Walking/Drawing: North Pack Monadnock

On Thursday, July 25, 2013 I walked up North Pack Monadnock, a 2278 foot mountain in Greenfield, NH. It was a beautiful day. Not too hot, but warm sun coming through the trees. I took Ted's Trail to the Cliff Trail to the Wapack Trail to the summit. On the way down I took Carolyn's Trail to Ted's Trail back to the car... about 6 miles all told. The trail passes through, and the mountain is located in, the Wapack National Wildlife Refuge (est. 1972, 1625 acres). Thoreau went up a neighboring mountain in the Wapack Range (a subrange of the Appalachians) called Pack Monadnock (Little Monadnock) in 1852, but today it's got 3 cell towers on top and while I will ascend it for this project, on this day I wanted to walk in the woods uninterrupted by roads or built structures.

The GPS Drawing Device is, after some trial, error, and swapping mine for my colleague's (John Anderson), operational. Here's that day's walk/drawing (appendage and stoppage... see below).

It' s an experiment and I'm learning its ins and outs. For instance, I neglected to delete the previous data and so my hike got connected to those coordinates when I turned the device on. That's the long, sharp, straight, diagonal line on the right. As the crow flies, a connection to my home in Fitchburg. Also, I'm learning how much life the battery holds. As you can see the line becomes sharp and straight and then stops on my return trip (more on this below). Each battery gets about 5 hours of use before it is depleted. I've got to get rechargeable ones. I'll use the spent batteries in (another) artwork.

My last walk, on Mount Wachusett (see previous post) was a relatively dry one, but for the sweat. There were no brooks or creeks to cross or meander along. By contrast, this hike had me wandering along and crossing over Otter Brook. The Wapack Range is the source of the headwaters of the Contoocook and Souhegan rivers. The north slopes of North Pack Monadnock drain into Otter Brook. There are a variety of mosses, ferns, and seemingly well-placed stones, making portions of this riparian habitat into a sort of zen garden...

This forest is quite diverse featuring a variety of habitats: 

Northern hardwood-conifer

Hemlock-hardwood pine

Spruce-fir

Old field

Scrub-shrub

Talus slopes

Rock ledges

Not long into the hike my presence and movement flushed out 3 or 4 ruffed grouse from the undergrowth (scrub/shrub). I say 3 or 4 as one of them may have been flushed twiced. Their bursting forth from the vegetation in a fury of wingbeats brought me into the present moment. One's mind can wander on the trail, daydreaming, thinking about the project, about lunch, or what type of fern that might be, when BAM! the mind flies back into the body, totally present. Everything becomes whole, one thing, with no separation: me, grouse, forest, sky, brook, stones, mountain--all one. 

As a zen student for about 15 years, I understand these moments as "waking up" to one's real life... one's true nature. We often mistake our thinking for our lives, and don't realize/embody them, our lives, fully. Moments like this, without thinking, without speech, are reminders, "I am alive!" I tried to walk through the rest of the day with awareness, to be present with "what is going on right now," or as Shunryo Suzuki Roshi, zen master and author of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, would say, "things as it is." 

Ruffed Grouse (not my photo)

There was an abundance of familiar birdsong throughout the day: robin, cardinal, chicadee, bluejay, various woodpeckers. Not being a serious birder, there were several startling and beautiful songs which I cannot identify. The Wapack is home to an abundance of songbird species. However, what most captured my attention was the continuous presence of 2 or more ravens (or 1 ventriloquist raven) croaking just out of my sight. I'm sure these great beings were quite amused at the stumbling human with the blinking light on its head. 

Common or Northern Raven (not my photo)

Near the top of the mountain: BLUEBERRIES! They were growing as far as I could see and I ate my fill, looking the whole time for any sign of black bears as blueberries are a favorite snack of our ursine friends. They will loll in a patch and eat the bushes bare. But, the berries were plentiful, delicious, surprisingly large, and super juicy.

At the summit I encountered a group of berry pickers with their bags and buckets and I was reminded that Thoreau lead a huckleberry picking party on the day he was released from jail for his famous act of civil disobedience (see Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust: A History of Walking, page 8). Like the black bear, Henry was a lover of berries. This, we definitely share in common.

After passing a lovely cairn that lead me toward the summit I paused for lunch with my back against a small boulder whose size and shape held great appeal for me. I'm not sure why, but it seemed to be perfect. I don't know for certain if that stone is a glacial erratic. A "glacial erratic" is a piece of rock that differs from the size and type of rock native to the area in which it rests. "Erratics" take their name from the Latin word errare, and are carried by glacial ice, often over distances of hundreds of kilometres. Erratics can range in size from pebbles to large boulders. Judging by the size of this rock, I don't think it was placed there by anything but natural causes. It's likely to be an erratic.

Cairn Cliff Trail

Peanut butter and banana sandwiches with my back against this rock

Erratic on the way down the mountain (Note the trail blaze on the tree)

View of Pack Monadnock from the summit of North Pack Monadnock

On the way down I followed Carolyn's Trail. It was about at the half way point where the batteries gave out. I had taken off my hat to wipe my brow and noticed that the light was off. Dang! It was working at the summit! Ah well, I shut it off and walked a bit, then tried turning it back on. The light showed briefly, blinked, then went out. The straightness of the line in the drawing shows the connection between the two points of turning it off and turning it back on and the dead battery is the end of the line. As I walked along lamenting the incomplete drawing and worrying about a growing discomfort along my right calf... SCARLET TANAGER!

  Scarlet Tanager (not my photo)

Again... a "wake-up" from nature. Bright red filled my mind, worry and pain were gone for the moment. And then... PILEATED WOODPECKER! It flew across the trail not 10 feet in front of me at eye level. "Things as it is" indeed.

Pileated Woodpecker (not my photo)

So, it's a week later and I'm a bit hampered by a calf injury. Muscle or tendon? Ligament or bone? I don't know. If it does not heal soon, I'll be off to the doctor's. But for now, the hiking is slowed, not stopped, but definitely on hold. Doesn't mean the posts will stop. I'll be back in a few days with some thoughts on  hollow trees, emptiness, and decay.