New Hampshire with the Pettengills

Since I spend most of the weekdays surrounded by the white walls (sometimes splattered with red) of the operating room...by the time the weekend comes—I am almost always experiencing an intense hunger for anything outdoors. I think in another life I would have been perfectly happy as a tree gnome.

Daniel Webster, a New Hampshire native, once wrote: "Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men."

We wound through small pudgy mountains—covered with granite, maple, and pine, past the "Old Man of the Mountain" who used look out across the Appalachia until his forehead cracked in 2003...(Jennifer and I reminisced on our Winnekeag days when we saw him square-jawed and solid), while I daydreamed about a few faceless mountain men. Finally, after several hours of fighting the rivulets of cars all heading to the White mountains of New Hampshire, we made it to the trail head. "Nancy Pond trailhead..."

Matt had done his research on the original "Nancy."
In 1778, a Nancy Burton, scraped and saved money preparing on a bright future with her fiance. She came home one day to find that her lover stole her entire savings. On a cold blustery and winter night she took off after him...following his tracks through the dense wooded and snow covered mountains. She never got her revenge (or her money back). They found her frozen body the next morning. As we hiked her trail I could just imagine her stiff white face, and ice-covered hand outstretched to her lover. I could almost hear her wailing in misery when the wind rocked my tent. Poor Nancy.

The White Mountains were beautiful. The 10-mile hike torturous. We saw moose tracks, and Calissa left trails of Cheerios for the bear to follow. (It was her first backpacking trip for the almost two year-old.) We ended up camping by a serene lake framed by a beaver dam, and just got our tents up before the rain poured down. I unloaded the chinamen that were in my pack and melted happily into the pine needles.

We started the trek back down the mountain under a calming drizzle the next day, elbowed our way through hours of traffic back home again, and made plans to do it again the next month. Perhaps we won’t pack quite so much food next time. Although I must say that the haystacks were awesome...

Ode to Nancy:

If you're a male with pockets deep
Gone out to camp in the woods all alone
And hear a sound that makes you weep
Like a wheezy, half-frozen kind of groan.

Don't be alarmed if you wake to find
Your money's gone, somehow disappeared
And an icy hand creeps up your spine
A hoarse whisper close to your ear...

"I'll get you Jim. You thieving swine
In this life or the other.
Now warm my feet in that bag of yours
Or I'll send you home to mother."

Tree of Knowledge

“Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.” James Fennimore Cooper.

I remember reading Cooper in gradeschool—fondly stumbling through pages solely describing a tree in The Last of the Mohicans. For some reason I remembered that tonight as I watched the leaves rustle. A pale brown body sunk deep into its home, spreading wide its arms into the night, and the green flapping in a warm sea breeze. The tree was beautiful. But that’s not what made me pause. It was as if I had come to terms with a part of myself.

I felt the ancient pull and connection to the woman known as Eve. Books. Knowledge. Whether she really existed or not, I would have picked from the tree also. (The ancient Egyptians also had a story from long ago bearing a sacred tree and serpent, but the story didn’t stop there.) Knowledge that was forbidden or a life of ignorance…How ironic. What choice would I have?

I have discovered an expanse of wilderness that extends for miles, and before I rest—I will have discovered all of it.