The Abominable Snow(shoe)man

Single digit temperatures with wind chills below zero. No heat, electricity, or running water. 

Huh.

When Chris first suggested joining Outdoor Bound’s President’s Day weekend snowshoe trip to New Hampshire, I was a bit skeptical on the probability of returning with all ten fingers and toes. But I like to consider myself to be fairly adventurous, so I agreed to the challenge.

We left by 7am Saturday morning in a van with 5 fellow snowshoe-rs, plus our guide. The car ride was lengthy, about 7 hours to get from the city to the White Mountain National Park, an area of New Hampshire mountains near Mt. Washington. Thankfully our van mates were a fun group of professionals from the city – and a stop at Littleton diner in NH provided local flavor both in terms of culture and lunch deliciousness.

All of our supplies, including food, had to be backpacked in, so we loaded up our giant hiker backpacks and snowshoed uphill for ~3 hours to arrive at Carter Hut Notch, part of a remote group of huts run by the Appalachian Mountain Club.  Carter was a small compound with a kitchen hut (where the all-important wood stove was lit between 4-9pm daily), bunk huts (bunk bed rooms – no heat/electricity/water but still shelter from the wind), and an outhouse hut up the hill (which was quite aromatic to say the least).

We arrived after dark, using our headlamps to make our way in, and hit the hay early after a quick dinner around the stove. With no lights and no heat after 9pm there’s no dilly-dallying before retreating into sleeping bags!

A daylight view of the hut, and the bunk's interior room door handle, which frosted over at night:

Sunday involved a rigorous snowshoe up to Carter Dome and Mount Hight – the views from the top were stunning, with snow drifts of several feet. The way down was a bit of a heart-pounder: the sun made the snow a bit icy, so there were a few moments where we were unintentionally butt-sliding down the mountain! Thankfully there were minimal steep drop-offs adjacent to the trail, so a quick self-arrest with hiking poles averted trouble (for trouble read: dropping off several-thousand-foot mountain).

Carter Dome:

 Trail and Mt. Hight Summit:

We arrived back exhausted, mostly in a good way, around 3pm. Then came one of the worst moments of the weekend: hanging around, counting the seconds until 4pm until the wood stove was lit. While the weather was cold all weekend, we really didn’t feel it while snowshoeing. In fact, the exercise was strenuous enough that the real risk is sweating, since a wet base layer of clothing can get dangerously cold after you’re not walking around. But once you’re just sitting around in cold huts (where the temp outside is teens and the temp inside is 20s/low 30s) it gets chilly pretty darn quickly. But we survived until 4pm, and enjoyed the evening snug around the fire, eating tacos and chatting with other hikers. 

Hanging out in the cold, waiting for the coveted 4pm fire-lighting moment:

Once 9pm hit and the stove was off, we were out of there like lightning, bolting for our sleeping bags.

We forget in modern society how odd it is not to have to deal with the cold – we quickly retreat to heated homes/cars/offices. But sleeping in the cold is another story. You have to plan ahead! We filled water bottles with warm water (boiled from the lake) to take the chill out of our sleeping bags. Anything you didn’t want to freeze solid overnight – including slightly sweaty clothes, water, etc, had to go into the sleeping bag with you. And definitely no drinking water right before bed – going to the bathroom during the night involved unzipping two sleeping bag layers, losing the all-important body heat, putting on boots and waterproof clothes, grabbing a headlamp, waking up the entire room of campers with the ruckus, and trekking in the dark to the outhouse. 

The 5am pre-dawn darkness on Monday saw us up and about for an early hike up Wildcat Mountain. We began in cold/dark/single digit temps, but enjoyed a beautiful sunrise as we hiked up the steep trail. Popping back to Cater by 8am, we grabbed a quick breakfast, packed up our packs, and hiked back out to our cars, 2-3 hours away.

First peek of sunrise:

 

The drive home was a bit “ripe” – 7 hikers who hadn’t showered in 3 days – but a happy exhaustion prevailed in the van. On the whole, I’m incredibly glad we went. Not just for the views, though the area was beautiful, but for the forgotten art of unplugging. Without cell service, laptops, emails, or even electricity we embraced the art of actual conversation. With all of our modern conveniences, we lose a certain beauty of the old days, where everyone gathered around a fire and talked to each other as the evening’s only entertainment. No on hung out alone in their bunks (why would you in the cold/dark?) so we got to know one another and the other hikers passing through the area.  A sense of strong community prevailed, and we remain in touch with our hiking buddies.

Of course, all that said, a looong hot shower at home on Monday night felt pretty darn amazing.

The Intrepid Crew:

Wuv, Twoo Wuv

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

CVS is packed today. Mostly with men. Mostly with men buying cards for their wives. It always seemed like a mismatched holiday to me; from my stereotyping (and rather cynical) viewpoint, it seemed that women pinned the apex of their romantic dreams on the day while the men seemed to be doing whatever it took not to be in the doghouse with their women.  I always feel a bit of pity for these men standing in line at the flower stand – but then again (as my husband will admit) he was one of those poor souls waiting in line at 7pm on Valentine’s Day last year in an effort to find flowers that didn’t appear overly bedraggled.

