The Sound of Silence

Back around June, a few nagging issues I’d been nursing seemed to just explode into a synergistic rage, and I really had no choice but to back off, slow down (a lot), and nevertheless continue to eat ice cream. Faced with that, the number of ways I’ve thought of to lead off a running blog post when there’s been precious little running worth talking about have been staggering. Yet before I’ve sat down to write against any of them, being that that hasn’t risen to a high priority given the dearth of running excitement, most of those ideas have faded or been eclipsed by new ones.

One of them was to play off the word ‘funk’. As in, I’m in a running funk. Then, for artistic fun, play off on the possibilities: Funk, as in music. Funk, as in a spice used by a local high-brow gourmet pizza grill. Funk, as in the smell of a hiker after days in the trail (which really raises questions about the use of that spice on food). Funk…and Wagnalls, which, if you’re old, means something. And of course Mrs. Funk, who I didn’t have for second grade, but Sis did.

Well, that was a paragraph worth ignoring, now, wasn’t it?

But that’s how the running news has been all summer. Stunning silence, void of anything interesting, which led me to call this the Sound of Silence. But while running has been a sound of silence, that doesn’t mean I can’t sate my half-dozen followers with something else interesting. After all, all run and no alternate fun makes Jack a dull boy (whoever Jack is). And besides, sometimes silence is a good thing, or at least the silence of complete isolation, where nobody can hear you scream, or more accurately, nobody can hear you curse. Cursing happens when you get to that “Oh ****!” moment where you question the decision tree that brought you to this moment – and your sanity – the kind of moment I found myself in a couple of weeks back.

How I got there does make a decent story. But to properly tell this story, I need to set the stage. This is going to take a few minutes, so hold on. I promise it won’t hurt a bit. At least not you.

Besides running, as frequent readers of this series likely know, hiking is another of my passions. I completed my New Hampshire Four-Thousand Footers in 1995. Accomplishment of said feat is accompanied by (upon application to and acceptance by the Four Thousand Footer Committee) the presentation of a ‘scroll’ – alias, an artistic certificate – at an annual awards ceremony. Back in ’95, I received mine by mail; I didn’t make it to the festivities.

But two summers ago, Dearest Daughter determined that before she disembarked for her extremely green college, she wanted to complete her own circuit of the White Mountains, so, accompanying her, I completed my ‘second tour’. Though no new scroll was involved this time for me, we did attend the gala to receive hers, and heard about the plethora of other summit lists out there that I’d not given much attention to prior, such as the New England 67 and the Northeast 111; the former consisting of all the four-thousand-foot summits in New England, and the latter adding New York’s Adirondacks and two rather forgettable summits in the Catskills (and curiously consisting of one hundred and fifteen, not one hundred eleven summits). As each recipient of these lofty list awards was called up, they’d be asked which summit was the last they scaled to complete the crusade. Other than those who finished their ‘111’ in the ‘Dacks, the answer was almost universal: North Brother.

I decided right then that I’d finish my ‘67’, and it wouldn’t be on North Brother. Be different.

The reason that North Brother is almost always last is that it’s so far out there, you get points just for making it to the trailhead. It’s buried deep in Baxter State Park, which is buried deep in northern Maine. I’d been there once – in 1984 – by accident, travelling homeward with my college wing-man Scott after an excursion to the Canadian Maritimes. Returning through Houlton, Maine, we stared at Mount Katahdin, the centerpiece of the park, for what seemed an endless stretch while driving the nothingness of I-95, nothingness so extreme that only a few years earlier had the road been expanded from two-lane limited access to a full-fledged Interstate. Our resistance worn down, we were forced by the allure of the mountain to bunk down and climb the beast the next morning. Since then, thirty-four years have elapsed, and though I’ve passed through Bangor dozens of times, I’ve never ventured further north.

North is what you need to reach Baxter in general, and certainly North Brother. First go to Bangor, then keep going. Pass Orono, home to the University of Maine, the last bastion of anything sizable, and keep going. Drive fifty more miles (at speed limit seventy-five, there’s nothing in the way), get off, go another dozen miles to Millinocket, a once-thriving paper mill town now searching for its next gravy train. From there, you got it, keep going, seventeen more miles to Baxter’s southwest gate. And from there, another thirteen, on a twenty-mile-an-hour dirt road – nearly an hour further – just to reach the trailhead. Adding the detail that Baxter is preserved in a highly primitive state – there is no power, no phone service, no cell phone signal, you realize that at this point, you’re a long way from just about anything. It’s a whole lotta’ north, both literally and figuratively. At least the gods were smiling on me, literally leading me north with a rainbow.

But back up a moment here, as there’s more stage-setting. Remember, we’re getting to a moment.

