Date: 2017-11-13
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: few clouds

I should have written this entry Thursday night. Thursday night, my brain was in post-hike mode. Post-hike mode is the best for journaling. My brain gets in that introspective zone.Last Thursday, I climbed Katahdin. I never really know if it's more appropriate to say "hike" or "climb". I believe "hike" is a more correct term... but climb seems appropriate too considering the number of times I found myself in almost full-body contact with the mountain.Let me me preface my description of this hike by letting you know that the lady at the gate, who we (I hiked with my park ranger coworker Emily) bid farewell to post-descent, told us, "You're the last hikers. They're closing the gate tomorrow until winter camping opens up." Which means, yes, I was the first person to reach the summit of the Greatest Mountain on the last open hiking day of 2017, before enough snow accumulates to make the trails "safe" again.It was REALLY DANG COLD. Cold, and, of course, exposed and windy above treeline, and there was a nice, crisp layer of frost on many of those majestic granite rocks. And yes, the Saddle trail was slick and slippery with water, half-frozen, streaming its way down, around, and through the landslide of rocks.But I guess I should start at the beginning. Emily and I had been talking about heading north for a hike for weeks. But life gets busy. It's always busy. Wednesday, as we sat down for lunch, though, she started to steer towards a decision... she wanted to hike Katahdin, and if I was interested, she'd do the Knife Edge. Nothing like a super-fun, exposed ridgeline to get your adrenaline pumping and remind you that you're a little, tiny, soft, warm-blooded human being with rather breakable bones who could easily snuff it as you bounced down the cold, craggy mountainside... right?!Anyway, Emily really wanted to go. And even though, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, "I haven't had a day off in forever. All of my roommates are finally gone. I just want to sit inside and watch TV all day.", you know I can never pass up an opportunity to hike Katahdin. So, a few hours later, I was cramming whatever warm items of clothing I could fit in my day pack, lamenting the amount of good gear I had already sent home to Connecticut, and psyching myself up for a near-death experience.Okay, I'm exaggerating. We woke up early in Millinocket at the Baxter Park Inn, getting to the gate shortly after the park opened. We were surprised that the gate lady didn't give us any in-depth hiking advice (such as, wear good shoes, carry a flashlight, have a turnaround time... the kinds of things we ourselves recited to park visitors day after day during the summer). I like to think that I am not an idiot, but I knew, heading into Baxter last week, that this wasn't the best decision of my life. It was going to be cold. So cold. I am not a great fan of the cold. But... Katahdin...So we started climbing, up, up, and I felt okay as I warmed up, and shed layers, and as we first got above treeline and I wasn't blown away I started to feel like maybe it wasn't so bad after all. There was ice on the trail, yes, but it wasn't too difficult to navigate around, to shift my center of gravity and keep my balance as I shimmied up boulders and hopped from rock to rock.But then it started getting frosty. And then the wind started to pick up. The sunlight warmed the eastern rocks, but those on the west side of the ridge kept their frigid film. Not the best situation considering I hike like a clumsy mountain goat.It was okay, though. I kept moving, and my body pulsed with warmth. We hiked up the Helon Taylor trail to Pamola peak. I have not done this trail before... the first time I hiked Katahdin, I took the Cathedral trail, and then, of course, the AT. Helon Taylor wasn't bad, and I felt surprised at the strength in my legs as I ascended. I haven't been hiking as much lately, or even running as much, but my body was up to the challenge. That's not to say my legs didn't get very tired and weak and shaky by the end of the ascent, but... I still felt strong, hooray!And then we faced the Knife Edge. As I stared across that mile (1.1 miles, actually, from Pamola to Baxter Peak), I started to really question my sanity. I put on my rain jacket to block the wind, and doubled up on gloves, opening and closing my fists to encourage circulation into my poor frozen fingers. The scramble DOWN Pamola was difficult in , and as I waited for Emily to find a feasible route, I grew colder and colder, and doubt grew stronger and stronger in my mind. I thought, maybe we should turn back... if we aren't able to get down this stretch, it might be a sign that we should NOT continue THE ENTIRE MILE along the Knife Edge. Aaaaaand THEN, it was a freaking pain in the frozen buns to get UP again FROM the dip down after