When Life Finally Slows Down, Are We Too Slow to Finally Enjoy It?
Climbing Katahdin at the far reaches of middle age.
My childhood bestie went in for cataract surgery the week my husband and I climbed Mt. Katahdin. We rode up to Maine in our usual fashion: me in the passenger seat with my bare feet on the dashboard; him drumming the wheel as we blast Neil Young. Our late-in-life kids are finally launched and we’re flirting like teenagers again. I retired from teaching two weeks ago. All those adventures we’ve been postponing await.
We’re feeling strong. We’ve been running and hiking throughout the pandemic. The dog has lost 10 pounds. We are who we’ve always been. Age 19 forever.
Only I can’t stop fixating on the image of the ancient Connecticut mariner.
I once did some boat varnishing for him, a vagabond who was something of a legend in our small town. He had cruised the world in his sailboat, much of it single handedly, and still kept it docked by his house on the Connecticut River. He was in his late eighties — shuffling, hunched and weathered — and I was surprised he’d even managed to clamor aboard the vessel one afternoon when he looked at me with the sparkling eyes of a child. He wanted to sail it to the Caribbean for the winter, he said, “but my wife won’t let me.”
It’s even harder to keep his image at bay once we get on the trail and I begin to wonder if I’m similarly deluded. The hike is 9.6 miles and 4,152 feet of elevation gain — 3,419 of them in the first 3.2 miles. I remind myself that anyone would feel challenged by the climb. The prize, though, is the most spectacular of east coast peaks, the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. Katahdin rises thousands of feet above four steep and conchoidal glacial cirques. It evokes Alaska more than New England.
It has simmered in our aspirational crock pot for several years. Although by Western standards it is — at 5,269-feet — not very tall, it is as grueling as any peak out west. Early New England trailblazers had no patience for switchbacks. All trails go straight up.
We focus on our legs, newly rippling with muscle definition, but can’t ignore the young hardbodies who pass us as we steeply ascend. We take our time, my husband and I, ages 66 and 61 respectively. A year and a half ago he spent two weeks in intensive care with a ruptured brain aneurysm. Yet here we are.
Soon the old tortoise-and-hare parable kicks in. We pass a hefty 40-something and his teen children, who had earlier rocketed by. We never see them again.
The sunny weather is ideal for a hike that will take us above the treeline, but the day is hot. The temperature hovers around 80℉, nearly 20 degrees above normal. Hours pass. It is hard but gratifying and after several hours we reach our first destination, the not inconsequential Pamola Peak.
The view from this peak of Katahdin’s famous Knife Edge is daunting. We don’t see them at first, but ant-sized people in colorful clothing spread across the sharp and serrated arete, which drops off thousands of feet on either side.
Having just absorbed the same scene, a young couple is heading the opposite direction — straight down the rocky trail we’ve all just ascended. “My hamstrings froze,” the guy says, even though we haven’t asked. “Can’t do the Knife Edge with frozen hamstrings. The best outcome is to get down safely.”
“The best outcome,” says his girlfriend, “would be to finish the hike.” She casts me a sideways glance.
We exchange superior smirks which soon dissolve as we reach The Chimney. The Chimney is the narrow gap separating Pamola Peak from the first sharp spike in the Knife Edge — Chimney Peak.
“We have to go down that?” I ask him as we look at a nearly vertical rocky drop painted with random blue blazes. But even harder is the 100-foot ascent on the far side of the gap to Chimney Peak.
I feel like Alex Honnold free climbing El Capitan, but somehow we both make it up. Today is our 29th wedding anniversary. The sharp rocks add another 29 years to the patina on my wedding ring as we maintain our three points of contact. At one place both my legs and my hands are crossed as I stretch for handholds almost out of reach.
When we’re out of the chimney Bill is dripping blood from his left forearm and his right calf. My right elbow is leaving red blotches on the rock, too. We pause to catch our breath and can’t stop ourselves from grinning. Our workouts have paid off. Five years ago neither of us would have been here, but today we’re killing it.
