Sunrise Solace

On most days, I am a morning person. This is in part by nature and in part by habit. When my now-teenagers were babies, I started rising before the sun to have an hour of time to myself – to work or read or simply sit with a cup of coffee and the quiet of early morning. Lately, though, I’ve become a weekend morning slouch. While I’m still up-and-at-’em early through the week, I’ve taken to lazing around an extra hour or two on the weekends.

So when my youngest asked if we could go for a sunrise hike this weekend, I weighed the luxury of sleeping in with the idea of pre-dawn trail time with my daughter. The second choice was the clear winner. This daughter – like youngest children everywhere – has been dragged along on many adventures at a younger age than her older siblings were.  

When they were already toddling along gentle trails, she was carried in a kid backpack. When they were scrambling over rocks as preschoolers, she was working hard to keep up. When we hiked our first big mountains together, they were 9 years old, and she only 7. And on our inaugural backpacking treks this summer, she carried the same gear and weight in her pack as her two-years-older, several-inches-taller siblings did. (My older kids will point out that the youngest also benefits from certain perks – like getting a phone, or staying up later – at a younger age. It’s a balance.)

Sunday, though, was an adventure just for the two of us. With the pre-dawn sky at home cloudy enough to block our view of Franconia Notch, we weren’t sure how much of the sunrise we’d see. But the moon was clearly visible high in the sky, and the hot cocoa was already packed in the thermos and ready to go, so we took a chance and headed down the road toward one of our favorite little hikes with a big view.  

There were a few cars in parking lot at Baldy, and several more at the Echo Lake lot. I’d seen a slew of photos from the day before of bumper-to-bumper lines of cars streaming through the notch, presumably filled with people looking for foliage that was already past peak. But we’d spent the summer successfully avoiding the crowds, and I hoped we’d be able to find a quiet spot up on Artists Bluff so early in the morning.

Alas, there were close to a dozen people there when we arrived, including two photographers with tripods already in place and a couple of 20-somethings continually posing for Instagram shots (much to my tween daughter’s combined amusement and disgust). Still, we found a spot away from everyone else and took in the colorful scene around us. The sky was beginning to lighten in a prelude to the big event. The trees below still held lots of color. And Echo Lake was like a giant looking glass, reflecting the mountains on either side.  

After about 20 minutes of relative quiet, though, the crowd had more than doubled in size. And although drone use is prohibited in Franconia Notch State Park, three of them buzzed annoyingly just off the ledge. Our peaceful sunrise adventure was turning into a rowdy circus. We decided to move.

Back on the trail, it was quiet again, and bright enough now to hike easily toward what my family calls Mt. Baldy. “Will the sun already be up when we get there?” my daughter asked as we rounded the last corner of the trail and emerged at the base of the familiar rock scramble. We soon had our answer. 

Climbing above the gnarled trees, we looked toward the big mountains across the notch. There, from behind a cloud cloaking the tip-tops of Lafayette and Garfield, the sun was just peeking into the sky. Patches of fog dotted the landscape below us and made the valley toward home seem a sea of white. The moon, just past full, glowed in the western sky. We spent the next several minutes delighting in the golden hues of fall, discussing how glad we were to have this low rocky summit to ourselves, and taking pictures.

At one point, my daughter, on a ledge below me, exclaimed, “Mom, stand right there!” and snapped a shot of the dog and me silhouetted by the rising sun. I think that one gets the artsy award from the morning. But my favorite images from our sunrise adventure are of my daughter standing quietly on the rocks, looking out over the hills and peaks of the place we are lucky enough to call home – from a spot where we managed to get away from the crowd. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's October 8, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.   

Summer Strange and Sweet

In some ways, this has been a strange summer. And in others, it seems just as summer should be. The strangeness began with the early closing of school – both the physical school building in mid-March and the release from remote learning at the end of May, two and a half weeks before the originally anticipated last day of school. The kids have been home nearly four months already, which hasn’t happened since before they went to preschool.

