Category Archives: photos

You’re up at 6, at Dad’s house by 715, dis­grun­tled because the morons at McDonald’s can’t even get two Sausage Egg McMuffins right.

Sausage egg bis­cuits?  Maybe on Venus muf­fin sounds like a bis­cuit.  But you’re run­ning late and it’s not worth going back for the switch, muss less the stress and bother of mak­ing a fuss.  You let it pass, drink your Diet Coke and pick off the egg and sausage while dis­card­ing the bread. Not when your last day at your old store was more or less stress-free and peo­ple were nice, gave you wine and baked goods and actu­ally seemed like they’d miss you. Why mess that up by crank­ing at some­one who at 7 o’clock in the morn­ing isn’t awake enough to tell the dif­fer­ence between break­fast baked goods, espe­cially when you’re mostly in it for the protein?

Of course, you for­got your damned boots, though you did bring your Tevas for chang­ing after the hike. The plan is to stop in Con­cord at the Bean’s out­let (the web­site says they’re open at 9 and the way that you drive you know you’ll get there just about then) and pick some­thing up– and then back on the road and hit the moun­tain by 10:30, 11.

Every year, he tries to con­quer this moun­tain. The first year, it was with another friend and he’d pushed it too hard, came down in the dark and the story curls your hair every time because Griz­zly Adams he’s not. (You always sneak your flash­light in your bag just in case because the Pres­i­den­tials, they’re unpre­dictable, even in the midst of Sep­tem­ber.) Last year, you tried and the path he chose was steeper than he’d thought it would be– three and a half hours in, it was too much though the scenery was fan­tas­tic. This year, your stop at the Bean’s out­let shows– well, they need to update the hours on their web­site for Sundays.

No mat­ter. You’ll climb in your Tevas. The path that he’s cho­sen (you read the descrip­tion before you set out, while he was using the john) isn’t that rough, and even if it is, just a bit– well, he’ll be 68 in Decem­ber. He doesn’t climb quickly, and at least you wore nice thick comfy Smart­wools. He fusses the rest of the drive about ankle pro­tec­tion and steers you wrong on the roads despite all the maps printed out (the satel­lite on the GPS is no use because you’re high in the moun­tains and there’s no cell­phone recep­tion, much less satel­lites with all the roads wind­ing)– but there’s a nice man on a back­hoe who con­firms that yes– that likely look­ing left up ahead, the one Dad says can’t be the right road because it’s a right you’re sup­posed to be tak­ing (though you know you’re all turned around, have been for about five miles or so) is the one that leads into the park.

After all, the moun­tain is on the left. It only makes sense. You may not have a Ph.D., but you can tell which side of the road the moun­tain is on.

Re-set on your way, you con­cen­trate on the car on the road, the sta­tion wagon jounc­ing the last five miles over well-graded dirt roads that lead in the direc­tion you thought you should have gone in the first place. You keep your mouth shut when you re-cross the cross­roads where you’d thought you should turn left and he, with the map, said to go right.

The whole drive up, there have been things you’ve wanted to ask him about, get his advice. Per­sonal things, vents, var­i­ous stuff– but he’s on a tear about this, that and the other, and he inter­rupts to go off on his tan­gents. You never get around to the things you want to talk about because he’s distracted.

A week ago, you’d have been hurt, feel­ing ten­der, unloved, unlistened-to, unwanted, etc. Instead, while it’s some­thing other than amus­ing (it is still some­what annoy­ing) it doesn’t get your blood all a-boiling. Instead, well– it’s just how it is, he’s in one of his moods– or doesn’t want to. You’re 35, 36 in a month and a half, and it’s time and past that you stopped whin­ing to Daddy, not that you’re intend­ing to whine, but still, all the same. The fact remains– he’s 68 and the les­son you know you knew hits home once again. Just because you’re a grown up doesn’t mean you grow up or things get any less hard. It just means you get older– and in the end, we all have to fig­ure our shit out on our own because the peo­ple we love can only help us so far.

The sky’s a bit grey when you park, but the yel­low self-pay tag’s a bright sunny spot on the dash, and the trail’s not all that hard when you set out, despite all his huff­ing and puff­ing. You take his water bot­tle from him and put it in your pack when it comes clear that even the min­i­mal weight of that and the baked chicken ten­ders he brought for trail food is too much for his out-of-shape body to carry– and your Tevas are more than up to the task on the well-tended trail (well, that and the very slow pace, that plus your new, smaller body.)

The sun­light shines through on occa­sion. You two talk, though it’s not about much except his job kvetch­ing and things like the new din­ing room rug and what color to uphol­ster the liv­ing room couch. It’s still nice. You take out your cam­era and take pic­tures of fallen leaves, fun­gus, moss, princess pines, inter­est­ing trees, dead and alive, and point them out to your dad. Some­times he looks, some­times he’s caught up in his story. Some­times he’s too busy catch­ing his breath or plan­ning his email let­ter to Bean’s about the incon­ve­nience of not being able to buy extra boots. That part’s pretty amus­ing. You tell him sto­ries about some of the meaner cus­tomers at the store this week and how you got really sassy. What did you care? You were leaving.

A few times you ford Sep­tem­ber streams. Once or twice, your socks get wet, once they get soaked– but that’s okay, because as long as you don’t stop mov­ing for long, your feet don’t get cold and you’re a bit of a plan­ner, even with the for­got­ten boots in the rush to get out of the house. You always keep dry socks in the trunk, and you wore clogs for the drive. (“Huh,” he says later, when you uncover the car trunk con­tents, dry bright pur­ple socks to replace your muddy Smartwools.)

You never reach the top of the trail. You never reach any clear­ing with any mountain-top or valley-deep view. But the sun shines on asters and the occa­sional patch of spent ladys­lip­per, early fallen red leaf. The birches and hem­lock, fungi-bestrewn, the rock rid­den path– it’s all hemmed in so that all you can see is what’s just ahead (and what’s just behind), your only com­pan­ions your own thoughts and the voice and pres­ence of your dad and those few other hik­ers that you encounter.

When you get back to the car, it’s totally sunny, and the last burst out to the lot feels strange after being hemmed in by the trail– a clear­ing after being in the thick set woods for so long. He hasn’t given you any answers to any of your ques­tions– but you’ve seen some cool mush­rooms, pho­tographed some nice leaves, and reminded your­self of a key fact you for­get when you’re stressed and distressed.

It’s okay to let stuff slide and make do. It’ll come out alright in the end. And if you hadn’t had dry socks in the trunk, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world to drive home bare­foot in clogs. (After all, you did have extra paper nap­kins in the glove com­part­ment. You at least could have blotted.)

Cre­ated with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.