The Very Best

12/7/2013


The Very Best


I am home now.  I have been home for almost three months.  But my thoughts are still filled daily, with the trail, and the people that I met while on it.  I talked to two of them this week by phone.  It was so good to hear their voices....to experience their personalities.   I think that I am beginning to realize just how deeply the AT has planted itself into me. 

I am gradually organizing photos and videos.  Yes.  I am reliving my hike.  Today I am immersed in the thought of water.... running water.

There is, I suspect........ one special place.... one experience...... for each thru-hiker on the trail..... that stands above everything else.... something so unexpected..... something so spectacular.... so mesmerizing..... that it overwhelms one's senses..... leaves you in breathless awe.
That moment for me, was the Beaver Brook Cascades, on the north face of Mount Moosilauke', at the start of the White Mountains in New Hampshire.  

I was blissfully unaware of and unprepared for the Beaver Brook Cascades.  Nobody told me.....I can not believe that nobody told me.

Two of us summited Moosilauke' together that day...... experiencing rain ...which briefly became small hail.... with two distinct lightning strikes.  We were exposed and did not linger up top.  I wanted off that flat, treeless, top.  Now!  We worked our way down to the shelter.  I think it was about 1500 feet below the 4800 plus, foot summit.  I will have to check the stats on those elevation guesses.  There were other hikers taking refuge from the rain, at the shelter.  Ironically, they had witnessed one of the two lightning strikes.  It hit a tree down there, not up on top, where we had been.  The person I had summited with had a sore Achilles Tendon, and decided to stay at the shelter with the others.  I decided to get off the mountain alone..... intending to stealth camp at it's base.  Hell.  It was only a mile and a half downhill.  I wanted to be fresh for The two Kinsman Peaks in the morning.  I was unaware of the difficult descent ahead and completely unaware of the cascades.
So it is that ignorance can be bliss.     

I know now..... that scrambling downhill..... on wet rock..... on that north face, is probably the toughest descent on the AT.  It demands total concentration.   But the cascades blunted my awareness of the descent.

Although I fell twice on the wet rock, I could think of nothing else.....no thought .......save that of  falling water....the sight and sound....the feel and taste, of rushing water.  I breathed the mist of rushing water into my lungs.  The cascades seemed a living thing.  For me.....it was the right time....the right place.  It was an intensely mystical experience.  I felt the overwhelming joy filling up my soul.  And the rain fed the cascades.

I had difficulty narrating.......emotion choking my voice.....as I stopped again and again.....and yet again...... to video the falling water.  I simply could not get enough water.
  

The cascades flowed down and down....and down.....unendingly.  And then they magically fell farther.  The cascades and I descended the mountain together.  For me....for all of my senses....for my mind...for my whole being....that falling water on the north face of the mountain, was my moment.... the absolute peak of joyous envelopment in natural beauty.
I was at peace......... and it was good.