Beaverzilla vs. The Sweat Bunny. Oh, and a Moose.

I'm delighted with this recent change of attitude in my hiking wife, Julie. She used to dread (or at least be concerned to the point of distraction about) the fact that I wrote about all our hikes together and then posted my blasphemous lies on my blog for two or three people to read.

But no longer. On this, our first hike of the season, she was pointing out things that I should take pictures of to include in my blog. Naturally, I assumed that she had finally overcome her fear of my poisoned pen and was embracing that fact that there was absolutely nothing she could do about what I write.

 I realize, as I write this, that I may have interpreted Julie's motives incorrectly.

None of the things that she suggested I photograph were her.

As proof, I offer these pictures, suggested by Julie:

This is not Julie.

This is not Julie, either.

So now I'm thinking that Julie was merely redirecting my attention so she will not appear in my writing or pictures in any compromising way.

It did not work. Because here is a picture of her, helplessly lost and about to be consumed by Beaverzilla:

Nice try, Julie.

And, in fairness, it is not entirely true that we were helplessly lost. Merely re-checking our coordinates carefully because none of the surroundings looked even remotely familiar and we had no idea where we were.

But the looming threat of Beaverzilla was very real.

Our first hike of the season was a leisurely stroll to the summit of Mt. Passaconaway, conveniently located far, far, far away from wherever you happen to be.

A tantalizing view of the summit, which never seemed to get any closer, no matter how much we walked.

Julie chose this as the destination of the day because its height (4,043') makes it one of the lowest of the 4,000 footers that she is determined to conquer. She thought we should start the year off easily and work our way up to higher, more challenging peaks.

Like Mt. Everest.

And the hike did start off easily, a mere stroll through the woods for several miles, which, in retrospect, should have set off more alarm bells in my head. The thing about a hike is, you have to get to the top of the mountain. That's the whole point. And if the first 4 miles of your 5 mile ascent are flat and level, then it should be obvious that the last mile will be nearly vertical and extremely painful.

Like this.

Or this.

And it was.

But before we got to the vertical part, we had to slog through Beaverzilla's territory.

And here, I am forced to admit that I do not have a picture to include, in spite of the fact that Julie specifically suggested that I take one. Our path to the summit ran along the ridge of a very well constructed beaver dam. Imagine (since there is no photograph) a bucolic, idyllic little pond, bordered on one side by hundreds and hundreds of baseball bat-sized sticks, all sharpened to deadly, razor-sharp points and laid in place by the slavering, rabid teeth of a beaver.

Now, imagine the pain, infection, and lingering death you would suffer if you slipped and punctured your foot on one of those sharpened sticks, glistening with foaming globs of bacteria-laden beaver drool.

So that's why I don't have a picture to show you, okay? I was way too concerned with not catching a deadly case of Beaver Fever.

After we traversed the deadly dam of doom and despair, we continued along our merry way, blissfully unaware of the fact that were likely being stalked by the hideous creature of the woods, Beaverzilla. We never actually saw Beaverzilla and, frankly had never even considered the existence of Beaverzilla before seeing the tree it had evidently chewed down.

Sign of the Beaverzilla.

While there is nothing in the picture to give you a sense of scale, I can personally assure you that I took this picture from atop a high hill, from about a half mile away. The tree is roughly 750,000 feet in diameter. I'm estimating, of course, because when we saw that, we raced wildly away through the woods to escape Beaverzilla.

We ran the nearly vertical last mile to the top of the mountain so we could stop and have lunch on one of the two scenic vistas available for hikers' lunching pleasure. When I took off my pack, Julie screamed a horrible scream and fell back a few paces, pointing in wide-eyed horror at the mark of the beast that had appeared on my back.

Mark of the Sweat Bunny.

The dreaded Sweat Bunny of the Whites had marked me as its own and I was powerless to resist. To further enhance the frightening atmosphere, nature provided some frightening atmosphere. As soon as my Sweat Bunny was revealed, a bank of ominous Zombie Fog™ rolled in to make everything look spooky and completely obscure our view.

Here comes the Zombie Fog™.

There goes the view.

We decided to take one last picture of ourselves before the fog transformed us into hideous, twisted creatures of the forest.

Pre-mutation.

Julie was the first to breathe in the steamy Zombie Fog™ and was instantly transformed into a moose.

Julie is transformed into a Zombie Moose.

I told her that I wasn't buying her ice cream if she was a moose, so she fought the Zombie Fog™ and willed herself back into her original form.

Post-Moose Julie.

Sadly, she transformed into Julie With A Giant Tree Poking Out Of Her Chest. But it was better than a moose.

