Following Atticus

by Tom Ryan

  We’d climbed forty-nine mountains. In order to reach our goal we’d have to hike forty-seven peaks in thirty-nine days. We were well within reach.

  Unfortunately for us, the snows of winter were about to arrive.

  13

  The Spell of Agiocochook

  My father always had a difficult time being happy. He was witty and charming in public, with the cashiers at the local pharmacy or supermarket, or with the people at town hall, but alone it was a different story. He was hard on himself and critical of his children. He was good at many things, but intimacy wasn’t one of them. What he and I had shared that first summer Atticus and I were in the mountains was as close as we would ever get. But when Atticus and I returned to hike them our first winter, my dad built a wall between us. He was back to being distant, to pushing me away, and to at times acting belittling.

  I didn’t understand it, but my friend Ed Metcalf did. He was from my father’s generation and offered me the following perspective: “Your dad was thrilled when you hiked the mountains in summer because he could see himself doing them. Lots of people do them. But in winter you were going someplace he couldn’t go. He couldn’t see himself doing that. You were overshadowing him.”

  I knew Ed was right—I just didn’t want him to be.

  Toward the end of our first winter, when it was clear we weren’t going to finish all forty-eight, I was disappointed and called my father to let him know.

  “I didn’t think you could do it,” he’d said. The words were not tinged with emotion; they were flat and matter-of-fact, but some arrows don’t need to be dipped in poison to kill.

  There was only one way to love him, and that was through a buffer. That’s why when I visited him in spring or summer, it was during a Red Sox game. Or during a Patriots game in football season. He felt comfortable conversing for half an hour before or after a game and was happy that one of his children had come for a visit—provided we didn’t stick around too long when the game ended or talk too much during it.

  Another buffer was the Undertoad. He enjoyed getting every issue, even though he often went to great lengths to point out the misspelled words and would count the ads to see how I was doing financially. He would never admit to it, but he was proud of me.

  There was a time he’d wanted to be a newspaperman, and he went through his life as a frustrated writer. His eloquent letters to the editor, which were often the highlight of the local newspaper, were the closest he came to being published.

  When Atticus and I began our Winter Quest for a Cure, my father and I hadn’t talked for months. Our last conversation had taken place right around the time I let him know our goal of ninety-six peaks in ninety days. But I wrote to him, every two weeks. He liked getting letters. As he grew older, the only personal mail he received was from his daughter-in-law, Yvette, who wrote wonderful, flowing letters, and from me.

  He was a voracious reader, often going through three or four library books a week. He loved the fast pace of mysteries, but when he was younger, he’d read the classics. With his typically heavy-handed approach, he’d tried to force us to read when we were young, but I was willful and fought it. There was something about words that lit a fire in me, but to read would have been giving in to him. You see, the son could be just as obstinate as the father. When I finally moved away from home, I allowed myself to enter the worlds of Emerson and Thoreau and Tennyson and Frost. Those names were familiar to me, for they were men my father admired, and he’d read their masterpieces.

  Life is funny. I set out to be nothing like the man I both loved and disliked, but I ended up becoming a newspaperman, reading the same authors he admired, becoming a big political fish in a little pond, and even climbing his mountains. Somewhere in my efforts to get as far away from my father as possible, I had adopted his dreams as my own. I had become his son.

  My letters home were our bridge. They kept us connected, even when we weren’t talking. When the Valentine’s Day nor’easter came and Atticus and I sought shelter back in Newburyport, I wrote to my dad about the mountain gods of New Hampshire. I suggested they were not unlike their counterparts from Greek mythology. They amused themselves by toying with mortals. And boy, how they toyed with Atticus and me.

  First there was the Lyme disease to slow us down. Then, on our first trip above tree line, they conjured up a blizzard over the Bonds. We snuck by them on Jackson as they delivered frigid temperatures and winds strong enough to keep others away. And once we finally hit our stride and were moving through the wilderness as I had hoped we would when I’d first made our plans, they brought forth the biggest storm of the winter.

  From the third floor of the Grand Army Building in Newburyport, we watched helplessly as winter ticked away. There was no sense going north; the snow was too deep for a little dog to get through. So we waited. And we waited. We ended up waiting eight days, and our quest was beginning to seem hopeless. I was not ready to concede. But the harsh truth was that there were only thirty-one days left, we still had forty-seven peaks to climb, and among them were all of the highest, most exposed, and most dangerous mountains. And we had to do them twice.

  Time might not have been on our side, but I had faith, and I figured that had to be worth something. Besides, the gods had their benevolent side, too. Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, pointed this out: “I have found that you have only to take that one step toward the gods, and they will then take ten steps toward you. That step, the heroic first step of the journey, is out of, or over the edge of, your boundaries, and it often must be taken before you know that you will.”

  A leap of faith.

  Our winter had been a series of leaps of faith, and we leaped once again by not giving up. I hoped the winds would die down for the first time that winter. Our faith was rewarded.

