Up

by Patricia Ellis Herr

  “Are you ready?” I ask. Alex nods. We get up, walk a few minutes over some blessedly flat land, climb another steep, but blessedly short, section—and we’re there!

  A small pile of rocks, serving as a cairn, sits on a flat boulder and marks the official high point. Alex runs to it, whooping with pride and joy. Smacking her five-year-old hand on the topmost stone, she hollers, “I did it!” Happiness pours out of her skin, and her face beams with pride. She stands, victorious. I walk up to her, touch the cairn, kneel, and give her a giant hug.

  “I knew you could do it, Alex,” I tell her.

  “How did you know?” she asks, the corners of her smile almost reaching her ears.

  “I knew because you knew. You knew you could, so I knew you could.” I congratulate her on her first 4K, then take out my disposable camera to mark the occasion.

  There isn’t much of a view from this summit, as the cairn is almost completely surrounded by trees. If we stand and peer through a gap in some branches, we are able to see a partial view of the valley below. This little bit of vista is enough to sufficiently impress Alex, and she declares the scene “so beautiful!” After a few minutes of standing and peering, we sit and share a chocolate bar.

  “What about Sage?” Alex asks, after her part of the chocolate has been keenly devoured.

  “What about Sage?”

  “You said you knew I could do it. What about Sage? Did you know she couldn’t?”

  I smile at my daughter, so incredibly astute.

  “Sage is very young, Alex, and her legs are shorter than yours. Also, she didn’t really want to do this today.”

  “She said she did.”

  “Only because she knew you and I wanted to.”

  Alex is silent for a moment, then takes out various writing utensils and paper from her backpack. She sketches a picture of the mountain. It looks like a giant, upside-down V. As she draws a narrow, green-topped tree at the very top of the sharp peak, she asks, “It’s okay that Sage didn’t want to, isn’t it?”

  “Of course!” I answer. “In the future, she’ll probably stay home with Papa … and that’s fine. I don’t want her to feel like she has to hike in order to please you and me.”

  Alex finishes the first tree and goes to work on a second, wider one, situated at a precarious angle, just below the summit. I watch as she shades in the houselike trunk, then creates a mass of similar-looking figures up and down both sides of her impossibly sloped mountain. She asks how to spell “Tecumseh.” I tell her, and she writes in big, print letters across the page.

  Peaks #2 and #3: Mount Eisenhower and Mount Pierce, June 21, 2008

  Moose!” I sputter as my foot hits the brakes on my little Honda Civic, bringing it to a screeching halt along Route 302. The huge, imposing creature—obviously a male—stands halfway out of the woods, its two front hooves on the asphalt of the road’s shoulder, its two back hooves in the grass under the trees. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a moose, and I’m awestruck. The bull reacts to my sudden stop by bounding back into the forest. It doesn’t go so far as to disappear from view, however. Instead, it stands just beyond a close row of trees and keeps its massive head turned in our direction. Slowly, I drive my car onto the shoulder and come to a stop inches from where those majestic hooves so recently stood. Knowing these animals are unpredictable, I leave the car running in case we need to make a quick getaway.

  “Alex!” I exclaim, trying to rouse my daughter. We had left our house at 5:30 this morning in order to get an early start on what will potentially be our second 4K, 4,761-foot Mount Eisenhower. Though a good sport about getting out of bed before dawn, Alex had promptly fallen back to sleep soon after we had gotten on the road. She now snoozes away, securely strapped into her car seat, the top half of her body slumped over in that contorted posture only young kids can successfully attain. “Alex, moose!” I repeat.

  Alex stirs, blinks a few times, then sits up dutifully and tries to focus her eyes. “Moose!” I say yet again, frantically gesticulating toward my driver’s seat window.

  Alex catches sight of the moose, who is still standing erect, staring at the car. “Wow!” she murmurs, shaking off her early-morning cobwebs.

  “Don’t get out,” I instruct. “We don’t want to provoke it.”

