Spring 2004 Dartmouth Outing Club NONPROFIT U.S. POSTAGE PAID P.O. Box 9, Hanover, NH 03755-0009 DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

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Spring 2004 Spring 2004 Woodsmoke From the Editor Articles Life is full of adventure. Some adventures Winter Carnival: a Seussentennial take you to cold places and remote regions, or by Will Morrison ‘05 ...... 2 to raging rivers and dense jungles. Sometimes A Great Adventure in Moving a paddle down the Connecticut River can be by Nate Monnig ‘05 ...... 4 an adventure. More Ways to have fun: Schlitz Fund As you can see from these pages, adventure by Katey Blumenthal ‘06 ...... 8 is an important element in the life of a Dart- Fifty Miles to Go Before I Sleep mouth student. Taking an Friday afternoon by Brett Carr ‘07 ...... 9 to paddle the rapids of Hartlands can be the A Day In the Woods With Alcott Smith best medicine after a rough week of meetings, by Matt Kemp ‘04 ...... 13 classes, and papers. An expedition that spans Lost in Batholith Country an entire off- term can be a centering force in by Victor McConnell ‘04 ...... 14 our life and can put the rest of our Dartmouth Cabins and Trails years in a new perspective. Adventure is about by Kelly Swartz ‘05 ...... 22 growing, learning, being challenged, being Excerpts from “Big Salmon Creek” excited, being rejuvinated, and having fun. by Zack Strong ‘05 ...... 24 Adventure has the power to calm our nerves A Voyageur at Night and change our souls. by Matthew Richardson ‘07 ...... 28 Our beloved club, the DOC, is a great catalyst Climbing Will Save All Our Souls for adventure. It brings us together, inspires by Brenda Whitney ‘02 ...... 30 us with its rich history, and feeds the flames Mementos From the Tropics of inspiration.With the encouragement of the by Barry Hashimoto ‘06 ...... 36 North Woods, it fosters the spirit of adventure in all its members. Poetry With this new edition of Woodsmoke in your Swayambu’s Shadow hands, I invite you to sit back, relax and enjoy by Arjun Heimsath ...... 12 a good armchair adventure. Walking the Dusty Road by Arjun Heimsath ...... 16 Finding Gold Will Morrison ‘05 by Brenda Whitney ‘02 ...... 29

Woodsmoke Photography Spring 2004 Vicki Allen ‘06, Jeff Bate ‘07, Jacquelin Burnett ‘02, Pamela Collins ‘07, Rory Editor-in-Chief Will Morrison ‘05 Gawler ‘05, Libby Hadzima ‘06, Barry Editors Katey Blumenthal ‘06, Catrina Hashimoto ‘06, Arjun Heimsath, Jen Hill ‘04, Lindgren ‘04, Matthew Richardson ‘07 James Joslin ‘05, Page Kyle ‘02, Melina Marmarelis ‘07, Nate Monnig ‘05, Will Contributors Morrison ‘05, Matthew Richardson ‘07, Katey Blumenthal ‘06, Brett Carr ‘07, Barry Zack Strong ‘05, Nick Taranto ‘06 Hashimoto ‘06, Arjun Heimsath, Matt Kemp ‘04, Victor McConnell ‘04, Nate front cover: A climber on the lower pitches of Monnig ‘05, Will Morrison ‘05, Matthew El Capitan (Photo: James Joslin ‘05) Richardson ‘07, Kelly Swartz ‘05, Zack back cover: Trees in the White Mountains Strong ‘05, Brenda Whitney ‘02 (Photo: Pamela Collins ‘07)

2 Woodsmoke From the Editor Reflections

Spring 2004 47 Notes

46 Woodsmoke Winter Carnival: a Seussentennial by Will Morrison ‘05

An Seussian cat sat coyly on his hat little snow in the preceeding weeks, behind President Wright as he spoke to the situation had appeared bleak, but open Winter Carnival 2004. The voices a timely blessing from the snow gods of a capella groups rang in the night precipitated the frenzy. In fine Dart- as the ski team marched by, glowing mouth style, the sculpture was finished torches in hand. It was another typi- in the eleventh hour. cally peaceful ceremony to begin one Winter Carnival, themed“Oh, the of the most celebrated weekends on Places It Snows,” kicked off the multi- calendar. week celebration of Dr. Seuss’s 100th But fifteen hours earlier on that very birthday. Seuss, whose real name spot, volunteers onthe Winter Carnival was Theodore Geisel, graduated from Committee, led by Jeff Woodward ‘06 Dartmouth in 1925. His fun and imagi- and Victoria Solbert ‘07, shovelled and native spirit set the tone for a Winter sculpted frantically to give the cat and Carnival that will go down in history. his hat their recognizable shapes. With

The snow sculpture dominates the Green with Baker Tower in the background. (photo: Vicki Allen ‘06) Spring 2004 3 A Great Adventure In Moving by Nate Monnig ‘05

At 5:30 AM on November 14, 2003, Mike Holliday ‘05 and I checked in for our flight to San Jose, Costa Rica. For $25 apiece, Taca Airlines took our whitewater kayaks, pathetically wrapped up in black plastic and duct tape disguised as surfboards, and we left the frigid temperatures of Boston for Central America. After changing planes in El Salvador, a quick flight landed us in Costa Rica. A lot of argu- ing in my newly revived Spanish hired us a van into downtown San Jose for a few dollars less than the going rate. an acceptable home base. They didn’t After a nice stay at the Hostal Pangea ask much about our strange ways, (the best place to stay in the whole and we didn’t ask about theirs. It country) we made the trip to Turrialba, was a good thing Mike and I are very the center of Costa Rican whitewater. sound sleepers. To say the least, Costa At a price of around $1.50, the 30-mile Rica is a very noisy country, and the trip took a mere two hours on the Primavera was no exception. Loud ultra-fast Directo Bus. Our next mis- music blasted over the partial walls sion was to find a cheap place to stay all through the night to muffle the less that we would make our home for the reputable goings on down the hall, I next week or so. Our ever-so-helpful suppose. It was worth it though; any Lonely Planet Guide recommended the money we could save on hotels was Hostal Primavera (“Hotel Spring”) as more we could spend on boating. a cheap, basic place with shared bath. Our seven-week trip to Costa Rica Well, it was cheap. Known better to the could best be described as a great ad- locals as the “sex hotel,” it provided us venture in moving. Navigating the bus system, while quite reliable, was quite a hassle at times with our heavy plas- tic kayaks. We spent countless hours waiting in bus stations, as one full bus after another couldn’t take our boats. We became experts at roping our kay- aks into the trunks of small taxis in mere seconds, before they could tell us “No cabe!” In the Turrialba area, we paddled the Lower Pacuare, the Pascua section of the Reventazon, and the Pejibaye Rivers—mostly big water, class III- 4 Woodsmoke shelter, and began privy construction. Cabin and Trail hosted a feed in the With assistance from David Hooke ’84, fall following a major Smarts moun- construction began at the start of Fall tain trailwork trip, with special guest Term. With the help of Eric Benson ’04, Bernie Waugh, class of 1974, on guitar trips to the shelter went out almost playing great sing-along songs. Atten- every weekend, consisting usually of dance at this feed was so big that even only one or two upperclassmen and the huge quantities of food normally large groups of excited ‘shmen and prepared for a CnT feed were barely ‘shwomen. Construction has halted for able to nourish the masses of hungry the winter season, but should finish up Chubbers—but rest assured that this is early in the spring term. a rare occurrence. A Mt. Isolation back- It has also been a banner year for pack, Lafayette hike, Camel’s Hump, the Forestry team. In the spring meet Franconia Ridge, and many other great at Colby College, in Waterville, , hikes are the bread and butter of CnT’s Dartmouth fielded a men’s, a women’s repertoire. and an alumni team. Kim Iwamoto ’03 Under the direction of alternating came home with her fourth consecutive Chairs Eleanor Alexander ’04, Matt doubles canoeing title. After a summer Kemp ’04 and Chelsea Lane-Miller of using the skills gained in “practices” ’04, and Summer Co-Chairs Whitney up on Moose Mountain, the team went Maughan ’05 and Rory Gawler ’05, to the University of the club has continued to welcome in the fall and came home with two beginner and more advanced outdoor trophies, one in men’s Team Relay and enthusiasts. Coming up is a great one in men’s Wood Splitting. The team spring break trip to the Petrified Forest also had a good showing at the winter National Park (Arizona) and an excit- meet at McGill University in Montreal, ing revitalization of the leader training Quebec, Canada, with a second place process. Cabin and Trail meets Mon- finish in women’s Axe Throwing. The day nights at 10 PM in the basement team has now begun the extensive of Robinson Hall. Even if you’ve never preparations for what will certainly heard a single song in the songbook, be an exciting meet at Dartmouth this Cabin and Trail can’t wait to help you spring. The 58th Annual Spring Woods- get outside! men’s Weekend will take place at Oak Hill on Friday April 23rd, and on the Green on Saturday April 24th. Rory Gawler ‘05 CnT continues to run all sorts of ex- Vicki Allen ‘06 citing hikes and trailwork trips, some- times as often as every day. Although a disturbing number of local diners have closed down, DinerToure has bounced back and found new diners for cheap, good eats in the mornings.

