Note: no quotations from Henry Thoreau in this post, but I like to think a similar spirit suffused his mountains.
The other day, while small-stepping along the trails that lead to and from Walden, I got to thinking about footwork. A lifetime of trails has kept me reasonably adept at the juggling cadence needed for New England trails and their studding of rocks and roots, often disguised by leaf litter. But it was a sharp downhill that triggered this running meditation.
Not long ago, I’d heard from a younger friend who runs mountain trails. I’d asked for a report about a loop I like, and I had gotten back a detailed account of a daylight-long ramble. At its close he wrote, “the last five miles go by pretty quickly with a bomber descent off Flume and a flat mile out to the road.” ‘Bomber descent,’ I thought as I short-stepped down the sharp, forty-foot drop off an esker; ‘no way no way no way no no way…’ – this one-syllable no-mantra set up with my stepping.
All of New England’s mountains genuflect to their northern shaper, the glaciers, gone to water for now, but likely to cycle back at some point. The upended, frost-split rock is their residue, and everyone who visits our uplands must contend with its odd angles.
As boy turned loose for the first time from parental supervision, I began to stride and run through the White Mountains. I was seventeen; I was in a hurry. Beyond each summit was another, and that was where I wanted to be.
Rock-strewn Way
Memory’s scrapbook holds images from a summer day moving north along the ridge that joins Mt. Washington to Mt. Jefferson; I am with a 17-year-old friend who is new to these hills and their jumbled trails; I am his trail-tutor. “Look,” I say, eyeing the half-mile descent of Mt. Clay’s flank, “it’s more fun to run this.” I don’t think so,” he replies, and he starts down in a stolid fashion. “At least take my pack,” I say, and he returns, shoulders it (only a day pack) and turns downhill again. I watch him grow steadily smaller.
The amperage loose in my system has me edgy, which is another way to say sharp. I see my first five steps and figure the rest will appear. They do. I land on various edges, listen to the hollow clunk of my boots and odd knocking stones, and when I can’t find my next step immediately, I do what my mountain-running counselor taught me at fourteen – I “go up.”
“Going up,” jumping higher when you see no landing, may sound counterintuitive, but it works. In those few airborne seconds, you find your next step, even if it is a thin edge of stone; and then you quick-step on. This is rock-dancing, and in that era of life that was my way.
Up There – Franconia Ridge
That memory leads to appreciation for the ways our walking changes over time. And so, even as I walk and shuffle the same trails as my younger friend and my younger self, I leave the bombing to them and dance now in short steps. They are my little feats.
Post note: surely, when you consider the ground Henry Thoreau covered on his walks and in the hills, he too must have “danced” or “bombed” some of his descents.
