to, dad, if I could find the time.
You see, my new job's a hassle,
and the kid's got the flu,
But it's sure nice talking to you, dad.
It's been sure nice talking to you."
And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me,
He'd grown up just like me.
My boy was just like me.

Sometimes no matter how hard you try, there's no fitting in

Beating the Crowds: Our Latest Tom & Atticus Column for the Northcountry News

Bryan and Sue Flagg, the ma and pa of this wonderful ‘mom and pop’ newspaper, have been busy lately. In a short period of time they climbed Mount Washington, Mount Monroe, North Hancock, South Hancock and took in sunset and moonrise on the Sugarloaves over in Twin Mountain. When I asked Bryan if he was hiking this weekend he responded: “No – we decided to sit this one out. Too many people in the mountains for me!”

Amen, Bryan.

My friends sometimes think me a misanthrope, but the truth is while I love mankind, I can do without people – especially in the mountains. (Besides, I put in my time. I lived in the heart of Newburyport for a dozen years, ran a paper and even took out papers to run for mayor. Is it any wonder I not only headed to the hills, but actually ran to them?)

The Abenaki Indians considered the Whites a sacred place. Imagine if they were here on a busy weekend and saw the conga line moving along any of the trails up Mount Washington or along the Lafayette-Lincoln loop.

Don't get me wrong. I believe the popularity of the White Mountains is a good thing. It’s one of the reasons people had the foresight to save them after the lumber barons had raped and pillaged them to their bank accounts content. Back then, even if people hadn’t been to the mountains, they felt like they’d been because of writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Starr King; poets Lucy Larcom and John Greenleaf Whittier; and the amazing White Mountain artists, who other than Benjamin Champney and Thomas Cole are simply too numerous to name, brought the White Mountains to the civilization. It was a shining moment in history when preservation was spurred by environmentalists and fueled so by the romantic vision of the writer, poet and artist.

But the knife cuts both ways. These mountains are stunning, soul-awakening and spirit lifting. Once you discover them, they don’t let you go. It’s one of the reasons Atticus and I found our way up here. When first I stood atop Mount Garfield I could not believe such a place existed. And it was only two hours from the hectic hustle and bustle of the upscale boutiques and the yuppie shoppers in Newburyport. So, being an outsider myself, who am I to complain about the crowds that flock to the mountaintops each stunning weekend, or the pizza, hot dogs and coffee served atop Washington, the most sacred of all the Abenakis mountains? They Abenakis called Washington Agiocochook, the Home of the Great Spirit. Today, they’d probably call it Visa.

Just what is a person who lives in the mountains and loves them supposed to do when it comes to hiking? If possible, head out for a hike in midweek, as Bryan and Sue did, and Atticus and I typically do. Alas, Bryan and Sue didn’t beat the crowds on top of Washington that day, but at least they reached Monroe, the Hancocks and Sugarloaves and it didn’t feel like it was Grand Central Station at rush hour; or worse – North Conway on a busy weekend.

As for Atticus and me? We’ve been sticking to smaller, less crowded peaks. When Ruth gets here we’ll be doing the 4,000-footers again but for now I’m pleased with avoiding them. However, we did hike Mount Moriah, starting about an hour before sunset and by the time we reached the ledges of the Carter Moriah trail for the last mile and a half, we were joined by the delightful full moon that was so bright I didn’t need my headlamp. But my favorite hike as of late was one that went into the woods and not above them.

We parked at the end of Zealand Road and took the Zealand Trail through the mostly flat woods, across the spider web of tree roots along the trail and the wood bridges spanning the moose and beaver ponds. When we arrived at the place we’d normally turn right to head towards Zealand Hut, Zeacliff and the Bonds beyond, we went straight. This took us into the heart of Zealand Notch where we walked along the tumble down remains of Whitewall Mountain and looked up at the giants around us that we have often stood on top of. Eventually, this gentle meander took us to Thoreau Falls. After a while at the falls we continued to Shoal Pond. There are few more isolated places in the Whites than where we were sitting on the floor of the Pemigewasset Wilderness. All-in-all, it was a perfect day to be out in the woods. Better yet, we didn’t see another person all day.