For large chunks of that time they have been left on their own to entertain themselves and each other. If necessity is the mother of invention, well, boredom seems to be a good motivator.

With no big trips planned this summer, no fast-moving weeks filled with the happy chaos of cousins visiting from California and Texas and Tennessee, no camps to attend – there are a lot of hours to fill. Some of these are taken up with books or puzzles or board games, others with screens, a few with chores, and some spent around the corner at grandparents’ houses.

The rest is time outside – alone or with each other, roping me in when I am not typing away or meeting-by-zoom in the hot office upstairs. We’ve had a couple of big hiking days, with more anticipated later in the summer. There’s the occasional bike ride. But for the most part, the kids have to find their own fun – or invent it.

For weeks this spring, after the snow had melted from the yard – during that long stretch of time

where we didn’t go anywhere or see anyone outside of our own family – we held daily 2 v. 2 soccer games late in the afternoons. We rotated teammates every other day and argued every call. It was an unwritten part of the daily schedule, a reward for making it through another day of school via Google Classroom.

In the weeks since school has ended, the kids have cycled through several rounds of self-propelled amusement. There’s a rudimentary rope swing hanging from the branch of a maple tree near the edge of the yard, and the skeleton of a fort in another corner. For a while there was an obstacle course climbing and twisting through a series of natural and kid-made structures. They’ve created a disc golf course and three variations of foot golf courses, weaving around gardens and through trees to hit the designated targets. The actual golf clubs have made only one brief appearance.

Only recently have we expanded our pandemic era circle to include a few friends. We hike through the woods toward mountain summits together, or meet at the river in the afternoons, where the kids skip rocks and choreograph synchronized leaps into the water.

Many days, as I make my way through working remotely, the kids make summer plans up as they go along. There is no itinerary, no set agenda, no schedule mapped out by the hour or the day.

But there is hot sunshine and cool, clear water just down the hill. There are bikes in the garage, hiking boots in the mudroom, and flipflops strewn across the front porch. There are trees to climb, friends to meet, towels hung on the line to dry between splashing in the pool and leaping into the river. There are books to read on long, lazy afternoons and fireflies flickering through the tall grass of the field after dark.

While we are missing some of our cherished summer traditions, I think maybe this is how summer should be, even if just this once – completely unmapped, unplanned, unbusy. Strange, perhaps, but sweet, too.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's July 9, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

Community Strength

On a hot, sunny, beautiful day last week, the kids and I met friends in the early morning at a trailhead. Sunscreen and bug dope applied and backpacks strapped over shoulders, we headed into the woods, following a trail that meandered upwards to the summit of one of New Hampshire’s 4,000-footers. It would have been the 24^th 4,000-footer – the halfway point – for three of the five kids in our posse.

A hike and perspective from another day

We didn’t make it to the top.

 

A bit more than three miles into the White Mountain National Forest, we ran into an emergency on the trail. It wasn’t our emergency, and, so, much of the story is not mine to tell. The day took a turn none of us anticipated, nor would have chosen. As with many things, however, there was a positive take away – for me, it was the coming together of both strangers and familiar faces in a tough moment, and a reminder of the strength of community.

The short story, the part that belongs at least partly to me, is that this was the kind of emergency that included a call to 9-1-1, the administration of first aid none of us had ever had to do before, and a long wait for the search and rescue crew to arrive and take over. There was not a happy ending.

The friends I was hiking with are good ones. We’ve seen each other cry through terrible days, and we’ve laughed together countless times. We’ve vented about a vast array of annoyances, shared parenting advice, and watched as our kids have grown up together. But we’d never been thrown into a situation of literal life and death before this. I’m thankful we were there together – and that if I have to have this story as part of my history, it’s one I share with them.

There were others there with us, too. A solo hiker just behind us jumped in to help. His name is Ryan, and he spent a few harrowing hours with us, with no complaints and with as much good humor as any of us could muster. Two other groups – a trio of college students and a pair of young women – also stopped. Through it all, the 9-1-1 dispatcher was calm and encouraging.