The trip back down the mountain was quite a bit faster than the way up. Our usual incentive for a speedy descent is a huge ice cream cone at the end of the hike. Generally, that is enough for me. On this hike, however, nature saw fit to test our speed and resolve by sending along a few rumbles of thunder to hurry us along.

Julie has a pathological fear of thunderstorms that occur when she is perched precariously atop a mountain. She spent the hike down devising many ingenious methods of emergency descent, most of which involved killing me and using my lifeless corpse as some sort of ghoulish, Jeffrey Dahmer-esque bob-sled.  I explained that if I was dead, I would not be buying her ice cream. She explained that when she killed me, she would take my wallet and buy her own ice cream.

I had no good counter-argument for that, but her plans were cut short by the thudding roar of a helicopter flying low overhead. It passed over us several times and I tried to convince Julie that it was a team of body-guards I had hired to protect me from her during our hikes. I'm not sure that she believed me, but at least she didn't try to use me as a bob-sled.

We managed to get down off the mountain without incident and without any actual Beaverzilla sightings.

Now if I could just get this Mark of the Sweat Bunny stain out of my shirt.

More Mountain Climbing. More Suffering. More Pain. And No Ice Cream.

Let me get this out there right away.
The ONLY reason I go on these ridiculous hikes with Julie is because we ALWAYS get ice cream after the hike.
ALWAYS.
(Are you reading this, Julie? ALWAYS!!!)
So when we finally braved the treacherous and outrageously difficult dual summits of Mt. Flume and Mt. Liberty last Friday, I cannot be blamed for expecting to be rewarded with an ice cream sundae the size of a 1959 Buick.
Julie insisted that she would rather have iced coffee.
Clearly, she had gone insane. There is no other explanation.
I even have photographic proof from our pre-hike photo.

All hike and no ice cream makes Julie CRAZY.

As so often happens, I failed to see the warning signs until it was way too late.
Adding to my case for Julie's advanced state of craziness is the simple fact that we climbed these mountains at all.

Mt. Liberty and Mt. Flume are described in the guidebook like this:

"Oh, the humanity. What are you thinking? DON'T, under any circumstances, EVER climb these mountains. You will regret it. Why don't you just go out and get some ice cream and SAY that you hiked them. Nobody will ever know."

But rather than following the guidebook's sensible advice, we headed off into the chilly morning air to climb two mountains and suffer needlessly. And without ice cream.

The hike began with a mile of walking along a paved bike path, just to reach the trailhead. We chatted of this and that, marveling at the fact that it could possibly be so cold here in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in October. Who would have guessed?

We turned off the pavement, into the woods and began a leisurely stroll through the woods. A leisurely stroll designed exclusively to lull us into a false sense of safety and well-being before the mountain could roar up and give us both a dope-slap.

We traipsed merrily along in the woods and soon began to get warm and decided to shed some of the hundreds of layers we had worn for the trip. At a trail junction, Julie took off her vest and the pants that she had brilliantly worn over her shorts.

I, less brilliantly, had worn some very fashionable spandex pants (pictures not included) under my regular pants. Removing them required removal of my pants first, followed by a tricky balancing act while trying to slide the spandex off and not step onto the cold wet ground. When I was about half-way through the ordeal, another hiker came striding into view from the foggy, misty woods.

I had chosen to simply change in the middle of the path, as there was obviously nobody else around for miles except Julie and she was busy looking at maps or engaging in some other useless activity. I tugged at my spandex pants, trying desperately to yank them back up so I could get my regular pants up. A simple over-balance sent me hopping across the path on one foot with my pants around my knees, directly in front of the approaching hiker.

"Nice morning," I said, assuming a nonchalant pose and smiling suavely.
"Warms up fast, doesn't it?" he asked, striding away quickly and disappearing into the misty shroud of the forest.

Julie is happy because SHE wasn't the one hopping around on one foot in her undies when the other hiker passed us.

I managed to get myself changed without any serious personal injury or charges of indecent exposure, and we started out once again, headed for the foot of the Mt. Flume slide, now a mere 2.6 miles away.

I should probably explain that a slide, when hiking, is not a delightful piece of playground equipment designed to bring joy to all who use it. A slide is a horrible slash of rock that runs nearly vertically up the side of a mountain. It is designed to kill you in painful and spectacular ways, but only after causing you unimaginable amounts of pain and suffering.

The day was warming up even more and, rather than risking more indecent exposure charges, Julie used the opportunity to take a refreshing dip in the icy mountain stream.

