by Tom Ryan
I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t thrown all his ashes into the ocean that day on the beach. Perhaps somewhere deep within, I knew there was a better place for Max. How I enjoyed knowing that whenever we’d return to any of the four-thousand-footers, Max would be waiting for us . . . along with all the other great spirits of the White Mountains.
11
“Our Faith Comes in Moments . . .”
Winter stretched on. Each day brought different tests for us, sometimes in the form of mileage or elevation gain—or both. Other days it would be the weather we had to contend with on a hike, or weather that didn’t allow us to hike; those were the worst days of all. We were trying to cram ninety-six peaks into ninety days and stay safe while doing so. It was taxing both physically and mentally.
Each night we’d sit alone in front of the fireplace in our little cabin, expatriates from the world we were used to, isolated from friends who were far away and had a hard time relating to what we were doing. I’d write while Atticus slept next to me, curled into a little ball—more cat than dog—against my hip. I’d watch his body rise and fall with each breath, and I’d listen to his snores fill the cabin. No matter what we’d done that day, no matter how easy or rough a time we’d had of it, he slept as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Watching him like that, when we were alone, there were times I’d get choked up. It was humbling to see that little dog fearlessly lead me over ice and snow on mountains that most would never dare dream of climbing. And even I found it hard to believe that the little dog next to me so deep in slumber was actually doing all those amazing things. I considered myself lucky to have such a friend, but I was also lucky to have a front-row seat to witness something remarkable taking place.
As a boy who grew up enamored of the legends of the White Mountains, that winter I began to realize I was with a legend in the making.
I’d once read that the world’s best marathoners keep their minds numb until they reach the twenty-mile mark. At that point they tune in for the last six miles of the race. That’s the way I approached our winter: stay numb and get close enough to finish. That was my strategy by day as we busied ourselves making it up mountains. But when the sun went down and my mind grew as quiet as the night, I took time to register just what we were doing. That’s when I would comprehend that we were creating the winter that would never end for us. It would live as long as my mind was healthy enough to hold on to it.
It’s one of the reasons I enjoyed hiking alone with Atticus. I wanted to soak it all in without distraction so I would never forget it.
Whenever we hiked with others, the trip was filled with lively conversation and fun, but the wind, the trees, the streams, the mountain, and the entire magical sense of place took a backseat and became merely supporting characters. I wanted to hear what the mountain had to say, and when I talked with someone else, I didn’t hear the wind, or the creaking of the trees, or the whispering mysteries of the hills that don’t always get passed on by words, and I was left wanting.
That’s what it was like when we joined eight others to get to the isolated summit of Owl’s Head. In the summer it’s an eighteen-mile round-trip. In winter it’s closer to sixteen miles, because it’s shortened by two bushwhacks that eliminate some of the stream crossings and sidestep the dangerous Owl’s Head slide. We went with a fun-loving group, and there were plenty of jokes and laughter from beginning to end. And it’s a good thing we joined them, or Atticus and I wouldn’t have been able to reach the summit that day, for there was snow to break through and all those snowshoes to beat down the trail for Atticus. (In the previous winter, when it was only Atticus and me, it took us three hours to climb just the last mile up Owl’s Head, so I was more than happy to have help.)
But our success in reaching the summit came at a cost. Because of all the people and the noise, instead of feeling as if we were hiking with a purpose and for a purpose, I felt as if we were in the middle of a roving cocktail party. By day’s end I hadn’t given Vicki or the cancer survivor Owl’s Head was dedicated to as much thought as I normally would have, or even the mountain itself. It had simply become a checkmark on a list. I hated that.
The next morning we slept late. We were finally on the trail to North and South Hancock at twelve-thirty in the afternoon, and during the first two miles we encountered several people who were finishing for the day. Some suggested we turn back because it was too late to start out. One fellow posted the following on a hiking Web site: “Ran into Tom & Atticus getting a late start. I hope his headlamp battery holds out.”
I knew there was a good chance we’d finish after dark, but I didn’t care. We had a mountain to ourselves. It was refreshing to be alone again. Surrounded by the tranquillity of the forest, I didn’t care if it took us all night.
The Hancocks were the first mountains we repeated that winter. We’d worked so hard the day before, and even though it was a ten-mile hike, it was perfect for us, because they are relatively easy to get to. (How funny to think that the man who used to lose his breath walking the block from the newsstand to his apartment thought that a ten-mile hike in January was relatively easy, but it was evidence of just how much our lives had changed.) Most of the route was flat. Then there was a notoriously steep half-mile section leading to the top of the northern peak. A stairway to heaven, if you will. In previous hikes on the Hancocks, I’d come to know that slow, painful climb as the place where I paid for my Ben & Jerry sins. I’d take twenty steps, stop, hang over my trekking poles, gasp for air, let the sweat run down my face, and swear off junk food forever. Another twenty steps and I’d repeat my penance. It was like saying the Rosary—but with a lot more cursing. Each time I’d stop and hang over my poles, I’d look up and see Atticus standing above me with a stern expression on his face—half wanting to make sure I was okay, half wanting to know what was taking so long.