Spring 2004 45 everything in reach, I felt latent. The earthly winds whipped my face with doldrums had claimed my wander- crystals from unknown snow slopes as ing ship. My land of milk and honey they surged across loveless crevasses, had been gulped, and the residual over ancient divides, through the mixture that I couldn’t bear to conjure cols I came by. What steeped in my had lost semblance to the native flavor. mind then felt like the gritty naranjas Despite the chilling disappearances pressed with brown hands tasted, felt of the climbers who had passed me like inhaling the pungency of salted on the streets, the unsettling fragil- lomo through a stray’s bark in the open ity of the political harmony, and the door, but felt nearly as momentary as sometimes-unbearable amount of litter a glimpse of a miniature Eden through in the wildest of places, I cherished the looking glass. When the attendant’s the aftertaste del Sur. I had feared that voice woke me in Houston and the the second-generation cosmopolitans stiffness of my body stole my attention, in Paris, Rome, and the manic routine I couldn’t remember for how long I had of college would soon efface the emo- been asleep. tion that gripped me like a panic upon rushing through the calles of deep, dark Lima to my flight. In the plane seat, I had anxiously turned my head to the mottled web of lights outside the window, and as I crystallized the last memories a chill pranced out of my mind and down my spine. And, as it was for the few enchanted conquista- dores sailing for the last time from a haunted fog and its marshy Peruvian coasts, my story’s loose ends were fastened by an ethereal presence. Un-

Cabin and Trail

This year has been one of contin- that has been in the works for a few ued growth for Cabin and Trail. Since years, began construction late spring our last report, we’ve added over a 2003 under the guidance of Rory dozen new leaders to our pool of Gawler ’05. With the assistance of enthusiastic Council Members, and Ben Honig ’05 and dozens of hearty graduated eight fantastical seniors Chubbers, trees were felled, peeled, in the class of 2003. and moved to the site (not far from the We’ve also added a shelter to our old shelter) during the summer term. section of the . During DOC Freshman Trips, groups Moose Mountain Shelter, a project dug the foundation, cut the trail to the

44 Woodsmoke IV(+) runs. The warm water made out. Running the waterfall was an for amazing playboating, and great unforgettable experience. We hiked women’s bathing suit tans from our our boats down into the canyon, and lifejackets. It was incredible to have lowered them down to the water above the opportunity to paddle miles and Pozo Azul with our throwropes. We miles of big water, day after day—a bit paused to observe how much larger of a rarity to us paddlers. it appeared while standing on the lip. Every day we’d pull off the river dead After some significant mental prepara- tired and hungry and head for the bars tion, all that was left to do was run it. for our shots of Guaro. Guaro, the local Off the edge, a couple seconds of free sugar cane alcohol, which is a lot like fall and I hit the water. Before I knew moonshine, was recommended to us it, we were all hoisting our boats back by many of the other gringo boaters up on a rope to do it again. traveling the area. They insisted it We also spent time on the Pacific was always necessary to purge any Coast catching some big air on the organisms from your body that you ocean waves at Mal Pais. On our last may have collected from the rivers. day at the beach, just before heading It always made for good times, so we back to meet up with Nicole Mansfield didn’t argue much. ‘05, Allison Forbes ‘04, and Shannon I’ll never forget the Lower Pac- McCarthy ‘04, we unexpectedly ran uare—one of the true gems of the into our friend R. Scott Cushmann ‘03. whitewater world. Offering eighteen miles of continuous class III and IV big water, through a beautiful remote canyon, it’s a playboater’s paradise. On our first day on the river, the mere sight of the waterfall below Upper Huacas rapid, cascading hundreds of feet down the canyon wall to the river made the whole trip worth it. The Pacuare offers some of the most beautiful and fun whitewater in the world—we can only hope that plans to build a dam that would submerge the entire run are thwarted. In addition to paddling in Tur- rialba, we ran the Upper and Lower Sarapiqui, and the nearby ten-meter waterfall Pozo Azul. The Upper stands out as some of the best technical white- water I’ve paddled in my life. Long, continuous and very technical class IV drops challenged us the whole run and left us wanting more at the take-

Spring 2004 5 Together we returned to the same riv- you thoroughly afraid of the jungle. ers Mike and I had run in our first few You haven’t lived until you’ve seen weeks in Costa Rica. After re-running the frog he brings out as the grand the rivers, we traveled to Manuel finale. Everybody talks about it, and Antonio on the Coast. In addition to you’ll laugh when I say this, but that surfing in the ocean there, we ran the frog changed my life; it’s just that cool. Naranjo and General Rivers—a couple It’s florescent colors look like they’re more fun play runs. from another world. Truly an incred- On occasion, usually when we were ible creature. too tired and sore to paddle another Our time in Costa Rica was an op- consecutive day, we’d take a day off portunity of a lifetime. We’d like to from the river to enjoy some of the give special thanks to the Davis Kirby other experiences Costa Rica had to of- Adventure Fund and Ledyard Canoe fer. We were big fans of the Serpentario Club for providing significant financial (Snake Place) outside of Turrialba. For help and making the trip possible. If a few dollars, the man we came to call you have any questions about the trip Yo Yo introduces you to all his crazy please feel free to contact us. We’d poisonous snakes. (Those of you with be happy to throw in our two cents if at least a rudimentary knowledge of you’re thinking of a trip of your own. Spanish might be able to guess why Pura Vida! he receives this nickname…he’s not Nate Monnig ‘05 exactly modest about his accomplish- ments.) The impressive tour will make

Environmental Studies Division

The Environmental Studies Division of the DOC is working on building up momentum. This term we are focusing on energy use at Dartmouth and in the Upper Valley. We have Ecostews every other Tuesday at noon in the basement of Robinson. At our last one we learned about dams from Frank Magilligan, in preparation for a trip to the Wilder Dam. We are also helping to sponsor an Earth Week Celebration this year. The Earth Week Committee met bi-weekly to plan the week’s events. Monitor our bulletin to get in on the action. Weekly ESD meetings are Thursdays at 9PM in the basement of Robo. (Photo courtesy of Jacquelin Burnett ‘02)

