White Mountain High

Three days of hiking in the Pemigewasset Wilderness provides peak experiences.

From the 4,900-foot summit of South Twin Mountain, distant ranges recede toward the New Hampshire horizon like overlapping strips of ripped paper. It is into this world of purples and blues that Nature Boy Mikenango strolls into view with the steady gait of a man who started his hike in Georgia.

Mikenango is the self-assigned trail name for Michael Morgan, a 20-year-old substitute teacher from New York who is covering the Appalachian Trail in its entirety, nearly 2,200 miles. A couple of thousand hikers attempt the feat annually. Morgan left Springer Mountain at one end in February and hoped to make the terminus -- Mount Katahdin in Maine -- before August.

"Wow, isn't this something else," he quietly muses as he stands on the peak and absorbs the silence of the world below, roadless as far as the eye can see.

Morgan sports a Mohawk haircut, yellow earphones tuned to a rock station, a 40-pound backpack, an old hospital identification band left over from a bout of Lyme disease contracted earlier on the trail, and a beard singed from a recent night of drinking shots of flaming sambuca. Fireballs have also done a number on his shorts, but they are still decent enough to wear in public.

For long moments, the hiker stares afar. And then he offers an observation that could give the most seasoned outdoor enthusiast hereabouts reason to pause: "You know, I've come all the way from Georgia on this trail, but nothing compares to the beauty and remoteness of all of this."

This would be the Pemigewasset Wilderness, a 45,000-acre retreat in the White Mountain National Forest where you can stand on a mountaintop and feel interwoven with vistas void of human sign for 360 degrees. Robert Frost wrote that New Hampshire's mountains "curl up in a coil." At the core, located between Franconia and Crawford notches in north-central New Hampshire, is the Pemigewasset (the Abnaki Indian word for the "rapidly flowing" river that ultimately drains the area).

"The Pemi" is rumpled with a dozen major peaks and laced with scores of rivers, brooks, and waterfalls tumbling through 200-million-year-old formations dating back to the ancient supercontinent of Pangea. The Pemigewasset is the destination for 33,000 hikers annually. For three days this summer, I was one of them.

I am a 54-year-old novice hiker (do expert hikers walk better?) who took advantage of the lodge network maintained by the Appalachian Mountain Club to meander 25 miles in and about what most road maps simply depict as a big green blob. My route, with many side trips, began at the Zealand parking lot off Route 302 in Twin Mountain, proceeded about 3 miles south to Zealand Falls, then 7 miles west to Galehead Hut, and finally 5 miles north, back to a trailhead on Route 302 where an AMC shuttle returned me -- one sore puppy in need of a shower -- to my car.

The author Nancy Newhall once wrote, "The wilderness holds answers to questions man has not yet learned how to ask." Perhaps only when life slows to one step at a time where the journey is up or down but never level, and kindness to self dictates that material clutter be reduced to what can be carried in a backpack, can such questions begin to percolate.

Day 1: "People say they climb for the views. I climb because I just always have liked going up. If I see a mountain, I want to climb it." He is Frederic Stott, an 86-year-old hiker moving with the gentle motion of a humming industrial-age machine up the Zealand Falls trail on a morning when patches of sunlight promise respite from the black flies.

During breaks in the walk, Stott talks of his early teen years during the Depression when a trip to the mountains was made in a Model T and a sleeping bag was a bedroll, rain gear was oiled or greased cloth, and hiking shoes were work boots.

He is a retired administrator for Phillips Academy in Andover with a longstanding interest in the growth and economic health of the Appalachian Mountain Club. And he is all muscle.

In the late 1930s, Stott ran the Madison Hut, one of the seven facilities in the national forest that provide wholesome meals and dorm-style lodging for hikers. His mentor was the late Joe Dodge, the hard-driving force behind the AMC in earlier days. Dodge, the stuff of local legend, was able to cajole his workers into carrying huge loads to stock the huts, as they still do.

How did Dodge do it?

"A combination of discipline and humor," Stott says. He takes several steps in contemplative silence, then adds, "And you always knew he cared about you."

The Zealand Falls Hut, located about two hours into the Pemi, is no hut. It is a clean post-and-beam spruce lodge that sleeps 36 guests, with running water and odor-free composting toilets. It also is the summer home to a college-age staff of five who hike when they are not cooking and appear to have an at-rest pulse just on the positive side of zero. The meal tonight is ginger chicken, rice, salad, chowder, bread still warm from the oven, butter, and brownies. Tomorrow's breakfast will be pancakes, peaches, oatmeal, and sausages. I like the wilderness.

