Enjoying The View
(photo by ASK)
Michael wanted to climb up a hill of boulders across from our Misery Pond campsite. Goats can do that. Those with good balance and with long legs, like Adam, can do that. My children, now in their twenties and still fearless, can do that.
I knew it was trouble from the start. These rocks, rather odd shaped and some 3- 5 feet across, had crevices up to a foot or more between them. That can be a problem unless one is surefooted and constantly in motion. Not that I’m a terribly bad climber – rough flat surfaces and switchbacks going uphill are fine by me. (I had once even hiked down the mountain opposite Mt. Blanc with a Swiss friend 30 years ago in the dark with tennis shoes and wearing only a tee shirt. In the course of that I learned that one could overcome the obvious fear, adjust to “see†in the dark, take small steps and feel one’s way down. But that seems like a long time ago.)
I got about a third of the way up, while Michael and Adam scampered up the direct face. Then I saw what I thought was a lateral way around the right side and perhaps a path that might be made through the pine trees and scrub adjoining it.
Nature and terrain, I learned from early journeys and trekking around hills on Greek islands, can be deceiving. The side route was no easier and had an even steeper assent, not visible until I got there. Ariana Huffington’s encouragement to fearlessness was appealing, but boulders have no consciousness, I thought.
So I did what every self-respecting 59 year old, still semi-athletic, highly competitive, and type A male in the wilderness trying to keep up with his more agile friends would do – I stopped! Then I leaned against a nearby boulder, surveyed the brightly lit pond, marveled at the myriad of colors of Maine trees across the way, daydreamed about people and places, and waited for Adam and Michael to come down and eventually join me.
It wasn’t so much a defeat as an acknowledgement. Look, at least I was there. Others from our camping group, more experienced and able, had retired from active camping service or had other obligations. The camping trip is important to Michael, who refers to it as his vacation. Adam had asked for these dates six months ago to accommodate his schedule.
Showing up was part of the obligation of friendship, even though I was the least experienced in camping skills and knew that something along the trip would likely test my limits. Not that I could not easily have been elsewhere – I had business or speaking engagements in Salt Lake, London, Reston (VA), and Brussels in that order during that time and I was trying to figure out which trips to jettison.
Michael and Adam soon after climbed down and caught up with me. They looked around and said that the view at the summit was much better. They had finished the bottle of fairly good Spanish red wine brought up to the top as a reward. Sorry there was none left for me. (I had packed it on the trip from Boston.) They chided me for not making it all the way, but seemingly accepted it. All of which was OK with me.
The measure of late middle age, I concluded, is accepting that you can’t do it all, our bodies will deteriorate, and what was once perhaps surmountable now really is a big pile of semi-passable boulders. There are competencies we probably cannot go back and master, and the choices at times are whether to take the next step or stop, take a look around and at least momentarily enjoy as far as you can get.
Are you calling me a goat?
From my view, atop that rocky hill, it’s not about what I can do and you can’t, it’s about not having to share that bottle of wine. As a middle child in a family of four and married to a compromising middle child, I’ve shared enough. Why do you think I scouted and climbed that hill before suggesting it as our day’s hike? I knew part of the view would be your orange hat below as we sipped what turned out to be an especially delightful full-bodied wine with a rich, fruity bouquet.
But seriously, you touch on many relevant issues. You don’t read the blog, but there’s a guy here, his name is rakkity, who, though only in his “very late forties,†is older than all of us and but for recent injuries , he hasn’t slowed down a bit. His wilderness trips aren’t accompanied by five course meals and enough liquor to keep Richard Burton happy. No, he’s still back- packing into the mountains, and climbing like your goat, and still playing racquetball as you and I did twenty years ago.
Now where am I going with this? Is it that there’s always someone more competent? No…oh, I know, it’s my not knowing (and I bet Adam will second this) that you even cared whether you were keeping up? As in our racquetball games all those years ago, you do hide your competitive instincts, except maybe in your comment about active camping service. Service? This ain’t the military. After all, in terms of accepting limitations, don’t we mostly just sit around our campfire and talk?
Lastly, boy do I relate to life being a big pile of semi-passable boulders. And don’t they get bigger every year.
Comment by michael — October 15, 2006 @ 8:40 am
When I first spied that slope I thought of it as dangerous talus and assumed we’d have to find another way up if we were to attempt the summit, and I even investigated on the map possible trails up the back side. But when I crept down to the shore one morning to catch a picture of Mike shaving but heard him whistle from way above me only to find him in mere minutes most of the way up that “talus”, I knew it would be doable. But it wasn’t exactly “easy”.
More later on the disparate experience of not stopping, and especially the last few yards to the summit, but I know, too, the well-phrased sense that “Showing up was part of the obligation of friendship”. A big part of the glue of these trips, and thanks for identifying that. Not a burden, but a commitment. Not generally voiced aloud, but appreciated.
But one correction — we shared the wine out on that slope when we came back down and rejoined you. I may have drunk most of it, true, but none on the summit …
Comment by adam — October 15, 2006 @ 10:08 am
Ah, those friendship obligations. Are we truly down to three? How soon before one of us is alone, not searching for panoramic views, but companions? How perfect a metaphor than the Debsconeag guy with dog, having long outlasted his five friends?