  We look out our window and admire the bull for a few long and glorious minutes. Its big brown eyes blink, and I wonder what it thinks about us rapturously staring human creatures. This fellow is an intriguing display of nature’s handiwork. The body is massive—at least seven feet tall and six feet long—yet it’s supported by four very skinny, spindly legs. The broad, handsome antlers protrude upward and outward from an impossibly narrow head. It’s an interesting juxtaposition of opposites.

  “This is pretty cool, yes?” I ask Alex. “Yeah!” she answers, beaming. We stare a few minutes longer; then I slowly pull back onto the road. Ten minutes later, we arrive at the small parking lot adjacent to the Edmands Path trail.

  Edmands Path, named after J. Rayner Edmands, a prominent trail builder during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, has a reputation for being an extremely pleasant way to ascend Mount Eisenhower. The guidebooks describe its three-mile length as relatively gentle in slope with good footing. Most trails in the Whites are rocky—we are, after all, in the Granite State—but Edmands Path is reportedly less so. It seems a good choice for Alex, who has been asking to attempt another 4K ever since we climbed Mount Tecumseh two weeks ago. Mount Eisenhower will be a hike of greater distance, more than six miles round-trip, but if at any point it becomes too much for my daughter, then we’ll simply sit and rest. I’ve no problem turning back if necessary—however, if Alex does indeed make it up there, I know her eyes will be rewarded with much more than the sight of a treed-in cairn.

  Smith and Dickerman’s The 4000-Footers of the White Mountains describes Mount Eisenhower as having a bald dome for a summit; therefore we should experience 360-degree views. The mountain’s position along the Presidential Range will enable us to see Mount Washington, Mount Franklin, and Mount Pierce, not to mention many other, farther-away Four Thousand Footers. This morning’s forecast contained the terms mild, dry, and cloudless—in other words, we should have a breathtakingly beautiful time of it up there.

  Alex and I enjoy the first mile very much. My daughter takes typical five-year-old delight in hearing her feet thunk-thunk upon the various wooden planks that bridge a couple of streams. Little flowers bloom here and there, tiny and delicate and beautiful. Our conversation is chipper as Alex and I make continual comments on the greenness of the leaves, the cool feel of the morning air, and the trickling sounds of water chasing itself over rocks and pebbles. We reminisce about our morning moose, and concur that life is good. It’s a grand thing, being out on a trail in the forest, ambling along, happily anticipating the views from the top of a good, solid mountain. We move slowly, luxuriously, and stop frequently to pamper our senses. Hikers pass in twos and threes, adults hiking at their normal pace, all of them happy, just like us, each of them reveling in the day’s glory.

  Everything is almost too good to be true. And then, suddenly, it isn’t.

  “How old are you, honey?” A bulky man plants himself before us and asks the question of Alex in a voice most people use when talking to infants. He’s the only hiker who has passed but not continued upward with a smile. Instead, he has come up from behind, overtaken us, and then turned to purposely stop us in our tracks. Though my instincts tell me not to worry, I fully straighten my nearly six-foot self and bring a hand to the pepper spray hanging from my belt.

  Alex never appreciates being spoken to with any voice that isn’t also used for adults. If this man wasn’t blocking the trail, she would have politely smiled and kept walking. As this is not possible, she turns her face downward and takes a step toward me.

  “She’s five,” I answer, placing my hand on her shoulder.

  Continuing to look at Alex, the man inquires, “And how fa
r are you going?” Again, his voice is over-the-top sweet, as though he has somehow mistaken Alex for a mentally challenged puppy.

  Alex neither lifts her head nor answers. I force a smile and explain that we hope to make it to the top.

  For the first time since coming to a halt in front of us, the stranger looks up and meets my gaze. His angry eyes surprise me with their intensity. His glare is filled with righteous indignation, and for a moment I worry that I have accidentally offended him. Why is he so angry? I experience another second or two of bafflement, and then I get it. He isn’t used to seeing young kids on mountain trails, so he’s worried about Alex. He thinks I’m dragging her along, forcing her to do something that’s beyond her interest and ability. The concept of a small child doing this happily and enthusiastically is foreign to him, so he assumes I’m marching her up.

  The man finally breaks eye contact and turns his attention back to Alex.

