Being The Continued Adventures and Misadventures of Bob Hodge,
Author, Mountaineer and Erstwhile Professional Road Racer.
Frederic Edwin Church traveled to northern Maine soon after the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Ktaadn and the Maine Woods.” In this canvas, Church brings the landscape that Thoreau called “exceedingly wild and desolate” subtly under control by imagining its civilized future. Cattle, sawmill, bridge, buggy, and men harmoniously coexist, domesticating the landscape without appearing to disturb its natural beauty. The soaring mountain remains outside the bounds of such cultivation. Church optimistically evokes the divine destiny of a young country by bathing the land in the sunset’s spiritual glow.
Seven hours from Clinton, Massachusetts, the Saturn landed.
Baxter State Park. Abol Bridge Campground.
Fathers Day Weekend 2006.
The wife had asked, “What would you like to do this weekend?” It being Daddy Day and all.
“I would like to hike Mt. Ktaadn,” said I.
“Well, have fun.”
Mount Katahdin is the highest mountain in Maine, United States, at 5,269 feet (1,606 m).
Named Ktaadn by the Penobscot Indigenous People, which means “The Greatest Mountain.”
I began pulling my tent from the car and slapped at black flies as I set it up. There was a moment of panic when I could not find the stakes but just as I was about to give up looking, I pulled out my hiking boots where I found the stakes tucked inside.
I had only used this tent once before. I had set it up in my hermit friend’s front yard where he has views of Kinsman and Cannon and many others of the highest peaks in the Franconia Ridge of New Hampshire’s White Mountains.
I bought the tent at Hilton’s Tent City on Friend Street in Boston near North Station where I often window-shopped and fantasized about hiking trips I would someday take. One day, overcome with optimism, I purchased this tent – all seven pounds of it – and I stuck it in the way back of my car where it sat unused for a couple of years and rarely used after that.
Once the tent was up, I next needed the campfire. And once that was done, I could relax and rest up for approximately fifteen miles hiking. Starting early tomorrow morning. I sat by the fire with a sandwich and snacks and cold beer. It was late afternoon and I was unaware of any other campers around. I was alone.
I read for a while Maine Woods with Thoreau’s account of his outing here in 1846.
But the place which you have selected for your camp, though never so rough and grim, begins at once to have its attractions, and becomes a very centre of civilization to you: “Home is home, be it never so homely.”
It was still light out when I crawled into my tent. Always a nice primal feeling to lay flat down upon the ground, the faint outline of giant trees visible all around, roots under me, cradling me, to sleep in my wildest dreams.
As I lay reading, I heard someone calling my name. Turned out to be a park ranger who stopped by to remind me to sign in at his station before leaving for my hike to the summit in the morning.
They like to know where to start looking for the body.
I would be making this outing alone, as I had not been able to convince any of my regular hiking buddies to come. That was fine with me, just as the long ride alone in the car had been a time to let my mind wander and plan in expectation of the day.
I was fifty years old then with a bum knee from a car accident, so I didn’t want to put off this opportunity to get Ktaadn’s summit under my feet. I would rather remember the day I spent there than wonder when I would ever manage to make it to this place.
I did need to do a job interview with a law firm located in Chicago and I don’t know why I was bothering, as if I would ever leave New England for The Windy City.
I had just recently purchased a cell phone and barely had any idea how to use it. I pulled off of the interstate and found a hotel coffee shop and dialed in. I thought the interview went well but, like so many others, it didn’t work out in the end. All of the strange and weird ups and downs of my former library career in law firms well behind me now.
I arose, dressed, slugged down some ice coffee and water, broke down my camp site and staggered off in the direction of the trail after checking in at the ranger station. It was already warm and bright sunshine. After just a few miles meandering along through the woods, I came to an opening vast and wide and the trail soon became a collection of loose rocks.
The sun was baking and in the 80’s and the black flies – vicious little teeth with wings. I was way overdressed and stopped to unzip the bottom half of my fancy pants so the black flies would have a chance at my legs, too. After a time, I just let the little devils have their way with me, while I enjoyed the beautiful scenes of the day through the swarm.
Abol is a tough trail but more direct. The reason I chose it was simple, the easier Saddle Trail was snowed in and not yet open for business. I made steady headway but the entire time thinking, “how the hell am I going to get back down.”
I spent most of the time hiking, looking down at my feet and at one point smacked my head into a giant boulder above me nearly knocking myself out. As I pulled myself up out of the last steep section onto a grassy area, I lay on my back and looked to my right, just as a guy with a hang glider jumped off of the mountain!
I did not spend much time at the summit or do the Knife Edge. I was not entirely right then in the mood for such an effort.
The Mount Katahdin Knife Edge trail is a bucket list hike you’ll tell stories about for years and years to come.
After venturing a short way, I vertigoed my way back. I began wambling down the trail, the way I had come but it was so treacherous I just sat on my butt and scooted my way down, going at least a mile that way before getting upright again.
Young women in tights looking like they just came from yoga class and little kids hopped, skipped and jumped around and by me, as I slid around on the ground like a snake, only to avoid falling hundreds of feet.
Once back on my feet I took stock of myself, did a little inventory and hiked on hungrily. I had renewed vigor – after all I’d nearly completed a humdinger of a hike. I was back in the woods now, feeling the cool in the shade, the itch and burn of my skin anticipating a swim in Echo Lake on my way out of the park.
Just then I heard some scratching as two bear cubs scampered up a tree and I could feel the essence of Mama Bear and smell her presence but I was so knackered I just continued on in a general direction away from the bears.
“Go ahead, eat me.”
At some point I realized it was Mt. Washington Road Race day and thought I had found a more than worthy challenge for the day.
I returned to the Saturn and regretted not taking more pictures, photographs being not the first thing on your mind while trying to survive under duress. I swam and revived myself in Echo Lake, then stopped at a McDonalds in Millinocket and bought a large Coke and a whole lot of junk food with extra fries. Seemed like the right thing to do.
I pointed the Saturn across western Maine toward the hermit’s house in neighboring New Hampshire. I had some pretty good wildlife sightings, of course; the bears and also turtles, snakes and an eagle but no moose.
I landed at the hermit’s house and drank all his beer while I waited for him to arrive home. From a golf outing, no doubt.
As I sat watching the sunset over the mountain, along came a moose walking right up the driveway stopping to snack on the trees.
Not a bad day.
“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
Tennyson
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
https://perfecthike.com/mount-katahdin-knife-edge-trail/