by Tom Ryan
Then came the trudge to Mount Bond. (I say “trudge” because on our previous hike I’d torn a tendon in my foot, and each step felt like I was walking on a nail.)
There were several people on the summit of Bond, so Atticus and I didn’t stay for long before we were off to West Bond and number forty-eight.
A friend of mine who is not into mountains or nature or the simple blissful feeling that comes from the wind in your face once asked me, “What’s the big deal? You get to a mountaintop and you see the same view you did from the last mountaintop. I don’t get it.”
I didn’t have the appropriate words to answer her at the time, but once atop West Bond, while I was looking out on so many of the forty-eight we’d encountered throughout the summer, I had my answer: “How many times can you look upon the face of God?”
We’d come a long way from the days when I weighed three hundred pounds and was out of breath carrying a little puppy the block up State Street from Fowles News to my apartment. But there we were, standing on top of West Bond, and I was thankful that we had 11.3 miles left to go before getting back to our car. There are times when a man needs 11.3 miles to get his thoughts and feelings in order. This was one of them.
Like all good journeys, this one had left me with memories to catalog and thanks to express. As I limped along, I was grateful to my brothers for getting me into hiking, thankful to DeeDee for helping me take the next step, happy that Steve Smith had become a friend who welcomed Atticus and me into his store after each hike, and, of course, I was grateful for Atticus. He never complained, and he even overcame his fear of bridges and eventually his fear of stream crossings, and he always walked with a spring in his step, even on the longest and the hottest of hikes. I could not imagine a more faithful hiking partner.
The next day Atticus and I stopped at the Mountain Wanderer and bought my father that blue T-shirt. We then drove two and a half hours down to Medway. It was hot, and he was sitting in the air-conditioning without a shirt on. It was the first time I’d seen him bare-chested in his old age, and I realized how fragile his life had become. I showed him pictures, and we talked of mountains and our fantastic summer.
Earlier in the summer, I’d given him a wall map of the White Mountains, and each time we climbed another peak, I put a sticker on it. Sitting in his living room now, I felt proud when I looked up at the map with all those stickers over the forty-eight peaks, which to me were forty-eight gifts to him. At times like that, if you are lucky enough to have a parent live so long, you find that the roles have reversed—the father becomes the child and lives through the son. I was more aware of it then than at any other time in my life.
My father has never been emotional or expressive, unless angry, and when I gave him his T-shirt, he thanked me but quickly put it aside. I knew better than to expect anything. I said good-bye and left.
Just before I drove off, I realized I’d forgotten to take my photos with me, and when I went back into the house, there he was, standing up and proudly wearing his new T-shirt with the forty-eight peaks listed on the back, admiring himself in the mirror.
And just like that the journey was over.
5
“People Die Up There in the Winter”
Atticus and I proved that if an overweight, middle-aged fellow with a fear of heights and a twenty-pound miniature schnauzer could hike the four-thousand-footers, nearly anyone could. And many had. The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) formed the Four Thousand Footer Club in 1957, and by the time Atticus and I stood atop West Bond, more than eight thousand humans and eighty-three dogs had completed “The List” and earned membership.
And yet it was clear we were different from most. First off, it’s rare to do them all so quickly. Most take years. Second, we just didn’t look the part. One of us was much bigger than the average hiker; the other was much smaller. Not that there really is an “average hiker.” But it was clear from pretty much anyone’s point of view that we didn’t look like a pair capable of hiking the forty-eight, never mind doing them so quickly. This was not a big deal to either Atticus or to me, but it obviously was to some others.
We often ran into hikers who looked upon us dubiously. We encountered one such fellow on the next-to-the-last week of that first summer. We were setting out to climb Mount Jefferson, the third-highest peak, by way of a short but challenging trail. As we entered the woods, he approached us and abruptly said, “You can’t take that dog up there!”
“Excuse me?”
“You can’t take that dog up the mountain. He’s too small.”
