Thursday June 8, 2023 – The Kinsmans 2 – You Are Not Home Until You are Home
I fall asleep. How, I do not know, but I wake to dawn’s early gray light and the rumble not of snoring but water.
The murmur of the stream, and the patter of water dripping from trees.
No, it’s not rain. Not yet anyway.
Our bunkmate snores on as we rise to boil water and make breakfast and head off up and up and then down, then up, then down again, a long rocky descent. Here on Day 5, I’ve settled at last into the way of the trail. The Kinsman Pond shelter provides a good stop for lunch but I’m soon cold and stride off down and further down the dark trail by the rushing stream and at last – at long last, and not a second too late, see the roof of the Lonesome Lake hut through the trees.
Soon my friends arrive and I treat everyone to hot drinks and snacks and a very welcome warm up and revival before what promises to be a last gentle 2.7 mile descent to our ride home and what promises to be another great dinner.
Alas, the day is not over, not by a long shot. We stride warm bellied and merrily along the aforementioned gentle dirt trail. I wonder why anyone would go up to Lonesome Lake the way I always had gone, up the steep rocky trail from the Lafayette Campground. We’re all chattering along and dreaming of dinner when the trail descends into the raging Cascade Brook. I sit to take off my boots and begin to wade across, boots in hand.
As the others catch up, calls of “Wait! Come back!” There must be a better and safer place to cross.
I put back on my boots and we walk down the trail that appears on our map to be the Basin Trail. And then, suddenly the trail ends.
What do you do at the end of a trail you thought was the trail? Do you bushwhack? We bushwhack. Bushwhacking has such an adventurous lilt to it. I picture men with long swords cutting back the underbrush. Bushwhacking in fact is not nearly so romantic or easy. We stumble over soft and uneven ground and through a tangle of prickers. Sharp low branches snap back into our faces.
We trip along, willing the woods to turn back to a trail. Alas its now clear that whatever we saw on the map as the trail we were looking for was wrong. We can now see the trail clearly, on the other side of the stream, rushing and roaring beside us. We scan hopefully up and downstream for a better and safer place to cross. At last, find a spot where the stream widens and slows. We wade in boots and socks and all across the stream onto the Basin Trail on the other side. Its steep and rocky and not the nice trail I’d imagined it to be. But yes, better than bushwhacking. We trudge along, glad to have found it, until the trail veers left into the stream and crosses back over it to the other side. No way! Way. The way through is through. This cannot be. This is.
I wade across the stream in my boots a second time. Put down my pack and wade back in and across to pick up Pat’s pack despite her protests. Go back and forth a third and fourth time to retrieve other’s packs. Good heavens. This has been an adventure already. My feet wet, boots soaked. The sun begins to set over the hills, the valley darkens. We scurry down the trail, but something has to give.
Jen and I determine that we’ll head off to get the car leaving the others to wait at the Basin Parking Lot. On the map it doesn’t look far and on the drive down Franconia Notch on 93 it isn’t far. But when we get to the Basin, the trail twists and winds on and on and on.
Are you sure this is it?
Are you sure we didn’t miss a turn?
Alas, sure. The car ahead, further down this way. We go on and on down the bike trail a mile and a half. Turn off the trail at last into a parking lot and the joy of the car being there. Weariness turns to elation.
And second guessing.
Could we have done it differently when we came to the stream the first time?
Should we have turned back up to the Cascade Brook Trail when we crossed the stream?
Should we have bushwhacked?
We don’t know what to think. We think and rethink our decision making and why we made the choices we did. We text Roger to let him know that we’ll be home in an hour. We pick up Marsha, Pat and Barb and arrive home at Roger and Marsha’s for a luxurious hot shower and more laundry and a meal surpassing my wildest dreams of steak, Brussel sprouts, beer, pie and ice cream.
Maps confirm that our decision was the right one. Backtracking up the Basin Brook Trail to the AT Cascade Brook trail would have been much longer by a long shot. Despite having to cross the stream twice, everyone got down safely. We are all elated to see that a right decision was made.
And humbled to see how hard it is to make decisions in these situations – to go forward or backward, bushwhack or what?
All week we’ve been chasing choices. Do we go over to Galehead or head back down? Do we bushwhack and cross the stream at a safer place? Is the summer or winter bag the best choice? And where is the sun and how do we find it?
Navigating Through Change 