A fellow hiker who made the same hike a few weeks ago warned, “Beware, there’s no cell phone coverage out there.” All the more reason to make the 12 mile out and back journey, which is very easy, but does wonders for whatever it is that ails you.

Our next hike? You don't actually think I'm going to tell you, do you?

(On a personal note, Bryan and Sue, if you want to see Washington at her best, we’ll take you up there in winter. I can assure you the crowds will be gone and the museum, gift shop and cafeteria will be closed. And for a second personal note, I’m told Animal Planet will be airing their footage of Atticus on their second Dogs 101 show of the new season on October 10th.)

Want To Know More About Atticus?

We've only been in Jackson for four months but I can’t imagine ever wanting to leave. Atticus and I continue to get to know the nooks and crannies of this remarkable place and the more we see, the more attached we become to it. And yet as special as the mountains, rivers and pastoral settings are, the people of Jackson are pretty special themselves. I’ve never been to a friendlier community. On our thrice daily walks we are greeted as if we’ve lived here our entire lives.

In Jackson, nature will always get top billing and from what I’ve seen most of those who live here understand that and appreciate it and hope to keep Jackson the way it is. There is sense of reverence in putting the community first, whether from the newcomer or the native. I like that.

Many we meet here want to know more about Atticus, so I’ve made it a bit easier. In the right hand margin of this blog you will see a section that reads: “Get to Know Us through Some of Our More Popular Posts”. This will help you navigate around these pages and find the meat between the bones. Simply click on any of these and you will be linked immediately to that story. Of course there are many other posts I think you'll like, too, but these will give you a shortcut in getting to know this little dog I am lucky enough to call my friend.

The bottom two posts show a list of the mountains hiked during our two winters of fundraising, first for the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, then for Angell Animal Medical Center. Click on those and you will see a the people and animals those peaks were hiked for. Above that are highlighted trip reports from our hikes and other stories. You will see why we set out to hike the 48 4,000-footers twice in the 90 days of winter in the fight against cancer and then again for MSPCA Angell. You will read about how Atticus lost his eye sight, and then had it returned through the goodness of friends. How he was savagely attacked by another dog and we feared he'd lose his life, only to be honored at the JFK Presidential Library six nights later as one of the MSPCA's heroes of the year. But more than anything you will read about the relationship he and I share and the part the White Mountains have played in that.

The Morning Air Tells Me Autumn's Coming

Hey Booboo, He's Not Your Average Bear!

On Sunday night, a report was filed about a hungry bear at the Osgood tent site, which is just a few miles down the road from us. I'm suppose I should feel sorry for the hikers, but considering the boldness of the bear, I found myself liking his chutzpa. Yes, it's a different world up here compared to quaint, comfortable Newburyport, where the only thing I ever had to worry about as the editor and publisher of The Undertoad, was my trash going missing when the police had the urge to search it. Below is a report that showed up on the popular northeast hiking forum Views From The Top (http://www.viewsfromthetop.com/). The motto of the story is quite clear: you can yell, cuss, stomp your feet at Mother Nature all you want and she's still going to do whatever she wants to do.

"We were at Osgood Tentsite 3 nights this week. Two of the three nights, other campers reported food taken by a bear. In the second case, they had their food up, and had taken it down in the early morning and sitting in front of their tent as they were striking camp. Bear came in and grabbed one of their bags. They yelled at him and he took off - with their next three nights' dinners. [TRIP ABORT]. Not Good."

Traffic Jams, Jackson Style

“I went to call you yesterday morning but I don't have your number in my phone. Must have lost it somehow. I was stuck in traffic. There was a fatal accident on 495 and it took me 2 hours to go 5 miles. Frustrating. Total commute time was 3 hours. Then going home last night someone drove off the road into the woods south of the Pike. That turned into a 90 minute commute. So in all I spent 4 and a half hours on the road.” ~ An email from my brother David

During a lecture the late mythologist Joseph Campbell shared the following...
A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation: “As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It’s not as far as you think.”