Atticus sat down next to me and gazed up at us.
I smiled. “He’ll be fine.”
The man looked at Atticus, then at me, and spoke as if trying to be patient with a child who just didn’t get it. “You’re new to hiking, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, we started a couple of months ago.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “I’ve been hiking for several years. . . . I’m almost done with the forty-eight. . . . Your dog really is too small to hike up here.”
I smiled again but didn’t say anything.
“Has he hiked a four-thousand-footer yet?”
I paused, looked down at Atticus, then into the man’s eyes and continued to smile gently as I spoke. “This will be our forty-second four-thousand-footer in the past ten weeks.”
The fellow didn’t say another word. He blushed, nodded his head a couple of times as if he were trying to swallow something, and walked away.
If Atticus could have, I believe he would have given me a high five. But instead he bounded down the trail ahead of me. Two hours later we were sitting on the summit of Mount Jefferson sharing peanut-butter crackers and enjoying the view.
As much as I disagreed with such unfair assessments of my little friend based on his looks alone, I agreed with those who said that while Atticus had done a great job in the summer, neither he nor I should hike in winter. I’d always laugh and tell them not to worry, because it was the furthest thing from my mind.
It’s the furthest thing from most hikers’ minds. AMC statistics back that up. While more than 8,000 people had hiked all forty-eight, fewer than 350 had done them all in the calendar winter and applied for their “winter” patch and scroll. Add to that second list one dog who had hiked them all in winter. He was a 160-pound Newfoundland, a breed made more for winter hiking than summer. His name was Brutus, and he’s the only dog ever to receive a patch for the winter forty-eight, and he’ll be the only dog who ever will. After Brutus completed them, another dog and his owner took a tumble down an icy rock slide on the way up the Wildcats one winter day, and the Four Thousand Footer Committee voted that it was too dangerous for dogs to hike in the winter. They refused to be party to any hiker who brought his or her dog on hikes during the most dangerous season in the White Mountains.
When we learned of this and were advised not to hike that winter, I didn’t need convincing or the typical refrain that came with the advice: “People die up there in the winter.”
Actually, people die up there in all seasons and from all kinds of causes. But it was clear even to a novice like me that the margin for error in winter is far worse. One mistake and you can be stuck miles away from civilization in subzero temperatures fighting hypothermia—praying that a search-and-rescue crew finds you before death does.
As summer waned and autumn came, we hardly hiked anymore. My foot was still aching, and no matter how much I rested, it wouldn’t heal. I decided we’d just wait for the spring thaw before hiking again.
Alas, the mountains had something entirely different in mind for us. I blame my dreams for what was to follow. Nearly every night I could feel the mysterious pull of the mountains. Many mornings I’d awaken to the fleeting fog of a dream where Atticus and I were standing on some snowy peak. I resisted those dreams and convinced myself that we belonged in Newburyport for the winter, eat
ing hot soup and drinking cocoa, not freezing in the mountains. Besides, I didn’t know anything about winter hiking . . . and the gear cost too much . . . and, most important, Atticus wasn’t made for the cold weather or the deep snow.
And yet there was a nagging sense that we were being called back to the mountains. They called and called.
In late November, defying all logic, I surrendered and started the expensive exercise of shopping for winter gear. I wasn’t sure where to begin, so I paid close attention to the two popular hiking Web sites that focused on the White Mountains, Views from the Top and Rocks on Top. Experienced hikers gathered on these sites and shared information about equipment, trail conditions, and techniques. I also picked up yet another Steve Smith book, Snowshoe Hikes in the White Mountains. Steve had a chapter on what every beginner needed to know about taking the first steps in winter hiking.
