could have joined their club. I asked him whether he felt it was safe for me to make a
descent with solar radiation showing 18.574.
"Oh, yeah," he said quite earnestly. "Solar radiationwise, today is very low risk."
"Thank goodness," I said, quite earnestly, too, and took my leave of him and the
mountain.
And so I proceeded across Vermont in a series of pleasant day hikes, without anything
electronic but with some very nice packed lunches that my wife made for me each night
before retiring and left on the top shelf in the fridge. Despite my earlier vow not to hike
with the car, I found it rather suited me here--indeed, completely suited me. I could hike
all day and be home for dinner. I could sleep in my own bed and each day set off in
clean, dry clothes and with a fresh packed lunch. It was nearly perfect.
And so for a happy three weeks I commuted to the mountains. Each morning I would
rise at dawn, put my lunch in my pack, and drive over the Connecticut River to Vermont. I
would park the car and walk up a big mountain or across a series of rolling green hills. At
some point in the day when it pleased me, usually about 11:00 A.M., I would sit on a rock
or a log, take out my packed lunch, and examine the contents. I would go, as
appropriate, "Peanut butter cookies! My favorite!" or "Oh, hum, luncheon meat again,"
and eat in a zestful chewy silence, thinking of all the mountaintops I had sat on with Katz
where we would have killed for this. Then I would pack up everything very neatly, drop it
in my pack, and hike again till it was time to clock off and go home. And so passed late
June and the first part of July.
I did Stratton Mountain and Bromley Mountain, Prospect Rock and Spruce Peak, Baker
Peak and Griffith Lake, White Rocks Mountain, Button Hill, Killington Peak, Gifford Woods
State Park, Quimby Mountain, Thistle Hill, and finally concluded with a gentle eleven-mile
amble from West Hartford to Norwich. This took me past Happy Hill Cabin, the oldest
shelter on the AT and possibly the most sweetly picturesque (soon afterwards it was torn
down by some foolishly unsentimental trail officials), and the town of Norwich, which is
notable principally for being the town that inspired the "Bob Newhart Show" on television
(the one where he ran an inn and all the locals were charmingly imbecilic) and for being
the home of the great Alden Partridge, of whom no one has ever heard.
Partridge was born in Norwich in 1755 and was a demon walker--possibly the first
person on the whole planet who walked long distances for the simple pleasure of it. In
1785, he became superintendent of West Point at the unprecedentedly youthful age of
thirty, then had some kind of falling out there, and moved back to Norwich and set up a
rival institution, the American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy. There he coined
the term physical education and took his appalled young charges on brisk rambles of
thirty-five or forty miles over the neighboring mountains. In between times he went off on
more ambitious hikes of his own. On a typical trip he strode 110 miles over the mountains
from Norwich to Williamstown, Massachusetts (essentially the route I had just completed
in gentle stages), trotted up Mount Greylock, and came back home the same way. The
trip there and back took him just four days--and this at a time, remember, when there
were no maintained footpaths or helpful blazes. He did this sort of thing with virtually
every peak in New England. There ought to be a plaque to him somewhere in Norwich to
inspire the few hardy hikers still heading north at this point, but sadly there is none.
sean pound
(Sean Pound)
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