A few years ago, upon first getting to feel these mountains under my feet, I knew right away I needed to live in them no matter what the cost. At the time such a move seemed impossible to make. I was comfortable and in Newburyport I’d found the kind of community I always wanted to live in and found my calling as a writer. But the power of the mountains is both strong and mysterious and when the time came I didn’t hesitate – I jumped. One of the reasons I did so was because of the exact scenario brother David emailed me about. But it wasn’t just because of traffic. Traffic was only a symptom of the greater stresses of the world I knew. I longed for a simpler, less cluttered life; one not twisted up in the vortex of a society in constant competitive hyper-drive or the mania of owning things.

On the day my brother spent four and a half hours on the road, I spent four and a half hours on North and South Doublehead – twin peaks here in Jackson. It was the day summer relaxed its grip and the high temperatures and smothering humidity broke. Even the maddening bugs disappeared for the first time in months.

What a difference: my brother in stuck in traffic, me following Atticus up the steep Old Path to the col between the two peaks. While he was bumper to bumper, inhaling exhaust fumes, surrounded by angry commuters, Atticus and I were surrounded by dense forest primeval, so thick and tangled it was hard to imagine another human being there at any time in the past several weeks. I can’t say the same for moose. There were signs of them everywhere. I kept waiting for one of them to come lumbering through the woods. While David sat in traffic and drummed his fingers on his steering wheel, I sat on a cool, mossy rock feeling like I had stumbled upon a lost world. At about the time he was just beginning to creep along on his journey home, Atticus and I stood on the first ledges of South Doublehead. Below us the hills and fields of Jackson glowed in the late afternoon sun and rolled happily along. A breeze swirled around us playing with my hair and Atticus’ floppy ears. Its refreshing chill was a hint of things to come – the first taste of autumn’s crisp, clean air.

South Doublehead is a remarkable summit. It offers unique views towards the Presidential Range and even more so towards the Moats. North Moat stands out particularly, much like the prow of a great ship cutting through an undulating green sea. Had the artists who flocked to the White Mountains in the 1800s ever stood on top of the South peak I don’t think they would have ever left. That’s how captivating it is, especially in the glow of the end of the day when light is softer and more beguiling and the green of the valley invites you to sit back and put your feet up and take a deep breath. From this angle the view to the south plays tricks on your eyes. It is as if you are seeing North Conway long before the outlets or big box stores arrived, long before even the first house was built. There’s nothing to be seen but the rugged edifices of Cathedral and White Horse ledges and the pulsing mountains and valleys.

North Doublehead is not so special, at least when it comes to views. But on the way over we traveled through that great moose hall of twisted trees and could just imagine how many of the great beasts had made their way to that col through the years. The climb up North is a little steep in places but the cool air made it easier than it would have been just a day before. The lone view is from behind the cabin, on a little rock porch down a ways, and it looks out towards Maine. Were it not for what we’d seen on South Doublehead, it would have been much more impressive. Still, it was a fine place to stop and sit and drink in the cool of the shadows.

I didn’t have the heart to tell my brother David that the closest thing I’ve seen to a traffic jam around these parts as of late occurred when we were on our way back home after coming off of the Doubleheads. We stopped at a small, out of the way pond we’ve grown fond of, and in a 10 minute span we saw a Great Blue Heron, a beaver, a moose and two ducks. That’s about as cluttered as it gets here in Jackson during the summer, unless you count the line at the J-Town Deli on weekend mornings or when the mail arrives at 10:30 at the Jackson Post Office.

Einstein: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."