There was much to get: snowshoes, crampons, trekking poles, ski goggles, hats, gloves, socks, boots, water bottles, headlamps, layers and layers of clothing, and a bigger winter backpack to carry all that extra gear. It got to the point that every time I walked into an Eastern Mountain Sports store, the salespeople knew they were going to meet their sales quota for the day. Whenever one of them asked me what my plans for all that gear were, I told them Atticus and I hoped to replicate what we had done in the summer—hike each of the forty-eight in one winter. They’d give me a look as if they’d never be seeing me again and reminded me, “People die up there.” But that didn’t stop them from selling me more gear than I could possibly need. Add ignorance and fear together, and I probably bought twice as much equipment and clothing as I needed. They could have sold me anything and I would happily have paid for it. That’s how much I didn’t know.
I had it easy compared to Atticus, however. He’d always been a nudist by nature. He hated his leash and collar or anything that restricted him whatsoever. But if we were heading to the White Mountains in December, I had to find him a bodysuit that would keep him warm and dry, and he was going to have to wear his Muttluks on a regular basis. (Muttluks are ingenious fleece-lined dog boots. He often wore them in Newburyport during the winter months to keep the sidewalk salt from burning the pads of his paws.) I got lucky and found a bodysuit just a block down State Street in Pawsitively Best Friends. It was made by K9 Top Coat, and Atticus hated it at first sight.
The first time I put the suit on him, we were in the store, and immediately he looked like he’d been to a taxidermist. He stood stiff as a freshly stuffed dog. He wouldn’t move his head. He wouldn’t even move his eyes. And he stood like this for a couple of minutes in the middle of the store. Nothing I could do would get him to budge.
I knelt next to him and gave him the tiniest of nudges, hoping this would throw off his balance and cause him to move a leg for support. Nothing. I did it again. Nothing. I did it again, a little firmer. Still nothing. I did it a little firmer yet, and this time, instead of moving his legs to keep his balance, he toppled over onto his side—a dead, stuffed dog with stiff legs. The cause of death was humiliation; rigor mortis was immediate.
I rolled him gently over onto his back, and he looked like a table turned upside down.
Okay, so I got the hint, but he still needed a bodysuit if we were going to hike in the winter.
I picked him up and set him on his feet and tried to coax him with words . . . then treats. I walked out of the store knowing he would follow me, but for the first time ever he didn’t follow me somewhere. Nope, there was no budging him. His inner mini schnauzer had emerged, and he was determined to let his stubbornness win out.
In the midst of all this drama, three middle-aged women, in town for the day to visit the different boutiques, came charging into the store. They were in the zone—deep in their shopping trance—and didn’t really care who or what was in their way as they barged through the tiny shop. To make sure they didn’t step on Atticus, I picked him up, sat him in the crook of my arm, and stood off to the side. Every now and then, one of the women would call out to the other two to look at this or that, and they’d all scurry together to examine some newfound precious thing they just had to have.
Then one of them stumbled upon my friend, looking like he was wearing an X-rated Aquaman suit, sitting stiff-legged in my arm, with only his head, paws, and privates revealed for the entire world to see. She called out to the others, “Oh, my God! Look at how cute this little dog is in his suit!”
They flocked around us. The loudest and boldest of the three took one look and said, “Look at how big his penis is!”
Oh, the things people will say. What’s a man to do when confronted by such a comment? I did what any self-respecting, quick-witted Irishman would—I smiled and said, “Well, thank you.”
To which she said, “I was talking about the dog.”
“Alas, that’s always the case.”
Eventually I solved the problem of Atticus’s bodysuit rigor mortis, but it took a few days of dressing him in the suit and leaving him that way in the middle of our living room like some strange coffee table. I finally won the negotiations when I put him in the suit and drove my dead, stuffed dog to Moseley Pines, where Atticus loved to run free and chase after squirrels. I carried him into the woods about fifty yards, his legs as stiff as ever, then put him down. Nothing. Then I called out, “Look, squirrel!” And just like that Atticus was off and running. It was only after he treed the furry little creature that he realized he’d been found out in his effort to convince me that the suit was made of lead.
The look in his eyes at that moment was priceless. It said, quite simply, Oh, shit!
