Mt. Greylock: Letting Go of Views

"When you come to the place where you are practice occurs."  -- Dogen

On October 1, 2013 I drove west on Massachusetts State Route 2 to North Adams, MA to hike to the top of Mount Greylock. I descended into the mist-shrouded Hoosic River Valley in North Adams... sun above, clouds below. The river and town were completely blanketed in a flannel-like cloud. I expected visibility to be nearly nil at the trailhead and was not disappointed.

Mount Greylock is the highest peak in Massachusetts at 3491 feet. The trail I chose to follow is aptly named Thoreau's Footsteps as it is partially the route that Thoreau took to the summit. It follows the Bellow's Pipe Trail to the Appalachian Trail South to the summit. On the way down I took the AT North to the Bernard Farm Trail back to my car. This is a 9.6 mile roundtrip hike.

I found much of the early part of the trail to be like the image below... a narrow, soft, leaf strewn path through a forest of mostly green but changing deciduous trees. It was much like the trails I remember hiking in the Cherokee National Forest when I lived in Greeneville, TN (2000-2006). The sun was burning off the fog, but every surface was wet with dew. There were several rills on my right carrying water downward. These did not appear to be creeks or brooks, but rather shallow waterways cut by erosion as water drains off the slope. I encountered robins, blue jays, juncoes, frogs and toads as I made my damp way upward. 

As I proceeded upward on the increasingly steep trail I climbed toward and through autumn in full swing. There were Mountain Ash, with their large, bright red berries, Large-leafed Goldenrod, Yellow Birch, Bartram's Shadbush, with their five-petalled white flowers (mostly gone-by), and Balsam Fir.

This hike, while quite steep in places, did not offer the challenges of, say, Monadnock or Katahdin with their great piles of stone and exposed rock faces in the wind. The passage to the top was ultimately a pleasant walk through the woods where I flushed out a few ruffed grouse and watched, at length, as a chipmunk rooted about in the leaf duff and scurried back and forth to an unseen den with nuts and nuts and nuts.

Emerging from the forest near the summit, I crossed a road (one that motorists may take to the top) and encountered, on my right, a group of motorcyclists, I hesitate to say bikers, in full regalia and, on my left, a phallic tower with what I can only describe as a giant light bulb on top. The tower is a memorial to WWII veterans. On it's side is a plaque describing the mountain. 

The summit was a bit of a disappointment as it was overrun with cars, tourists getting their pictures taken with the Great War penis, and folks filing in and out of Bascom Lodge's restaurant. A bus full of high school-aged students pulled in and they poured out over the summit, cell phones pointed "inward" to get that selfie with the mountain for Facebook. Okay, this is the age we live in, but when "experiences" of nature, especially mountains, seem so packaged, easily accessible, and, ultimately disposable, is it any wonder that our wild places are at risk? 

I ate a lunch of an apple, a pear, and PB&J sandwiches, read a few poems, and headed down the mountain as the cooling sweat dried on my back. I was feeling let down as I crossed the parking lot, but as I reentered the woods, I found that with every step I began to let those feelings go. I realized that I'd come toward the summit with preconceived notions. I knew in advance that there was a road, a tower, and a lodge. The disappointment was with me before I even began the hike. I'd created it in my mind and carried it with me, an extra weight in my pack. That view perverts the essence of the project which is not only based on hiking and mountains, but also on a non-attachment to outcomes. Not only does it pervert the essence of the project, but more importantly it inhibits my perception of reality, to see what is before me as it is as opposed to how I expect it or want it to be. So I attempted to return to the present moment, and remembered what Dogen said: When you come to the place where you are practice occurs. 

Walking down the mountain I took particular notice of the elaborate root structures of trees, alive or otherwise. Twisting and spiraling, spreading out like the hem of a voluminous gown, displacing stones, or blanketed in moss. They put me in mind of a question/koan that my first zen teacher, Barbara Rhodes, put to me when I was a fledgling zen student: Where is your original root? A question like that cannot be grasped with thinking. I don't believe I ever answered it, even adequately, let alone "correctly." I always tried to figure it out. Here in the forest, on the side of Mt. Greylock, I let this question burrow into the ground along the innumerable tree roots. I did not find an answer, but rather a letting go of the need to have one. Better to live the question.