Day 2: At 6 a.m., Michael Greenwald, an associate professor of religion at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, leads a nature walk down to the beaver ponds located within sight and sound of the rumbling Zealand Falls. Greenwald is a volunteer naturalist for the AMC. "Oh, my gosh," he exclaims as a tiny salamanderlike creature crosses the trail. "How remarkable. A red eft." This is an aquatic eastern newt metamorphosing through its terrestrial phase, of course, and a sign that the animal is making a comeback in the Pemigewasset.

I depart for Galehead Hut, wondering how Greenwald processes all his input and still manages to walk. The hut is more than 7 miles to the west on a steamy, sunny day. By the end of the first mile, which seems to go straight up, I realize I have brought too little water. Much of the hike is along a ridgeline, but the trail also leads over three 4,000-footers -- Zealand, Guyot, and South Twin. Views are stunning, the fragrance of balsam fir is everywhere, and my wildlife sightings would have made Greenwald proud -- a spruce grouse in the middle of the trail so dumb I almost step on it.

But three hours into a five-hour crossing, I begin to lose interest in aesthetics. I am parceling out last sips from a quart container and cursing my stupidity and my load. It includes a tripod that one hiker said resembles a Gatling gun. What the hiker could not see in my 50-pound pack were the 5-pound poncho, the new "FAMILY SIZED!" toothpaste tube, a wooden box of cigars, several plastic-coated maps showing places I will never go, and a 542-page guide to the White Mountains with a preface that warns hikers not to drink from mountain streams because they may be laced with Giardia parasites.

Late in the day, I meet Judith. She seems to be dancing down a pitch I am clawing up with limbs that have become severely cramped.

She is half my age and perhaps the most beautiful woman I have seen in a decade -- except, of course, for my wife. And she sloshes. Judith carries a reservoir of water, not only for herself but also for her dog, Cinder. Big moment here. Can I swallow my pride and ask for a nip of Cinder's stash?

Instead I ask, "What mountains are we looking at?"

"The Bonds," she replies. I try to repeat the name, but with parched lips I cannot manage the "s." We bid adieu, and I stumble on to Galehead Hut wondering if Judith was a mirage.

Day 3: Galehead, like Zealand, is more lodge than hut. As is typical of facilities in the AMC system, the building demonstrates a remarkable kindness to its surroundings.

Solar cells and a wind turbine power the lights. The end product from four composting toilets (fans dry the waste to eliminate odor) is topsoil. No napkins are served with the meals, plus hikers "carry in, carry out," so the AMC huts basically generate no trash. A total of 35,000 people a season sleep and eat in lodges that have virtually no environmental impact beyond the infrequent helicopter flights delivering nonperishable supplies.

I have decided to stay here two nights so I can take short hikes, then depart early tomorrow. Destinations include Thirteen Falls, a return to the summit of South Twin, and two uphill trips for photographs.

My human connections include members of Boy Scout Troop 735 from Gamber, Maryland; "Hoffman's Hoofers," a predominantly female group of hikers from Tolland, Connecticut, who have come back annually since 1989; and Wayne Remillard, a pharmacist from Cape Cod. He is splayed shirtless across a boulder high on the Twinway Trail, soaking up the sun, spraying himself with Off!, and contemplating a question everyone in the Pemi asks: "How many black flies do you think I have to eat before I can say I've had a hamburger?"

The Pemigewasset generally draws two types of hikers. There are the short-trippers who seek the wilderness escape, perhaps set on "bagging" another 4,000-foot summit. There are 48 peaks above 4,000 feet in New Hampshire. The AMC awards a patch on the honor system to those who climb them all.

Then there are the serious hikers of the Appalachian Trail, which cuts through the Pemi. They either attempt the feat piecemeal during vacations or try for the whole shebang in one attempt.

You can tell thru-hikers immediately. They are lean machines with trail names seemingly born from Indian legends or the late 1960s: Wildflower, Dancing Prancer, Wild Turkey, and Hill Topper, to name a few. They are mellow, they don't pant up hills, and they love to stop and chat.

The observations they leave in the hut guest books tend to be seasoned with wisdom.

"Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else." -- Just Ducky.

And this, from Willow Brook: "This morning I wanted to quit. This afternoon I didn't want to stop. Ain't that just like life?"

David Arnold is a freelance writer.