Because we were hiking close to home, we know many of the members of the Pemi Valley Search and Rescue Team who dropped whatever they were doing when the call for help came and rushed toward the trail. We also knew it would take them close to two hours to reach us, no matter how fast they hiked.

One member of PVSART, who also happens to be our children’s elementary school principal, called to talk with me twice en route to the scene, to get information and give support. Another friend and PVSART member unable to respond that day also checked in by phone. When, already exhausted and emotionally drained, I said I wasn’t sure what we should do, she told me, “You just have to do what you think is right.” Clear enough advice for pretty much any situation, and exactly what I needed to hear at that moment.

Although I was not the one who needed rescuing that day, I’ve never been so thankful for the local search and rescue crew. These folks have a strong sense of doing what is right. They do not stumble across emergency situations, as we had, and react. Instead, they dedicate hours of training and effort to the volunteer work of coming to the rescue.

After the trained professionals – and the trained volunteers – arrived, the three of us headed back down the trail. It was a slow descent. Sometimes we talked about what we’d just seen and done, often we were quiet in our own processing of thoughts, occasionally one of us would steer the conversation toward something unrelated, something more cheerful, normal.

As we hiked out, we saw more bright yellow-shirted PVSART members hiking in, some familiar, others unknown. I’ve read a hundred stories about mountain rescue operations, even written a few. But seeing them in real time, sweating through a hot day and moving as quickly as they could to reach a stranger in need of help, was a welcome comfort amid a difficult day.

And then we were down, our statement written out for the Fish and Game officer at the trailhead we’d left hours ago, free to go. We each climbed into our individual cars and drove the short distance homeward solo. But we weren’t quite ready to let each other go. So we gathered the kids and spent another couple of hours together in my friends’ yard. The kids ate ice cream, then ran around chasing chickens and swinging and being kids. The grownups sat with adult beverages and rehashed the day again, from all perspectives, trying to sort it all out.

The principal came to sit with us awhile, to make sure we were ok, the kids were ok. Our phones buzzed with others checking in. It is a small community, after all, and word travels fast. A small community, but a strong one. A good one. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's June 26, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

So Fast Summer

August sneaks up on me every year. In June, summer stretches before me like an endless daydream of carefree days, family adventures, sunshine and warmth. Then, suddenly, it’s August, and it feels like summer is coming to a screeching halt before it’s really even begun.

This summer has seemed to pass particularly quickly. It feels a bit like one of those days where you get to the end of it, flustered and exhausted, and wonder what the heck you did all day. But once you’ve had time to sit and reflect, you realize there was a lot packed into the day – or, in this case, the season.

During the first month of summer we had a revolving cast of visiting cousins in town, which made for days – and nights – that were fun, to be sure, but also sometimes hectic and amorphous. We loved the quality cousin time, but never really got into our own summer swing of things.

For the first time since the kids were toddlers, we also didn’t take our annual week-long pilgrimage to the ocean. We’ve had lots of shorter adventures that have all been a blast, but without that week of beach time marked on the calendar, summer has seemed a little off, I guess.

And don’t even get me started on the garden. Oof. Busy June weekends, on top of some pretty miserable early summer weather, thwarted all my good intentions of getting the vegetable gardens planted early. The perennial bed is a disgraceful tangle of weeds with the occasional sturdy bloom poking through.

Still, my flower boxes are overflowing with color. And the small plots I managed to sow – late as it was – with veggie seeds are producing well, keeping us in beans and carrots, cukes and zucchini, beets and more kale than I know what to do with. It all makes me think it’s simply time to cut back on the size of both gardens for a while.

Despite missing our Cape week – and the fact that it took us to the end of July to get to our first big hike of the summer – the adventures we have had have been fabulous. We’ve gone glamping and mountain biking, camping and kayaking, climbed a few tall mountains and splashed in our favorite spots along cool rivers. I’m still holding out for a few days at the ocean – and a few more hikes, bike rides, and trips to the pool and the river.