Pamola. Seriously. It didn't help that my fingers were too frozen to actually grasp on the rocks to pull myself up. My fingers were so cold. So, so cold. At one point, I was so miserable, and cold, and tired, and almost totally believing that my fingers were frozen solid, that I was almost in tears. I will proudly admit that I have not cried much lately. I think back and I cried SO MUCH on the Appalachian Trail. It was an intensely emotional journey, and such a struggle. But this summer I actually started to feel like a person again. And by that I mean... life was busy, and I didn't have too much time to dwell on the seriousness of things. I actually had a social life, and as much as my introverted self wanted to run away from the hordes of people surrounding me all the time, I did enjoy a lot of it. On top of Katahdin, however, I wanted to cry. The thoughts on my mind were similar to... "I don't want to die on this mountain." and, "I CAN'T BE LIKE INCHWORM." and, "Why did I agree to this madness?" and, "NEVER LET ME DO THIS AGAIN." There were two stretches of time where my fingers were so cold, and I was so tired and dehydrated (my fingers were too frozen to open my water bottle, and water had frozen solid in the tube of my Camelbak), I just wanted to let those tears fly freely. Fear of slowly freezing to death put a healthy respect for the outdoors back into my system that day. I didn't actually cry, though. I am tough. I am pretending to be tough. At one point I made it in front of Emily and just... took off. I was so cold, I had to move, I had to heat up, allow hot blood to return to my icy digits, and SURVIVE. I felt much better once I started moving again, skittering along the Knife Edge, hiking like a clumsy goat, picking my way among the frozen rocks, occasionally slipping a little, occasionally stopping to admire all the amazing ways I could potentially die, and eventually catching view of the summit sign beyond the huge cairn of rocks on Baxter Peak.It got weird. I didn't really expect it to be so weird, to be back on top of that mountain, a bit more than 2 years after completing my thru-hike. I really just wanted to get down, below treeline, and out of the wind, and get warm again.But you can't just blow past the summit sign on Katahdin. Things HAVE to occur there. At least, if you were once a Red Panda, that's what has to be done. And I was surprised by all of the things that came back to me, as I stared down across the tablelands. The feeling of accomplishment of reaching a huge peak. Wanting to celebrate, but also processing the knowledge that the climb down would be longer, in distance, than the climb up, and there would still be plenty of opportunities to die...Of course, most of all, the reflection back on the AT... the friends, the people... Surprisingly, most of all, the hike that day made me think of my family. My life so odd and disjointed, a bunch of last-minute decisions and adventures and odd jobs cobbled together last-minute. I'm in such a different place than both of my sisters. This fall, one had a baby, and the other got married. Meanwhile, I'm off rambling around the woods, playing park ranger for 5 months, with very few plans of what might come next.And hiking up the trail, we passed by green evergreen sprigs that some little critter had ripped off of trees, and red berries were scattered along the path, remnants left after some munching. That bright, crisp red juxtaposed against the green was a vivid reminder of the season, and the upcoming holidays, and I was suddenly homesick.Like I said... I'm at a weird point in my life. Being a ranger at Acadia is seasonal, so I have been cast again into a state of unemployment. I'm better when I'm busy, so I'm staying at Acadia as a volunteer for a few more weeks. It's better than going home, because I will just laze about and eat too much, but I miss home. I miss my parents, and my cat (who I guiltily abandoned to the care of my wonderful mother, as pets are not allowed in park housing). And here, I can keep busy, be useful, and hike, and live alongside the oceans and the mountains and run through the woods in the morning and blast my music while I cook. It's good and bad. Life is good and bad.But I felt homesick as I faced that reality. Most of the friends and coworkers that kept me so busy during the summer have left, continuing on their own new adventures. I have more free time, which should be occupied by trying to lose weight and increase my running mileage, but is slowly being spent more and more on video games and overindulging in hot cocoa. I haven't had free time in so long that I don't really know what to do with it, honestly. The other day, I sat around the empty apartment, just after the last roommate left, and it felt so STRANGE. I bubbled with a warm happiness inside, allowing my stuff to gather in public areas, setting up my computer in the common room, where I could