Walking Is Drawing: Mount Katahdin 1: Wind Sweeps Mind

On Monday, September 16, 2013, I set off with 2 companions for Mount Katahdin in Baxter state Park in Maine. My traveling companions were Robert Lidstone, of Lancaster, MA and his high school friend, Marc Ayotte, from Auburn, Maine. I had only recently met Robert. We were brought together by a mutual friend who made Robert aware of my project. Robert kindly invited me to join his "expedition" to Katahdin.

We would be spending the first night at the aptly named Roaring Brook Camp. The following day, Tuesday, we ascend to Chimney Pond Camp where we will spend two nights. Wednesday we hike to the summit spend the night at Chimney Pond, and return to Roaring Brook on Thursday. We will spend Thursday night at West Branch Pond Camp. A site visited by robert's family for decades. It, along with Katahdin, is one of his sacred places. I am grateful to Robert for sharing it with me. He treated us to the night there in a cabin (with showers, beds, and meals). It is his intention to share these places that he loves so that we may have great experiences and in turn share them with others. I had intended, originally, to make the hike alone, but going up with others, people with whom to share stories and silences, made it a richer experience. Not to mention closer to Thoreau's trip as he went up with guides and friends.

My boon companions and I arrive at Chimney Pond on Tuesday, 9/17/13

(L-R Robert Lidstone, Marc Ayotte, and yours truly)

Wind and Water

As mentioned above we spent the first night camped at Roaring Brook. Our lean-to, a wooden shelter with walls and a raised floor, was positioned within yards of the brook. We were in for a cold night as the forecast called for a hard frost. And the north woods did not disappoint as the temperature steadily dropped to freezing. As Roaring Brook Camp is designed for "car-camping" we did not need to eat trail food, but ate a sumptuous meal consisting of salad, steak for Robert and Marc, and BBQed seitan for me, the lone vegan. A hot cup of tea and early to bed finished the long day of travel (about 6.5-7 hours of driving which included stopping to pick up Marc in Auburn, ME).

Roaring Brook lean-to (apologies for blurries). That's my pack and stick on the far right.

A bright, waxing moon rose that night and the wind picked up and scoured the mountainside. When I woke in the morning after a restless night I had the feeling that the continuous chant of Roaring Brook had purified my ears and the all night rush of wind down the mountain had swept my mind clean.

Robert volunteered to clean up the camp and sent Marc and I on ahead with a plan to meet us at Basin Pond (about an hour from Roaring Brook). Despite fitful sleep I set off with Marc (and a full pack... 25-30 lbs.) with what I can only describe as a cheerful awareness.

The trail to Chimney Pond is mostly steep and mostly stones, although there are flat stoneless stretches. It was on one such stretch that I came upon evidence of a fellow earthling.

Moose Tracks!

I saw plenty of tracks and some droppings, but despite the abundance of these magnificent creatures in this forest, we did not encounter any during our time in Baxter Park. This may be due to Maine's opening a moose hunting season, a natural and intelligent wariness of humans, or simple bad timing. However, on our last morning in ME, at West Branch Pond, a moose came out of the trees across the pond to feed on grass at water's edge. A photographer in a neighboring cabin (from Princeton, MA as chance would have it) lent me her high-powered binoculars and I was afforded a beautiful view of a great being in his element. Alas, he was too far away for my little camera. But here's an idea of what I saw. This is not my photo. I repeat, not my photo.

And just to be clear: Not My Photo

Mt. Katahdin, a 5267 foot peak, is part of a laccolith (an intrusion of magma underground) that formed in the Acadian orogeny (a long-lasting mountain building event), when an island arc collided with eastern North America approximately 375-400 million years ago. On the sides of Katahdin are four glacial cirques carved into the granite by alpine glaciers and in these cirques behind moraines and eskers are several ponds, of which Chimney Pond is one. A cirque is a concave amphitheatre shape, open on the downhill side corresponding to the flatter area of the "stage," while the "bowl" generally consists of steep, cliff-like slopes down which ice and glaciated debris combine and converge from the three or more higher sides. A moraine is any glacially formed accumulation of unconsolidated glacial debris (soil and rock). This debris may have been dragged off a valley floor as a glacier advanced or it may have fallen off the valley walls as a result of frost wedging or landslide. Moraines may be composed of debris ranging in size from silt-sized glacial "flour" to large boulders. Eskers are long (sometimes kilometers so), winding ridges of stratified sand and gravel.

These images are views from the Chimney Pond Trail of where we were, ultimately, headed. Baxter State Park, for all it's trails and many visitors, is a deep and broad wilderness. One does not immersed oneself in it, but rather one is gathered in by it. A Dogen wrote in his "Genjokoan," To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. And, When you see forms or hear sounds fully engaging body-and-mind, you grasp things directly.

All my senses and consciousness(es) were completely filled with this mountain wilderness. It is startling to recognize that one's psyche is completely in line, at one, with one's sensual experience. Of course, once I awoke to this, it, for a time, became a self-consciousness, thinking about it rather than simply letting the mind roll out with sight, sound, smell, and touch. However, like the wind the night before, the towering peaks, the walls of rock and glacial debris, the massive architecture of time, the present moment spreading out in all directions cut through all thinking. I did notice, though, a feeling of kinship with those that came this way before me, and those that find themselves in mountains everywhere. While Thoreau's activities form the structure of this project, I also had John Muir and Gary Snyder at my ear in equal measure.

Piute Creek

BY GARY SNYDER

One granite ridge

A tree, would be enough

Or even a rock, a small creek,

A bark shred in a pool.

Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted

Tough trees crammed

In thin stone fractures

A huge moon on it all, is too much.

The mind wanders. A million

Summers, night air still and the rocks

Warm. Sky over endless mountains.

All the junk that goes with being human

Drops away, hard rock wavers

Even the heavy present seems to fail

This bubble of a heart.

Words and books

Like a small creek off a high ledge

Gone in the dry air.

A clear, attentive mind

Has no meaning but that

Which sees is truly seen.

No one loves rock, yet we are here.

Night chills. A flick

In the moonlight

Slips into Juniper shadow:

Back there unseen

Cold proud eyes

Of Cougar or Coyote

Watch me rise and go.

While this mountain (all mountains, really) looms large in our collective imagination. I am finding that the quiet, intimate, small "gestures" may be leading me towards the form this project's art will take.