This weekend found me backpacking in the Carter-Moriah range in the northern part of the White Mountain National Forest, following the Appalachian Trail most of the way.
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Author: Occasionally Author
Desolation and other trails
With yesterday’s hike up and over Mt. Carrigain, I’m more than halfway through the list of New Hampshire 4000 footers. Instead of doing the more common 10-mile out and back, we opted for the longer loop which took us down from the summit into the Pemi Wilderness in the area that early surveyors and loggers called Desolation.
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Hitting the bar at golden hour
Summer weather and state guidelines for safe reopening under Covid have brought my trapeze practice back to full height outdoors. There are still a few limitations— even with masks there’s no good way to give a safe spot still keeping social distance, but it brings me joy to stretch out under the open sky.
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Up is (almost) always the right answer
Any good alpinist will tell you to expect the the air temperature to drop by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit for every 1,000 feet elevation gained, so what would make more sense on a hot July weekend than heading uphill?
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Now for something completely different
For some time I’ve been meaning to commit to video the definitive version of the parlor trapeze routine I developed with my teacher during quarantine. Here it is. You may need to turn the volume up all the way to hear the music well. Yes, I’m a monster for taking video in portrait orientation.
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Backpacking in the Pemi wilderness
The federal holiday for US Independence Day was this Friday, and since long weekends in the summer are a precious commodity, we took to the trails for a few days of backpacking in Pemigewasset Wilderness.
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Bonus day!
The weather for this weekend didn’t look particularly promising— there were showers and thunderstorms predicted starting on Saturday morning, but with contradictory forecasts and a promising radar map (and with rain gear) we set out under cloudy skies to take our chances with a hike over Blueberry Mountain.
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5, 7 and 5 syllables a haiku makes
Crouched among the ferns
Humbler than its lofty host
No less beautiful
Yay, Mountains!
The scientific literature is pretty clear that spending time outside is good for health and wellbeing, and I’m happy to provide a testimonial in support! Work is intense this week, and most days my meetings extend well into the evening. When I was unexpectedly freed from my laptop at 5PM yesterday, what I thought I wanted to do was collapse, but what I did instead was go for a hike (and to paraphrase a local poet, that made all the difference).
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千羽鶴 (Senbazuru)
I’ve lost track of the weeks since the Covid-19 pandemic swooped in and changed my life. I could tally up the trips I’d expected to take, mark the weekends I’d planned to volunteer with an outdoor program, but that seems like an unhealthy direction to dwell. I could count the loaves of raisin bread I’ve baked and eaten, or look up the number of times I’ve used my yoga app, or the video selfies I’ve taken of my quarantine trapeze. I could add up all the hours I’ve spent on video conference, add in the number of people I’ve interviewed and hired without ever meeting face to face, and think back fondly to the time at the beginning of all this when connecting with friends by zoom still felt like a connection, and virtual happy hour still felt happy. Are you depressed yet? Me too.
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