more interesting and rewarding if it wasn't all wilderness, if from time to time it purposely
took you past grazing cows and tilled fields.
I would have much preferred it if the AT guidebook had said: "Thanks to the
Conference's efforts, farming has been restored to the Delaware River Valley, and the
footpath rerouted to incorporate sixteen miles of riverside walking because, let's face it,
you can get too much of trees sometimes."
Still, we must look on the bright side. If the Army Corps of Engineers had had its
foolish way, I'd have been swimming back to my car now, and I was grateful at least to
be spared that.
Anyway, it was time to do some real hiking again.
In 1983, a man walking in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts just off the Appalachian
Trail saw--or at least swears' he saw--a mountain lion cross his path, which was a little
unsettling and even more unexpected since mountain lions hadn't been seen in the
northeastern United States since 1903, when the last one was shot in New York State.
Soon, however, sightings were being reported all over New England. A man driving a
back road of Vermont saw two cubs playing at the roadside. A pair of hikers saw a mother
and two cubs cross a meadow in New Hampshire. Every year there were half a dozen or
more reports in similar vein, all by credible witnesses. In the late winter of 1994 a farmer
in Vermont was walking across his property, taking some seed to a bird feeder, when he
saw what appeared to be three mountain lions about seventy feet away. He stared
dumbstruck for a minute or two--for mountain lions are swift, fierce creatures, and here
were three of them looking at him with calm regard--then hightailed it to a phone and
called a state wildlife biologist. The animals were gone by the time the biologist arrived,
but he found some fresh scat, which he dutifully bagged up and dispatched to a U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Laboratory. The lab report came back that it was indeed the scat of Felis
concolor, the eastern mountain lion, also variously and respectfully known as the panther,
cougar, puma, and, especially in New England, catamount.
All this was of some interest to me, for I was hiking in about the same spot as that
initial mountain lion sighting. I was back on the trail with a new keenness and
determination, and a new plan. I was going to hike New England, or at least as much of it
as I could knock off until Katz returned in seven weeks to walk with me through Maine's
Hundred Mile Wilderness. There are almost 700 miles of gorgeously mountainous
Appalachian Trail in New England--about a third of the AT's total trail length--enough to
keep me occupied till August. To that end, I had my obliging wife drive me to
southwestern Massachusetts and drop me on the trail near Stockbridge for a three-day
amble through the Berkshires. Thus it was that I was to be found, on a hot morning in
mid-June, laboring sweatily up a steep but modest eminence called Becket Mountain, in a
haze of repellent-resistant blackflies, and patting my pocket from time to time to check
that my knife was still there.
I didn't really expect to encounter a mountain lion, but only the day before I had read
an article in the Boston Globe about how western mountain lions (which indubitably are
not extinct) had recently taken to stalking and killing hikers and joggers in the California
woods, and even the odd poor soul standing at a backyard barbecue in an apron and
funny hat. It seemed a kind of omen.
sean pound
(Sean Pound)
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