Six

SUNDAY, JULY 24, 2005

Change of plans: from an 8-mile hike in the White Mountains (plus 2.5 hr drive each way) to roughly a 5-mile hike up Temple Mountain, on the Wapack Trail. I think I speak for the whole class when I say, "Good choice!"

The day could not have been better for hiking. Sunny, clear, and not too hot or humid. The perfect ending of a great class.

The following is a moving passage that stands out for me from Jeremy Bernstein's book Ascent: The Invention of Mountain Climbing and its Practice. Here he quotes from British climber Edward Whymper's Scrambles Alongst the Alps, about Whymper's climb of the Matterhorn in 1865. This incident later became known simply as the accident:

   For a few seconds, we saw our unfortunate companions sliding
   downward on their backs and spreading out their hands,
   endeavoring to save themselves. They passed from our sight
   uninjured, disappeared one by one, and fell from precipice
   to precipice on to the Matterhorn Glacier below; a distance
   of nearly four thousand feet in height. From the moment the
   rope broke, it was impossible to help them. So perished our    comrades! (67)

Luckily, my comrades and I never had to encounter such danger over these past several weeks, although there were a few tense moments descending Grand Monadnock when some of us might have worn out the seats of our pants sliding on our backsides.

And it is with a little sadness and much appreciation that I write my last entry here. Appreciation for my fellow hikers--Dawn, Myrtha, Samantha, Tom, David--our unofficial hiker, and our truly fearless leader Roger.

And along the way, there have been other friends like Tom Wessels and his weird apples, Mr. Leopold and his veteran oak, and McPhee and his archdruid David Brower--one of the most interesting men I've read about in a long time. Every one of them has helped to make this "Mountains" experience quite special and truly educational. A walk in the New England woods will never be the same.

There are numerous websites with quotations from the famous and infamous about mountains, such as:
"Going to the mountains is going home" - John Muir
"Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments" - Nathaniel Hawthorne
or my favorite:
"Well, we knocked the bastard off!" - Edmund Hillary on climbing Everest.

Photos of our hike up Temple Mountain are below and on the
following pages. Hope you enjoy them.

- Cathy