actually sit and use it (it spent all summer awkwardly on an end table, where I couldn't sit and reach it). Anyway, this is a super tangent, I guess... the point is, I was homesick. Getting to the summit broke me away from my inner dwellings on my odd lack of a home and the difficulties of nomad life. I wanted a picture of that dang summit sign, all nice and new, but my fingers were seriously frozen. Emily seems to be much more impervious to the frost, because she actually took her gloves entirely off to eat her lunch, huddled in a sunny alcove out of the wind on top of Mount Katahdin, but I was still wearing my double layers, and was like totally freezing and ready to go after 2 minutes of stuffing a homemade onigiri (I had very little available in my cupboards before this last-minute trip... but found it kind of funny that onigiri, my go-to Shikoku staple, was my Katahdin lunch).I was itching, itching, wanting to get on with it, wanting to get the blood flowing back in my fingers and toes. But Emily, the brave one, with apparently molten blood, dragged me back to the summit sign for a photo op, using her BARE HANDS in the frigid wind to snap a picture on her phone before we departed.Then we left, passing a surprise pair of hikers coming up from the Cathedral trail - two guys from Quebec, who inquired as to the best way back down to Roaring Brook Campground. I told them to take the Saddle trail, the same way we were going down... I did not wish the Knife Edge on any other being that day. I was relieved, fifteen minutes later, to see them trailing behind us. I didn't want anyone to die on that mountain that day. I will say, however, that when we did see them, they looked like they were rather comfortable, and not at all on the brink of hypothermia (I'm exaggerating... a little).Heading back away from the summit sign was also a springboard for introspection. Last time I descended Katahdin (on a totally different trail, yes, but still...), my mother and the pizza fairy were waiting for me. Actually, they were more than waiting for me, they were hiking up to meet me. But this time, I knew that all that awaited me was Emily's cold car at the Roaring Brook parking lot, and another cold, chewy onigiri (I had to double layer the seaweed because it kept crumbling apart). And I felt extra homesick. I wanted to see my mom, and Dan. I wanted to have a chocolate cake, brought up from Connecticut, and eat it with my hiker friends. Instead I just had dried dates and gluten-free crackers that didn't agree with my gut anyway. The thing that I always love the most about hiking is getting into that autopilot, deep-thinking mode. It's good and bad. I do such good, productive thinking. But I'm at a crossroads again, another big life change just around the corner, and the thinking that day wasn't so easy. It was a good hike, despite the fact that the cold makes me a baby. Somehow I managed to keep my fingers alive, pumping them in their gloves, then pulling my fingers out into the middle and huddling them together into icy fists in my sleeves. As we reached the Saddle and headed down, I felt more relieved, until I saw the nice ice flows that wandered among the landslide rocks. Fun stuff. Good challenge, though. It really wasn't that bad, but the cold made me grumpy, even as I gazed around in awe and wonder at how freaking beautiful it is out there. I mean, I spent all summer in a national park, a park that millions of people visit, because it is beautiful, and amazing, and just... incredible. But Baxter is a different beast. It's majestic and intimidating and HUGE, sprawling, and wild. It's more isolated... even now, at Acadia, the chances of only seeing TWO other people on a major trail in the middle of the day isn't that unlikely. But last Thursday, on Katahdin, it was just me, Emily, and the two guys from Quebec. True wilderness. No moose, though :(And in the end, it really was a good hike. 75% miserable + 25% badass awesome incredible = good hike. Don't ever let me do it again, in that weather, but... it was good. I think it helped my soul to have a little Katahdin. It was encouraging to think that I am still strong, and that Red Panda is still part of me. Thicker than ever in my triple layers, but still muscular enough to beast that mountain, gives me that good dose of perspective.From far away, Katahdin looks huge. A monster, looming in the distance. It's hard to comprehend that a tiny human body can make it to the top, to climb and scramble up those huge rocks, to survive the frost and the wind and the cold, unforgiving granite. I told my mom, "No matter how you do it, Katahdin is always a hard hike." Baxter's website lists the trails as VERY STRENUOUS. Life itself is freaking strenuous, but I guess you have to do some crazy dumb stuff to make it worth it, and just hope it all works out and pays off in the end. Right?I'm looking forward to the next adventure.