He sits and thinks of the things they know, He and the Forest, alone together… ~ A.A. Milne

Hedgehog At Sunset

Think back to the fairy tales of your childhood and how the rich, dark woods were as textured as the characters themselves. I have felt like I’ve stumbled into such an enchanted forest whenever entering the woods to climb Mount Hedgehog. They evoke a feeling of other worldliness and each step into nature and up the mountain is a step into a realm where mystery and magic meet and society is left behind. The child within me half expects to come face to face with a gnome or dwarf. And no matter how often I trod the familiar path and never see such a creature, I never doubt I could actually see one around the next bend in the trail.

I get to Hedgehog as often as I can because before too long many of the trees in the area will be wiped out by the lumber industry. I fear that not unlike the children who would be the kings in queens in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia, there will come a time when I’ll never reach it again and all I’ll see will be the stubbled remains of where a forest used to stand and where magic used to live.

Oh, I know there are plenty of special places here in the mountains, but there’s something about this particular area that has always resonated with me. Why? I cannot say, other than to say it’s like love – you know it when you feel it and it is nearly impossible to describe in words. And while the Forest Service has always allowed logging in the White Mountains, there’s never been a time in recent years where they will level nature so close to a trail.

Last Saturday I was in the mood to visit those woods again but I didn’t want to deal with the crowds or the heat of August so we didn’t arrive at the trailhead until 5:00 p.m. and the only people we saw were those getting ready to leave. I had planned it right and Atticus and I had the mountain to ourselves. Whenever that happens, I enter the woods with a childlike trill running through my body, my senses tingling with excitement.

In the first mile and a half of the nearly five mile loop I saw numerous trees marked by tape revealing where the destruction will take place. It’s incredible when you consider how many will be removed and the generations that will pass until a person can stand where I was and see such mature trees again. As we passed these areas I felt like I was saying goodbye to old friends I’d gotten to know these last few years.

Hedgehog is only 2500 feet high, but like all mountains it makes you work. There are easy parts and there are parts where you have to push yourself. The discomfort takes over – shortness of breath, racing heart, sweating, low back pain – but it brings a gift with it. You cannot think of anything but what you are doing and where you are. Distractions evaporate. The mind becomes clear. It’s here in the stripping away that the senses become even more alive and on Hedgehog this happens just before you reach the breathtaking open Eastern Ledge. You leave the woods and yourself behind and scramble up large shelves of rock and suddenly you stand on the edge of the mountain. Far below the green carpet of the valley sweeps away and up towards Chocorua, Paugus, and Passaconaway – mountains even grander than the great Indian chiefs they were named for.

This is our favorite place on the loop and when we arrived we spent a great deal of time sitting and looking out at the views while growing shadows brought a welcomed coolness. Even in the shadows though, the scene in front of us was amazingly bright while the sinking sun cast everything in a golden hue.

After a lengthy visit we left the ledges and entered the woods for the climb up to the summit. Here the forest grew so dark I could barely see and I had to let my eyes adjust but where my sight failed my sense of smell grew strong. The musky smell of earth, pine and decaying wood entered me. The deeper we went the more we were enveloped by shadows so dark it felt like night. Then, on the western edge of the mountain the setting sun splashed through the trees like a breaking wave and the forest was flooded with that same golden light. We were bathed in it as we walked the twisting trail until we were face to face with Passaconaway. The name itself translates to ‘Son of the Bear’ and I could almost imagine it coming to life and looming above us like a giant bear.

The climb was done and we settled in for some more views before heading down to finish off the loop. But there was still one more stop to make. Just before night completely fell, we reached Allen’s Ledge. Here we sat for the third time and watched the night roll across the sky until the stars pin-pricked their way through the blue-black sea overhead. Here you really could count the stars, although I fear once you started you’d never finish.

Amazing, isn’t it, how the various facets of a journey come together like patches on a quilt? Each area of the mountain shared something different with us. And although night had fallen we still had one more to experience. The final pages of our journey came in the last mile when the mountain came to life even more with its mysterious smells and sounds. Trees creaked and groaned, beasts both big and small moved just out of sight – a scampering here, a crashing through brush there. That’s when we reached the place Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote about: “Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.”