  “Well, aren’t you sweet for trying!” Man, that voice is annoying. Alex’s shoulder tenses beneath my hand. “It’s a long way though—a little girl like you shouldn’t be trying to hike such a big, grown-up mountain.”

  Oh, dear. I need to get Alex out of here before she explodes. My daughter’s whole body is now stiff with outrage. I can feel the frustration and anger radiating off her, and I’ve no idea how long it will be before she unleashes her incensed, adult-size vocabulary on this condescending fellow. I strengthen my hold on her shoulder.

  “Oh, I think we’ll be all right,” I answer.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” the man snaps without even looking at me. His eyes remain on Alex, who is glowering so intently at the ground that I expect little plumes of smoke to start rising from the dirt at any moment.

  “Maybe your mama should take you home now.” The sugar in his voice could choke an elephant. Alex starts to shake. I understand the emotional hurricane that’s going on within her—she is being underestimated, something she cannot tolerate. My grip on her shoulder tightens even more as I say in a raised and unwavering voice, “Thanks for your concern, but we’re really all right. Have a nice day now.”

  The man throws me another look of death, then finally turns his bulk around and continues up the trail.

  Alex is seething. I look down at her face, and she looks as though she wants to attack something, anything. I wait until I think the man is out of earshot; then I release my daughter’s shoulder and we move forward. As soon as we round the nearest bend, my forty-inch firecracker explodes.

  “Why did he talk to me like that?” she roars. I don’t attempt to quell her volume. The poor kid has a right to vent her fury after such a frustrating encounter.

  “Why did he say we should go home? Why did he call me a little girl?” Alex marches along, slamming her feet into the ground, pushing herself forward in a full-blown, five-year-old huff.

  “He thought I was making you hike up this mountain,” I explain as I quicken my pace to match my daughter’s flying, ferocious footsteps. “He saw you and assumed you couldn’t possibly reach the top.”

  “Why did he think that? Was I limping?!”

  Suppressing a smile, I reach out, grab hold of Alex’s backpack, and bring her to a halt. She swivels her body around and looks up at me.

  “Alex,” I gently intone, “have you seen any other kids on this mountain?”

  “No.”

  “What about Tecumseh? Did you see any other kids on that hike?” I ask.

  Alex thinks for a minute, then answers, “No. I mean, except for Sage.”

  “Do you think you’re going to see any kids today?”

  “Well,… maybe a teenager.”

  “What about kids your size? Your age?”

  I remain quiet to see if she’ll connect the dots on her own. This strategy doesn’t work, as she eventually answers my silence with an impatient “So?”

  “When people see something they aren’t used to seeing, they question it,” I explain. “Some then accept what they see and change what they believe accordingly. Others refuse to change their minds, no matter what. Such people try to make what’s in front of them fit the model they already have in their heads, even if the model is wrong.”

  Alex stares at me intently, trying to understand. “So,” she begins slowly, “he saw me and thought that kids can’t hike up mountains. Instead of seeing me and changing his mind …,” she trails off, trying to find the right words to express her thoughts.

  “He decided to make you fit what he believes,” I say. “He doesn’t believe kids your age can hike up mountains; therefore he wanted you to turn around. Even though you’re doing fine, even though you can hike up mountains. He wanted to make you fit in with his ideas about children.”

  Alex blinks incredulously at me for a moment, as though she can’t believe her ears. “Well, that’s stupid,” she finally declares. Then she marches up the mountain ahead of me on her own two very willing and capable feet.

  Our previously halcyon atmosphere has now been infiltrated by negative thoughts and emotions. That simply won’t do, so I get to work restoring my child’s happy state of mind. As we make our way up a straight and steep pitch, I ask Alex if she wants to sing a song. She looks dubious, but I go ahead and launch into a loud version of “Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee.” The lyrics brighten her mood, and she giggles as I sing in an obnoxious, goofy voice. Though I temporarily ruin the wilderness experience for a couple of passing hikers, I manage to bring the spark back into my child’s beautiful blue eyes. When I finish, Alex cheers.

