Spring and Summer Sketches
Early April and I’m slogging through five inches of wet snow on what is usually an easy stroll at the base of Mt Greylock. I haven’t even been out an hour and already my legs ache. My ancient Vasque leather boots feel heavier after each step. Hearty chickadees taunt me from the snow covered branches and they keep ten yards ahead as I grind my way up the trail. My thickest fleece jacket is now wrapped around my waist although the morning is neither sunny nor warm. I am working up a good sweat. It doesn’t seem quite possible that less than a month ago I was sunning myself on a massive rock slab at The Grand Canyon’s south rim. But it’s true.
The short loop is taking me longer than I remember, however I haven’t walked it in years. I cross the closed off Rockwell Road and leave the chickadees behind and the silence of the woods assures me in some primal essence that Nature is going about her mysterious ways. I lean against a tree, close my eyes and try to get in touch with whatever that might be. Am I successful? Time, I guess, will tell. I take my small satoris when I can.
The wind picks up and by the time I get to the Jeep it has started to snow again. The view down to Pontoosuc Lake is obscured by the passing tempest. Twenty minutes later I’m sitting in front of the pellet stove’s flame, sipping Japanese tea and watching out Fran’s picture window the scattering snowflakes.
On another trail coming down from Berry Pond. I’m wearing light boots. Wrong choice. I’m walking in a river. The day warmed fast and the path is now a stream. My feet are drenched. I kick up a couple of wary deer, smallish does. Later, closer to the parking lot several turkeys fly off at my approach. They make a tremendous noise as they hurl themselves through the still bare trees. The sky is clearing, and patches of blue grow bigger and bigger. The woods are on the verge of spring’s great awakening. I can sense it. The damp smells have changed over the past several days. The snow has been melting quickly which accounts for the water flowing down the trail. By the beaver dam green grasses are starting to shoot up through the detritus of last autumn’s fallen foliage.
Two dispatches from Half Dome this week. A young girl slipped to her death while navigating the cables. A terrible accident. Heartbreaking. The grieving father, who was climbing with her, called the wooden steps and bolted cables “unnecessarily dangerous.” One can hardly blame him his anger. He is surely devastated. The story brought me to tears.
I have been on those cables twice. They are a bit tricky in spots and get more challenging when the rock is wet. Fair warnings are posted and anyone who decides to make the final climb to the summit should be aware of the risk. Both times when my group arrived at the base of the cables a few of our party looked up and chose not to go the rest of the way to the top.
There are terrible mishaps every year in our national parks. In most cases, as John Reilly, the sage of Fish Camp reminds us, people don’t grasp that “park” doesn’t mean Disney. Animals are wild, rivers are swift and cold, rocks are slick, storms and weather are unpredictable.
A week later a 92-year-old man completed the climb. A few months ago, I stood at Curry Village looking up at the granite face and doubted that I would ever make it to the summit again. But now, Everett Kalin, a retired theology professor has given me something to ponder. (I’m so bold sitting here on my deck, a very long way from California, on this sunny afternoon enjoying a glass of delicious red wine.)
Pak Wu and I have always figured that into our old age we would at least always be able to shuffle up Sentinel Dome even if the 1.1-mile stroll took us a couple of hours. Sore backs, tricky knees, hangovers and poorly healed ankles be cursed.
Always after these types of accidents there is talk of replacing the cables with something safer, easier to climb, more convenient for the inexperienced. I hope this doesn’t happen. Half Dome is already, by my opinion, too crowded, too busy. On summer weekends two hundred and fifty permits are issued. When a mountain becomes a trophy instead of an adventure something is lost. I did not climb Half Dome either time so I could have bragging rights. I wanted to see the rock up close. I wanted the views. I wanted to sit above 8000 feet and smell the air and look for falcons. I wanted to see from a different vantage point the other mountains I had climbed. I didn’t feel like I was running a race or adding another hike to my checklist. I wanted to learn something new about the park I love so much.
On that first time on the cables as we reached the top afternoon thunderheads were building up over Toloumne Meadow. Faster, we thought, than might be safe. We took a few pictures and did not tarry. The few other people who were on the summit that day started back down before us leaving our group of four alone as the sky grew darker.
The high Sierra weather in July and August is tricky. On this day the clouds dissipated almost as quickly as they gathered. On the long hike back down to Curry Village it did not rain. But those darkening few minutes exposed on that massive rock certainly added a sense of just how fragile and insignificant we truly are. Our transience was unmistakable.
The second time on top the sun was shining and we were able to linger longer. The summit was busy with hikers coming and going. The cables were crowded, and I feel some of the charm is stolen from the experience when shared with so many people. My desire for lonely places is nothing new. The mountains I have gone up alone or with one or two dear friends are the ones I remember with the most pleasure. Hoffman and Dana jump to mind.
Another national park fatality. A kid, college student, slipped at one of the overlooks at the Grand Canyon’s south rim and fell 400 feet down the cliff. He was hiking off the trail and lost his footing. I’ve walked along the south rim and there are definitely tricky spots and there are plenty of warnings to stay on the trail. But again, the word “park” does not mean amusement park.