Only now we’re just at the beginning of the 1.1 mile Knife Edge, described by a fast-moving 20-something we encounter as “jungle gym for grown ups,” and which, apart from its menacing drop-offs, is also an ascent. It is long and arduous, but not actually as scary as it would seem. The rock is rough and stable. The natural handholds are plenty; it’s the breath in short supply. Even sips from my Camelbak tube leave me panting.
Earlier in the year I placed 6th in my age group at a 5K attended by thousands. It pains me to think that the Knife Edge is kicking my butt. And it’s not just me.
“Can we do something easier next time?” asks my husband.
“What were we thinking?” I ask in return as we peer ahead to see how much of the Knife Edge remains. Suddenly fog drifts up one side of the ridge and surrounds us in blessed relief from the heat we’ve been too preoccupied to realize is sapping us.
At long last we emerge from a boulder field to the Katahdin summit. We are inordinately happy, possibly as much because the Knife Edge is over as because we have reached the top. We gape at the view and snap photos of each other.
Soon we start down the other side, which is a walk in the park compared to what we’ve just come through. We’re rock-hopping along alpine tundra tablelands and heading for an orange gash in the distance that marks the rock slide that we’ll follow into the basin.
We’re happily realizing we’ve finished the most difficult sections of the hike when I go to sip from my drinking tube and feel my cheeks collapse. We have four and a half miles to go and I’m out of water.
The trail down the rock slide is steep and slippery. But steadily we inch toward the fabled Chimney Pond without incident. At one point a clear mountain stream babbles across the trail. We doff our shoes and socks and plunk our feet into the icy water. By now, my husband is out of water, too. Oh, how tempting to slake our thirst here and deal with Giardia later. Of course we don’t.
Chimney Pond is arguably the most scenic camp spot east of the Rockies. We reach the ranger station too gassed to walk the 300 further yards needed to take in the view. We’re down from the tablelands, but have three long miles to go. Three boring, never-ending miles. It’s still hot. We’re still out of water.
Twice we pass rugged specimens who tell us they’re rescue volunteers heading to their base camp at Chimney Pond. Surely they would pump some water for us, but pride prevents either of us from asking. We both silently acknowledge that outside assistance would diminish our accomplishment.
Thus we stumble into camp thirteen hours after we started — hot, tired and, most of all, thirsty. We desperately slug from our water supply, then celebrate our safe arrival by heating some beans and franks over the Coleman stove. Our sore feet and stiffening muscles remind us that we’re not 19 anymore.
The next day when we’re back in cell phone range, we post the most vertiginous pictures, the youngest looking selfies, and use our own 20-something phrases like “gnarly” and “bad ass” to describe the hike. The bragging rights are sweet.
It takes next few days for us to recover. At a beautiful campsite in Baxter State Park, we’re content to sit by the fire, read books and sip tea from our Yeti mugs. Years ago I chalked up weeks-long treks carrying a 60 pound pack. Double-digit daily mileage was standard.
Those days, I now realize, might be irretrievably past. Now that I’ve got the time, Katahdin has informed me that it has very nearly run out. That the treks I yearned to take when life was crammed full of work and childrearing are possibly as unrealistic as the solo sail to the Caribbean that my Connecticut seafaring friend still hoped for. These are bitter pills for people like my husband and me.
Next year we’re planning to go to the Dolomites in Italy. Crazy alpine scenery, high-altitude passes, and challenging trails. No 60-pounds packs, though. At the end of each day you stay in “refugios” where you sleep in a bed and eat home-cooked Italian cuisine. They even pack you a lunch for your next section of the hike. Easy peasy. We’d have scoffed at such a trip when we were younger. But there’s another reason why we wouldn’t have gone on such a trip back then and, as we nurse our sore muscles, it is a reason now consoling to acknowledge.
When we were younger we never could have afforded it.
