goals

The Angel Rocks trail should be a metaphor for something, but I am sick of metaphors even though I write them into nearly everything I post. The hike up starts along a deceptively wide, flat trail, devoid of roots and rocks. Half a mile in, and it becomes a narrow snaking path through the trees, more rock and root than dirt. After a short jaunt up an increasingly steep boardwalk traversing marsh, the first of the tors becomes visible on the ridge far above. Impossibly far above. But you begin the climb anyway, because the tors (and the view they provide) is why you have come.

After a brutal steep climb over roots and rocks with no view through the trees of what is ahead, you come to that first tor and the view is spectacular. You are above much of the forest now, and the valleys stretch away in several directions. You breathe a sigh of relief, but then look up and find another, bigger, grander tor is looming ahead and higher. You catch your breath and start making the climb. And the pattern continues. Each tor reached juts into a more breathtaking view that before, and after each is reached, another, higher, steeper tor presents itself further upslope, tantalizing. The trail becomes a tilting scramble, more breaks must be taken. The day is hot for the northcountry, and muggy ahead of promised rain that night. There is not much breeze. You wonder at sweating so much in a place so close to the Arctic Circle. You lean on trees to catch your breath, embracing paper birch and wondering at the map patterns left on their leaves by passing bugs. You collapse onto small rock outcroppings, giving your burning legs a break, guzzling more water, cursing the next tor that has made itself visible, obscuring the sky, beckoning you upward.

As you scramble and huff to reach each new outcropping of granite, each new and higher view, the scattered people around you drop off the hunt and head back down. It’s not a long hike, but the steep trail and discouraging appearance of more of it after every turn proves discouraging to many, even the intrepid couple decked out head-to-toe in brand-new REI gear complete with clanging bear bells that you are sure would attract a curious grizzly rather than alert it to move on.

At the top, you find yourself alone in the silence. There is still no wind, and the sweat is heavy on your t-shirt. A bee passing over the rock seems deafening. You scramble up the last of the tors, at the top of the world, finally, and the landscape is laid out before you a green canvas, the blue sky mostly obscured by low continuous clouds, grey rivers snaking away and out of sight. A single cabin stands out far below, a speck of blue in the endless green forest. Your legs are shaking from the climb, and you aren’t exactly sure they are steady enough to make it back down the rock to the trail. But you are at the top, scraped knees and dirty hands and sweaty back, and slowly your heart rate slows and your breath comes evenly and your legs stop screaming at you for what you have put them through.

I didn’t stay at the top for long. I was hoping for more of a breeze, but one never kicked up. I lay for a while in the hazy sunlight, but found myself more worried about the scramble down the rocks than able to embrace the view from their peak. There were more bees than I was comfortable communing with. My backpack didn’t make an excellent pillow. Before too long, I found myself attempting to backtrack down the steep rock to where the trail began its endless switchbacks down the back side of the hill through ever thickening forest. In my scramble, my bearspray fell out of the pouch on the side of my back. I watched in horror as it bounced down rock after rock, twenty feet, fifty feet, a hundred, and in slow motion I saw the safety latch break. Suddenly a breeze kicked up, just as the handle engaged with a rock, I got a facefull of cayenne pepper, disseminated over a hundred feet of elevation loss and generously delivered straight to my face by the sudden gust of wind.

I dove back to the top of the tor to catch my breath and let the coughing fit subside, then shakily worked my way down through the mass of granite to where the bearspray lay, innocent next to its safety catch, banged up and dented but still intact, in a little hollow of grass beneath the highest of the coveted tors. My eyes were burning and my lungs were raw. The view was gone down in the trees, and I still had a two mile hike down the steep grade and along the river back to the trailhead.

Maybe this is why there is no metaphor for climbing higher and higher, only to find more worthy goals around each subsequent corner. Because at the top there are too many bees, not enough breeze and a faceful of pepper spray meant for an eight hundred pound grizzly. Buyer beware.