6 Woodsmoke mountain rides on a wooden truck gian told me that it was a Spaniard he bed with broad-brimmed hats, bright found—not a pretty sight, and that Quechua shawls, goats and sacks of he had somehow fallen at least a few hamsters are far from memory by that hundred meters. I asked his name. He time. From there, the familiar McWorld pronounced “Raoul” with a Southern unleashes what you had felt was miss- flatness, told me he was from Catalan. I ing, and washes clean your mind and momentarily forgot all of the moments sun-caked cheeks. of the past two months I thought were I sat next to an American on the the beautiful ones. The golden memo- bus weaving through gorges back to ries and purple majesties of all of my the sea, and down the coast to the escapades in the , and capital. He was a Georgian who had every close encounter there froze like been to the range over eight seasons, a nightmare at the waking moment. I had explored the dusty avenidas of didn’t ponder long whether I would Huaraz when I was eleven. His last have been lying out with him had I climb, a week earlier, had been a solo not missed our dinner appointment, of , but had been aborted or if I might have saved his family the when he saw a mess of ripped cloth- sorrow of receiving him in a bag by ing and person flipping about in the having climbed with him. glacial wind. It was a solo accident. The Eighteen hours of the most unfa- climber lay at the base of the fifty-five miliar abstract separated Lima from degree slopes Page and I had raced Seattle. There, the things in the exact and gasped up a month earlier, where places I had left them exuded an air we knew that the loose pickets we slid of stability that threw me off. A day in every forty meters were merely for passed, the boredom crept out from our psychological welfare. The Geor- beneath the bed I lay in, and with Spring 2004 43 off at the moment, anonymous, at with her—the fog cleared. The im- new latitudes, with thick, black curls penetrable gray curtain drew back to spilling onto the pillow next to me. the port over elegantly rotting, yellow Wearing my oddly fitting, deep blue iglesias of Incan gold-plated interiors. I silk shirt, strolling through the middle touched the lion’s obsidian head above of a sun-washed street, the caramel Pizarro’s tomb, walked again past beauty acted as if we were brother and statues of Tupac Amaru and through sister, implored if I was hungry, and squares named for Simon Bolivar. Win- flipped her head as we passed one of ter’s grasp was loosening on the city; the ubiquitous chalked menus. “Quiero gangs of filthy pigeons and the horns arrrrroooz langostino!” she said, almost and motors echoing off of the walls in begging—rolling her tongue violently the cool mornings sung in tune with as an irresistible Latina can. We pros- the sun’s alien light. pered in each other’s company. Later, In the catacombs I saw the skulls as my attention for her wavered, the of generations of 17th century Spanish fantasy caprices of swinger life after immigrants, and thought about the the climbs grew stale, and I tired of ancestors of a Catalonian alpinist I had the taste of Cuzqueñas and the same sought named Raoul. As he was the songs. I had forgotten the promises I only person in Huaraz willing to com- had made to myself, and she seemed mit to climb peaks at that time, I had to realize it as she slipped back out been to his hostel and asked at bars, of my life. Without speaking, it was but never had found him. I blew my if she had concurred that our instant chance and slept through an arranged was just a flirt of time, an indulgence dinner—a planning session for our in the common pleasures. Those days climb. He had mentioned Artesonraju came to an end, and I felt that I had to in an email, and I probably would have climb again, be with my life tangibly accompanied him in desperation for attached to something, or at least to a parting summit. But I never found be alone. him, and never got another email after I missed our rendezvous.   Later, as the weather repulsed more efforts, I dabbled in the distractions The eight-hour bus ride to Lima that were foreign to me, and I felt seems like it should be the first, painful divorced from the mountains whose step of the return home, but it’s not. pictures I had put on my walls at The honeymoon is over as soon as your Dartmouth—their peaks just above proud, jocular hostel proprietor real- me, jutting through the jealous Ama- izes you’re leaving, produces a bottle zon nimbuses. I spent the final, several of his father-in-law’s “home-made days of my time in appreciating ” from behind the counter, takes the people I met, and went to Lima you on a blurry night tour of every with a curious and beautiful student. spit and sawdust affair in town, and And a miracle happened on the last forgets you in an alley. It’s your last day sitting on a bench in barriochino taste of country. The bumpy, hitched 42 Woodsmoke Dartmouth Club

This year the DMC was up to the other intercollegiate comps, making same old mischief, namely climbing, a particularly strong showing at Mid- climbing, climbing. dlebury, where they dominated and New freshman made a strong maintained possession of the coveted showing in the fall of 2003. They are an pink chalk bag given to the winner of adventurous, dedicated, the comp each year. and super-active group DMCers were also of climbers who have al- active outside of Dart- ready contributed much mouth. During a three to the club in terms of month trip to the Cordil- their fun presence and lera Blanca of the Peruvi- participation in trips, an , Barry Hashim- feeds, and club activities. oto ’06 and Page Kyle ’02 During the fall Alana climbed the Ferrari Route Hanks and Christine on (5947m), Balaz chaired, and took and the Direct South- trips to Rumney and west Face of Artesonraju Pawtuckaway. (6025m). Barry also so- The winter, during loed the Northwest Ridge which Robin Batha ‘06 of Tocclaraju (6034m) and Bree Inglis ‘06 chaired, was a time and climbed the Southwest Ridge of of many beginner trips. Many fresh- Chopicalqui (6345m). They gave a man went on their first great slideshow upon their return, trips to Holt’s Ledge, Ascutney, and which was a great way to show less the Flume. Of particular note was experienced aspiring mountaineers that an overwhelming majority of the what a trip like that entails. This sum- participants were girls, who all came mer Will Morrison ‘05 and James Joslin back raving about their trips (as did ‘05 spent a week in Yosemite climbing the boys), and many of them started in Tuolumne Meadows and the Valley. going out ice climbing on their own. Also this summer, Victor McConnell Dartmouth hosted its annual indoor ‘04, Tristan Perry ‘04 and Ben Graham competition for Dartmouth under- ‘04 packed into Cirque of the Towers grads. Nearly a hundred routes were and climbed Wolf’s Head in the Wind put up by dedicated graduate students River Range in Wyoming. Nira Salant for the undergrads. It was a success, ‘03, Gabriel Martinez ‘99, Mike Pirozzi with James Joslin ‘05 and Christine ‘00 and Cheryl Shannon ‘00 journeyed Balaz ‘04 winning the gym rat catego- to Bishop over winter break for some ries. Those routes, in addition to some good , as did Melina Mar- put up later by the undergrads, were marelis ‘07 and Robin Batha ‘06 on used for the Dartmouth intercollegiate trips of their own. comp, which too was a success. Dart- Robin Batha mouth climbers went to most of the ‘06 DMC Co-Chair Spring 2004 7 More ways to have fun: Schlitz Fund by Katey Blumenthal ‘06

Conceived in the spring of 2003 by Kate Huyett ’05, the Wolfgang Schlitz Adventure Fund encourages under- graduate DOCers to plan and go on outdoor adventures. The Schlitz Com- mittee meets once per term to review proposals and allot funds and gives preference to applicants who demon- strate attempts to accrue funding from other sources, particularly from the View from Astkyrkja (Photo: Rory Gawler ‘05) member clubs of the DOC. The Schlitz Fund first sponsored a trip in the summer of 2003, partially December 12, 2003 funding an ascent of Mt. Kilimanjaro “We awoke to a beautiful, crystal clear by a group of Dartmouth ‘05s. night. Seeking to make the best of every Anthony Bramante ’06 and Rory minute of precious daylight, we headed Gawler ’05 received a Schlitz Fund out from the hut an hour before sunrise. Grant in the fall of 2003 to spend two The mountain before us would be our first weeks in Norway ski touring from of the trek and we looked forward to the Lillehammer to the Rondane Moun- climb and the possibility of a view. This tains this past December. The follow- would be our fourth day out, and the first ing is an excerpt from their journal: that held any promise of decent visibility. We began the climb, switch-backing up the mountain’s ridge, fighting a bitter wind the entire way. When we finally reached the summit of Astkyrkja, the sun broke through the ho- rizon. An amazing dome of color towered over us. In the south, the sun’s light bathed the world in fiery reds and deep burnt-or- anges. The colors faded to yellow and then light blue directly above us before plunging into a sea of deep murky blues and purples punctuated by an occasional cloud and the bright, setting moon. And finally, in the north the white-capped mountains silently waited. A breathtaking rainbow of color stretched horizon to horizon as we plodded along underneath..” The porch of Rondvassbu hut (Photo: Rory Gawler ‘05)

8 Woodsmoke Chilean pop hits after the busloads of pisco to forget the dangerous clouds, young women enjoying a dry pisco which had been sitting on the sum- sour, swinging to “Like a Prayer.” mits every afternoon. Losing patience, The local jovenes in meager clothing my interest waned and I took off the stick together at the fringes, and the blinders, weaving a daily circuit past campesinos in the street outside peddle the vendors, llamas, and bank lines gum and cigarettes. in town. I caught collectivos to smaller As we headed for 3:00 AM alpine towns, biked the switch-backed roads starts, pumped the stove with our that were so frightening to drive down, meaningless rituals, and stamped to climbed boulders in the hills, cooked keep our toes warm, the nagging val- plantains, and enjoyed the night. My ley lights on the horizons of glacier sun-peeled face healed, and I forgot and slope were like oases separated by about the deep powder calf burn and the expanse that marks the difference the damp, bivouac sack mornings. in our ways of life. Disparate vectors Nick left for the South, but instinct intersect in that little town when the forced me to stay behind to wait out the streets are crowded; when they are weather in what time remained. empty at siesta, cool winds blow, and The ease with which Sojai, a woman climbers wander alone through the of the north Peruvian coast, and I, from plazas, are watched from windows, and the golden-gray Midwest slipped into followed by fearless children, season each other’s lives astonishes me, and after season. After Tocllaraju, I was as I lay in my bed, surrounded by content to spend more time at plastic white walls and the noise of Huaraz’s café tables, in the meager bookstores, street vendors below the window, I speaking with foreigners, and in sight thought I saw the climax of my life in of the alluring women, bundled in knit, the hourglass. The strength of a thou- mountain sweaters against what I felt sand, cramponed steps flowed through were tropical breezes. me; I was alive, healthy, free, and well Back in Huaraz after a high, but easy climb on Chopicalqui with Nick and a strong German, I combed the message boards around town for experienced partners for an attempt on Huandoy Norte, or on a peak in the Cordillera Huayhuash. All the posts advertised partners for trekking peaks, however. At the bars I was told that ev- eryone was leaving for La Paz to climb, biking to Colombia, or drinking Spring 2004 41 and clouds raced over its combed crest like fleeing ghosts. An endless night in the steaming disco followed our return, and Page left Peru with sun-chapped lips and throbbing fingers. After recovering in Huaraz, I hopped in a taxi alone to a southern quebreda and slept a nervous night inside a groan- ing bergschrund. The of kamikaze alpinists who frequented following morning, I the big ranges until the 1990s. It was soloed Tocclaraju, a pyramid perched a dramatic place for a sociological in a whiteout, traversed an elegant discussion on climbers from converg- backbone of granite to Urus, and de- ing cultures, beneath a wind-stunted scended to make my rendez-vous with forest in the opaque, Andean twilight. Nick Taranto—a dazed New Yorker at I watched his thickly bespectacled eyes a creaky hut that swelled with Italian drift over my shoulder as he narrated and German travelers sipping matté in his last climb—Artesonraju. Extending the thin air. an arm to outline the distant, bony rock bands and hanging glaciers of  the famous pyramid, I wondered then if I would know its slopes on our next Rules of the Latin social game excursion. I would—sooner than I had became an interesting study for me thought—waking at 20,000 feet inside during my rest days. The chic Limeñas, her, gasping in a dark snow cave for I found, resent the rustically beautiful our last ounces of water. Huarazinas, with whom they must We had slogged up a kilometer of share space in a familiar discoteca, her impossibly steep powder under El Tambo. The latter group forms a dark hail and high winds. We had nightly contingent at the old haunt, is blown through our turnaround time, naturally acclimatized, and spends the and spent the night with neither stove week in company of an international nor food, packed into a hole we’d dug settlement of climbers and adventur- at the summit. Two days later, we ers. The former languishes in the hu- hiked back to our place of failure, Al- mid, coastal garua among ten million, pamayo, and blitzed the Ferrari in the and flees the Friday commotion for the freeze of pre-morning, swinging our heights of the Andes. After the sunny way up water ice and under drooping days end, busloads of men tired of the ice gargoyles. My pick broke in the capital wade in black suits through bullet-hard ice of the initial pitches, sweaty cigarette haze and pounding 40 Woodsmoke Fifty Miles to Go Before I Sleep by Brett Carr ‘07

