I turned 50 last week. We climbed a mountain to celebrate. Get it? 🙄
I should rename my blog Migratory Double Entendres. Readers should not be subjected to this much titular cleverness without a warning label. Sorry.
I initially booked the only 6 bunks available (of 90) at my favorite White Mountains hut, Lakes of the Clouds, for my birthday. Room for me, my two teens, and whichever of their grandfathers and aunts could collect them from the airport and hike up with them. Over the subsequent months, 2 more bunks opened up, and then 3 more after that. So we were able to accommodate lots of grandfathers, lots of aunts, lots of partners, and even a Moe!
Mount Washington is the 4th tallest on the Appalachian Trail, and the tallest outside the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. I was hiking in on a different, longer trail than everyone else who parked at the bottom and hiked the Ammonoosuc Ravine. (My longer trail had been over 1800 miles already.) Allow me to tell the story in photo captions:
Harry’s smiling face was first to appear. This is not the first time he and Moe raced up a mountain. But the first time in about 10 years! The Beehive at Acadia in Maine comes to mind…The rest of the crew was not too far behind. Check out my Dad’s old school pack frame! 😳 Hopefully aluminum had been discovered before he acquired it?Moe and I have been here before! Check back-issues of Migratory Pebbles for season 1’s hut-to-hut hike back in 2011. Deja vu all over again! Lakes of the Clouds, near the summit of Mount Washington, will ever be my favorite.The thunderstorms began outside, so we ate soup and drank cocoa — and smuggled Guinness Draught — in the hut…And we played intense games of cards and Jenga and Codenames..Right before sunset, the storm miraculously cleared!We could even make out the summit of Mount Washington above us (or above the pictured Croo) for the first time all day!In the morning our bunk room was chaos. 12 people in bunks stacked 3 tall. Moe upheld his trailname, Top Bunk. We felt bad for the random stranger assigned to the 12th bunk in our room!First thing after breakfast we ventured to the summit. My sister Maggie has been by my side through thick and thin for all of my 50 years. We celebrated with my brother Paul two weeks ago closer to sea level, and he and I have already been up here together anyway, so he got a pass this time. 😉Dad and I had been up here at least twice before together. And at least once had me chasing my bedroll across the summit in a gale wind, followed by a hitchhike down the auto road. But this guy exposing me to the elements and exposing me to the existence of the Appalachian Trail at an impressionable age I can blame for this year’s wanderlust. And he can blame me for an unruly hat to the face.Finally, Felicity & Harry have always been partners in crime to my shenanigans. Head to the airport minutes after your last final exam? Sure. Miss all your friends’ high school graduation? Done. A decade ago I had to bribe them with Snickers bars to climb down this mountain. This time they refused my Snickers entirely! I hope I get another 50 years worth of adventures with these two. ❤️
As a special treat for reading this post to its end, I leave you with a self portrait taken the day after Mount Washington, in between the Carters and Mount Moriah. I call it “You should see the other guy.”
This is 50.
The other guy was a tree. A nasty lichen-covered mace of a tree hiding behind the curtain of a harmless looking tree leaning over the boardwalk. So I unwittingly went full-speed through the curtain tree and into the mace tree, which knocked me flat on my ass, but somehow did not permanently disfigure or blind me. Or even break my glasses?!
Looking backward down the trail at the culprit in the foreground and his accomplice behind him. Maybe you can make out the Benj-shaped depression in the moss where I lay stunned for a while, counting and re-counting my eyeballs and convincing myself that gratitude is the correct hot take.
After a couple zero days convalescing in Gorham, NH, I’m ready to get back out there and push into Maine!
Having escorted pebbles from the Irish Sea to the North Sea on the Wainwright Walk, now Benj is eyeing the Appalachian Trail…