That first climb of the day, of any day, was always the worst part. My body was not made for going uphill. I was too heavy. And yet it was often during those moments of oxygen debt, when I was forced to stop and just breathe, that I’d hear nothing but my own breath, the beating of my heart, and the forest. In winter, on a windless day, the forest is silent, and that minute of duress turns into a halcyon moment. That’s when the world comes around. It’s where clarity is found. It’s times like that when I find my kinship with Thoreau and Emerson, Einstein and Wordsworth. It’s when their words come to me like a prayer.
That’s how I’ve always struggled up a mountain. It didn’t matter whether it was Garfield on that first September hike or the Hancocks—I struggled on every climb. Aches, pains, and breathless panting begat epiphanies. Emerson wrote, “Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.” That most painful part of every trip was where I found my religion.
As for my religion, it was a free-form faith, meaning I picked and chose what worked for me. However, that didn’t always work for other people.
A woman I knew in Newburyport—who used to be a good Catholic but became a good Congregationalist, until the church decided to become “open and affirming” to gays and lesbians, so she became a good Baptist—once asked, “In your ‘Letters Home’ to your dad, you mention God a lot, but you don’t go to church.”
“That’s right.”
“So what religion are you?”
“I don’t have one.”
“You have to have a religion if you believe in God. If you had to choose a religion, which one would it be?”
“I wouldn’t choose. Who needs the middleman? I believe in God, isn’t that enough?”
“But say God came to you and said, ‘You have to choose a religion,’ which one would you choose?”
“I don’t think God would do that.”
“But just say He did.”
“Okay, if I had to classify myself as one thing, I’d say I was a pantheist.”
The woman gave me a disgusted look and
stalked away. A couple of days later I ran into her boyfriend, and he wanted to know why I’d been so rude to her.
“Huh?”
“When Susan asked you what religion you’d choose, you said you’d worship panties.”
I had to explain that pantheism was a belief that God was in nature.
That’s what the mountains were to me. They were my religion—the only one I wanted—and I found it in my struggles when I was literally forced by my exhaustion to stop moving and look at my surroundings. When your body is like that, so worn down that there’s no distraction other than your own breath and heartbeat, you feel everything. You feel part of everything.
When I reached the summit of North Hancock, Atticus wasn’t waiting for me. But I knew where he was. I pushed to the left through the snowy pines and saw him sitting on the ledge. It was a fine day, warm and calm, and he sat the way he did in the summer months, a little Buddha looking out at the Osceolas, watching the late-afternoon sun paint them a golden yellow. I regarded him for a while, not wanting to interrupt.
I watched that little dog sitting placidly on a mountaintop in winter, miles away from the life we’d come to know, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be doing, and that’s when it struck me: Our quest was about so much more than reaching ninety-six mountains or raising money for a good cause. It was about us and what we shared and saw together and what we were becoming. It was one of those moments when you realize that this is truly the time of your life.
Eventually Atticus turned his head and looked in my direction. Our eyes met, and I saw that gentle, invincible calm he enjoyed on mountaintops. I hadn’t seen it the day before, or on any of the hikes we’d done with other people. It was something we shared when we weren’t in a hurry and, more often than not, when it was just the two of us.
Atticus continued looking at me without moving a muscle until I walked over and sat next to him. He gently leaned in on me. We were no longer looking at each other but out at that breathtaking view. And time disappeared.
A couple of days before that, I was moved when I read something Thomas Merton had said in a talk he gave: “The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless, it is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. . . . We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.”
When Atticus and I hiked, that’s exactly what we shared. It was a communion between man and beast that didn’t differentiate between either. More important, it was a communion between two friends.
Owl’s Head had wrung us out and left us weary and parched. We were both tired when we started out that afternoon, but the woods and sitting together on the ledge renewed us.
After leaving the north peak, we reached South Hancock and headed for home. During the last few miles, we bounced along the trail in high spirits and enjoyed lighthearted interchanges. We were but a boy and a dog at play with each other. As the day was waning, I looked up to see the bruise-colored Osceolas as we left the forest. We made it out before sunset, even with the time spent summit sitting.
I believe that each mountain has lessons to teach, stories to tell, and on that simple Sunday afternoon I was reminded again of the good company I keep and of how grand it feels to be swallowed whole in the woods.
That day was the turning point of our winter. It had been just the two of us on most of our hikes, but from that moment on I’d be even more careful about keeping it that way. We’d hike with others on occasion, but they would be select company, for our days in the mountains really were the times of our lives.
12
Atticus in Disguise
Along with announcing our Winter Quest for a Cure in the Undertoad and on the two hiking Web sites, I had started a blog. I updated it daily and occasionally would post a trip report on the hiking sites. We had a small but loyal following of readers.
Yet with winter halfway over, our little journey took on a more public face.
When Atticus and I reached the aptly named Mount Isolation in wind chills registering thirty below zero during a fourteen-mile hike while everyone else was home watching the Super Bowl, my readers in Newburyport became more captivated than ever by the Little Giant. Our blog became a popular read, and that brought more donations for the Jimmy Fund.