The morning was beautiful and It’s called the Fifty Miler, and this past cloudless but I couldn’t see it. A light fall I was lucky enough to win a lot- wind blew through the treetops but I tery spot to go on the hike; fifty other couldn’t hear it. I stopped and took a people wanted to go, but there wasn’t long drink of water from my Nalgene room. That’s right, I was lucky. I was but I couldn’t taste it. Sweat soaked lucky to have the opportunity to turn every piece of clothing I had on but myself into a stumbling, moaning, I couldn’t smell it. My break over, I rancid shell of a man. As I charged up started up again. I took a step that last stretch to Moosilauke’s pin- and winced; I could feel. I could feel nacle, I was beginning to understand the quarter-sized blisters on both my why. When I took those last few steps feet. I could feel my twisted knee to 4,802 feet, my senses came back. I refusing to bend. I could feel fabric walked straight to the highest point rubbing my body raw. I could feel and stood there. It was as if my eyes every fiber of every muscle screaming opened for the first time. The valleys at me to stop. I could feel the nausea below me were glowing orange with that turned my entire world into a fall colors, where birds chirped as blurred vision of the next few feet of they flew around and people lounged trail in front of me. I rested. Then, about, talking, eating, laughing. It resolute, I took another step, and an- was a good day to be alive. Barely vis- other, and another. I leaned forward, ible as a small bump amidst the haze forcing myself uphill. I grabbed tree on the southern horizon was Smarts branches, literally pulling myself Mountain. At twenty-five miles away along. I couldn’t stop. Not this close. it was the halfway point on the hike. Not after this long. Not here. The trail I looked east, down the slopes of the turned and suddenly opened up into tundra. I stopped. I moved my head to gaze up- wards, and I smiled. Blood from my cracked lips trickled into my mouth but I couldn’t feel it. I was there. The summit of is exactly fifty miles on the Appalachian Trail from Dartmouth College, and every fall, thirty students at- tempt to cover that distance in one long, excruciating push. The author, right,with his group on Moose Mountain (Photo: Jeff Bate ‘07) Spring 2004 9 beginning. I descended Smarts with my strength waning and my knees buckling. At midnight, a short rest and some warm soup at a rest station at the twenty-ninth mile kept me standing. I began climbing Mount Cube. My new energy was quickly spent and I resumed my slow, painful push onward. I made a high step with my right leg and pushed up. My leg cramped. mountain towards the Ravine Lodge. I gritted my teeth as the pain Just 3.6 downhill miles and I was done. contorted my face into something from I looked at my watch. It was 1:30. a Picasso painting. A tear ran down Twenty-four hours earlier I had my cheek. The cramp had locked my started out from the steps of Robin- knee straight and I couldn’t move it. son Hall with two friends as a happy, I chugged a quart of Powerade on healthy, pain-free college student. If I the spot and threw whatever Advil I had only known. If I had only known had into my mouth. After maybe two that I would knock off the first nineteen minutes I grabbed my shin and with miles in five and a half hours. If I had a roar that echoed off the surrounding only known that Moosilauke would be granite bent my knee back. The cramp the sixth mountain I would climb on subsided and I trudged on. I made the hike. Moose Mountain and Holt’s the summit at two in the morning. I Ledge I had done in the daylight, still barely even remember being there. If fresh, still excited, and still running the only I had known my brain was about downhills like an idiot. By the time I to shut down. was on Smarts Mountain it was dark. The descent off Cube was up to The trail charged straight uphill and that point the worse experience of my so did I. Many times I would enter life, though the ascent of Moosilauke a clearing and stop to gaze up at the would soon take that title for itself. I night sky, the full moon farther across was asleep on my feet and walking in the sky each time. During those stops, a daze. The trunks of trees bent and though, my eyes always seemed to oscillated like weak rubber. I saw settle on the summit. It was so far nonexistent trail signs telling me I was away. It was so far above me. It didn’t almost finished. Rocks were dancing seem to be getting any closer. My pace in the trail, moving out of the way and between clearings became slower, my then back again just in time to trip rest stops longer, and my morale lower. me. I couldn’t even bring my arms I was starting to feel those miles. At up to stop my falls. I just crashed to ten o’clock I struggled to the summit. the ground. I was not in good shape, I told myself I was halfway there. If and I was only thirty-five miles in. only I had known that this was just the 10 Woodsmoke snow fortresses knows his name, and retreating from our first Alpamayo associates it with the greatest lines on attempt. With the consolation of a gratte-ciels like the twin Chacrarajus, near empty fuel canister, we hiked Huandoys, Huascaráns, Alpamayo, out a famous trekker’s route, pick- Abasraju, and grand . ing our way past the beautiful behe- The Limeñas swooned at the cantin- moths and the crumbling fortresses as when his jubilant arrieros and friends flanking their valleys in repose. The related his most recent accomplish- sights of Artesonraju, Rinrihirca, and ments. Their simple astonishment at a Taulliraju—summited only six times— man able to climb the most grandiose stunned our labored lungs. These were entities of their world probably mat- Quechua names that the passing, local tered little to him. The winter before, arrieros pronounced with nonchalant he had spent three weeks alone at eloquence. I imitated their native 22,000 feet, observing his physiology, tongue under my breath, memorizing far from any human acknowledge- the region. My only other memory of ment. Would he often step out of his the trek is of encountering the embar- tent on those nights and, watching rassing European ethic of leaving toilet the lights turn off in the Callejon de paper and candy wrappers under and los Huaylas, wonder why he chose to around every obvious rock bordering place himself so often near the land of the trail. I barely greeted anyone except the dead? Would his life, his youth, and the hired Peruvians on the trail, clad in the collective memories of him on a the common tire rubber sandals, click- distant continent mean anything to the ing tongues at their clients’ mules, giv- indigenes who might find his strange ing kilometers to the next landmark. remains, crumpled between those On the way to the mosquito-ridden huge Andean neve penitentes? He gave terraces of Vaqueria, the previous proper goodbyes to them all, though, night’s human encounters replayed, and saw Paris again. But that was 1978, as do things that stick in the mind and now the doctor lies somewhere during a full day’s hike. With a tepid, unknown on Lhotse. Peruvian beer at the base camp, I had He had tried that year to link its watched the shaky, pixilated screen summit with that of Everest and paid of a hand camera taken by the Greeks the Himalayan toll with his life. The on Alpamayo; it showed them in the lists of young and famous names midst of magically steep, ethereal written on the talus at base camps in flutings. Page’s eyes glazed over and that region are humbling warning to his face expressed a restrained frus- modern climbers. What life was left tration. The defeat and exhausting ahead of them when they perished descent hadn’t affected me as strongly, in white monsoons, avalanches, and and I spoke with an aging, muscular crevasses? Japanese alpinist about the American influence on the bouldering generation  of climbers in his country. He told me stories of his dead and retired friends, My partner Page and I ended up members of Japan’s dwindling breed