Nothing says "hypothermia" like a cold, wet foot at the beginning of a hike.

After her swim, we decided that a snack might be in order.

I'd like to point out that eating is an integral part of any real hike and that near the end of every single hike, the talk revolves exclusively around food. We typically each bring an assortment of goodies and share them.

Julie brought along some trail mix and commented, "I got this kind because it was cheap."

A brief view at its contents explained why it was so cheap.

"Oh my god. Is that a dehydrated heart?" I cried when Julie pulled this hideous lump from the trail mix, "Because if it is, you can have it."

Closer inspection revealed that is was actually a dried, salted strawberry, which is exactly as delicious as it sounds.

Julie attempts to eat The Strawberry of Doom and Despair

Once she tastes it, Julie can no longer remember happiness.

With a cold foot and the foul, salty taste of dehydrated strawberry scorched onto her tongue, Julie suggested that we start off again before things could get worse. As if in answer to her suggestion, we almost immediately lost the trail  and wandered aimlessly in the woods for a few minutes, lamenting the fact that we were going to die with the taste of salty strawberries in our mouths.

 We eventually found the trail again and walked for a few months before catching our first glimpse of the fabled Mt. Flume Slide.

The slide, before it gets steep. This is the trail up the mountain.

"Hey, Julie. It's been fun. I'll be going home now," I said, turning and heading back toward the car. I took off my pack to get a drink before heading home. I leaned against a tree and was rewarded with the most miraculous sight in nature:

New Hampshire's rare Toasted Marshmallow Tree

Close-up of the toasted marshmallow. They look much better than they taste.

Julie didn't like them, either. Foodwise, it was a disappointing day for her. And destined to get worse.

Enchanted by what other wonders might possibly await us at the top of the mountain, I reluctantly agreed to continue the climb, which got significantly steeper.

0.8 miles doesn't sound like far, I admit, but when it is made of slippery, wet rock jutting directly into the sky, it takes on a new sort of meaning.

Julie somehow managed to tune out my constant whimpering and whining and complaining and we found ourselves at another trail junction.

0.1 miles to LUNCH!

I am jubilant at the thought that we will soon be eating.

We finally crested the hill that opened onto the summit and were rewarded with some glorious views.

I am not actually scenery, I realize that.

We settled in for lunch and this was the view while we ate.

We will discuss my pathological fear of heights in much more depth in the following paragraphs.

After lunch, we trudged onward toward the summit of Mt. Liberty, visible in the top right of that picture of my foot. It was a mere 1.2 miles away and after the climb up the slide, we felt like we were floating. It was a lovely, deeply wooded hike that opened onto a rocky, barren summit, inhabited by a french guy who did not budge from his spot at the summit marker.

Julie poses with the immovable french guy.

A word about hiking etiquette: Everyone who climbs mountains, likes to touch the summit markers hammered into the rock. It's silly, but we do it. It makes the entire ordeal worthwhile just to touch that piece of metal. It gives you a sense of accomplishment.

"I hiked a ba-jillion miles over slippery, wet, steep rocks. I have blisters, aches and pains, poison ivy, altitude sickness, dehydration, hypothermia, and vertigo, but I got to touch that marker."

So when you do finally reach that marker, it is very poor form to squat there and eat your lunch hovering over it so nobody else can get near it without climbing around you. Yes, I'm talking to you, random french guy!

I would also like to take this opportunity to discuss the sphincter-puckering drop you see in the photo behind Julie. There are times, when hiking, when a drop appears very impressive, but actually glides gently away from the summit. This was not one of those. The drop behind Julie is exactly as terrifying as it appears to be. A rock-studded plummet to certain, splattery death.

"Go out there," Julie coaxed, "I'll take your picture."

You will notice that there are no pictures of me on that summit. I was clinging desperately to the craggy granite, explaining to Julie that I am terrified of heights.

"This probably isn't the best time to be letting me know that," Julie said, "And, anyways, it's not that bad."

"I have almost wet myself climbing a step ladder," I told her, "This is like a million step ladders piled on top of one another."

"You wet yourself?" Julie asked, missing the point entirely.

"I said 'almost'," I explained, "Just like I almost got to the summit of this mountain."

"Come on," she pleaded, prying my fingers from the rock. The french guy sat back and watched impassively.

Julie succeeded in prying my fingers from the stone and getting me out onto the exposed summit. There is no picture of the event because I was shaking so badly that I appeared only as a slight blur in the picture.

I did not wet myself.

Much.

And I managed to snap one picture of the view from the summit before I got all woozy.

And then I changed my pants and we headed down the mountain.

