(HOST) Recently commentator Tom Slayton returned to his favorite mountain – to climb, to reflect and to contemplate the future.
(SLAYTON) Can mountains have personalities? After more than 50 years spent hiking and climbing in the mountains of the Northeast, I like to think so.
And for me, the mountain with the most personality, charisma, style call it what you will – is Katahdin, in far-northern Maine. It is
the most dramatic, the wildest, and most challenging mountain in the Northeast, a symphony – no make that an opera – in stone. And it is also a trickster mountain, a shape-shifter, a mystery.
For one thing, it looks different – radically different – from different angles. From the south, it is deceptively simple: a tentlike mountain with a single peak. From the east, it can seem to be several mountains, carved by glaciers into a sleeping giant lifting a huge
shoulder here, an enormous knee over there. From the west, it’s a single long sinuous mass that rises to its full height – 5,267 feet
– like a green dragon rearing its rocky head. It’s really a single huge range from which several peaks rise and a mile-long sawtoothed ridge, the Knife Edge, is traversed by the most exciting hiking trail in the east. I have Katahdin in mind because I’ve just returned from yet another trip there. Its power and beauty are still with me – as are the collection of scrapes and bruises I inflicted on myself getting up the mountain.
It’s getting harder to climb Katahdin, there’s no denying it. While most of my companions set off to traverse the Knife Edge, I set myself a more modest goal, mainly because of my arthritic hip – not, God knows, because I’m getting too old for this kind of contact sport! I just wanted to get up above treeline to the great Table Land, a broad Alpine plateau from which the mountain’s summit, Baxter Peak, rises.
It took me five hours of climbing, sometimes over bare rock faces and huge stacks of boulders with deep drops on either side, but I made it. I sat and watched grey wisps of cloud blow across the table land, watched the wind ripple the tawny rushes and sedges of the summit as I ate my lunch.
But I knew I had to turn around without reaching the summit. I didn’t feel disappointed at all. I was just grateful – honored even –
to have been allowed to climb high on New England’s greatest mountain once again.
My only moment of regret came when I prepared to leave the table land. I retraced my steps to the top of the boulder-pile – the trail
down the mountain and back to camp. Before heading down, I said goodby to the mountain, but made a quiet vow that I would come back, somehow, this life or maybe next.
Though I’m not young any more, I’m not ready to pack it in yet. I’m not going gentle into that good night. The high, wild places still
call to me, arthritic hip or no. And I still hope – and believe – I can clamber up New England’s greatest mountain at least one more time.
Tom Slayton is editor-emeritus of Vermont Life magazine.