There were times in that last mile when we stopped and I turned off my headlamp and we just enjoyed that ‘beloved’ night on this beloved mountain. I pledged that I would return again as often as I can before the forest is stripped bare and with it much of the magic. Perhaps each subsequent visit will allow me to build a replica of this world in my imagination so that this doomed forest will live on if only in my memory.

Hedgehog for Sunset

Late in the day Saturday, Atticus and I headed over to the Kancamagus Highway, a relatively short distance from Jackson if you utilize Bear Notch Road, for a sunset hike along the Hedgehog loop. This is one of my favorite small mountains. The summit elevation is 2,520 feet and the loop is 4.8 miles. It's perfect for the end of the day. We dallied on the breathtaking East Ledge, the summit, and Allen's Ledge and made the loop in 3 hours.

In photo #1 Atticus is looking out towards Chocorua. In the next he's on the natural stone couch on the East Ledge while Mount Passaconaway (one of the 4,000-footers) looms behind him. In the third photo he's looking out over the sweeping valley that leads up to Square Ledge. Photo #4 is a shot of Passaconaway, named for one of the great Indian chiefs in the area. The name translates to 'Son of the Bear'. Legend has it that when Passaconway died, a sleigh pulled by wolves brought him to the be with the Great Spirits on top of Mount Washington. The last photo is a study in light and shade with Atticus in the foreground and Chocorua in the background both shaded, while nearly everything in between is lit by the late sun.

Starting the Day on Black Cap

Summer’s waning. It hit me this morning when I got out of bed at 5:15 and beat the sun up by nearly 30 minutes. In the past six weeks we’ve lost daylight. Funny to think of it that way with August just under way, but it is true. Time flies. It always has; it always will.

Soon after I got up, Atticus and I were making our way through the sun-dappled forest. The air was cool, the path gentle, the woods greener than I’ve ever seen them in August. We moved over rock and root and smooth earth, deeper into nature, higher up the small mountain, into my prayers. Heart and lungs started to wake, then legs. The tightness in my low back eased. So did my shoulders. The forest enveloped us. Birds settled on branches and watched us pass, occasionally filling the air with song. The only other sounds were my steps and breath. Sweat ran down my face, rivulets flowed down my spine. In the quietude with a body in motion, I reached that release that comes with the Zen moment that is born when I’m not pushing too hard or in too much of a hurry to get up the mountain. Thoughts mingle with breath, both are inhaled, both expelled. The tide comes in and then goes out again. Freedom.

From time to time people ask me if I miss Newburyport. This question is never asked of me up here, it’s always asked by Newburyporters. In the mountains people understand how special this area is. Folks from Newburyport, however, can’t imagine wanting to live elsewhere but where they live. I couldn’t at one time either. Such was the draw of that little city where the Merrimac flows into the Atlantic. But times change, people do too. Or at least people can change. That’s what happened to me. I loved the intrigue, the tempest in a teapot world of Newburyport politics and couldn’t imagine wanting to ever go anywhere else. I was in the middle of everything that happened. There was even a six year period – the first six years of running The Undertoad – where I only spent two nights out of town. Imagine that. In six years I spent only one weekend away. It was all Newburyport all the time.

The shift started when Atticus and I climbed Mount Garfield with my brothers. I couldn’t believe such places actually existed in the world. I stood on that rocky summit with views over a seemingly endless ocean of mountains and I felt God’s rapture. Over the next two years I returned often. I didn’t realize it at that time, but I began to understand that I no longer belonged in Newburyport. Here in the mountains I found the peace I’d always sought.