We passed a small but impressive pile of animal poop that I had to photograph simply because of its startling similarity to the dehydrated strawberries that Julie packed. The poor creature that left this had obviously been feasting on the strawberries thrown away by other hikers who had bought the same cheap trail mix Julie did.

Seriously. Where do these flies come from? We're over 4,000 feet in the air! Come to think of it, where did the poop come from? Probably the french guy.

It was a long walk down, but with very little chance of being dashed to bits on jagged rocks. The path wound through the woods, leading us slowly and painfully down the mountain toward the ice cream that I still assumed we would be eating. If you imagine a steep, irregular staircase made of slippery, round, loose rocks that leads sharply downward for 4 miles, you'll have a good idea of what the descent was like.

We were at the point in any hike where talk gravitates to the subject of food and stays there permanently. Things were going splendidly and we drifted easily from food group to food group. I explained my theory of carbohydrates to Julie (your brain uses glucose as fuel; carbs make glucose; therefore, carbs make you smarter). We were passing the time pleasantly until we get around to the inevitable subject of ice cream. And Julie said that she'd rather have iced coffee.

And the world shimmered and faded to black.

I have no recollection of the rest of the hike, shrouded as I was in the bleak hopelessness of a hike without ice cream. I suppose that we did make it down safely, as I have a picture that suggests a happy ending.

Notice, please, that Julie no longer looks insane.

My smile is fake. A thin veneer of joy slapped over a bottomless pit of hopelessness and despair and sore feet.

Next time, I'm packing ice cream to eat on the summit. And some dehydrated strawberries for Julie.

Slacker, you say? Oh, no.

So, you may have noticed that I haven't been updating my blog as much as I possibly could. That is true, but there are reasons.
No. It's not that I'm a slacker.
I've actually been writing some longer chapter books and for some odd reason, taking a break from writing a book by writing a blog does not seem like enough of a change on some days.

Also, I have been doing more hiking with my pal Julie.

In fact, we were supposed to go for a hike tomorrow, but she flaked out at the last minute citing some weak reason. "Oh," she said, "I just got back from a two day trip to Pittsburgh [or Detroit or somewhere, I wasn't really paying attention] and my plane was delayed and then I had to go up north for a party or something [I still wasn't really paying attention] and now I'm at a bridal shower [or a baby shower or something] and I'm just mentally exhausted."

She did say that she was mentally exhausted. That much I heard for sure. I helpfully pointed out that hiking doesn't actually require enormous amounts of mental stamina.

You see a mountain, you walk up it.   

It's basically that easy. Sure, you have to figure out how to turn around 180 degrees and return to you car, but still, the real heavy thinking revolves around what kind of ice cream you get after the hike.

But still, she was unapologetic about wimping out.

Our last hike was not a 4,000 footer. We climbed Mount Chocorua (pronounced: Mount Chocorua) and my brave and intrepid daughter came along on this one. My brave and intrepid son opted to stay home and do yardwork with my wife, something that I would climb a dozen mountains in succession to avoid.

I put this picture in at this point because I know you crazy kids with your clicky fingers. Confronted with several unbroken paragraphs of text, you begin to get antsy and you go clicking away, searching for something more visually stimulating and shiny. So, to keep you here a moment longer, that is a picture of my daughter, after the hike, indicating the mountain that she had just climbed.
The photo is not actual size, the mountain is much bigger in person.
If you don't believe me, go hike it yourself. It seems that about a million other people do each day.

I was recently at the top of tiny Mount Monadonock (pronounced: Mount Chocorua). It is reputed to be the most climbed mountain in the world. Judging by the swarming packs of people on cell phones cluttering the summit, I can well believe it.

Mount Chocorua is likely the second most climbed mountain in the world, as the population of the summit was close to that of Beijing.

Here are some more pictures so you can see the amazing view of other people you get when you climb a mountain.

This one is Julie being swept away in a crowd of people. The hand in the foreground belongs to an unlucky traveler who was run down in a stampede of LL Bean clad hiker wannabees.

Here is one final picture. This one is of Victoria and me making the universal hiking hand signal for "I made it up to the top of the mountain without plummeting down any sheer walls of slippery granite." We were using the binoculars to try to read the sign at the ice cream stand, but it didn't work out that well. There were too many people in the way.

In the immediate foreground, you can see a sliver of the lady who, for some inexplicable reason, chose the summit marker as a place to practice her yoga poses.Many people like to touch summit markers or take their pictures at them. It was entertaining watching people try to slip their hands under her as she was doing her downward facing dog move or whatever it was.