I continued down the trail turning onto Bernard Farm Trail seeing trees dotted with fungi and great boulders of quartz. These were the little moments that interrupted my thinking and brought me back to the present moment. For despite the above thoughts on letting go (and the actual letting go), the reverie on that very subject continued to unfurl in my mind... trying to articulate it, to find the words to describe what is ultimately outside of language... like trying to make straight the very twisted root that woke me up in the first place. So it was like this... think think think... caterpillar! think, think think think... fungi! Let Go!! think think think think think... quartz! Let Go!

Not far off the trail I encounter a truly surprising sight; something that I never would have imagined in a lifetime of imagining; something so unexpected that it stopped all thinking like nothing else I'd yet experienced on the trail... a real letting go of preconceived views...

The wreckage of a plane crash! It had obviously been there for some time. I have been unable to find any information about it, but haven't really tried that hard either. I prefer to let it be, to let it go, and move up and down these mountains, a point moving in space.

Monadnock 2: Looking At It

"They who simply climb to the peak of Monadnock have seen but little of the mointain. I came not to look off from it, but to look at it."  

Henry David Thoreau

On September 23, 2013, three days after my return from Maine and the excursion to Mt. Katahdin, I climbed Mount Monadnock for the second time.

Upon arriving at the gate to the Monadnock State Reservation Area I was informed that there were 400 high school students on the mountain that day. I later learned that it was lawrence Academy's Mountain Day. Once per year they take their students out to hike a mountain. This is a great idea as it turns students loose in a classroom without walls, or rather, a classroom with walls that they must scale. A direct experience with the natural world is, for the most art, missing from not only our children's lives, but all of ours. That disconnect may be more directly responsible for our environmental crises than any coal burning power plant as it is the ignorance of where we live that allows for its despoiling.

But enough soapbox... armed with the knowledge that the mountain's most popular trails would be overrun with visitors, I set off on a less used one, the Palmer Trail to the Cliff Walk, over Bald Rock to the Summit. The quote that leads off this post aptly describes the way I have applied myself to this project. And I have written that it's rather the more intimate moments and smaller gestures that will likely inform the art made from these hikes and climbs as opposed to the grand vistas. That being said there is nothing like looking off from a high peak to distant ranges, hills, cities, and towns. Or seeing the landscape dotted with lakes and ponds, etched by rivers, gridded into fields, or aflame with color from Autumn's paintbox.  My route, at first, took me through coniferous forest with a soft footpath which was a relief after the rocky trails on Mount Katahdin.  The easy passage, though, soon gave way to steeper and steeper sections that took me out onto Bald Rock. It was here and on the climb to the summit, often using my hands to pull myself onto shelves of rock, that I took particular notice of the nature of the stone. The granite was formed by magma as it escaped and cooled. In some places one could imagine the "liquid" origins of these fields of stone. Such close contact with hand and eye, one might begin to see stone as much more than inert matter.

To get to the summit from Bald Rock, one must first descend into a not too deep valley before ascending over granite, and hard mica schist to the top. Below is the view of the summit from Bald Rock.

 The approach from this side is nearly straight up and the wind, as on my last visit to Monadnock, was cold and blowing hard. So despite the nearly cloudless day, I was in need of a jacket and wished I'd brought some gloves.

I stopped on top for a sandwich and some water, but the summit was over populated, so I beat a hasty retreat down the White Dot Trail, a steep nearly straight descent to the parking area. Before I went down though I wanted to look around at the "party" on the mountain. There were maybe 100 people on top with me. Some were looking outward and pointing to landmarks, some were talking quietly, some were laughing and shouting with friends... their joy evident. There was one man reading and a small group of smokers. however the majority of people were looking for a signal, faces pointed down at their phones. I beat it out of there.

Mount Katahdin 3: Coda

Thursday night at West Branch Pond Camp. A cabin, a shower, a meal, and a bed. The full moon rose over the pond. In the morning, tea, and a moose across the way.

Mount Katahdin 2: Saddle and Summit

On Wednesday, September 18, Robert, Marc, and I set off for the summit using the Saddle Trail. While only 2.2 miles to the summit from Chimney Pond, this trail is mostly uphill and a good deal of it is over exposed rock above the treeline. Citing a bad knee, Marc set off a bit earlier than Robert and I, figuring we would catch up with him. As I ate breakfast, made lunch, and filled my day pack and water bottles I could feel my anticipation growing by the moment. However this kind of "future-thinking" was quickly put to rest by the nature of the trail...