Before this expedition, I was three summits short of the ‘67’: Old Speck, the peak I’d designated to be the last ascent on this quest, North Brother itself, and a lonely and nearly flat spot called Hamlin Peak, on a shoulder north of the famous and busy Baxter Peak, the main summit of Katahdin, probably the most spectacular mountain in the Northeast. Thirty-four years back (almost to the day), Scott and I summitted Baxter, oblivious to peak lists (and many other things in life). Hamlin hadn’t registered on the radar screen. Now, to complete this odyssey, a return was needed to notch that high spot; a flat spot, as noted, but only flat after you’ve done all the hard work of going up all the steep bits (and worse, later, coming back down). And you don’t do it without the glory of the main summit (I mean, seriously…) so of course a return to Baxter Peak was in order, and besides, it was an unparalleled day. Hamlin followed, lonely, windblown, and spectacular in its own right, and that was merely Day One, which meant I reached the forlorn and remote Day Two trailhead for the Brothers on an already somewhat worn body.

And I said the Brothers, not just North Brother, because as it turns out, in yet another of Mother Nature’s practical jokes, the three other summits adjoining North Brother – South Brother, Coe, and Fort – don’t rise to the four-thousand-foot threshold, but they do rise high enough to land on yet another peak list, the New England Hundred Highest. The NEHH list has some seriously obscure summits on it, and the likelihood of ever finishing it is slim, but it’s well recognized that if you’ve made it to the trailhead of North Brother (Points!) and you think there’s ever a chance in your life that you might find the NEHH in reach, well, you’d better knock off those other three summits while you’re there. It’s a long way back. And not only that, but the last one – Fort – is accessible only via an off-trail herd-path, read, bushwhack, from the summit of North Brother. In other words, if you don’t do it and you want it later, you’ll have to do North Brother all over again. And you’ll hate yourself.

To knock off all four summits in a day, there’s a trail loop that nabs Coe and South Brother, a spur off that loop to North Brother, then the aforementioned bushwhack to Fort. But to add more flavor to this adventure than just the bushwhack, the marked trail itself ascends a rock slide on Coe that every online summit post and even the ranger at the gate of the park warn you not to even think about descending. Though the quite useless Appalachian Mountain Club guide describes the trail as simply climbing “moderate at first, then steep”, and though others not so spooked by steep drops might not break a sweat on it, to yours truly, who loves high places but hates edges (for those of you who know Baxter, no, I will never do the Knife Edge), such endeavors chill the soul more than just a bit, and the prospect of facing this solo, miles from anywhere, miles from anyone, chilled the soul a considerably large a bit.

Because yes, this excursion, unfortunately, was solo. That wasn’t the plan, but Intrepid Hiking Companion ran smack into a nasty health event wall the day before our departure and landed in an extended hospital stay (*snif*). Now, solo on the trails to Katahdin’s main summit isn’t solo; there are plenty of souls all around. Solo from there to Hamlin Peak was entirely solo, but not particularly challenging. Solo descending from Hamlin was a bit frighteningly solo, with more than a few, ‘don’t trip here’ moments. But solo in the Brothers? That’s seriously solo. And when you finally get to that trailhead and find it nearly deserted – just one vehicle in the lot, who’s park destination ticket indicates they’re not going where you’re going, so you’ll be facing that slide Very Much Alone (not to mention the bushwhack later) – and you’ve been staring at some seriously sharp mountains on the drive in that gave you pause… Yeah, solo. Like, oh crap, solo. And the tone of the moment wasn’t helped by the fact that the day’s forecast of glorious sun instead became a somewhat ominous hazy fog, which I’d learn later was actually smoke from distant fires.

I paced around the trailhead a few times, pondering the wisdom that had plopped me in the middle of nowhere facing a significant challenge with, as previously noted, no one to hear me scream.

Just do it. (Sorry, Nike.) Start walking. And at that first junction, where a left meant just knocking off North Brother and going home, quick, turn right, start the loop before you think too much. The disappearance of the few wet footprints I’d seen on that first segment and the plethora of cobwebs attacking from all sides only served to assure me that the party in that other pickup truck had indeed gone straight to North Brother, so it was me versus slide; me and me alone.

As the trail rose up the valley between Coe and a rather uniquely named mountain called OJI (yes, all capitals, named for the one-time shape of rockslides on its south face), a cliff came into view on Coe. Naw, that’s a cliff, that’s not the slide. Naw, that can’t possibly be the slide. No, um, bleeping way. (You can’t get a decent picture of it from the trail, so I cheated and stole this one, probably taken from OJI, from that infinite source of the Internet.)

You know where this is going.

Boil the frog time. By the time you realize you’re in it, and yes, what you said couldn’t be it is indeed it, well, you’re in it. By the time it gets so steep that you’re holding on at every step, testing each handhold, each foothold, three points of contact, steady, take the next step, can’t afford a single mistake, it’s too late. You’re not going back down this thing. There’s only one way out, and it’s up.

