AMC Outdoors, June 1999

By Catherine Buni

Today, sunny and August in Maine, trails and mountains mere steps away, just heaving myself into the hammock feels like an expedition. Ben's bare knees press into my ribs and a round cheek rests on my chest. His toes uncurl on my belly. Up and down, his small body rises with my breath and his own. Under wind and white pine, we rock, a moment in sun, a moment in shade. Warmth again, then again none.

I slept four hours or so last night. And the night before. And before that, well, I've lost track. Ben, we think, is cutting his first tooth. And he's learning to sit up too. At 2:00 this morning I'd found him locked in a miniature push-up, asleep still, but not for long.

I doze and wake, brush a pine needle off the back of Ben's head. Above me, a freckled, dusty-brown bird hops up the side of the tree, and I vow, again, to find time to check Peterson's and learn more about this creature that balances itself over open air and pulls food from brittle bark and climbs along—all at the same time. I am tired just watching it. I am just tired.

I'd been warned by bleary-eyed moms everywhere. "Say goodbye to all that," they'd sigh when I told them my plans. Not me, I'd say, remembering the story I'd read in the Times about the mom who ran a triathlon six weeks postpartum. So I'd gone ahead, two months before Ben was born, and scheduled the hiking trip that now looms only seven short days away. Ben, my husband, Bill, and our friend Maria and her 11-year-old daughter, Athena, would overnight at Mizpah Hut. We'd take the Crawford Path to Mizpah Cutoff, a piddling two and a half miles to the hut, no more than nine miles round-trip. Ben would be five months old by then. I'd be long back to running, back to my pre-pregnancy weight.

Adventure mom I'd be, with at least a half-dozen camping trips already under my newly expanded belt and daily canoe excursions around the lake near our house in Maine, Ben strapped in his infant life preserver and cooing with the loons.

But Ben screamed when we zipped up his new jungle-theme PFD, and within a mile on my first run the shooting back pain that had been my constant companion during pregnancy decided it had missed me. My weights sit in a bag in the closet, and I've yet to squeeze into my old jeans.

What had I been thinking?

We have to cancel our trip to Mizpah, I decide. The bird above me climbs closer to the sky. I fall asleep.

Of course, we don't. Ben has a few good nights. I grab a couple hours on my mountain bike. I jump off the rope swing into the lake. We head out full of ourselves.

But we forget lunch. Take a wrong turn. The skies are spitting a cold September rain when we finally make the trailhead at 3:00 p.m. Shaky and cold, I wish I'd never left the hammock. In an effort to spark confidence and calm, I ready Ben, irresistible in mini polypro ensemble with blue stripes, purple fleece bunting, hooded rainsuit, and doll-size wool cap. Bill hefts gear and food for three onto his back. Then he lifts Ben, in his baby backpack, onto mine.

Soon we are in the woods and I am warm, my step light. Ben is smiling and wide eyed in his new rig. Bill, well, I figure he's got at least nine months before he can gripe about who's carrying the weight around here. But he's nowhere near complaining, and hikes alongside Ben, pointing out trees and ferns and waterfalls. At the crossroads of Crawford Path and Mizpah Cutoff, we sit on a carpet of moss under fragrant spruce, and I nurse Ben. We chatter on about the woods around us.

Less than a mile to go.

A full half-hour before dinner we stomp triumphant into the hut. We're met with a few adoring smiles but mostly worried looks and even a few scowls. It isn't hard to imagine what they're thinking. I'd thought it once too: "Please, please, no baby in my bunk room."

But Ben is a dream. Tucked next to me on the bottom bunk and nursing, he issues barely a peep. The only all-you-can-eat-buffet for miles, I think. I sleep only four hours, but the quiet of the woods and wind outside are rest enough for tonight.

And tomorrow. After pancakes and smashed pears, we hike the Webster Cliff Trail, stopping to snack on gorp and Zwieback I pull from our packs, then climbing on. Before noon, we're on top of Mount Pierce, a dusting of snow underfoot. The sky is everywhere, and it is bigger and bluer than I've ever seen before.

—Catherine Buni former editor of AMC Outdoors, writes from her homes in Boston and Maine. She, Bill, and Ben are currently living just outside the Sierra Nevada in southern Spain, where they continue their effort to perfect the fine art of family camping.