I guess that’s the upside of August hitting so hard – realizing summer isn’t really forever, and that it’s wise to fit as much of its goodness in before the days shorten too much more, before the kids are swallowed up back into the school year, before we move on – ready or not – to the next season. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the August 9, 2019 issue of the Littleton Record.

What goes up must come down

Sunday afternoon, knees creaking with every step, I remembered ABC’s Wide World of Sports intro from many years ago and thought the wording could be changed to, “The thrill of summiting and the agony of descent.”

Coming down Cannon earlier this summer.

Hiking can be a punishing sort of pleasure, even more so with kids, and I was feeling the punishing part of it on the way down Mount Moosilauke.

There was a time when I preferred the downhill to the up. I remember running down trails as a kid, exhilarated by the speed and making daring leaps over obstacles. Not once did I consider my knees and their perfect cartilage.

Those days are long gone. Now, the descents are often, indeed, agonizing. My knees grind and click with every step. I lean heavily into my hiking poles to get through the steepest parts of the trail. Somehow, I still expect the down to take less time than the up, but that is rarely the case.

“When will we be at the bottom?” the youngest hikers in our group asked repeatedly during Sunday’s descent of the steep Beaver Brook Trail, when each landmark we remembered from the trek upward seemed impossibly far away from the last one we’d passed.

The tradeoff for the pain of going down, of course, is reaching the lofty tops of mountains after going up, looking over a small piece of the world from thousands of feet higher than when you started. On the upward journey, there is the promise of the summit, of views that stretch for miles across other peaks and into neighboring states.

Sunday’s hike up Moosilauke also included scrambling along pretty waterfalls and marveling at the wooden steps bolted into granite ledges for our climbing pleasure. The kids checked out a backpacking shelter just off the trail, the boys distracted themselves with some imaginary game they’d devised, and the younger girls happily plucked bright red bunchberries from the edge of the path.

There was mild consternation at the steepness and length of the climb, but this was easily assuaged by doling out chocolate and well-timed breaks. Less than a mile from the summit, a tweaked knee threatened to keep the 8-year-old tweakee and her mother (me) from the top, but with the goal tantalizingly close, she power-limped through.

And then – ahhh. What a summit! What a thrill! I’d be long content at the top of about any mountain I’ve climbed – at least on days like Sunday, which was sunny and bug-free and warm even at nearly 5,000 feet up. I could sit there and watch cloud shadows drift across the landscape for hours.

Alas, the world below always eventually calls.

With our summit aspirations met, lunches dug out of backpacks and hungrily consumed, and obligatory top-of-the-mountain photos taken, our merry crew of five kids, two dogs, and three creaky-kneed grownups headed down. The kids were raring to get back on the trail, unimpressed in their youth with contemplating life from on high. We adults, though, lamented the quickness with which we were back below treeline, away from the views and the openness of the summit.

On tired legs, we slowly made our way down the mountain. Back through the high-elevation fir forest, descending until we reached birches and mountain ash, following the trail back to the steep cascades of Beaver Brook, picking our way carefully down the wooden blocks and boulder steps. Once down, we piled, relieved and exhausted, into the car, where the dog promptly fell asleep with her head in the littlest’s lap.

“That was not my favorite hike,” said littlest told me when we reached home.

That’s an easy sentiment to hold immediately after a challenging climb and descent. But once we’re all showered and fed and have unloaded our packs, we remember most the fun – or funny – parts of each hike. The moon rising over Mt. Lafayette and that sense of awe in looking out across a wilderness nearly unmarred by human activity. The gray jays that ate puffed corn snacks off the kids’ heads on Mt. Jackson (incidentally, on the way down that not-as-steep trail). Our famished dog thieving a pizza lunch on Moosilauke (not funny at the moment, but something I bet we’ll all remember for a long time).

We tend to forget the hardest parts of each hike and hold tight to the special memories and the lofty places that make hearts sing. In the end, we are always happy to have gone up a mountain – even if it means we’ve also had to come down. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the September 22, 2017 issue of the Littleton Record.