Then came that winter when Atticus and I tried to complete two rounds of the 48 in 90 days. It was at times a brutal but magnificent challenge. We ended up four hikes shy of our goal. But it was during that quest when the final shift took place. Atticus and I were walking along the sweeping snowfields between Mount Washington and Mount Monroe. We were alone on that ethereal February day and the wind howled and the clouds rose like ghosts out of the ravines and flew by. Halfway down the cone of Washington Atticus stopped and waited for me. Just as I reached him a curtain of clouds rose and revealed the summits of Monroe, Eisenhower and Pierce under a sky so blue my eyes ached. They were caked in ice and snow and we were wrapped in winter, this little dog and I. By the time we reached Pierce we’d be on our 65th peak of the winter.

Atticus put his front paws on my leg and asked me to pick him up. He settled into the crook of my arm and together we looked out at those mountains below us and before us. There was no sign of civilization, or of life itself, just an astonishing, vast wasteland of white. Alone on that mountainside with Atticus, that’s when it hit me – we’d come too far.

I had literally walked out of Newburyport and my life there and into my new one. I had unintentionally left my life behind and there and then I understood that there would be no going back for us. It was a lonely and horrifying, but at the same time, liberating sensation.

When I returned to Newburyport the two of us were thrown back into small city life and brought back to earth, especially when Atticus went blind and the cancer scare surfaced. I would at first fight the change by trying to stay with the familiar. I even entered the race for mayor. But it was not to be. I would end up dropping out before the election. I was being called home. Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, said it best, “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

I wasn’t the only one who saw it. On her Newburyport Blog Mary Eaton would later write:

“I remember watching Tom at a Newburyport City Council meeting after that experience was over, and thinking to myself, ‘The mountains have captured him.’ And they had. And there was the ultimate, ‘Shall I stay in Newburyport, or not stay in Newburyport’ question, when Mr. Ryan threw his hat into the ring as a mayoral candidate this fall. It sounded as if when it came to Newburyport, MA, that in the end, ‘all passions were spent.’ And Mr. Ryan left Newburyport, MA on October 1, 2007 for the White Mountains of New Hampshire.”

Mary was right, my Newburyport ‘passions were spent’. But there were other passions that took hold.

In Newburyport I not only wrote about politics, I planted myself in the middle of them. I literally inhaled them. Far too often that translates into writing about how mankind fails and what is wrong with the world. That’s especially true in a place once known as ‘Cannibal City’ because of its politics. On the other hand, the mountains revealed to me what was right with the world. It brought me back in time to a place where I wasn’t so jaded or dubious and I believed in magic and was filled with awe and wonder.

So do I miss Newburyport? Well, let me answer it this way. Yesterday we began the morning with a walk to Diana’s Baths. We were early enough to have it to ourselves and we sat on a rock slab at the top of the majestic falls where I said my prayers while Atticus watched the water flowing, spinning and churning past us. Today we started the day by climbing Black Cap, a short peak with stunning views. One day a waterfall. The next a mountaintop.

Interestingly enough I inherited my love of both politics and the mountains from my father. I thought of him this morning when we reached the top of Black Cap and the rays of the morning sun. He would have loved this life. There was something, however, in Jack Ryan’s life that refused to allow him to reach for his dreams. It was as if he believed they would always be just out of reach for him.

Towards the end of his life he told me about a dream he had the night before. He had died and was approaching the gates of heaven. Inside he could hear Mozart playing. Not just the music of Mozart, but Mozart himself. He could also hear the crack of a bat and the cheer of the crowd. His brother-in-law Bill Shea was already in Heaven and he spoke to my father.

“Jack, the Sox need you to pitch. Hurry up and get inside here!”

Then he saw my mother, his beloved Isabel, and her mother and father and they all told him how much they loved him and how much they’d missed him.

He hurried to the gates with a young boy’s bursting exuberance. When he reached it, the angel standing guard said, “I’m sorry. You are not allowed.”

When my father told me that dream he had tears in his eyes. Without saying it, he’d summed up much of how he saw his life.

So here I sit, not just writing a book, but also chasing after my dreams, after starting the day on a mountaintop with Atticus, and I know – I just know – that Jack Ryan would have loved this journey and this life.

