I’m back from New Hampshire, and still a little out of it. (Partly, I think, due to the fact that I gave myself a sunburn this morning without noticing it.) But anyway…
This was the week of the hikes that did not happen. Today’s was the most important of these: I’d been planning to climb Wildcat with Dan, to warm up for our insane “Hike ALL the Presidentials” thing next month, and because it’s two of the five 4000-footers he hasn’t done. But last night the forecast said it was going to drizzle on us all day, instead of just part of it; so we called it off. And then, of course, it didn’t rain that much, and we’re kicking ourselves; though I think we would still have gotten rained on this morning, and had crappy views this afternoon.
A week ago, my Aunt and I did hike a small mountain (I will try to put photos here, if anyone not on FB wants to see them); we’d initially, however, thought to do Mt. Wonalancet, another fairly insignificant height, but one that had dominated much of my hiking career, since it sits right above the trailheads for Dicey’s Mill and Mounts Passaconaway and Whiteface. But then we decided that it was likely to be blackfly central, and headed further north – and still got blackflies.
And on Wednesday I’d thought to climb King Ravine, an epic glacial cirque on the north side of Mt Adams…but I’d driven to Plymouth the day before to see Peter,* and gotten home late: and the thought of that much more driving – and burning that much extra fossil fuel just for me, because I’m that kind of person – was unappealing. So I dithered a bit, and played some video games,** and then decided that it was too nice a day NOT to go hiking: I’d just do a quick hike, do Wonalancet after all. But then when I got to the ridiculous beautifulness that is Wonalancet,*** Whiteface just looked too…majestic and interesting. SO I climbed it instead.
Whiteface has some interesting associations with me, I reflected as I went up. Am I making it up that Mom climbed it while pregnant? If so, I climbed it …about ten or twelve years later, as a kid; then ten or twelve years after that on my honeymoon. So: One chunk of life as a child; one as a pre-teen and teen and college student; one married to Grace and getting divorced. Under that schema, I’ve moved on to a fourth…let’s hope eighth, not quarter…of my life. May it end better than this last one has!
…But overall, it wasn’t a great week in NH. I mean, it was nice to get out of town, avoid the heat, build sand-things, and perhaps most of all not have to worry about roommates or neighbors: pile random stuff on the dining room table, walk around the house naked singing hymns if I felt like it, that kinda thing. But as I’ve alluded to here, it featured a lack of guests and a lot of computer games and job applications; which meant that the time didn’t sit heavy on me, but were also things I could have done as effectively in Portland. Possibly even while working and/or having a social life.
* One of the people whom I’d briefly thought might be coming up to visit this week smokes weed; I thought of him as I drove past the vegetable stand that, thanks to some local ordinance or just to being scofflaws who live in an isolated part of town, advertise marijuana right alongside the lettuce and artisanal bread.
** In the absence of guests, I brought my computer along, and also (as I may have posted) spent some time doing job applications.
*** In this case, I’m referring not to the mountain but to the nearby…village would be a bit of an exaggeration; “cluster of farms” is more on target--which lies, as I say, right at the foot of the mountains, straddling the corners of the boundaries of four towns.
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