Appalachia, Summer/Fall 2010
Why are some kids free to explore the wild, and others aren’t?
Catherine Buni
My dad remembers that when he was little, growing up in Manchester, New Hampshire, he slept in a room where snow blew through the windows, small piles building on the sills as he curled up against his older brothers and sisters in the one bed for warmth. Outside, the Merrimack River’s cold water moved south under ice, where blood and bone fragments—discarded from the slaughterhouse where his own father worked stripping hides—swirled, riverborne to new places. Later, when he was in his early twenties, my dad soldiered in the mountains of Japan. He traveled on skis, carried a heavy canvas pack, and was, he said, bitterly cold.
The first time I climbed a big mountain in winter, my father asked, “Why the hell would you do that?” Two decades later, I sometimes ask myself the same thing, but back then, getting myself to wild places was pretty much all I could think about. It was Mount Adams, and, in winds strong enough to knock me off my cramponed feet, I estimated the temperature at 60-below that January day. At the time, I probably told my dad that climbing mountains was part of my job, which it was. I’m sure I tried to explain, though only half-heartedly, knowing my dad believed that anyone heading up a New Hampshire mountain in January was just a damn fool, how the experience made me feel alive. I balanced on the icy ridge of the Presidential Range, leaning up against a healthy childhood in a warm house in a woodsy suburb of Boston. Along with his seven brothers and sisters, my dad was pretty much on his own by the time he was 11, when his father, who’d immigrated from the Ukraine when he was a young man, died of complications from pneumonia, and he never forgot growing up in Manchester. “A reminder of winter strengthens the happiness of inhabiting,” the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard once wrote. “A reminder of winter increases the house’s value as a place to live in.” And if you’d had to sleep in a room where snow clawed its way through the glass, then what? What poetry resides in that space?
Early last October, I volunteered to lead a group of 8-year-olds up Stowe Pinnacle, a sparkly granite spur on the northwest side of Hogback Mountain, 2,651 feet high with views of Mount Mansfield, Camel’s Hump, and beyond. For a third-grader, there’s not much that’s more exciting than the annual All School Hike at East Montpelier Elementary School. A month in advance of the fall hike, a permission form listing an exotic array of choices is sent home with the kids. There’s Camel’s Hump, of course. Extremely difficult. And Mount Hunger. Intermediate. East Montpelier Trail and the Stowe Bike Path. Easy. After considerable debate and deliberation among friends, kids select their top three in order of preference, and, a week in advance, receive their assignments.
Frances, our 8-year-old daughter, and I left for our destination—our first pick!—at 8:15 that Friday morning. My husband, Bill, and our son, Ben, 11 years old and in his last year as an elementary school student, had taken off almost two hours earlier, having been awarded the only summit truly worthy of a sixth-grader: Camel’s Hump, famous as Vermont’s highest undeveloped peak. Because I’ve spent the last 25 years exploring mountains in my free and work time, I was feeling, if not exactly anxious, let’s say, responsible. I knew we were facing a tough climb with some “unprepared” kids. It was 37 degrees that morning, misty and raw. We’d actually gotten a few inches of snow the day before, enough to build a snowman in our front yard, carrot nose and all. So, on top of Camel’s Hump, elevation 4,083 feet, I’d calculated, temperatures would be somewhere around 26 degrees. I wasn’t worried so much about Ben and Bill. Or even the few kids they’d be able to help with the extra nuts and chocolate and hats and gloves and fleece jackets I had stuffed into Bill’s pack. No, I was occupied with the kids I knew would be standing on the summit in sweaty T-shirts, shorts, and sneakers, soda bottles in hand. What if someone sprained an ankle? Became hypothermic? The midday forecast was bright, however, so I tried to be too. I am still learning to recognize this feeling of unease, the awareness, a sadness of sorts, really, that the diversity of experience and circumstance that we’d find during the All School Hike extended far beyond this day, these two mountains, and the unpredictability of the sky.
Catherine Buni, former editor and publisher of "AMC Outdoors", writes from her home just outside Montpelier, Vermont.
This is an excerpt from the Summer/Fall 2010 issue of Appalachia. To order this issue, visit the AMC Online Store.