That old refrain from Paige Foster came back to me: Y’all will work it out. We had, once again. Not that Atticus was very happy about it. And not that he would admit to it, but there would come times that winter when he was happy to have that suit to keep him warm.
The AMC rules for winter hiking are simple. You do what we did in the warm-weather months, but you can’t start your first hike until the winter solstice, and you have to be off the trail when winter ends. That gave us ninety days to hike the forty-eight.
Hikers on the two Web sites warned me that winter hiking was different. They continuously told me of the dangers, of how many of my hikes would either begin or end in the dark because of shorter daylight, and they warned me to carry more than one headlamp just in case one of them went out. “You don’t want to be stuck on a mountain at night with temperatures below zero and no way to see!”
I may have been ambitious, but I was also nervous, so I made sure to buy three headlamps, extra bulbs, and extra batteries.
They also warned me how trails could look different in the winter, how the paint blazes that marked them could be masked by snow and ice, and how if the snow was deep enough, it could even hide signs that were four or five feet high. And they told me how many of the same mountains we hiked in the summer would be even more taxing because the access roads to them were closed for the winter and it added mileage to some.
It didn’t take me long to realize that what they said was true. Hiking in winter was completely different, and I discovered it on the first day. My intention was to start right at the solstice—1:35 in the afternoon, the exact start of winter and the shortest day of the year—but it took nearly an hour to figure out how to put on the layers of clothing and all my gear. By the time I finished, I was sweating as if I’d already climbed the damn mountain. My last act of preparation was to hoist the large pack onto my shoulders, and when I did, I nearly fell over from its weight. Laboring under all those clothes and the larger pack, I stumbled into the woods looking like the Michelin Man.
I chose Mount Tecumseh for our first winter peak, because it is the shortest at only 4,003 feet and from the road to the summit is only two and a half miles.
The first third of the trail crosses two streams and meanders through open woods and climbs gently. The middle part of the hike climbs
steeply after it crosses a third stream. My pre-hike workout of getting dressed had me struggling the moment we entered the woods, but after that third stream crossing I really began to labor. I was not used to climbing in snow, even though it wasn’t all that deep. I was still nursing the sore foot that had kept me off the trails for several months, so I was out of shape compared to how I’d felt in the summer.
It was somewhere in the middle of plodding that long, unforgiving ascent that I got my second wind, and I started looking around instead of down at my feet.
My God, it was beautiful!
I could see why there were some who loved the winter season. I had to stop from time to time to gaze with wonder at the trees and their thick icing. I felt like a child again, like I’d stumbled upon a place I never knew existed before, and almost felt guilty for being there, as if it were too good to be true. The pleasure was immense, almost sinful, and when I came upon a hiker who was heading down the trail—the only person Atticus and I encountered that day—he told me there was no one up top. It was suddenly an exciting prospect to be left alone with Atticus on our first winter mountain.
There is a point in climbing when you get quiet and are enveloped by the solitude. The hike turns into a walking meditation and becomes Zen-like. You stop trying so hard, and your stride falls into place with your heart and lungs. Your mind follows suit.
I had reached that point, and my mind blissfully wandered from here to there. Eventually I was transported back to the innocence and wonder of when I was a small boy curled up on the floor with Spot, the family beagle, surrounded by my entire family and watching Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer on TV. For that’s what the trees on Tecumseh reminded me of—those thickly frosted trees in the show.
We were making good time, and winter hiking seemed like a breeze. When we came upon a spur trail just below the summit, I saw that no one had broken the path through the snow. I decided to walk that quarter-of-a-mile stretch to the only good viewpoint on the mountain, even though it meant we’d have to double back. The snow was deeper than I expected, and I had to stop repeatedly. When I was bent over gasping for breath, Atticus, impatient with my plodding, pushed ahead of me through snow up to his chest. By the time we made it to a rustic bench at the lookout, there were three sets of prints: Atticus’s, mine, and those of a snowshoe hare.
