Welch-Dickey August 22, 2023
“Unless you accept yourself, you can’t let go of yourself.” (Stephen Mitchell, annotation to chapter 22, Tao Te Ching)
One of the last days of summer or so it seems up here in the closing days of August. A brisk brilliant blue-sky morning. The tree across the lawn has turned dark green to yellow, a hidden tint of red and orange.
I’m not yet ready to turn to fall, and today a chance to seize the edges of a fading season. Summer closes up here on Labor Day. The swimming beach at Echo Lake, the ice cream stand down the street will soon put out their “Closed for the Season” signs.
I’ve come today to meet a friend here to hike a trail that’s been on her mind. She wonders if years ago she might have hiked it with her mother. But if she ever did climb these peaks, it has been a long time. Years ago, I hiked Welch and Dickey with my dad and a friend from the retirement community where my parents live. Dad was in his mid-80’s then; it was the last hike we did together.
This morning Kate and I take off at a slow ramble leaving our worn stories behind us on the trail as we ascend into the unknown before us.
Today I don’t know how far ahead I’m ready to look. Not ready yet to think of the needs of this body years hence, the attention it will require, the stairs I will no longer be able to navigate. No, I want to linger here still in summer. In this summer where my body has done and is doing well. Its been a most wonderful, physical summer of hiking, running, biking, swimming. Even Meg, my CrossFit coach, says I’m slowly getting better! But the strings of change pull as well. My sister is back at school, the kids in her classroom arrive next week. My niece finishes her internship today, a nephew starts grad school tomorrow. St. J. announces its Fall Festival.
We ascend to broad granite ledges and a spectacular view of the mountains surrounding us. Out at the far edge of the blue hills, the Belknap Range in the Lakes Region where I spent much of July with my family at a cabin on Lake Winnisquam.
Early this spring he asked me, How do you rest? In a life like many full of lists and things I need to do and want to do, stresses real and imagined, chasing imaginary demons, I have struggled to find the place, the time, the way of rest. I have many things I love to do and many pleasures that make up my day. But rest? Not so sure.
This summer we encouraged each other at church to take a July sabbath month, to put down the meetings and open up time. At the lake with my family and at summer camp as a counselor I got up early each morning and swam and biked and ran my way to rest. My family didn’t understand how all this activity was actually rest. But it was. A gift of time to be time and in this body.
It’s been a strange summer of fun, of presence, of not needing to do or prove or accomplish anything. And yet, how much I did. Races run, a course begun, commitments kept. And yet, writing and painting and reflecting and ruminating drift off. Instead, I’ve wanted to be here, to be present. I found out it out for a swim, here as I stretch and feel and sweat and ride. No, it wasn’t about the races though that gave an excuse and goal. This summer I didn’t want to be confined to what felt like the imprisonment of contemplation and thought.
We descend a steep col and up to Dickey.
“Excellent views for a modest effort” the AMC White Mountain Guide purports – but for sure, effort enough. I remember this steep cleft in the rock. This place where I had to hoist myself up by grabbing the roots of the small tree. Remember this steep scramble. I wouldn’t call it modest. Nothing of New England hiking is.
Today, I wind back and forth along the edge of a steep ledge with nothing to grab on to to help pull me up. A grateful offer of a hand from a descending young hiker. A strong grip and arm pull me up and over.
“Who is rescuing who?” my friend’s paw print sticker asks.
We find each other in our need and questions. We are pulling each other up and through.
A view north to the long ridge-line: The Kinsmans, Cannon, Lafayette where I hiked this late spring. Beyond them home. I feel more at home as I learn to recognize the lines of the neighboring peaks and ridges. Perhaps this the summer I learned to find home again.
It’s been a tricky and tragic summer of floods and heat and death, rain and rescues. Four hikers rescued off of Washington last week as rain turned to snow. Two separate drownings in the past week by parents trying to rescue their young children from babbling brooks turned to raging rivers with all the rain we’ve had. The children survive, a young father and mother do not. The challenge of what to do in an emergency – when to jump in, when to grab for a stick. How do you recover from trauma? The ongoing trauma of this world we are live in. Maui. How can there be 1000 missing people still? The worst fire in modern American history.
Meanwhile, a group of four bikers, and not all young 20-year-olds, haul their mountain bikes up the rocky trail to Dickey, the same bikers we’d seen earlier biking down Welch. Off on their own triumvirate, the first to do it.
A surprise of a few stands of Jack Pine in New Hampshire that are usually found further north.
Meanwhile, a trail to leave worn stories behind that opens into other wonder, questionsand discovery. Not so imprisoned in the comfort of the status quo we are ready to move on.
You ask all the hard questions she says shaking her head annoyed or amused or exasperated. I’m not looking for an interrogation but I’m hungry and curious and I want to know why.
Before moving on I want to look back and remember this summer. This summer I learned how to rest. This summer how I learned to be in time and learned to find again my way to joy. This summer I found my way home.
This summer of paradox and sorrow and death all around and this summer of resilience and life.
The trees here on the cusp of turning, the promise of an especially beautiful fall with all the rain we’ve had. The dark green turning of the tree to a golden green tint, a hint of red and orange.
But not yet, summer still lingers.
Navigating Through Change 