Spring 2004 39 ikhenn . . . Yoh haff moch expedienz in “ will rock your world. It is beeg mown-tennz?” not concerned with your hopes, goals, or loves. It offers sunshine and tri-  umph with the same indifferent hand that slaps fear and humiliation into Months later in France, I heard a your face.” It’s great to be a winner in tape recording of Albert Camus, and the mountains; nobody ever wants to when he spoke of the gentle indiffer- feel what losing is really like. Winners ence of the natural universe, I thought are who climbers look up to–talents of the monstrous, toppling summit like Peter Croft, Mick Fowler, and cornices lashing out suddenly against Carlos Buhler. the silence in which the eight had been Reinhold Messner, Renato Casa- climbing. My oxygen-starved thoughts rotto, and Alex Lowe were winners at the Alpamayo base camp had been once, too. cached like a dream, and they pinged Although faded under the tropical in response when I wrote about the ab- sun, the memory of another, Dr. Nicho- surdity of continuing in existence with- las Jaeger is somewhat revered in that out “knowing.” I had heard climbers little Andean city, Huaraz. Ever since speak of the weather, the mountains the summers when he would stroll like their mistresses having a good or down the Avenida Luzuriaga in a black bad day, benevolent or cruel. The truth suit to take his desayuno, people have is that they are just admired what he indifferent. Your was, and what he life will be crushed did there in his without mercy in brief time. Under the most ominous the white cloaks or innocent of plac- of the Huascaráns es, by anything as and Ranrapalca, small as a broken the educated and ankle where the daring Frenchman air is thin or a hold would have stood that dislodges at an out. He had a pen- inopportune time. chant for soloing Months be- hard, dangerous fore Peru, during peaks with few a brainstorming visible weakness- session, a partic- es, or repeating ular article on a difficult lines in different part of the same manner. the world by Tim Nowadays, every- O’Neil captured one who wants to my attention. Be- climb in that tum- low a picture of his bling and soaring emaciated figure, enclave of exotic his words were 38 Woodsmoke Every time though, I picked myself stopped moving. I laid out my sleep- up, brushed off the mud and dust, ing bag and crashed. My body ached. and hiked another hundred yards or My knee felt like someone had taken a so before falling again. At four in the hammer to it. So did my head. It was morning I was thirty-nine miles into twenty-five and a half hours and 53.6 the hike and at the next rest station. miles since I had set out. I had never I mumbled something incoherent to felt such agony. If I had only known. the people there and collapsed in a I still would have done it. sleeping bag as my hiking partners I had never felt such accomplish- continued on. I had been awake for ment or joy. That evening as I limped twenty hours, and was sleepier than I slowly around the lodge people parted was exhausted. An hour later, looking in front of me as if I was carrying a a lot like one of the undead to those staff and emerging from the sands of around me, I rose, put my boots on, Egypt. They looked at me with pity, and left with another group. I spent astonishment, and awe. I liked the the sunrise struggling over Mount awe. Sometime later, once everything Mist to reach forty-six miles and the but my knee had heeled, a friend last rest station before the lodge. If I asked me the big question after I told had only known that the worst was my story. yet to come. “Why?” The most pain I have ever expe- I opened my mouth to begin the rienced in my life was when I was answer I thought I knew: for the glory, hiking Moosilauke. Every system in for the self-discovery, to push the limits my body was shutting down. I was of human capability, to bag six peaks, no longer aware of my own actions. to hike under the night sky. These During a bathroom break a fellow were all reasons I had considered and fifty-miler, not much better off than thought justified my actions. I had I was, had to tell me that I was uri- given those reasons before, and was nating on the trail. But when I saw consistently told I was crazy. So I that summit, something deep down paused this time. I thought about`all clicked on. I was operating on pure the insane, suicidal adventures people adrenaline. I had no energy left. The descent was nothing less than a momentous charge. I was afraid to stop for fear of not being able to start again. I was running on the fumes of my reserves, and hitting empty would mean needing a rescue team. I stayed upright, and though the trail seemed to be end- less I eventually stumbled onto the leach field at the Moosilauke Ra- vine Lodge. I raised my hands in victory and let loose a raspy yell. I The Lodge on Fall Weekend (Photo: Will Morrison ‘05) Spring 2004 11 do: kayaking waterfalls, over myself among them. Justification cliffs, climbing 8,000-meter peaks is meaningless to this group. They without oxygen. Why do some people simply do. seem to have a lust for seeking out I thought about my answer, and death so they can spit in its face, return George Mallory, the climber last seen alive, and do it again? What drives alive on in 1924 still those to suffer as they do in seeking climbing towards the top, came to a seemingly arbitrary goal? I must mind. So I paraphrased his now fa- admit, there is something just a little mous three-word mantra: off about all these people, and I count “Well,” I finally said, smiling slight- ly, “because I could.” Swayambu’s Shadow Photo and poem by Arjun Heimsath

Oil lamps lit, Monkeys scamper prayer wheels spun, below spinning wheels, path trod round grab rice and squat. and round Swayambunath stupa. Devotees walking praying walk- Incense burn ing, city smoke in and out of shadow then the view opens. eyes not lifting, not seeing flags hung low. Swayambu’s shadow spreads covers wheels and lamps, Those long stairs up, pigeons and praying monks. then winding down. Look up The shadow cools throat-catching haze. through Swayambu’s shad- ow

12 Woodsmoke alpinist we had met on the walk in The Peruvians joked about heavy from Cashapampa. When I inquired drinking the night before on the pam- about the rescue effort, I was informed, pas, and sipped at matté de coca. Some “By the time any rescue arrives, the Brits puffed Lucky Strikes and took situation will have resolved itself.” photographs as we waited for our Climbers drop like flies in these moun- pulses and thoughts to decelerate. The tains. Two Swiss plummeted from Israeli was only one of eight climbers Rasac in the southern Huayhuash. A killed on the tragically beautiful face Mexican asphyxiated in his sleep on when a summit cornice decided to take Huascaran Sur. A young, Japanese all eight for a ride. I imagined the eight climber slipped away a week earlier, buried under tons of snow beneath probably somewhere near where I lay, their Mona Lisa, among the haphaz- sick from ascending too quickly. ardly strewn blocks of ice that one sees I had seen earlier that day a well- in alpine environments, or stuffed into built Israeli at my feet in the serenity the yawning bergschrund slashing and savagery that is a crevasse-slit across the pyramid’s base. After the glacier in the sun. He was just a hard carnage had ended, the astonished piece of frozen meat in expensive, strangers and friends at high camp synthetic wrapping then. But perhaps who had been awaiting their day on two weeks earlier, as I sat safely in the face would have combed the mess Seattle contemplating the risks I was for any color, then hastily retreated to about to undertake, he was breathing their mules in the rocky valley below, hot air into freezing shadows. In one of and to Huaraz. the flutings on Alpamayo’s southwest A white-bearded Slovenian up the face he was shouting the lexicon of slope in a red snow bib, regarding me alpinists to his girlfriend at the far end through his crusty, black glacier gog- of the rope. On that face, the echoes gles delivered me from my thoughts. disappear across a blue void, or are He looked ancient for a climber and absorbed into the vapid, white belly said in gnarled English,“Yoh err Amer- of the mountain. A green blanket belonging to the Peruvian mountain police covered his body, but I could tell that his helmet was still in place. He was so tall that his plastic boots stuck out from the blanket’s end, and his legs were frozen together. Surrounded, he reminded me of the dead dog that was laying in the street market gutter the day we arrived in Huaraz.