  We began a remarkable stretch in which we hiked six of the next nine days—but they weren’t just any hikes. They were over many of the most rugged mountains in the Whites. We did both Osceolas one day, then the four mountains of Franconia Ridge. We took the next day off to rest and the following day off because it was too cold and windy to bring Atticus out. On the next day we did the two Twins and Galehead. Then came the great Northern Presidentials: the second-, third-, and fifth-highest mountains (Adams, Jefferson, and Madison). After finishing the Bonds in December, we had only to reach those three to become the rare man and even rarer dog to climb all forty-eight in winter by combining them with what we’d done the previous winter.

  It took two months, but we finally had the right weather. On top of Jefferson, I held Atticus above my head to celebrate the feat. Other dogs might have squirmed uncomfortably when lifted so high, but in typical Atticus fashion he took advantage of his seat on the crow’s nest, slowly turning his head from one side to the other to take in the sweeping views. And, of course, each time we reached a summit and he sat up in my right arm, I thought of Paige: Carry him wherever you go. . . .”

  It was a joyous moment. When we’d started out, the only dog that had ever done them all in winter was Brutus, the 160-pound Newfoundland. And now 20-pound Atticus had done the same thing.

  The very next day, perhaps the nicest day of the entire winter, we were robbed of a hike above tree line when a New Hampshire television station set up an interview with us but canceled at the last minute. I didn’t want to miss a day of hiking, but friends had convinced me that the exposure from the television piece would help with raising money for the Jimmy Fund. We were behind schedule, and we’d lost a perfect day above tree line. I hoped it wouldn’t hurt us.

  The following day the winds returned in earnest and it was cold again. The Mount Washington Observatory called for winds between twenty and twenty-five miles per hour and temperatures in the single digits. That was good enough for us—barely—and we headed for the summit of Mount Washington, the home of Agiocochook, the Great Spirit.

  It was a surreal, windswept day. We had cli
mbed the highest peak in the Northeast, and the plan was to continue on to Monroe, Eisenhower, and Pierce in a fourteen-mile hike.

  The clouds were different, even for up there at the top of New England, where weather is fierce. There was something ethereal about them. Some were like ghosts, rising like steam from the ravines below. Others were thick and white, flying rapidly by overhead, blocking out the sun for seconds or minutes at a time, but not all of the blue sky, and casting fast-moving shadows over the snow. Those clouds were an ideal fit for the day, for it had a different texture to it as well. It was charged with a palpable energy, both haunting and mysterious. It felt the way all beginnings and all endings do when they sneak up on you and the earth beneath your feet shifts and you tumble out of control, your life taking an unexpected and quite different course.

  Atticus was ahead of me. With a wind chill of twenty below zero, he had his Muttluks and bodysuit on, and he ducked into the gusts as they came, his ears taking flight, his little body bold and steadfast. We were descending Washington’s massive dome and headed for Monroe. The trail was packed down by the wind, and the snow was as hard as the rocks it hid. Atticus walked on top of it easily, his boots slapping with each step. My snowshoes grabbed hold, their teeth biting into the crust. The mountainside, a craggy mess of tumbled dark and unforgiving rocks in fairer seasons, was now mostly flat and washed white with an occasional black shard jutting up.

  I followed Atticus, and he followed the cairns. They lined the trail like corpses of soldiers who had fallen in an ancient battle and were frozen in place for all time in a harsh and desolate landscape. They were there to show the way on the worst days, when the clouds hang heavily on the mountain and visibility drops to nothing. They wore coats of rime ice on the windward side and were naked on their leeward side. If it weren’t for these markers, it would be difficult to know where the trail went, for the winds that scour the mountain obliterate all signs of coming and going.

  I will never understand how Atticus knew to follow the cairns, but it’s something he’d done from the start. He always seemed to know where the path went, no matter the season, no matter the mountain, even on a day like that on Washington when the trail was covered in snow and ice.

  Those otherworldly clouds came and went, revealing and then stealing away views that left me breathless. At that elevation the whole world looked as if it were below us. I stopped often to snap photos, fumbling to take off my gloves so I could better handle the camera, then quickly put them back on before my hands stung and went numb. With each stop I could feel the cold catching up to me; the sweat running down my back beneath all those layers caused me to shiver. My head was covered by a balaclava, and sunglasses protected my eyes from the wind, but it wasn’t enough to keep small icicles from forming on my eyelashes and eyebrows.

  Coming off the top of the mountain, the path jogged to the right toward Jefferson, Adams, and Madison. The three peaks had been hidden by the clouds, but when the curtains parted, it was like encountering three giant beasts face-to-face, and I was stunned by their presence.

  Atticus kept his head low, protecting his eyes from the wind as he swaggered on. I was a constant twenty yards behind, just as I’d been all winter. You’d think I would have grown used to it after more than sixty mountains, but I still watched in astonishment as my little friend marched along, undaunted, as if it were his duty to be up there getting me to where I needed to go.

  This was a rare day in that we hadn’t seen another hiker the entire time we were on Washington, and it made the trek all the more unearthly.

  In front of us, the clouds lifted again, and the string of mountains came into focus, then were quickly veiled again.

