Some highlights from a 37-mile circuit over the holiday weekend along the so-called “Super Pemi Loop” in New Hampshire’s Pemigewasset Wilderness. The purpose of this trip was i) to make progress on the peak-bagging list for New Hampshire’s 48 mountains over 4,000 feet and ii) to test gear and train for my upcoming trip to the John Muir Trail in California’s High Sierra.
Nature
Texas Clouds
As a teenager I studied the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Now, decades later, here I was on an airplane flight from New York to Texas, rereading Beyond Good and Evil, when I came across one of his most widely-quoted aphorisms: “When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”
I paused to ponder what Nietzsche might have meant. Was this a comment on the risk of excessive introspection? (He’d prefaced the statement by cautioning that people who fight monsters may themselves become monsters.) Or was he expressing a concern about the spirit of nihilism, for elsewhere he wrote that the self contains an “abysmal sickness, weariness, discouragement” – symptoms of the impoverishment of life that results when the “will to power” turns against itself.
The dictionary defines abyss as “a deep or seemingly bottomless chasm.” I imagined a tunnel deep within myself, reaching back into my distant memories, or perhaps even farther back into a realm of ancestral knowledge. Maybe this tunnel would lead all the way back to the beginnings of life, maybe it would contain clues to the primordial forces that animate living beings.
Looking up from the book for a moment, I glanced out the airplane window and found that staring straight at me was — a cloud.
This was a year or two ago. Since then this strange idea has stuck with me, namely, that deep within the abyss you might find a cloud….
Notes from the Adirondacks
Some random notes from a recent trip to the Adirondacks, the purpose of which was to make progress on climbing the 46 high peaks. This trip bagged me 8 more, bringing the total to 37 out of 46, and hopefully I’ll be able to make a couple more trips this summer and complete the goal…. Continue reading “Notes from the Adirondacks”
Random Notes from Dallas
Apologies to anyone who might be following this blog, I haven’t had time to post in a few months, having started a new job recently. The work is interesting, my new colleagues friendly, and it’s exciting to have the chance to make a difference. As an aside, the job requires frequent travel to Dallas, which is a change of pace from the Hudson Valley and a nice place to spend some time in the winter. True, there have been a few cold days with rainy gray skies and temperatures in the 30s (perfect hypothermia conditions if you were wandering around outside), and sometimes the northern wind comes howling across the flat open prairie so hard it might knock you over. But a few days later, the sun’s back out, the winds have calmed, and the temperature’s soaring into the 70s. And the next morning I’m surprised when the car thermometer reads 24 F…
Starting the November Grid
With twenty-nine ascents remaining in the Grid, it’s time to bring this aircraft in for landing…
Setting Foot in Yosemite (for the very first time)
My four-week southwestern pilgrimage is drawing to a close, and what stands between my current location in Mammoth Lakes and the San Francisco airport is. . . . Yosemite National Park, John Muir’s temple of the wilderness, in which “every rock seems to glow with life.”
This is sacred ground, with 4.3 million visitors last year. This year, having just reopened after a month’s closure due to forest fires, no doubt the park will be thronged. What’s needed is a thoughtful plan: an infiltration route from a remote trailhead to a suitable vantage point overlooking the valley, sparing me the crowds below. A chance encounter with a friendly trail volunteer supplies me with exactly this: a 16-mile route from Porcupine Creek Trailhead to North Dome and the top of Yosemite Falls.
Continue reading “Setting Foot in Yosemite (for the very first time)”
A Visit to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes
Working on the route from Zion to Grand Canyon, a little dot pops up on the map: Coral Pink Sand Dunes. Who doesn’t like scrambling around in sand? How could you not want to check out dunes with such a distinctive color?
Bishop Pass and Sabrina Lake
After three days in Lone Pine, California, the grand tour of Owens Valley continues, and now it’s time for Bishop. First stop: the public land visitor’s center, where I enter the lottery for an overnight permit for the Bishop Pass trail. It’s a popular trail, but there’s not much competition mid-week, and a little later that morning, after a series of instructions from the Rangers (where to park, where to camp, how to dispose of waste, how to keep bears from eating your food, and not to mention watch out for dead deer on the pass and the thunderstorm forecast for tomorrow afternoon) — I stroll out with permit, map, and rented bear canister in hand. Now it’s time to prepare for the mission: map the drive to the trailhead, study the route, buy food, pack my pack, and rig up a carrying strap for the bear canister so I can sling it over a shoulder, it being far too large to fit in my 20-liter day pack.
The next morning I’m up at 3:00 AM, determined to steal a march on the weather and secure a parking spot before the crowds….
More in Moab
My objectives: explore the desert, get acclimated to the heat, build back some running stamina without aggravating injuries, continue to condition the feet. The goal isn’t to overdo things, but still to do a lot, and this requires an aggressive tempo of operations: breakfast, run or hike, dinner, plan the next day’s activities, bed — repeat. The planning is time-consuming: there’s an overwhelming volume of information on the internet, and not all of equal quality. My best source turns out to be the motel clerk who’s been exploring this area with his wife for the last ten years.
Swinging Birches
A week or so ago, our friends Ann and Jules invited me and my wife over to dinner, and after an excellent meal, Ann played a recording for us. It was the poet Robert Frost, reading his poem, “birches“:
When I see birches bend to left and rightAcross the lines of straighter darker trees,I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stayAs ice-storms do.
Having just returned from a hike in the Catskills, I had to interject here and point out that in the mountains of southern New York, it’s not the birches that are bent over after winter storms, but rather the fir and spruce saplings, which are often crushed to the ground under heavy loads of snow. Robert Frost lived in New Hampshire, I explained, and no doubt conditions up there are different.
Needless to say, on the very next hike in the Catskills, I was overwhelmed by bent-over birches….
The Long Brown Path 