There have been three other deaths in Grand Canyon this summer, from heat stroke and dehydration. This is the park’s most common cause of yearly fatalities. My recent visit to the south rim was on a clear and cool high desert morning. The air was crisp and the trails uncrowded. I paused at many overlooks and rested often on large rock outcroppings. Hawks flew silently way below me, and the muddy and sluggish Colorado seemed not to be flowing at all. Such is the optical illusion given the distance to the canyon bottom. And of course, as always with me, the further away from the visitor center I got and the less people I saw the more relaxed I became. I have always been a man of the outskirts. I sat, for I’m not sure how long, at the edge of the cliff under a fathomless blue sky and devoured the quiet and the solitude. The possibility of becoming a desert rat holds great appeal. I was later told by a lovely ranger that it’s never too late. A piece of advice that is truly tonic for my heart.
But back here in the semi wilds of Berkshire County I hike tame trails and survey some of the first blooms of the year. I find on one path red trillium and higher up the mountain the splotchy green and grey leaves and yellow blossoms of the trout lily. Ferns and wild leeks start to appear stream side.
At the edge of a field, I find a dead red tail hawk. It hasn’t been dead long. The feathers are clean, the talons sharp and the head intact. There are no flies or other bugs that easily find recent corpses. I flip it over, the wings spread beautifully. I look for a gun wound and find nothing. There is some damage to the neck but very little blood. Could this hawk have been hit by a larger bird? An owl or bald eagle? I’ve seen plenty of eagles around which slightly amazes me. Growing up around here they were nonexistent. The overuse of pesticides like DDT in the 50s and 60s simply wiped out all the large birds of prey. The accumulation of the poison in the birds cause their eggshells to become too thin to incubate. The parent bird would crush the shells when they sat on them to keep them warm.
DDT was banned in the early 70s. It wasn’t until almost fifty years later that osprey and eagles were again starting to be seen around the lakes of New England.
And now they are once again nesting in the Berkshires. This early summer I’ve watched them at Pontoosuc snatching fish from shallow coves. I see them flying around Ridge Ave with their dinner clutched tight in their massive claws. Crows harass and chase them around the neighborhood, and they’ve been taking refuge in the trees behind my house. They are magnificent to watch. One flew over the deck the other morning about fifteen feet above where I was reading. Its wingspan was easily six feet. I’m reminded of Melville’s “Catskill eagle” and imagine that while he was writing The Whale here in Pittsfield and often picnicking at Breezy Knoll, he had plenty of opportunities to watch eagles plucking fish from the blue water with Mount Greylock in the distance. Was Greylock a muse for Melville? Scholars seem to think so and from here on the south shore of Pontoosuc the outline of the mountain could easily remind an old sailor of a whale. Much more than the Grand Tetons looked like great tits to French explorers. They must have been rather worked up after so long on the trail to see breasts in the jagged peaks of Wyoming. When I passed that way I was not reminded of naked women when gazing in wonder at the daunting mountains. (That is not to say that there have been times when I have found real breasts both beautiful and daunting.) I guess us dwellers of the rolling and round Berkshire Hills should be thankful that the French didn’t explore hereabouts. Otherwise, I imagine the mountains Saddleball and Greylock would be known as the Great Tetons. But I digress…
Another bird that has made a fabulous comeback here is the great blue heron. I see one somewhere almost every day; by the lake shores, along the Housatonic, roadside streams, flying over the yard in the morning and hunting the marshes near the Ashuwillticook trail. Another sign that perhaps things are getting better, healthier and slightly wilder here in Western Massachusetts.
It has also been an emotional summer walking around this city that I was born and lived in until I was 24. As Neil sings, all my changes were there. Well, up until then. California brought on some massive changes that I’m still learning from. Or trying to anyways.
I have set up my office/study in my parents' bedroom. It has good energy. There has been speculation that I was conceived in this room. But I’m willing to entertain the theory that Fran and Tony being newlyweds, it could have easily been any of the other rooms. They had a long reputation for being a very affectionate couple. A few of dad’s love notes I found attest to this. Love notes, incidentally, that were written when I was in my teens.
This is the first summer in thirty years that I haven’t spent a few nights at the Wawona Hotel, sipping a martini and listening to Thomas Bobb play the piano and sing from the Great American Songbook and old Yosemite camp tunes. I try to make up for it and am not doing a bad job here on Ridge Ave listening to Cole Porter, Blossom Dearie, Jerome Kern and Hoagy Carmichael as I sit on my much smaller deck on warm July afternoons. It’s not quite the same and I do miss the hot and dry Sierra night air. The humidity here is heavy but only a fool complains about the weather. I make do with a cold Sierra Nevada pale ale in one of Dad’s vintage pilsner glasses that I keep in the freezer.
I get a text from Pak wistfully asking when will be climbing again. We’d both like to make it to the top of Mount Hoffman and Cloud’s Rest once more. Those days on both those peaks are very special to us. From here at the lake, I gaze at Greylock and plan on hiking up tomorrow. I’ve spent a lot of time there these past months taking trails I haven’t walked in a very long time.
With Yosemite on my mind tonight I sit outside with Gary Snyder’s poetry until it’s too dark to read. It cools off and I think perhaps I feel the first hint of autumn on the breeze.
