Summit

The summit of the mountain was, for me, a pole of attraction from the first time I tackled Chocorua. I barely arrived at the trail head because my car had started overheating on the way. Just to justify the long trip, I headed up the trail to the Nickerson Ledge Trail to get some views.

I glimpsed the top far above me and was drawn powerfully to it--but I knew I would be hours going home, starting and stopping to let the engine cool, and I should get going. Maybe that experience set the thorn in my heart because all that winter, I remembered the patterning of light through cool green beech trees, and swore that, come spring, I'd go all the way and attain the citadel.

This last Saturday, climbing one more time, a couple my age who broke a ten for me to pay for parking said they had been heading up to Mt. Washington but were happy to exchange the extra hour of driving for trail time. Sure enough, as I lounged on a granite slab looking out at the panorama of the Sandwich Range, they steadily toiled up to the than which nothing higher.

So why, descending, did I see a group of late teen girls (and two boys sitting apart) standing on an outcrop no more than 15 minutes from the top, call back one of their number saying that they wanted to go back. 'It's right there,' the girl pleaded, but no use.

How could you have so blithely refused the experience of achievement? What had drawn you that high just to turn back? Were you teasing the mountain? On Everest, time and weather can put the kibosh on an ascent, but this was a beautiful afternoon with hours left of glorious daylight. The magnet in me was locked on the top, but not yours, obviously. Further down the trail, I came across two more girls who'd dropped out and were sitting arms around knees on a ledge.  'A party of girls (and two guys)', I asked? 'They're coming.'

There are movies I've walked out of, songs I've stopped listening to, books I haven't finished. It's not necessarily obsession to go to the end of anything, nor fecklessness to not. But then why the cost without the climax? I felt for Jen, who went ahead and came back like a dog to get her friends to follow.

About 20 minutes down from the top, I met a 30- something woman fiddling with her walking sticks who looked anxiously upward and said she had climbed it twice 16 years ago, but now, looking at the rocks ahead and the summit beyond, was afraid to go ahead. What, I wondered, had happened in the interim? Can fear come to life ignited just by memories, the 'I could have been killed' substituting for the episodes of actual danger? It seemed that as she was struggling, the upward momentum that had got her so far along was losing way.

Oh, mountain, you are simply there, picturesque, challenging. The legend of Indian/settler revenge attached to you seems as arbitrary as the stories of any of people who attained the summit or did not. Our efforts on your flanks don't only reveal you but also reveal us, who we are. It's a great gift you bestow, beyond the mountains-beyond-mountains vistas you let us have.