Dispatch from North Woodstock, New Hampshire -- July 14, 2004

The Windsock Ramble continues.

It's only been a few days since my last dispatch, and I have not gone too far.  The towns are becoming more frequent and more significant. Not to malign the jerkwater trail towns of Maine, but New Hampshire's towns are just that much more hooked up.

Since Gorham I have entered the White Mountain National Forest, largely agreed upon as the most beautiful and most difficult part of the AT. Like a Voodoo Child, every day for the past week has involved standing up next to a mountain and chopping it down with the edge of my hand. Yesterday, especially, was a lesson in alpine euphoria. Well over half of my trail that day (17 miles) was above treeline. My second of many mountains yesterday was Mt. Garfield, a small mountain by New Hampshire standards but a brute nonetheless with a trail that climbs 1500' in just over half a mile. As I ascended Franconia Ridge a few hours later, I looked over my shoulder and saw Garfield small and conquered in my rear view mirror. I took the occasion, as I often do on blustery mountaintops, to talk some trash. Going up Franconia the treeline fell way away, clouds whipped over the loose, barren spine of the best alpine walk east of the Rockies, and I heard my throat generating spontaneous yawps of excitement. Uncle Walt would have been happy with me. The wind had me worried that I would lose my hat. Every sound that my throat made was immediately stolen in the wind. The giant pillows of cloud were pushed up the side of Lafayette and, upon reaching the lip of the ridge, torn away in tiny gaseous wisps. I have only one more mountain above treeline on the whole trail. It is Mt. Moosilauke, two days from here. After that, the trail becomes the long green tunnel, as hikers call it.

My first days out of Gorham were in the famous, over-crowded but not overrated Presidentials. I of course went over Mt. Washington, the highest point for a long way around, but was rather dissatisfied with my second summit. I made the mistake of summiting in the middle of the day when the peak is seething with fat, stupid tourists who drove to the top but still felt the need to wear backpacks and carry trekking poles. I farted in their general direction. And, to those of you who are familiar with the thru-hiker tradition, yes, I did moon the Cog Railway -- I mooned the hell out of it from 200 feet or so, slapping both cheeks rythmically and making Steven Tyler-esque Indian war cries. I could just picture the scene in the passenger compartment, bug eyed tourists with the P.A. speaker saying, "Well folks on your right we have an excellent view of a thru-hiker's buttocks."

And I'd do it again. I did however experience a bit of poetic justice because, in my rush after mooning the cheaters who get escorted to the summit, I accidentally got on the summit bypass trail and had to backtrack a mile to bag a summit that was too crowded even to take a picture at. Boo hiss.

Yesterday's 17 miles over Franconia Ridge felt better than that whole last week. One image particularly sticks in my mind. Coming up that barren and severe mountainside, seeing the ridge cutting its turns through the bluish mist and whipping clouds, I watched a trio of ravens flying patterns and conversing in loud grroak-s through the uneven air. The wind was such that they never even had to invest a wingbeat; they just banked and danced, almost colliding then suddenly carving a path into the clouds and out of sight before appearing again in rapid descent, checking their speed meters before hitting the ridge. I will miss ravens when I leave N.H. They will soon be replaced by the common crow -- the bastard of the corvids birds.

More from Hanover, N.H,--White River Jcn., VT, my second state border.