  Next comes a series of word games. We make up rhymes; we take the letters of our names and list words that start with those same letters; we trade riddles. Alex’s riddles are the kind that don’t make much sense unless you’re five years old, but the exchanges are enjoyable nevertheless.

  The trees are getting shorter as we gain altitude. Alex asks if we’re close to the top. I consult my ripped-out page of Smith and Dickerman’s book and read the trail description. Part of me twinges as I do so, as I can hear my elementary school librarian scolding me for damaging a printed work of art. My mind tells that voice to shush—it’s my book, and I’m using it as the guides intended: to retrieve information about a trail. Besides, the whole thing is too damn heavy to carry in my backpack.

  I read, then conclude that we’re probably about a mile from the summit, but only half a mile before we step out of the trees and venture onto open, high-altitude rock. I share this information with Alex, who nods approvingly, then asks if we can take a snack break before continuing onward.

  The two of us sit side by side and munch organic energy bars. Alex looks good, and I congratulate myself on taking her mind off our aggravating and unfortunate earlier encounter. I ask her how she feels, and she replies that she’s tired but looking forward to “having some good views.”

  Several more hikers trek by as we rest, each of them breaking into a smile when they see Alex. One small, thin lady carrying a backpack twice her size gives Alex a big thumbs-up. Alex beams at her and waves.

  Eventually we put ourselves back on our feet and hike onward. We walk in happy silence, feeling well sated and eager. The trees are thinning, getting very short indeed … and then we step out into the sun. We’ve entered that magical place known as “above tree line.”

  Oh my. There is a gasp at my side as Alex takes in the splendor before us. I don’t look down to see her expression though, not just yet. I’m too busy absorbing the view myself.

  A massive peak looms to our immediate northeast, little dots of moving hikers peppering the trail that runs across its crest. That’s Mount Franklin, my mind whispers, recalling the detail from Smith and Dickerman’s guidebook. It’s beautiful. So large, and yet right there … I feel like I can reach out and touch it. Miles and miles of trees carpet its flank; the greenery stretches downward and westward as far as the eye can see. We can see 5,716-foot Mount Jefferson in the distance. It’s a high, rocky bump to the north-northeast, silhouetted against a perfectl
y blue sky. The view to the east and south is blocked by the summit cone of Mount Eisenhower itself, as Edmands Path winds its way up the mountain’s west and north side. Clouds float lazily above our heads, fat and slow and free.

  The vision is more beautiful than I had imagined. I have traveled widely and seen many stunning landscapes. This, however—there is something about this that takes every bit of my breath away. We are up on high, in the New Hampshire heavens, and it took us only a few hours of steadfast walking to get here.

  I stand in a daze, only faintly hearing Alex exclaim, “Mama, this is so beautiful!” The two of us stay there for a long while, taking it all in. Eventually I look down into my daughter’s face, and what I see moves me tenfold more than the mountaintop vista. My precious daughter, whose legs are half as long as mine and who unwaveringly hiked up this giant, “grown-up” mountain, is consumed with what can only be described as pure joy. She is touched by this, and profoundly so. If she is lucky, she will remember this moment for the rest of her life. The times she is troubled, the times when she feels life is just too much, the time some jerk of a boyfriend breaks her heart, the times when life’s inevitable failures threaten to break her down—I hope she looks back to this moment in her very young life and remembers that Beauty can always be found.

  Love for my child overwhelms me; it threatens to flatten me. I am so lucky to have this incredible, strong, intelligent little girl in my life! It takes every ounce of willpower not to embrace her in a bear hug right that very second. I refrain from such a move, however, for I’ve no wish to interrupt Alex’s gazing. She is forming her own moment with nature, and it would be wrong of me to intrude. I return my gaze to the mountains and leave my child to her own quiet reflections.

  We eventually move on, stepping carefully along the remainder of the Edmands Path until we reach the intersection with the Mount Eisenhower Loop. I snap a picture of Alex at this junction. She smiles proudly as she holds on to the wooden trail sign. My new digital camera gives me immediate feedback: the photo is perfect, my daughter’s pink shirt is nicely juxtaposed against a deep blue sky.