Btw, I agree with Adam. My first concern was kicking boulders onto the man below.
Comment by michael — October 15, 2006 @ 10:20 am
So not true: “So I did what every self-respecting 59 year old, still semi-athletic, highly competitive, and type A male in the wilderness trying to keep up with his more agile friends would do – I stopped!”
Comment by Jennifer — October 15, 2006 @ 4:22 pm
Apropos of anon, Jennifer, I read The History of Love and loved it so much, I finished the last page and started over. Unfortunately, I had to return it to the library before its second ending.
As to you, Mark, congratulations on your new choice. Stopping, looking, and enjoying sounds just great to me.
Nice story, too.
Comment by anon — October 15, 2006 @ 6:20 pm
You’re spot on Jennifer. The last few feet of this climb was particularly treacherous, and after I made it and saw Adam clawing his way up behind me, I wanted to step on his fingers and watch him flail through space to become grape jelly on the rocks below.
Comment by michael — October 15, 2006 @ 8:31 pm
“…there’s always someone more competent…” One of my idols is Finis Mitchell, the Old Man of the Winds. I remember meeting him on a remote trail 1n 1972. He was 71 and carried a huge back pack. Before WWII, in his 30s & 40s he stocked fish in the high lakes of the Wind River Mtns, and took fishing clients up to catch descendents of those same fish. Throughout his 50s, he continued making back pack trips into the mountains, out-hiking all of his buddies. In his 60s and early 70s he was still hiking as fast as his younger friends. He finally had to stop back packing when he injured his knee at 73, but he kept on hiking and walking in the mountains through his 80s. He died at 94 in 1994.
Comment by rakkity — October 16, 2006 @ 9:54 am
In 1969 Ray Applegate and I hiked down the Grand Canyon to the Colorado and camped by the cold river for two days. We had no idea how hard the hike would be, we simply followed the crowd,except that all of our companions stopped well short of the bottom. Many hours into our never-ending walk, scorched by the heat and now chilled by the sunless canyon floor,and feeling like we’d never find the river, we passed two women on the way back up – a mother and her blind daughter.
Comment by michael — October 16, 2006 @ 10:46 am
The other day, I received a call from a high school student asking me if she could interview me. I said “sure”, and we planned a meeting time. But her father’s car broke down, so she couldn’t come, and we decided to do a phone interview. We talked for about an hour about astronomy, how I had gotten interested in it, and what the future would be like. What she could end up doing in astronomy. I could hear her pecking on keys, taking notes. Never did I have a clue about her, except that she was very bright, until I googled her later (she has a distinctive name). She was part of a NASA student project two years ago–a group of blind students who learned, hands-on, about Mission Control.
My jaw dropped when I saw that.
There are no limits. Weienmeyer (who’s called “Blindenmeyer” by his climbing friends) proved that
on Everest.
Comment by rakkity — October 16, 2006 @ 3:55 pm
S, *congrats*!
Evidently the friendship obligations extend to blogging too…which means you’ll also have to read and comment periodically.
Thanks for filling in for those of us that have retired from camping, obligations or no. Somehow can’t warm up to the idea of sleeping an inch above cold, lumpy ground anymore…my version of semi-passable boulders???
Nice tale! Who knew you could write so well? Do it again!
Comment by smiling Dan — October 17, 2006 @ 8:25 pm
Good thing Dan had a comment still fitting on the scroll bar of “Recent Comments” otherwise I would never know anon had read “History of Love” and re-read. I re-read it too. Were you trying to figure out (especially) what I was trying to figure out? I was trying to figure out when I should have 100% understood something important about — shoot, what’s his name? I mean the friend, not the main adult character. Now it’s been a while (and 89 new names) since I read it. Why are you “anon,” anyway? I really am not clever enough about blog comments to have a clue.
Comment by Jennifer — October 17, 2006 @ 10:36 pm
Jennifer,
(Imaginary) friend, Bruno? Or friend Zvi Litvinoff, who stole his book? I was trying to remember how his son, aka Jacob Marcus, got involved with the young Alma and her interpreter mother. (Which was sheer chance, her mother’s having translated with poignancy something in Spanish, right?) After reading the story,though astonished with how it all came together, I couldn’t quite remember how it all came together. Now I want to read it again, so though I denied myself the pleasure of buying it, and waited until it was available from the Acton Memorial Library, I have now bought it for Christmas, for either Matthew or my niece Kate. I will provide the winner with an envelope stamped and addressed to the other. And in the meantime, I own it myself, happy glutton.
Comment by anon — October 20, 2006 @ 9:04 pm
Oh, and as to anon, I was looking for a pun between anonymous and my happening soon identity, after godma and waiting wife and such began to feel sort of dated. I, too, feel lacking in the clever gene, and just wait for momentary inspiration.
Comment by anon — October 20, 2006 @ 9:07 pm
Tudo que você precisa fazer é tomar uma ação hoje. http://minhtuanbao.com/smf/index.php?action=profile;u=9780
Comment by Jamaal — December 12, 2017 @ 1:46 pm