  We came to a segment of trail where it looked as if the mountain ended abruptly and there was a dangerous, unseen chasm to cross before getting from this world to the one that held those peaks we wanted to reach. It was one of those mountain moments when angles play tricks on the eyes, moments that often frightened me but never seemed to faze Atticus. While I hesitated, he showed faith—or maybe it was just his ability to know these mountains as if he’d lived in them his entire life—and he moved forward. In an instant he disappeared over the edge. I panicked and hurried forward, only to see that he had not fallen off the end of the world but had just descended a steep set of rocks and was now in sight again, moving nonchalantly.

  As I walked in the mountains that winter with only Atticus and my thoughts for company, my mind often wandered. At that moment I thought about death. I wondered what it would be like—not the day, but the moment of death itself. Would I be walking toward the light? Would there be angels and music playing, or would it be too horrifying and devastating to bear?

  I wondered.

  I hoped it would be a day like that day, with stark, stunning beauty all around. The music of the wind, blue skies masked briefly by lively clouds in a hurry to get somewhere, the top of the world, a world at its end engulfed by sweet peacefulness, me enjoying an almost perverse pleasure in being separated from everything and everyone I’d ever known, the excitement of being someplace I never could have imagined in my dreams, the gentle thrill that this might be heaven.

  That’s what it was like on Washington. We had both died and found ourselves on another plane. There was no one in sight, no sign of life whatsoever. No buildings, no streets, cities, no sign of civilization. It was just two travelers, two faithful friends walking down the spine of a mountain range in a world where wind and clouds lived but nothing else did.

  Watching Atticus in those conditions inspired me. He would often be the inspiration I needed during our winter treks, but never more so than on Washington. In snow and ice and wind, on a mountain that had killed so many, I drew strength watching him in an environment that would have unnerved me in the past. If he could be up there, as out of place as one could imagine, then I could, too. If he could trot forward, marching down this steep mountain, then why couldn’t I?

  At one point, moving steadily along, Atticus did a most unusual thing. He stopped and waited for me.

  He had stopped and waited for me to go first on rare occasions throughout the winter, but usually it was when we came to a stream that was running wild and he knew he had to be carried over it, or if the stream looked frozen but wasn’t, or because a downward section of mountain was icy and he wanted me to lead the way. Whenever he did that, he would step to the side and let me go first, all the while continuing to look forward, nervously flicking his tongue. But where he had stopped that day there was no running stream and the trail was not all that challenging. The wind was steady, but not so strong as to deter him. He showed no signs of anxiety. I got ready to move in front of him nevertheless. However, he didn’t move to the side. Instead he turned and sat looking straight back at me. This was a most unusual sign in a winter where we had spent many days in wordless communion.

  When I reached him, he stood up on his hind legs and placed his front paws on my thighs. He wanted to be picked up. As I did so, I cradled him in my arm, the way I always do, and I looked over at his face. He regarded me for a moment and then turned his gaze in the direction we were headed. We always did this on mountaintops, but it was out of the ordinary for it to be happening in the middle of a frosted wasteland.

  There we stood, partway down the cone of Washington, still high above the other mountains we would climb as they came into view and then disappeared again behind gauzy, fast-flying clouds. I watched Atticus curiously while he stared off into the distance. He was calm and relaxed. After a moment my eyes followed his. For the first time that day, all the clouds shifted and completely lifted out of the way, revealing a vibrant blue sky that stretched over the mountains, which were now a brilliant white, glowing under the sun.

  It was so stunningly astonishing, so striking, I was speechless. It was so beyond definition or description that my heart ached and tears welled up in my eyes. Man and dog, connected in adventure and so
litude, stood together, gazing out at a world few had ever seen before.

  Something changed when those clouds lifted. Not “out there,” but inside us. Our lives would never be the same again. I’m not sure how, but I knew it. At that place, at that time, under the spell of Agiocochook, I understood that there would be no going back to what we used to know, not now that we had shared a winter’s worth of success and hardship together. Not ever.

  There are some things in life too powerful, too vivid, too life-altering to possibly leave them behind. They stay with you forever. They shape you from that moment on. We’d come to such a time and place. Atticus and I had reached it together, and the bond forged was truer than any I’d ever known. We had gathered a lifetime of experiences across all those mountains; there could be no returning to share them with others. No one would understand, no one could understand. This was our bond to share, our gift. But it was also a curse of sorts, because we would never be able to completely share it with anyone else.

  We stood there together, two friends gazing out toward that sea of mountains, watching them fold one behind the other, until our eyes reached the horizon.

  In retrospect, I now realize we were not just looking at the mountains, but toward all our unimagined tomorrows. We had arrived at unknown territory, and as frightening as it was, it somehow felt right, for we were there together.

  When I put Atticus down, he started walking again as if nothing had happened, and I followed. I knew we were headed for the three mountains closest to us, but I had no idea where we were going after that. I’m not sure how, but it was as if he knew what was to come. It was a lot like that moment at the ledge earlier in the hike when he disappeared out of sight and I panicked and hurried to see what had become of him. He had faith when I didn’t. Faith had never been my strong point, but he was determined to help me with that.