You Learn Things...

As you drive towards Mt Willard, going north on 302 just outside of North Conway, the mountains fill the span of your entire windshield. Pictures can't really do it justice, you need your own eyes to see the effect. Also, since I never saw Willard in real life before, it's looming appearance made me think, “Oh shit, this is going to be waay harder than I thought.” The mountains in the area just shoot up out of the ground and many with vertical cliff faces that run hundreds of feet long. Willard's face just showed one hell of a drop off and that was giving me second thoughts. “Fuck me...this might be a big mistake!”

AllTrails.com and most other sites devoted to climbing in every form had this to say about Willard. “A moderate hike, probably the most 'bang for the buck' scenery-wise vs. many other mountains in NH.”

Add to that a forum where anyone can post and pretty much said the same thing, except they added “easy and quick.” A relative few said it was harder.

Sure, it's easy if you're 24 years old. It's easy if your cardio, PaCO2 and ligaments are late model and in fine working order. I sure ain't “late model” anymore.

I won't repeat what happened as I wrote about it when I went up Watatic a while back. Just say I ran my heart rate up to 160 bpm and had to stop, numerous times, to wait till it got back down to a “manageable” 100 bpm. Once there, it didn't take much to ramp it up once again once I started ascending. I found out later there ain't 22% O2 levels like around here at sea level. Up there it drops to 17% and I guess my late model cardio was noticing it. I personally didn't notice a thing except that my heart was pumping on overdrive. The higher you go, you start to make silly decisions as your brain starts to starve for O2.

What did strike me this time around was how dark it is in the forest. The skies were just party cloudy for mid July and the sun is usually screaming bright but not on the forest floor. Then again, I had to tell myself that this isn't the woods of RI. This is the real forest I heard about in Grimm's Fairy Tales and that movie, “Deliverance.” The Black Forest in Germany isn't black, they call it that because so little light reaches the ground due to the trees and plant life blocking it. I'd say the forest in NH ain't too far off. When I popped out my camera to take a shot, the flash automatically flipped up because IT didn't think there was enough light either.

Another thing too, most woods have a scent, something akin to rotting leaves but this was a conifer/deciduous forest (a mix of pine and oak trees). The smell was like shoving your face into a warm, wet pile of fuming garden mulch. It doesn't stink but boy does it have it's own signature. If you like dank, go here.

If you go camping in these parts, real camping where you piss in the woods and hump your own equipment in and out, you're going to end up smelling and looking like the surrounding area pretty quick. You will become just like every other animal that calls the Whites home. Ticks and fleas in your nether regions are an added bonus.

**

Hiking with others can be fun but it poses some complications as well, namely; physical condition, age and motivation. If you want to kill the vibe of the group, just have one person who's into a competitive race with the others. You'll then see some real interesting dynamics develop you haven't witnessed since high school. Add some stress to an otherwise congenial group of friends and boy, will it ALL come out and not necessarily the good stuff. You'll see political groups forming, disbanding and reforming to gain the upper hand on the decisions needed to be made.

I hike with someone nearly half my age who jogs regularly. Good for him. I wish I was in my 20's too (but this time around knowing then what I know now). His excellent physical condition means he can whip my ass at ascending while I have to hold back and mentally keeping pace of my heart rate. Yes, we are mismatched as a “team.”

So why can't I get anyone my age to do it?

Most of the real locals I know here, who are my age, view their weekends as a time to rest as they work either physical jobs or very time consuming/stressful jobs...or both. They see weekends as a relief to do nothing.

“Huh? Are you fuckin' kidding? I ain't going to climb 3,500 feet! I'll climb the six steps to get into a liquor store though..and that's IT!”

That still ain't a bad idea for a weekend though.

Here's a vignette I had on Willard last week that taught me something I forgot long ago. A little life's lesson you tend to lose in the minutia of day to day living.

Without getting into it, there's been changes...many changes where I work and it poses some short and long term questions to me that will have to be eventually answered. As I was thinking about it, an old thought popped into my head that a close friend said long ago about work in general.

“No one can force you to do “anything!” You can say NO!” He was referring to a job he had in Ohio while in school and he found that it sucked so he blew it off. There was a price to be paid for that too. Finding another job to replace it and go a bit further w/o a steady income. But in his mind, it was worth it. He wouldn't settle and “Embrace the suck” as the Army Rangers say. As far as embracing the suck, you can make yourself mentally tougher if you do tough it out, but there are certain situations in life where you could still get that kind of workout, but it's way better, far smarter, to flee them with a flame coming out of your ass. There are some places, events, where being tough isn't much of a reward in the end. Want tough? Hang out in Syria or where the Ebola virus wants to crawl on you. I don't care how tough you are, it's a SUCK situation. . An illiterate person would've left that a long time ago, leaving your educated tough ass behind.

So....

As I was humping up Willards busted, rocky trail, I could feel the physical stress building in me. Most times I would just keep quiet and plod on. But, you reach a point where it becomes overwhelming and you have to stop. I do anyway. At 55 I will. Don't forget, I'm old now and an on again off again smoker who needs to blow off 20lbs. Final analysis: “He's getting there, old and decrepit...but not quite just yet but he's feeling it coming!”

My young friend understood why I was stopping but it is a bit tiring to someone that age to have to do it again..and again.....and yet again. Like I said, we were mismatched.

“You'll do it! You can keep going! We're almost there!” were the hints of support I was getting. With that I would start again, cutting short the length of the break I wanted and acquiescing to his prompt.

In my head I knew it wasn't that I needed mental encouragement. Hell. I can be focused as shit and never stop if I have a goal in mind, almost insanely so. If in the right mind, I.Don't.Quit I will summit this and come down in the rain and midnight dark if I have too because I have all sorts of nifty equipment in my backpack to do so. But this time there were REAL physical limitations that cannot be ignored. There are actual walls I have to contend with. These limitations, are different.

So, after stopping and hanging onto a sapling for support, he suggests we start again. I cave into the peer pressure and go. I glance up at the trail and see how steeply it rises and stomp on. I go until I start to feel the heat beaming off my face like a freshly made glowing ingot of steel. My heart was easily heard in my ears too.

“No...NO..Fuck no...FUCK NO!...I'm STOPPING no matter what anyone thinks for as long as I WANT!”

I didn't say that, I sure as shit heard it in my head though.

I sat down on a log and take the pulse. Wow, 160 per minute. That's a bit too far beyond the safe limit for someone my age. I stay seated on the log till that rate came down and I felt refreshed somewhat.

“Ok, Let's go” I say once I was completely satisfied that I got things to a comfortable level. I then said, “I'm going in stretches...then I'll stop..and go again...and we'll reach the summit.”

As we headed up, I thought about what happened. I finally, finally chose myself instead of going along with the crowd/group...whatever. There came a point where I wasn't going to tolerate my unease any longer, so I chose myself. This coming from someone who's been, in one form or another, the helping progressions his entire life. Add to that an “un” professional career of emotionally carrying terminally ill relatives on my back for years at a time.

When you're the only “strong” person there, you get to carry the load.

But I reached a point on that mountain where I said “No.”

As we got nearer to the summit, I realized that “No” isn't just for mountains alone, I can use it anywhere I feel like it. Work, life, pepperoni on pizza or not...I have choice.

Mike was right all those years back, you don't have to a god damn thing if you don't want too.

Unfortunately, there are two kinds of people in the world, the nurses and the nursed. If you are a “nurse,” you tend to ignore your own misery while you care for others. It's automatic and damn near innate. It's a knee jerk reaction you do w/o a moment's thought. Well, time to nurse my own damn self, don't you think? A billion others do it.