Dan Newton
Everyone is happy because the snow is draped between rocks and tufts on the ground and clumped in the trees. It fell from the sky just a day or so ago, and the wind has been calm, the air cold. The brooks are clogged with rock-topped white windblown puffs and drifts, and the ice along the edges is cracked-white and thin; and yet, the water flows in the brooks and rills, creating a dark juxtaposition to the whiteness all around. We’re tramping up the Old Waterville Road, having parked at the turn-around beside the Six Mile Bridge. It’s warm today. The hillside to our right as we ascend is steep and long under the evergreens, and I’m explaining how it’s a great “extreme snowshoe run,” to come down off Pine Flats when there’s a lot of snow, and today, we have a lot of snow. So I’m looking for adventure, for a story about the great snowy descent from Pine Flats to Route 49! There are about eight in the group today… absolutely none of them has any interest in doing this.
“It’s like running downhill— in slow motion,” I tell them, very enthusiastically.
Marilyn looks at me as if I’m a bit loony. Dan suggests the dangers of catching a shoe on a snowbound branch, and I agree with him that this is a factor, which is why the abundance of snow is necessary… Chris and Beth shake their heads dubiously, mumbling words like… kidding? And crazy…
After visiting the first of the nearby stone foundations, the one with a small field and an apple tree, we’re cutting through the woods to rejoin the Old Waterville Road, and there are several conversations going, just about everyone is talking about something different, and we’re sinking in about 6 inches or so, thick-stepped and clumpy. It’s the holiday season; so, after rejoining the Old Road for a while, we are soon merrily wandering off it again, into the old cemetery, reading the discernable headstones, and talking about Moses Foss, Waterville’s first settler, since two of his relatives are resting here. We let the history soak in… and soon, Moses is there with us, and we’re tramping into the woods behind the headstones. We see some open areas in behind the evergreens, and find a bunch of “patch cuts,” probably from the recent logging along Smart’s Brook, connected by skidder trails. We find ourselves going up and up and up, following the elusive figure of Moses Foss, unseen, exuberant and determined. Turning back to Suzie, Dick and Betty, and the others, no one seems to be struggling, and the trees are young and thin, and we can see Dickey and Welch through their naked fingers stretched over our heads. In the valley, there is fog. We can see Campton Mountain above its gray and white cloudwebs.
Marilyn puts a hand on her hip and squints suspiciously at me. “So, where are we?”
“We’re in the foothills of Bald Knob. Moses’ backyard.”
“You know what’s great about this,” says Dan, slicing the air with his hand, “is that we’d never be here, if we weren’t on snowshoes. You know what I’m saying?”
We all agree, taking in the limited but unique and somehow special view of this day: unknown ridgelines, distant peaks and the v-shape contours of the Mad River Valley. Looking up the slope through the trees, the summit of Bald Knob doesn’t seem so far away, and I’m wondering and watching, and checking my watch; and then, I say to myself… maybe some other time… but not today…
Descending is somewhat steep at first, and we’re winding through little red maples and beech growing along the edges of the clear-cuts, and before long we’re at the bottom of the foothills on a logging road. We follow it. The rills are purling everywhere, like springtime in Narnia, and we’re stepping over the little waterways, which lead us inexorably toward a little ravine with a small brook running between the green trees, and there’s a flat floodplain alongside, nice for tramping; and so, it is with a watery symphony that we’re angling back through the woods toward the Old Waterville Road… but this water is… big for a brook, a brook with no name… and I’m wondering where on Old Waterville Road do we encounter this kind of brook?
“When we went over the bridge,” says Beth.
“But that was at the very beginning,” says Chris.
Everyone looks at me.
Where’s Moses when I need him?
Marilyn taps her snowshoe.
…we’re going to connect to the yellow jacket trail…
“We’ll keep heading this way,” I tell them, vaguely, and we tramp and step somewhat desultorily for about ten minutes, and then I see it. I still remember its thin white corridor in the evergreens, just ahead, and the feeling of stepping from the relative unknown lands over which we’d been tramping for a couple of hours, to suddenly familiar ground; and how, even now, the vision of its ordered, patterned whiteness, amidst the beautiful chaos of green, is in front of me, leading me somewhere I want to go, toward a certain longed for place.
The trail brings us past the entrance to Pine Flats, and the snow is so sweetly deep that I want to just run up there and slow-motion-run down that hillside, sliding a few inches with each step, slowing my legs as I’m picking up speed… but I don’t; after all, I’m the guide, I tell myself, I can’t just leave them!
Once we’re back on the Old Road, however, heading down to Route 49, I peer over the side and see it’s steep and open along a little contoured spine among the pines.
“How ‘bout this?”
Chris says, “This? Not me.” She looks over the edge and laughs, “You’re crazy, but go ahead. We’ll meet you at the bus.”
Dan steps up to the edge and says, “I think I can do this. On that little ridge there.”
“It’s not that steep” I tell him… if you stay on the top of the contour…
The others have already past us heading down the old roadbed, so we start slide-stepping straight down along the spine, keeping a cadence to the steps, slowing the walking movement of our feet as we gather speed, sliding, sliding, and one step is like a frozen tele-turn, too steep to change the lead, so we’re holding that step as the snow slides away and the poles are dragging for balance and we’re going down and down and step-dropping down; and suddenly, we’re right up against some thick evergreens where we have to stop, bend and duck under a low-branched hemlock awning alongside Route 49; and, bursting out into the open, like falling from the sky, we land clomping and tramping in the deep open snow, shuffling to a stop, and looking back up at our tracks emerging from the steep-treed hillside, and we’re wide-smiling and proud as cars drive by, perhaps looking at us in awe, or with envy [or perhaps incredulity at our foolishness], and we’re trudging in the plowdrift, and I’m saying that there’s a distinct chance that no one has ever done that before.
…except me…