Spring 2004 37 Mementos From the Tropics by Barry Hashimoto ‘06

Nighttime in Lima is full of sound as we could come to the Andean sun and air, the smell of roasting chickens, and her secret city of towering ice. Page covers of “Hotel California,” Latin made the new arrangements in rusty machismo, black jeans, black market castillano, and the indifferent function- watches, lost Australian hippies, and ary placed us on the overnight bus to lost climbers. On July 1, Page Kyle, Huaraz, Peru’s ramshackle climbing my summer climbing partner knocked hub. We passed by the ongoing lives on the door of my hostal, which was, of ten million people, and stole away in fact just the private apartment of a from the bloated, former seat of the family augmenting their income. After rotted Spanish legacy when we’d just a check at the peephole, my hostess let barely felt its heaving pulse. in the odd-looking transplant, whose spindly frame and Czech complexion  stood out among the Incan populous on the streets. With a Eurasian heritage I am in a wretchedly cramped and quickly darkening features, I was tent at the most photogenic spot in familiar enough to many Peruvians the worl–the Alpamayo high camp– that they would mistake me for a lo- among an international contingent of cal in the weeks to come. Page and I alpinists. Concerns other than impend- had arrived separately, but wandered ing commitment and glory at hand together for a day in the former capital occupy my mind—chilly toes, which of the Spanish Americas, marveling at won’t rewarm, ice that has formed the filth on the walls, the mysterious between the laces of my “waterproof garua fog that veils the unregulated leather” climbing boots, and the alti- sprawl, and the circus of noise, most tude of 5300 meters affecting me like of all. The living orchestra of Japanese a fever of 103. I can hear the British car horns and motorbikes screaming outside planning a rescue operation and slipping from road to sidewalk for two, visible alpinists on , shocked our northern sensibilities. descending slowly at dusk with no The hordes of chatting, young Limeños bivouac gear. Meanwhile, the pain in and the buskers in the charged streets my head is making me delirious. threw us into a quiet shock, and we Nobody is climbing Alpamayo hastened to the crumbling shell of the right now, except the crazy Greeks bus station where my reservations who marched back from her as Page were found to be conveniently non- and I labored to melt water. Nobody existent. I collapsed on my red duffel is climbing Alpamayo because she and breathed in the developing world; shocked the community of climbers beaten Toyota vans and lacquered Mer- at camp by taking eight people to their cedes cycled in an endless procession. graves. “Si on tombe, c’est la chute; si on The bus line was called Cruz del Sur, chute, c’est la tombe” remarked a bereted although we were going north, as close 36 Woodsmoke A Day in the Woods With Alcott Smith by Matt Kemp ‘04

October 25, 2003 and exoskeleton bits from crayfish. Otter droppings, he announces, easily 1028 hours—Six of us pile out of identified by their contents and rank Vox Van 103; Alcott emerges from his smell (characteristic of all mustelids, or dusty red Subaru, sporting a camou- members of the weasel family). flage fleece shirt and cherry walking stick. Before we even enter the woods 1102—We move deeper in to the he launches into a discussion of conti- woods and pause for a brief discourse nental weather patterns and the resul- on gray birch identification (heavily tant abundance of gray autumn days branched, and the bark doesn’t peel) in New England. With Alcott, there is and the effects of the white pine weevil always a story—an overturned log, the on tree morphology. Alcott can age gnarled shape of a hemlock trunk, the the pines with a glance and tell exactly putrid stench of fisher scat, the bitter- what year the trees were attacked by ness of red oak acorns—they all reveal the weevil—the typical whorl of something about what goes on in the branches coming off the main trunk woods. Sometimes the story was writ- gives way to a splitting of the trunk ten last night, sometimes last winter. into a number of vertical stems. Sometimes Alcott even invokes the evolutionary history of an organism to 1112—Black bear signs. Alcott flesh out his tale. There is no limit to points out the scratches about five feet what the woods divulge to those who up on the bark of a big red pine (the can, as Alcott says, turn down their scent of which is apparently irresist- intellect and trust their senses. ible to the bears) and pulls out a few strands of bear hair lodged in crevices 1045—We pass through a fine grove in the bark. The vertical and diagonal of aspens to arrive at a beaver pond. marks are from claws, the horizontal A group of wood ducks, mallards, and from teeth. hooded mergansers, accompanied by a lone great blue heron, flees at our 1135—We come upon a stand of arrival. Though an intact lodge sits birch saplings hacked in half, the out in the water, Alcott decides this dead branches splayed on the ground pond is currently unoccupied—the stripped of leaves. Some of the cuts dam is penetrated by a substantial appear relatively fresh—there are still trickle of water (beavers wouldn’t let wood chips lying on the ground. Oth- that happen), and most of the good ers are faded with age, and all of these food sources are too far away for a are farther from the ground, at about beaver’s comfort. We do find evidence eye level. Two different herbivores of of another aquatic mammal, though: disparate stature? Look again, says fresh scat on the dam filled with claws Alcott, and we soon determine that the

Spring 2004 13 smooth tooth marks are identical on all that complete part of its development of the severed limbs. They’re all from a inside oak branches. We find more beaver, he explains, but for these older signs of bear activity nearby as well: cuts, he had a bit of a boost…a three- a hole in the ground where one tried foot snowpack. The higher branches to unearth a yellowjacket nest. were gnawed last winter . 1235—We surprise a trio of white- 1141—Alcott takes off in a new di- tailed deer browsing in a low marshy rection. We have to half-trot to keep area. The forest is filled with animals— up, he strides so quickly through the as the past two hours with Alcott forest. How he ever spots the won- attest—yet our encounters with them derful minutia of animal signs that he are exceedingly rare (deer and squir- does is astounding—I have enough rels are the only live mammals we see trouble managing my own two feet all day). I wonder if this is why the at the pace he bushwhacks. The next art of tracking is so appealing: it lets stop is abrupt, and with a slight grin us glimpse a world we rarely witness he challenges us to find signs of three firsthand. We’re voyeurs, really, striv- different mammals, all within ten feet ing for a little taste of that which is of where we’re standing. We find one, foreign and alluring. a small overturned log, but are at a loss for interpretation. Black bear, digging 1242—Discussion of the differences for insects, he tells us. And on top of between the bark of white oak and red the log are a few husks from a pine oak. You should be able to identify cone—a red squirrel dined there. A few every tree at eye level, says Alcott. feet away, he shows us scrapes on the Apparently looking at leaves makes bark of a hemlock sapling (the result of things too easy. Someone finds scat deer browsing last winter), completing composed entirely of berries and we the lesson. We press on. are surprised to learn that it belongs to a coyote. The guys just love berries, 1209—Another stop with a variety he tells us. Who knew? of subject matter. I get the feeling you could plop Alcott down at any random 1259—Lunch break, dominated by point in the forest and he could talk a discussion of ’s population for hours about what he sees without of timber rattlesnakes. Alcott taught moving a step. Here, he points out a himself not only to find the snakes grid-like pattern of holes on a hem- (which are phenomenally rare in the lock trunk. A few of us actually know state) but also how to handle them this one—a yellow-bellied sapsucker bare-handed. A red-tailed hawk glides foraging site. He also passes a fallen overhead. oak branch around for us to inspect. There’s a hole in the middle, and the 1349—We resume hiking. The branch appears to have been eaten next item of business: porcupines. A out from the inside. Exactly so, says series of gnarled, almost banzai-like Alcott, this is the handiwork of the hemlocks prompts the discussion. “oak pruner” longhorn beetle larva, 14 Woodsmoke Gallery

Left: Mt. McKinley, Denali National Park (Photo: Libby Hadzima ‘06) Right: (Photo: Arjun Heimsath) Bottom: A Chubber on the summit of Mt. Cube during the Thanksgiving cabin- hopping trip (Photo: Pamela Collins ‘07)

Spring 2004 35 Dartmouth Organic Farm This year at the Dartmouth Or- have the intention of making ganic Farm has been marked by animals a permanent part of the farm adventurous ideas and experiments landscape, we had to say goodbye to with new directions for the farm. our hardy and spirited Jacob sheep The farm continues to be a living at the end of the summer. Chickens, laboratory for various student inter- anyone? This fall and winter the farm ests as well as just a great place to has been host to other student proj- be. In the sunny fields by the river, ects, such as an engineering project in the woods above the farm, and involving the monitoring of electricity in the greenhouse and farmhouse, usage at the farmhouse, a compost students have found a space to make toilet project, an ecological and cul- their own. tural study of Basket Ash trees, and Many writers have found a place an exploration of Urban Gardening. for solitude and reflection out at the The pumpkin harvest was especially farm. Springtime at the farm was fine this year and jack-o-lanterns lit very literary and the farm hosted our barn dance in October. In De- Stonefence Review meetings and cember, Scott Stokoe, our esteemed readings by authors such as Terry farm manager, served as an advisor Osborne. Summer saw the arrival to the Tucker Cross-Cultural Educa- of new faces at the farm: three Jacob tion and Service trip to Nicaragua that sheep who kept us company as we promoted sustainable practices. enjoyed the fields. Early mornings Winter at the farm means good were often very busy in the fields as food and good company and... sled- students harvested fresh vegetables ding. Sugar season is coming soon for Collis, for farm-stand, and for and we are looking forward to tap- the local food shelter, the Haven. ping the Maple stand at the beginning Professors Jack Shepherd and Ross of spring term. We are also looking Virginia brought students out to the forward to the planting of a new berry farm as part of their Environmental orchard and another fine season in the Studies classes. The summer arts fields. Join us for Farm meetings ev- festival saw the installation of several ery Tuesday at 1PM in the basement sculptural works in the farm field, a of Robo. Come find us three miles dance workshop, and the creation north of Hanover on Route 10. Blitz of a makeshift shelter for the Jacob “Dartmouth Organic Farm” for rides Sheep. White Mountain Oysters en- and to find out how to get involved, tertained a large crowd that feasted or check the Organic Farm blitz bul- on fine home cooking as the sun set letin. Or just show up! Visitors are over the river. always more than welcome. We hope The end of summer marked the to see you out here! transition into harvest season. While Jacquelin Burnett the student farmers still ‘02