It was slow going with a good deal of scrambling and clambering over rocks. We carefully picked our way up and up and as we broke the tree-line were afforded some spectacular views. I could feel my chest swell with emotion as I turned on the trail and saw, a couple of thousand feet below, the pond from which we had ascended (and we still had about a mile and a half to go to the summit).

We climbed up the moraine that leads to the Saddle, a broad and slowly ascending table-land that leads to the peak. Staying to the right of the trail blazes for surer footing and to avoid sending a shower of stones down on those coming behind we slowly made our way toward the lip/rim of the cirque. When we reached the Saddle the wind hit us full in the face. There were gusts of between 40 and 50 miles per hour up there. Robert and I stopped to rest and put on our jackets. Marc was nowhere in sight. it seemed that his knee was not slowing him down. We still had a mile to go, so it was off along the Saddle Trail toward the summit. The Saddle Trail winds its way through scrubby gasses and piles of lichened stones. Looking around one feels on top of the world with spectacular views of mountains upon mountains and a landscape dotted with lakes and ponds. The sky comes right up to your face (but does not stop there).

Closer at hand this place feels otherworldly. The lichen is an eerie, almost phosphorescent green and it covers vast fields of pink granite stones, and amid them jagged rocks that jut straight up out of the earth.

Mount Katahdin is the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail (southern terminus is at Springer Mountain, Georgia). One must traverse the Knife Edge and come over the South Peak before one reaches the end. I saw one silent, but clearly jubilant "through-hiker" run up and kiss the sign at the summit. 

Knife Edge

View of South Peak from the summit. The tiny vertical forms on top are some AT through-hikers.

We had approached the summit from the other side. We passed several hikers who were on their way down, wind and sunburned, and smiling. They all had a particular look in their eyes that spoke of something newly discovered... it may have been an affirmation, or it may have been a surprise, but there was something that hinted of knowing in their gaze.

It was late morning when we at last we came over the final "stone steps" and arrived at the summit. There were several hikers there, some milling about, some eating lunch, some taking photos, some texting loved ones, or posting images to Facebook (the summit is about the only place where one might get a signal in Baxter Park). We found Marc, who apparently had been waiting for about 10 minutes. It was time for the "Summit with Sign" portraits:

Marc Ayotte

Robert Lidstone

Yours truly

In a previous post (Mount Monadnock 1: Am I a Pilgrim?) I wrote that the summit seems almost beside the point. However, on this mountain, to reach the summit seems, conversely and most definitely, the point. I don't necessarily mean the purpose. What I am getting at is that the summit is a point of stillness, a center from which one can look outward and/or inward.  

On the way to Chimney Pond with a view of the cirque forever in my eye, I was aware of the vastness of time and its emissaries; the glacier, its passage, and the great walls of stone left in its wake. Also, the depth of the forest, its history, both ancient and and more recent; old growth, through logging, and then a protected wilderness. While I didn't see all of them I was aware of the denizens of this wild place, the moose, the deer, pine marten, black bear, beaver, owls, ravens, juncoes, butterflies, dragonflies, rabbits, hawks, sparrows, coyote, and warblers. Some say that the mountain lion has returned to these high places. 

On the Saddle and at the summit something is different. There was only the present moment and its great silence. The silence was entirely interior. It contained the wind, the very few voices that the wind did not carry away, the eating of lunch, the taking of photos, the texting, the walking. There is the mountain and my sitting on it... the feel of it against my back, under my hand, its wind in my ears and against my face, the taste of it in my sandwich and the wetness in my water. In the Zen tradition of Buddhism, the position that the zen master takes before the assembly when presenting a lecture is called  the "mountain seat." I have a new understanding of this phrase. Zen does not go in for symbols. I now understand the "mountain seat" in a whole new and, possibly, more correct way. 

On Mt. Katahdin I experienced a depth to reality that is beyond utterance... I'll try... the miracle of being alive in the present moment.

After  about an hour, we headed back down from whence we came. Back across the saddle, down the moraine, and on to our camp at Chimney Pond. I said to my companions when we arrived at the lean-to, "This has been a damn good day." And it was. We spent the night at Chimney Pond and headed back to Roaring Brook and our vehicle on Thursday morning. We took our time... a leisurely amble over stones  and stones, and down and down and down. Autumn is coming and we're headed to West Branch Pond for our last night in Maine.

Here's a the GPS Drawing of the week on the mountain.