Appalachia, December 2000

By J. A. Pollard

Under a crisp, blue October heaven, Katahdin, Maine's highest mountain—the place the sun hits first in the U.S. each morning—seemed like a distant, frosted cake as the three hikers approached Baxter State Park.

It was late in the season for a climb, especially since their focus was Baxter Peak, five miles away up historic Hunt Trail. Starting at 1,100 feet above sea level and carved in the 1890s, Hunt represents the last section of the 2,158-mile-long Appalachian Trail coming up from Georgia.

As they left Katahdin Stream Campground, Britisher Peter Garrett, German exchange student Arne Springorum, and Mainer Tom Vigue felt secure and jubilant. Bristling stands of fir and spruce made deep-green patches amongst yellow poplars and birches. Underfoot, moss was spongy from fall rain. Chickadees flitted from branch to branch. There were signs of moose.

But Katahdin is noted for rigorous experiences. As Marion Bradshaw, one-time professor of philosophy at the Bangor Theological Seminary in Maine, wrote in 1944, "A group of us...once found five inches of snow above Chimney Pond the first week in September." And, alone on the peak, he later reported, "The wind grew icy as the light waned far across the northern wild. The sweat of the climb...gave way to chill and trembling....Whipping winds caught in crevices and rock pockets, or...jostled nearly-balanced rocks, making all the mountain seem alive....The mountain seemed too vast to think about...."¹

Thoughts from Thoreau
An earlier hiker, however, had done a lot of thinking about Katahdin. To Henry David Thoreau climbing in 1846, Maine's highest peak "presented a different aspect from any mountain" he had seen, "there being a greater proportion of naked rock rising abruptly" from the "damp and sombre forest of firs and birches."² In fact, it "seemed a vast aggregation of loose rocks, as if some time it had rained rocks, and they lay as they fell on the mountain sides, nowhere fairly at rest, but leaning on each other, all rocking-stones, with cavities between, but scarcely any soil or smoother shelf."³ Rocks, said Thoreau, "gray, silent rocks, were the flocks and herds that pastured, chewing a rocky cud at sunset. They looked at me with hard gray eyes...."⁴

From the 1890s until his death in 1942, Mark Leroy Dudley was a Katahdin guide nationally famous among mountaineers and outdoorsmen, not only for his guiding abilities, but for his tall tales about Pamola, the god of thunder and protector of the mountain, as well as other stories of life in the North Woods.⁵ "I think when the mountain looks prettiest is about the twentieth of June when everything is coming to life after its long winter sleep," he is quoted as saying. "The top of the mountain at that time is dotted with patches of Diapensia in bloom that resemble patches of snow. And around the rocks is the Rhododendron Pink sticking out and patches of Dwarf Laurel with its cupshaped blossoms. There's places around the ledges where Lazalia [alpine azalea Loiseleuria procumbens] grows with its fine leaves and its pink blossoms mixed in with the Cassiope [also called moss plant, Cassiope hyphoides] with its pearlish white. It seems as though there's life in everything at that time of the year.

"Early in the morning you can hear the song of the hermit thrush...also the white-throated sparrow with its sweet song which I love so well. And there's other birds: the purple finch, the crossbill, the rock wren, the flycatcher, and junco. In the evening the little rabbits are hopping...to get the green grass that grows. The marten are quite plentiful and oh, what thieves! We won't say anything about the blackflies. They rise from every bush in swarms and blind you, crawl in your collar and in every button hole. They come to keep you from being lonesome."

Next:
Autumn ascent