34 Woodsmoke The trees were, Alcott says, chewed with brown reproductive smoke. They by porcupines at various stages of are purportedly good eating, in case growth. Not really surprising, at least anyone was wondering. to him—a large rock outcropping nearby would provide ideal shelter 1500—More plants, this time a for the rodents. Porcupines appar- hophornbeam (also known as iron- ently became extremely abundant in wood). It’s the strongest, densest the decades after the ‘20s when fish- wood in the forest—would give our ers, one of their only predators, were crack forestry team a real run for its trapped out, though their population money. We also find a fine batch of has dwindled somewhat in past years “rock tripe,” green and black lettuce- (while fishers are doing quite well). like leaves of lichen coating the vertical Alcott tells us of a time when a young, face of a large boulder. football-sized porcupine mistook him Throughout the hike, latin names for a tree and climbed all the way up are flowing freely from Alcott’s mouth, his dungarees to perch on his shoulder. along with organic chemistry designa- Porcupines are not renowned among tions for the compounds that promote forest animals for their intelligence or growth in white pines or give winter- observational prowess. green its distinctive flavor or help buck moths from freezing to death, not to 1359—We pass a dead snag that has mention technical physiological terms been excavated by a pileated wood- for aspects of ruminant digestion and pecker for carpenter ants. The chipmunk hibernation (he used to be behemoth of the woodpecker family, a veterinarian). pileateds leave gaping rectangular holes that penetrate halfway through 1538—The sunlight is dwindling. the trunk; fresh foraging sites have We begin making our way back to impressive piles of woodchips strewn the van. Alcott takes the path of least about the ground underneath the resistance, the way animals would. tree. Sometimes, he says, I just close my eyes and feel my way out of the woods— 1425—The topic turns to plants and you just have to let your feet do the fungi. Alcott unearths some brown thinking. stalks of Indian pipe, which no longer retain their distinctive curved shape 1601—Time for one more lesson (they turn their flowerheads up at the on beaver ecology. We pass another end of the growing season for pollina- abandoned pond and notice a num- tion purposes). Puffballs are out in ber of large hemlocks with the lowest force today—little rounded fruiting three feet of bark completely stripped. bodies of fungi, chock full of delicious Alcott says that indicates the beavers little spores that fly off in a misty beige have literally eaten themselves out of cloud at the slightest nudge. Alcott house and home—the hemlock bark is tells tales of gigantic soccer-ball sized generally the last to go after all other puffballs that could fill his living room food sources have been used up. We

Spring 2004 15 head downstream from the pond and like to think I know a bit about how encounter a series of smaller dams that things out there work. Really, neither hold back just enough water to give a is very true. Spending time with Alcott beaver comfortable protection from is a lesson in how little I still know. predation. Beavers never like forag- More importantly, perhaps, it is a les- ing more than fifty meters away from son in how to acquire that knowledge, water. To this end, they also dig little and a very plain message about why we canals out from their ponds into the spend time in the woods, which offer forest, several of which we presently infinite curiosities for the patient and discover. Alcott says once while he quiet observer. Peak-bagging, kayak- was standing over one of these canals a ing, snowboarding, and ice-climbing particularly brazen beaver swam right certainly have their place and tender between his legs. They are fearless in their own rewards, but all too often we the water. Amazingly, considering neglect to slow down and genuinely how prevalent beaver ponds seem to explore the environment that gives us be in the area today, they only returned such inherent joy. Anyone who has to the Northeast in the 1960s after be- spent a day in the woods with him is, ing extirpated in the 1800s. I’m confident, quite thankful that Al- cott embraced this value fifty years ago 1625—We return to the vehicles, and is so generous in sharing the magic humbled and exhilarated by our day’s of the woods with anyone willing to ramble. As an active chubber, I like to listen to his or her natural senses. think I spend a fair amount of time in the woods, and as a biology major, I

Walking the Dusty Road by Arjun Heimsath Driving the washboard dirt-road I try his walk rattles every bone, every screw test his shuffle for days across the Tibetan Pla- No air, I gasp, grab a Coke, teau. sit while the pilgrim strides onward, Emerging from sapphire skies: aquiline nose forward. yak-skins, pointy-boots, smiles his red face fur-hat spins his prayer wheel: pilgrim walking the dusty road. one hand then the next.

My head turns, I ponder Always ahead the enviable task. despite the dust could I leave work behind, despite the rutted road. walk the dusty road to Lhasa: khora at the Jokhand my only goal. 16 Woodsmoke For the two weeks at Winslow for ers? Is it being so intimately involved Freshman Trips Climbing Croo ‘03 in the elements of the natural world? Is teaching freshman the basics of climb- it simply hiking and wandering from ing, climbing brought me once again place to place, appreciating the pres- back into myself, gave me the space sureless peace and time out of busy and perspective in which to reorder schedules to enter another world in my life, and reminded me again where which time is measured in millennia? my priorities must lie: in appreciating Is it the touch of reality that reminds us simply being, breathing in and out, we are living beings, that our intellect moving with quiet grace through the is not a thing separate from our bodies world, working hard when and where or spirits? possible, but always being grateful just In climbing, all three come togeth- to be alive and able to participate in the er…the mind must be hyper aware, beauties and workings of the world. problem solving and alert. The body And so now I must wonder, what moves in response to the mind. The is it about climbing that makes it such spirit rejoices in the movement, in the a saving grace? Is it the movement, or fresh air, in the sunlight and broad as John calls it, the dance over the rock? vistas. You are truly whole, living Is it feeling the rough textures at your completely in the present, and worries fingertips, the bloody scrapes, and the drift away. dirt under your fingernails? Is it the good-natured company of other climb-

(Photo courtesy of Melina Marmarelis ‘07)

Spring 2004 33 was one of the first snowfalls of winter term, ’04. We sat inside watching the snow stir into eddies along side the drifts. He made some comment about its beauty; I said: “I suppose it’s easy to take for granted.” He replied, simply: “I’m trying not to.” An Idaho native and skier, snow was as common to him as water to a fish. And yet still it did not cease to amaze him. I’ve often wished I were a skier, and could appreciate the snow more. over the years had sat in this cave, Instead, I turned to thinking of how contemplating. I thought of the deer many times climbing has in fact, often John and I had startled as we followed quite literally, saved me by virtue of fresh tracks bounding away from us being able to wake me up each time through the snow. I thought of our without fail. hike in under the white canopy, the My Dartmouth climbing career has snow deep in the forest interior not been inconsistent at best. I left campus yet blown or melted off the branches. often to travel. Months, years even, I thought of the highways and busy would go by without moving over the traffic patterns of wildlife we saw solid surface of rock. My fingertips tracked in the snow, so much more would find themselves tracing along than I had imagined judging by the the stone walls of buildings just to seemingly silent, empty forest of fall. remember the rough textures. Driving I thought of my own life, and its di- back to Dartmouth after my travels rection. I looked around the cave and and seeing the granite road-cuts along thought of the lines and forms, of the the highway has always been my ice sculptures flowing down its sides, signal that I am coming home, back and of the animals who had sought to the rock, and to me it is a beautiful refuge there within. I thought of the sight. Over the years, my saving graces surface of the rock outside, and the have been few and precious. Climb- routes waiting to be climbed come ing has been one of the most sure, the spring. But mostly I thought of noth- most true. ing and simply breathed in and out. Wandering red rock country and Sometimes, it is a gift to simply be, to spending days sweating and sunning co-exist, for once, in the world equal and working out at the dry desert cliffs among the rest of creation. is enough to bring calm into my chaos, Someone once said: “There are but and I am renewed. The same is true a few people truly awake in the world, for all the days someone has pulled me and they live in a state of constant out of living too much inside my own amazement.” How I wish I lived in head and gotten me out into the sun that state! Another friend once startled moving over the rock of Rumney, the me awake with a simple statement. It Gunks, or the Etna boulders.