My father, in his younger years, loved poetry. One of his favorites was Tennyson. He’s also one of my favorites. Today would have been Tennyson’s 200th birthday. One of the only poems I ever memorized is his “Break, Break, Break” and I recited it this morning while we stood surrounded by mountaintops. It goes like this:

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

Here’s to dreams and the willingness to chase after them. Life is, after all, fleeting.

"I love those who yearn for the Impossible." ~ Goethe

Some Joseph Campbell on a Tuesday

A Quote From Goethe (Click on image)

A Quote From Richard Bach (click on photo)

Getting Stretched Out On Black Mountain

In baseball, when a relief pitcher is converted into a starter, it cannot be done overnight. The team takes time in stretching out the pitcher, making him stronger, giving him more endurance. Recently, while working on my book proposal for ‘Following Atticus’, my agent, Brian DeFiore, has been doing the exact same thing to my writing. He’s making me think more, open my mind and my heart and tap into the creative spirit. It’s not easy, nor is it painless, but the results are fulfilling and can even be astounding.

My proposal about life with Atticus goes out on Labor Day – when the collective U.S. publishing industry ends its long summer vacation – and publishers will see something different than what I originally set out to write. Much of the transformation has come of late and it has to do with the ability of Brian to ‘stretch me out’. He recognized my book for what it was and it’s no longer just about mountains, a little dog and a middle aged, overweight writer with a fear of heights. But it took my agent to recognize that and get me to embrace it. I was thinking about all this the other day on Black Mountain - the one here in Jackson, not the one close to Moosilauke.

When we reached the summit there wasn’t much of a view. The forest has grown up around the summit rocks and the only way to see Washington, the Wildcats or Carter Dome is to look through and over the lush July foliage. Without much of a view I sat down and opened up my backpack and Atticus and I shared peanut butter crackers. We then both drank some water and after a bit I got up and started walking.

I noticed I was missing something. I looked back to the summit rocks and Atticus was still standing there, looking at me as if I’d forgotten to do something.

I knew immediately what he wanted. I walked back and picked him up as I always do on a summit and he sat in the crook of my arm. He looked out through the trees at Carter Dome. After a minute he turned his gaze to the Wildcats, eventually swiveling his head to see Washington. And there it was – his heavy sigh. And his body relaxed into mine.

I’ve always said that the mountains are my church: the climb is where I confess my sins; the summit is where I take communion. Communion – it’s a wonderful word, isn’t it? The first two definitions from American Heritage are as follows: “the act or an instance of sharing, as of thoughts or feelings; religious or spiritual fellowship.”

That’s the beauty of my little companion. He’s not only good company, there are times he makes me see things in a different way. Holding him in my arm with the setting sun in his eyes, the man-made lenses inserted during cataract surgery were easy to see. I cannot imagine a dog who could possibly appreciate modern technology that allowed him to see again more than he does. Up high, looking out together like that, it’s our own little ‘spiritual fellowship’. Whenever we have this communion between us I cannot help but think of that Saint-Exupery quote: “Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction.”

And there we stood ‘looking out in the same direction’ for a long while.

Who would have thought we’d be here now, when seven years ago all I wanted was a dog to replace the one I’d lost? But now we are on a threshold to a very exciting time. Between then and now we’ve been through so much together. Back then I made a living writing a political journal in Newburyport and if you know anything about small town New England politics you’ll understand it was mostly about where man had gone wrong. But because I picked up a little dog, then started following through the woods, we eventually made it to the mountains. One look around from the top of Mount Garfield, our very first peak on September of 2004, and our lives were transformed. I began to see what was right with the world. Politics went out with the trash and we moved north.

Looking back on the confluence of experiences leading us here, I suppose it was all fated to work out this way. As Einstein said, “I refuse to believe that God plays dice with the Universe.” There have been too many things conspiring to bring us to this point in our lives.

And now you can see how just as my agent has recently ‘stretched me out’, that it only took place after a little dog and these great mountains had done the exact same thing.