At Times A Little Is Enough

Jack Ryan would be happy with the hikes we’ve taken this week. 

My father was mostly what’s known as a windshield tourist.  Whenever we came north from Massachusetts, he’d drive us around the White Mountains and that’s how we saw these wondrous peaks – through a windshield.  Oh sure, we did all the touristy things such as Clark’s Trading Post, the gondola up Cannon Mountain, the auto road and the cog railway up Mount Washington, the Flume, Santa’s Village, Storyland, and all the other activities young families tend to do.  But we also did some hiking.  Just nothing of any height or difficulty. 

Our hikes were more like walks in the woods of no real distance.  Occasionally we’d stumble upon a view.  This past weekend, while sitting up on the Roost at the northern end of Evans Notch, my father came to mind.  It was only a half mile to the summit, then down another tenth of a mile to a brilliant viewpoint.  We finished off the hike by walking down the long way (seven tenths of a mile), to the southern terminus of the trail, and with an eight tenths of a mile road walk back to our car.

Yesterday, we drove to Wonalancet and hiked to the top of Mount Katherine (a 3.2 mile round trip).  Now if ever there was a mistaken classification here in the White Mountains it would be calling what was named after Katherine Sleeper a mountain.  It’s more like a hill.  But once on top of that splendid little summit there is a beautiful view across the bucolic farmland in Tamworth and the land rises slowly until it reaches the crescendo of Mount Chocorua off in the distance.  And as soon as I finish typing this up, Atticus and I will be heading to Lincoln to drop in on Steve Smith at the Mountain Wanderer to take care of some business.  When in town we’ll drive up through Franconia Notch and take advantage of Bald Mountain and Artists Bluff.  We used to take that 1.5 mile hike quite often when we lived in Lincoln and treated it as an afternoon or morning walk. 

Now in all fairness to these smaller peaks, or what could be considered mere bumps in relation to the rocky behemoths around them, a mountain doesn’t know whether it’s tall or small.  A mountain just is and seems quite happy with its circumstances.  All three of these sensational short hikes have something in common, for little peaks they give great bang for the buck views to the surrounding area.  As short as they may be, there is some work involved.  The climb up the Roost may only be half a mile but it rises up more than 550 feet in elevation.  According to the AMC’s White Mountain Guide (edited by Smith and Mike Dickerman), an elevation gain of one thousand feet over a mile is considered a steep climb.  (No wonder we were feeling out of breath in Evans Notch on Sunday.)  And that last scramble up to the top of Bald Mountain has you using your hands from time to time. 

Okay, so none of these are to be confused with Lafayette, Washington, Moosilauke, or the Kinsmans.  But presently we take what we can get.  Atticus and I are a long way off from the days of thinking nothing about trekking longer than twenty miles.  The little guy is halfway between eleven and twelve, but I don’t think his age would really slow him down.  Cancer has, however.  Actually, the cancer hasn’t.  It’s the chemo.  He doesn’t seem to miss that absent toe since its amputation earlier in the summer.  Heck, we climbed Black Cap less than three weeks after its removal.  But chemo is a different thing.  It’s fighting poison with poison, but the drug doesn’t differentiate between good cells and bad and it wreaks havoc on the body. 

Atticus’s body handled the first treatment well.  The second wasn’t so easy.  It got worse as the weeks went on, so much so that we’ve now moved his treatments from every three weeks to every four. There were even some days last week he chose not to go for our regular morning or evening walk. 

So while in the past I would have had nice things to say about the views offered from the Roost, Mount Katherine, and Bald Mountain and talked about them being pleasant “walks”, for us, they’ve turned into mountains.  At least for this summer and fall. 

My father loved such gentle hikes and it was a great way to work out his troop of children when we were on vacation.  But like the mountains themselves, Jack Ryan didn’t seem to consider them small at all.  He was away from his Framingham or Boston office and was in the woods, armed with a sense of wonder and a lightness of spirit.  And oh, what a pleasure those walks in the woods were – even if I was too young to appreciate them.  Those gentle seeds he sprinkled throughout our childhood turned into something much more for Atticus and me.  They turned into our way of life. 

As we wait patiently and hold onto ourselves throughout the chemo storm, I remember what my father thought of little mountains and those walks into a wooded wonderland and I feel it, too.  For now, they are all Atticus and I have as we scale our toughest mountain.  And yet, they feel like enough.  While sitting on those rocky viewpoints, the world is quite glorious to me – far more so than the view from our couch – and especially so when I look to my side and see one paw with a missing toe and a soul at peace as he too takes the views and fills his soul.

 

Atticus M. Finch takes in the view from The Roost.