Plenty of others have climbed this, and many who aren’t as edge-nervous as I may not have given it a passing harrumph. And to be fair, much of it was sticky, competent rock. And then it wasn’t anymore. And I’m climbing the left, where the summit posts had indicated the trail rose, since blazes were few and far between. And the cursing has begun. And then there’s no more way to go up, really, no possible way to grab a hold of anything else, no toe-holds, stuck, and I realize that fifteen feet below me, I spy a blaze that says I had to cross this open scape of cliff to the other side. Which means I have to back down, first, just to get to where I can cross. And let go of the vegetation on the sidelines that’s been my lifeline.

Solo. Trip just once and it’s going to suck, even if you’re with buds. Trip just once with nobody to run for help, and…

The crossing was somewhat vertiginous, but not too bad, but I cheated. You were supposed to cross halfway, scurry up to the next rock shelf, unprotected, and cross the other half. I opted to just make the crossing on the shelf where I started, which got me to some marginal grips on the right side, but stuck leaning into the hill against a chest-high rock with no footholds, no rock handholds, and only those marginal scrub grips, not strong enough to trust to heave my trivial mass over the granite. Obviously, that’s why you were supposed to scurry up the middle. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t…

It’s only taken me three pages to set up this moment, and that’s before I added the photos. But you have to realize how remotely alone I found myself, about eighty percent up a crazy one-way-up rock slide, miles away from anything, unable to figure out how to get over this damn rock, and yes, very, very, solo.

Yes, this was it, that “Oh ****!” moment. Why on Earth did I do this?

But we ask the same question at Mile Twenty-Three of just about every marathon, and yet we come back for more. It’s the runner mentality. It’s the human mentality.

Five minutes may have passed, or thirty seconds; I’m not sure. I scoped out every bit of loose vegetation till I found something with what seemed like just maybe enough purchase, gave a heave, and crawled up that boulder. Seemingly within a minute I’d reached the top of the slide, escaped onto a narrow, steep, but dirt-and-tree-lined trail, and downright sprinted upward, heart thumping wildly not from the effort but from the mere escape, wanting to put as much space between me and that slide as quickly as I could. At that moment, I didn’t give a crap about any of the summits on the day’s dance card. Bushwhack to Fort? Are you kidding? I had given up the New England Hundred Highest right then, right there. I was emotionally spent. I didn’t care.

But we cross the line, spent physically, wrecked mentally, and yet we come back for more. Maybe we take a little time to heal, but we come back. It’s the runner mentality. It’s the human mentality.

Summit Coe. Hike the ridge then bang up the side trail to South Brother. Back to the ridge, onto the spur, up the nasty eroded path to North Brother (where I finally found the couple from that one lonely trailhead vehicle, brightening my mood). Summit North Brother – that’s Sixty-Six – and there, there, there it was, a mile across the scrubby krummholz, Fort. Forlorn Fort.

Another Nike Moment. Don’t overthink this. Cairns marked the start of the herd path. Plunge into the scrub. Not too hard to follow at times, a little wild at others. Over a scattered boulder field, and there it was, the summit of Fort, graced by the chassis of the radio from an aircraft which crashed there in 1944. Ten minutes, get off before you forget which boulders brought you up and which ones you’ll need to find again to get back on that herd path, since there are no cairns on this end. Cuts and scratches and bruises, pain fades from your mind. Back on North Brother, damaged, but it’s done, save the long walk out, now encountering all those folks who got a late start and now, only now, let you know that you probably weren’t as alone as you thought. But you didn’t know that at the time.

Having lived to see another day, the next morning found me slogging ten-minute pace on a tour of the streets of Millinocket, a tour that doesn’t take too long and doesn’t encounter any resistance in the way of traffic on a Saturday morning. My legs responded as one might expect, given the punishment they’d endured over the last two days, but tainted further by the persistent wounds of time that brought on this summer’s funk. More time off hasn’t cured the malady, at least not yet. I’m not entirely certain what will at this point; the drop off was sudden and severe.

In no way am I throwing in the towel. There have been plenty of setbacks over the last thirteen-plus years of this running adventure. There’s no point in not trying to get past this one. As if to convince myself of this resolve, of course I went ahead and registered for next year’s Boston.

But when the thing that will stop me from running, or at least stop me from being somewhat competitive, finally hits – and it will, let’s not kid ourselves, I am getting old – I know that the running mentality is there. The mentality that drives you to do things you’re not sure you can, and even when you hit those moments that nearly break you, brings you back to take on some more. The longer any of us can hold onto that, the more we’ll get to live out our years on our terms.

And it also gives us chances to curse out loud in the middle of nowhere. Which, let’s face it, is kind of fun.