But what is this “love” that we are celebrating? The foundation of the day is an emotional one – the idea that love is light, ethereal joy. And if you find yourself less happy with someone than when you were alone, you break up (or get divorced). But the emotions of love are constantly evolving. Shakespeare’s famous Sonnet 116 makes love a fixed thing, but I disagree with most casual quotational use of the sonnet that seems to argue that love stays exactly the same forever. It shouldn’t. In fact, we should pray that it doesn’t. Love grows, matures, and strengthens, even when society would say that it appears to be weakening. It becomes less about chocolate hearts and googly eyes; more about weathering storms together, building friendship together, recognizing when the most romantic gift you can give your spouse is to help with the baby’s dirty diapers or write a post-it note that you love them. There will even be terrible, hurtful moments – but your commitment to one another teaches you the meaning of extending grace and forces us to face our own fallibilities.

Before I got married, my aunt gave me wise advice: she told me that there would be times when I would ask myself, “How did a nice girl like me end up in a place like this?” – but that those moments are ok. My uncle advised us not to be afraid to ask for help – that we should go into marriage expecting moments that are not full of daisies and Hallmark cards. After a few years of marriage, one of the things I am most thankful for is the honesty it forces upon me. The honesty to look anew at habits or sins in my life that had hidden from view until another person was so closely, constantly in my life. This is part of the maturity of love – to “speak the truth in love” to one another; that “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” But also the honesty to be myself with my husband, knowing that for both of us, our commitment to one another is long enough and strong enough to take joy in our joys and sorrow in our sorrows as we mature with one another and with God.

I’ll end this post with the below quote from CS Lewis on the deepening nature of love. But also I need to get going. Out to dinner. With my husband. It is Valentine’s Day, after all.

"Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing.  There are many things below it, but there are also things above it.  You cannot make it the basis of a whole life.  It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling.  Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all.  Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feeling come and go.  And in fact, whatever people say, the state called "being in love' usually does not last.  If the old fairy-tale ending "They lived happily ever after' is taken to mean 'They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married', then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were.  Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years?  What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friend-ships?  But, of course, ceasing to be 'in love' need not mean ceasing to love.  Love in this second sense - love as distinct from "being in love' - is not merely a feeling.  It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God.  They can have this love for each other even at moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself.  They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else.  'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity:  this quieter love enables them to keep the promise.  It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run:  being in love was the explosion that started it." CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

Alive and Well and Living in Paris

In 2006, I attended the Off-Broadway revival of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. The songs/themes are quite dark (code for über depressing), but I found “My Childhood” to be hauntingly poignant; the simple melody combined with provoking lyrics and sentimentality make for an unforgettable song (lyrics below).

What is it that makes us sentimentalize childhood? Perhaps the memories of imagination: the feeling that we could pretend our own worlds into being, untouched by the reality of practicality.  Truly, I believe childhood is not so much the panacea we remember it being - yes, there are fewer practical worries of paying bills, but also a greater sensitivity to the “smaller” issues of taunting classmates or frightening monsters in the night. Rather, as adults I think we become rather lazy with our imaginations, seeing the world increasingly in black and white.  More of our cranial space is taken up with life’s necessities, and less with the “leisure” arts – imagination, creativity, spontaneity.  We call daydreamers impractical. Perhaps they are in terms of skills for securing a desk job, but if we do not take time to dream, our lives become more “nose to the grindstone” than “eyes to the heavens.”

Of course, I work in business (in accounting, no less), so perhaps this view of lost creativity might seem a skewed perspective as compared to those in full-time pursuit of the arts. Then again, our society places less monetary value on arts (at least in terms of salaries), so the mere stress of making a living surely robs many of their creative veins/dreams.

The point? Our imagination is a cognitive muscle like any other – it must be used, stretched, and practiced before it will grow stronger. Leave it in neglect too long and it will atrophy.

Recommendations? Find something that makes you uncomfortable – or at the very minimum, something that seems “pointless.” Check out a new genre of music. Visit an art gallery whose work you always thought was a bit odd. Donate to an artistic cause. Take the time to imagine if things were different. A friend once asked me “what would you do with your life if you had unlimited resources and knew you couldn’t fail?”

What would you do?

My Childhood (Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris) – translated from Brel's original French, sung by Gay Marshall

So my childhood goes on the wings of the silence
Of memory’s treason, and true make believe
Winter snowflakes like diamonds on the window sill
Where I press my chin
And dreamed summer in

Then I ride ‘cross the plains, I’m an Indian brave
On a pony of gold, never taking a rest
I battle to save, my warriors, my West 

So my childhood goes, on the steam of the cooking

I dream of charlotte ruses, and other truths
My mother plays mahjong, my father plays cards,
So distant, so wise,
They look right through my eyes.

So I block off my head, I pretend I’m a bird
That’s unseen and unheard, I have not said a word
Now I’m driving a train, it’s bedtime again

So my childhood goes, with white gloves and bonnets
Dissolving in teardrops until it’s all gone
How my anger rises, how i hold my breath
Against this whole family
Always ready for death

Always ready for grief, always ready for war
Oh, I want so much to dance on the graves they adore
Dance to bring back the dead, and it’s time for bed 

My childhood explodes, and it shatters the silence

And it smashes through grieving, with a beautiful noise
There was the first boy the first boy that I knew
And his first tender touch,
My first taste of love

I wanted to fly, and I swear that I flew!
My heart glowed like the sun, the dark days became bright

And then the war began, and here we are tonight