New Hampshire newspapers also took notice of our fund-raising efforts, and we were featured in lengthy articles. Soon I was receiving e-mails and Atticus was receiving fan mail and care packages of various treats. Unfortunately, his celebrity status extended to the trails as well. I say “his” because I could blend in easily enough, but he couldn’t. Most people in the mountains recognized me only because Atticus was with me, and there was no disguising his look. On weekends, when the trails were busier, hikers saw him and wanted to stop and talk. We received numerous invitations to join people on future hikes. A woman e-mailed and said, “I don’t hike, but how about the three of us go out for coffee sometime. Love to get to know you. I’m single, by the way.”
We’d come full circle. We left Newburyport behind that first summer, in part because I reveled in the anonymity of the woods. The mountains offered us privacy and peace and quiet. But the peace we’d just reclaimed on the Hancocks was being threatened. It’s not that I was a misanthrope—anyone in Newburyport could attest to the fact that I was out and about and constantly in conversation with people. It’s just that in the mountains we led a different life.
New Hampshire had become our sanctuary, a wonderful escape from a hectic existence. I wasn’t sure how I felt about losing that.
On a hike to Mount Moriah, we had another late start and ran into five different groups of hikers on their way down the mountain. Four of the groups recognized Atticus and asked if they could have their photos taken with him. They were thrilled to meet him, but for Atticus, who’d grown up thinking that everyone knew his name, it was par for the course. He enjoyed saying hello but was just as happy to move beyond his admirers after he received a few pats, even if they were still fawning over him and wanted him to linger awhile longer. I was pleasant to them but was also happy to get going. The last group we encountered told us to be careful, because they didn’t think there was anyone else behind them and we’d be all alone.
Be careful? I thought. This is what we love the most!
The prospect of solitude thrilled me.
About a mile from the summit, while walking in peaceful reverie along the spectacular ledges of the Carter-Moriah Trail, with views over the western hills of Maine, we soaked in the warmth of the day. We were feeling as strong and peaceful as we’d ever felt on a trip. I fell into a walking meditation of prayers, thoughts, and gratitude. It was so quiet, so still, so blissfully peaceful.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a man coming in the opposite direction on the trail burst from the woods and startled both of us. We didn’t see him, we heard him. He literally gasped when he saw Atticus, lifted up his hands in surprise, and said, “OH. MY. GOD! . . . It’s him! It’s really him!”
He stopped and stared, his mouth agape. I’m sure mine was, too.
Before I could say hello, he spoke again. “My friends are going to be so upset they decided not to come today! Ha! They will be sooo jealous!” He fumbled with his camera case and quickly yanked out his Nikon for a picture. I got the sense he was talking to himself more than to me, because he wasn’t looking at me when he spoke. “We were talking about Atticus just last night at dinner!” he said, aiming the camera at Atticus.
I’m not sure what made me do it—perhaps it was because he was loud and obnoxious and had pierced the serenity with his shrieks—but I said, “What did you call him?”
Maybe I just longed to be private again.
“Atticus! I’d recognize him anywhere!” he said. And he chatter
ed just like that: fast and loud, with every sentence ending in an exclamation point.
“I think you’re mistaken,” I said. “This is Sparky.”
Panic came to his face, and he dropped his camera to his side. “But aren’t you Tom of Tom and Atticus?”
“Nope. I’m Mike.”
“Are you sure? He looks just like Atticus,” he insisted, cocking his eyebrow with a bit of suspicion. “Aren’t you guys hiking them all twice this winter or something crazy like that?”
“Sorry, you’ve got the wrong guys.”
He was crestfallen. He dejectedly put his camera back into its case.
“What’s the big deal about this Attica anyway?” I asked.
“It’s Atti-CUS! He is famous—very famous!”
“What . . . did he rescue someone or something—kind of like Lassie when Timmy fell down the well?”
“No, but trust me, he’s famous!”
“But what’s he famous for?” I prodded.
“Lots of things!”
“Like what kinds of things?”
“Listen, it’s hard to explain—he’s just a remarkable dog! He does a lot of neat things!”
And with that, he gave me a look as if we’d interrupted his peaceful hike and left us behind without even a good-bye to Mike or Sparky.
I’m not sure what Atticus was thinking when I said, “Onward, by all means, Sparky.”
When I told a couple of friends about the encounter, they were disappointed in me. They said I’d played a cruel joke on that hiker. I didn’t really feel that way, but maybe they were right. Maybe I should have felt a bit guilty, but I wasn’t ready to give up our privacy quite yet.
That trip to Moriah was one in a stretch where we hiked four days in a row. It was the first time we’d ever done that. We were peaking at the right time. I moved with ease and felt light and nimble. Atticus had a constant bounce in his step. Our spirits were bright. It was as if we couldn’t get tired. Hikes took less time than they’d ever taken us, even in the summer months. My Lyme disease was but a memory. Life was good.