We made it down safely and did get ice cream. I got Raspberry White Chocolate (pronounced: Mount Chocorua) and it was tasty.

Tomorrow, however, as Julie is so mentally tired, there will be no ice cream for me.

I'll probably be doing yard work.

Home and Gone Again

In case any of you have been losing sleep over the fact that I appear to be perpetually still in New Jersey; fear not. I returned home safely last week.

Sadly, that fate was not shared by my pillow and some of my clothes.
While I was in New Jersey, I got an email from my lovely wife explaining that my lovely son had been taken to the lovely hospital for lung x-rays. He had a lovely case of pneumonia.

This, I freely admit, upset me a bit.

I woke up very early the next day (like 3:30 early) and decided to just hit the road and get home. It seemed a wiser option than sitting in my hotel room, staring at the ceiling and listening to the roar of the traffic racing by.

I staggered blearily around my hotel room, showered, packed up my stuff and ran a large armload of my belongings out to my car. While there, I saw something shiny and got distracted.
"Ooooh coffee!"

I wandered over to the Dunkin Donuts, conveniently located in the scenic parking lot of my hotel, and entered its sacred coffee-infused walls. The clerk behind the counter was Indian and didn't seem to have a firm grasp on conversational English yet.

"Do you have vanilla coffee made?" I asked, seeking a whimsical, flavor-filled change in my coffee drinking experiences.

The clerk looked at me, obviously not understanding the question.

"Baniya?" he asked.

"Vanilla," I nodded, "Yes, do you have any vanilla coffee?"

He stared for a moment longer and then his face broke out into a radiant smile.

"Ahhh!" he said, "Medium french baniya, cream sugar!"

"That's it!" I cried, marveling at his psychic ability to penetrate my unkempt exterior and discern my innermost desires.

He handed me my coffee and I made my way back toward my car, marveling at the fact that he had learned English based entirely on the Dunkin Donuts menu items and how the majority of customers preferred them.

I was impressed. Thrust into the streets of Calcutta or Agra or Bombay, I doubted that I would have fared as well as he had.

I hopped into my car and sped off into the night, completely forgetting about the second load of belongings that sat in my hotel room, gathering up toxic levels of hotel carpet stink that I'm certain will render my pillow unusable for several washings.

I arrived home to find Alex doing better. My joy at that news was tempered slightly by the fact that I only then realized that I had forgotten all my stuff in New Jersey.

A quick call to the hotel confirmed that they would be delighted to do absolutely nothing to help me get my stuff back.

"Uhhh, I'd have to talk to the manager about sending it back to you, but I don't really think that's gonna happen."

Thanks Motel 6!

I sent a rather panicky and completely humiliating email to Cindy, the lady who had arranged my visit to New Jersey, asking her if she could possibly go to the hotel and grab my pillow–the one with the dirty socks and undies stuffed in the pillow case–and mail it up to me.

She agreed to undertake this odious task and I will forever be in her debt.

For the past week, I have been visiting schools from Massachusetts to the White Mountains. It's been fun, but exhausting. Every school is different and I never know what to expect when I arrive. This keeps me on my toes and in a perpetual state of near paranoid alertness.

At Fuller Meadow School, I was treated to delicious lunches (Candi, the coordinator, had read my blog entry asking that I not be served Sloppy Joes and Tater Tots) and, as if that weren't enough, she sent me home with two half gallons of delicious ice cream from the ice cream stand across the street.

My trip to Campton Elementary, way up north in New Hampshire began with a presentation to the 7th and 8th graders who, I was warned, might try to kill me and eat me.

Adults, as a rule, are terrified of 7th and 8th graders. Mostly with good reason, I imagine. But my visit with them was delightful. They were fun and enthusiastic and did not throw rocks at me or try to eat me. What's funny is that I gave almost exactly the same presentation that I normally do for 4th graders. It went very well, as did the rest of the day.

The only slight glitch in the day was the last presentation I gave to the Kindergarten, first, and second grades. It appeared that some poor child was suffering from some sort of gastro-intestinal distress and kept farting throughout my presentation. The child had the uncanny ability to time his farts to whenever I paused for dramatic effect.

"And then..." I paused, savoring the magical moment of silence. And when I opened my mouth to continue...

"FFAAAAAAARRRRRRRT!"

It was very amusing for everyone.

Tomorrow I head off to Portland, Maine for three days of school visits. I'm looking forward to this trip a lot because my good friend Amy lives up there and she claims to possess knowledge of the whereabouts of an excellent Thai restaurant.

And I know that, as I have yet to get my pillow back from New Jersey, there is no way I can leave it at the hotel this time.