A Deep River Year
August 6, 2014
I  carried a walking stick with me this weekend.  It was a sturdy thing, hand-decorated by an Adirondack Mountain wood-carver many years ago.   Jim had used it year after year, and Friday the group of friends who had hiked with him over the years were heading up to New Hampshire once again to laugh and eat and enjoy the mountain air together.   Jim was 78 years old when he had the idea of inviting a group to join him on the trails of the White Mountains; and that year we loaded packs and clambered up to the rustic Zealand Falls Hut, situated on the edge of a waterfall.   It was cold and rainy, and we got wet, sore, and tired.   One of us almost fell off a ledge, and the streams were so swollen that a few members of the group had to strip down  and wade through the water carrying a bundle of their clothes over their heads.   It was wonderful.

We've been doing these annual hikes for 25 years now; and Jim kept coming, too, until he died a couple of years ago at age 99.   Lately we've taken to staying at slightly cushier lodgings (we like indoor plumbing and electricity to charge our phones, even if there is no cellular service deep in the mountains).  And some of us, who are as gray on top as the mountain summits, choose kinder and shorter trails for our adventures.    But we are still drawn to these magnificent places by the bond of friendship and a deep and primal desire to immerse ourselves for a while in the awesomeness of nature. 

We humans are drawn to mountains and seashores, to the brims of lakes and rivers, for our souls' sakes.  There we can stand at the edge of something vast and mysterious and look into endless distances.   We feel the surge and retreat of the deep waters that resonate with the very tides of our bodies.   We stand on mountain ridges and look down upon circling hawks and the minuteness of highways that dwindle like bloodless human arteries into the insignificance of our noisy and distracted lives.  In these places we find, if but for a moment, a peace.   Last weekend Jim's walking stick made it to the summit of Mt. Moosilauke.   I hope that Jim made it there, too.

Mountaintop

We stand in silence,
as close as we can get

to the edge of a great immensity.
We look out at endless ridges of stone,
or to the hidden thing just beyond the horizon.
We wait, unmoving,
held by wonder,
not so much humbled by our own small size
as enlarged by the girth and glory
of what is all around us.
We stay there
waiting to remember
what we have forgotten
in the rush of our exhausting days:
that we live among mountains
and listen to the pulse of oceans
in our bones and blood,
that we come to ancient rivers that beckon us
to greater waters than we have ever known.
We find some narrow trail
to take us to these sacred places,
find others who would go with us
to that reverence and quiet
where life is offered,
like a gift.

--Timothy Haut, August 6, 2014