32 Woodsmoke Lost in Batholith Country by Victor McConnell ‘04

Paul leaned forward and prodded watching it, holding up one hand to the fire with a long stick. The flames block the fire. I stood up to look for leapt up and he squinted his eyes myself and could see only a vague, against the growing heat and bright- gray, coyote-like form moving in the ness. Suds from his beer clung to his distance. Tristan sat back down but thick mustache and gleamed in the Paul remained standing, watching firelight. He stood and looked over and muttering in a low voice about his left shoulder to the north at the the lion. I looked for a while more, but Mojave Desert behind him. The dark, saw nothing else. When Paul asked, chaotic branches of the Joshua trees though, I told him that I saw it – and dotted the flat land beneath the white that it was, indeed, something. moon. Pale, rounded domes of boul- ders cast shadows amongs the trees. A near-vertical, fifteen foot boulder Paul pointed at something just out of sat just outside the fire ring. Hours my line of sight. earlier, when the fire had been at its “You see that?” hottest, there was just enough light to I shook my head and stayed seated. make out small dishes and nubbins I figured it was just another coyote. spaced meagerly across the boulder’s “What is it?” Tristan asked, setting face. Paul had helped us finish off his beer on the boulder and standing our bottle of whiskey and he sat and up beside Paul. watched as we put on our climbing “Mountain lion. Hadn’t seen one shoes and began looking for a route out here in years.” up the steep side of the boulder. After Tristan looked off in the direction several minutes of scraping and sliding Paul was pointing. He seemed un- off, Tristan discovered a small side pull convinced. to pull up close to the top with. He des- “I see something moving,” he said. perately pawed the slopers above and “You sure, Paul?” his feet skated off as he flopped half- “Oh yeah. way onto the Big one. You boulder’s top. can see it good I stood under once your night him, ready to vision kicks prevent his roll- in.” He paused ing backwards and leaned for- into the fire in ward, concen- case he should trating. “Ain’t fall. One more that something. lunge and he It’s a female was up. Once too.” Paul kept atop, he turned

Spring 2004 17 and faced the fire with his legs draping  over the sloping edge. “Dude! That problem is all kinds That boulder that we sat on was of cool! C’mon!” once part of the gigantic batholith that I looked over my shoulder at Paul. encompassed the hundreds of square He was staring into the fire, seem- miles that now make up Joshua Tree ingly unaware of our antics. I turned National Park. Over the course of back to the rock and placed my left millions of years, erosion and weather foot high on a slight indention. The wore away the ground and broke up warmth of the fire pressed against my the rock, causing the infinite number of back as I fingered the starting hand piles that are currently scattered across holds. Joshua Tree’s sharp quartz the desert. It was these piles, some as monzonite cut into my finger tips, much as four hundred feet high, that which were already raw and worn drew us to cross the country and climb from five days of climbing. I pulled at Joshua Tree. up and found myself pressed against The trees themselves spring up the rock, balancing on my one foothold everywhere that the rock is absent. and pinching hard on a couple sharp They only grow in one place on the crystals. I smeared my right foot on planet and that is here, on the plains the wall and tried to keep my balance of the Mojave Desert. No two look as I reached up for the sloping right the same, and they routinely live hun- hand. I latched it, and as my left foot dreds of years, with the park’s oldest came off I lunged desperately upward supposedly approaching a thousand. with my left hand. I couldn’t find the They were named in the 1850s by Mor- side pull, and I clawed for something mon pioneers who thought the trees’ to pull up on as I belly flopped the branches resembled the upstretched sloping top out. Tristan was doubled arms of Joshua, leading them to the over in laughter beside me, waiting to promised land. Whenever I walked see if I’d pitch off and tumble down to among them, I wondered how many the ground. Luckily, my fingers closed had stood 150 years before to witness onto a crimper hidden in the shadows, and I pulled up and sat on top. From our perch, we looked down at the fire below. Paul looked up at us, raised his beer, smiled, and said, “Cool.” I smiled back and wondered how many times he’d sat in that spot and watched as kids half his age scaled this very boulder.

18 Woodsmoke boulders. To watch Bobby climb is to see an exercise in persistence, patience and determination. He will prac- tice the same single move hun- dreds of times over, knowing that the next time, he just might get it. He knows that once he gets it, he will then get it again and again, be able to link it to the next move and start trying another move. In this way he is able to complete the entire boulder problem from rock balancing on three smaller rocks, beginning to end. It might take a day, as if on a tripod, or been able to lie a week, a month, years. There is no in the space there between the giant point of frustration, of “enough is boulder and the ground, staring up enough.” Just, “one more time,” again at its flat underbelly just above my and again. nose. I never would have seen the Those who have sacrificed much way that ice forms twisting sculptures to dedicate their lives to the art, not as it runs down the angled surfaces of just the sport, of climbing, spending the rough rocks, branching and join- days often alone or with friends, or ing like rivers of clear crystal. An ice on barren windswept summits, or up so smooth, it is truly one of the most on towering cliffs, often carry an ec- beautiful and wonderful things I have centric air that speaks of wisdom. To ever seen and touched. And I never know Bobby, with his quiet, unassum- would have come across this cave, or ing wisdom is almost to have met an had the chance to sit in it for a moment angel. To know John Joline is to have of silence on a still quiet winter day. a glimpse, a doorway, into the sacred, The floor of the cave was flat, -al the profound. Both are welcoming and most as if carved by human hands, more than willing to bring another into with just enough room to sit up. Our their world, if only for a brief time, in breath froze in the air, the cold crept which wandering is the goal and not into our bones, warmed though we’d the destination, in which the forest is been from our hike in, and still we did magic, and the rocks are friends wait- not care to stir from our spot. John ing to be visited. and I sat in perfect silence and still- Without Bobby or John to guide me, ness, without pressure or plan, as the I would easily have been lost in that minutes extended on. We sat in quiet vast tract of land. More importantly, respectful awe, once again amazed at I never would have found or stopped the creation around us, at the privilege to appreciate such awesome mono- of being in such a unique position, so lithic creations as those rocks dubbed close and yet so far from our common “The Cosmic Egg” or “The Devonian experience on campus. Fish.” I never would have found that I thought of how many others

Spring 2004 31 Climbing Will Save All Our Souls by Brenda Whitney ‘02

“Climb the mountains, and get their stuck as I was in frozen New Hamp- good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into shire. Just a few days later I found you as sunshine into trees, while cares drop myself sitting under a rock in a small off like autumn leaves.” snow-filled cave, thinking again of her -John Muir words. My companion, John Joline ’70, Dartmouth’s Climbing Gym manager, “Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in PE instructor, and overall rock climb- your head and your head firmly attached to ing guru, had once again offered me a your body, the body active and alive, and quick escape from the daily grind to I promise you this much: I promise you lead me into the winter wonderland this one sweet victory over your enemies, of the Etna forest, a large, undevel- over those desk-bound people with their oped tract of land laying between the hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes industrial complexes of Greensboro hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise Road and the Centerra Park business you this: You will outlive the bastards.” district along Route 120. To me, the -Edward Abbey woods and ridgelines of this land, largely unexplored and untouched, are “Climbing will save all our souls.” magical and inspiring. Our two to five So spoke my best friend, calling me hour jaunts always leave me feeling from her sun-drenched work station refreshed and renewed. studying bat-biology in Bishop, CA. The rock we sat under was among Another Dartmouth ’02, we had met the hundreds dotting the landscape, while climbing years ago, during our some solitary, some in clusters. Af- freshman fall, through DMC climbing fectionately known as “Bobby’s Boul- trips to Rumney, New Hampshire, ders,” they were found and developed and on afternoons out at campus’ for climbing by Robert Hardage ’99, own Bartlett with the help of Tower. Over the John Joline and years and dis- current Dart- tances we have mouth climbers. remained close; The fall of ’03 similar in spir- saw many excur- it, she always sions into Etna, knew what I not only to climb, most needed to but often just to hear. wander among I envied her, the rocks, to make outside climbing a pilgrimage to hot desert rock the woods and in December, visit our favorite

30 Woodsmoke those pioneers passing through and giving them names. Paul hadn’t been there quite as long as the trees or the boulders, but, for our ten day stay, he was as much a part of the landscape as anything. He’d been living in J-Tree since 1982. After Vietnam, he’d spent a few years wandering, working, surfing, and sail- ing before “settling” out here amongst the rocks in the desert. The day we arrived he was sitting on a picnic table, soaking in the warm March sun. His skin was dark, creased and weathered from twenty years in the Mojave. He greeted us as though we were ex- pected, getting up from his spot on the picnic table–where he had been sitting for who knows how long–and shak- ing each of our hands before showing us the best spots to pitch our tents. The engine of the van we’d driven in sounded bad, sputtering shakily when we tried to move it after putting doing out there–and why. the tents up. Paul came over, popped the hood and diagnosed and fixed it After dinner that first night, we in- within an hour. And when our tent vited Paul to join the ten of us around stakes pulled out, Paul brought over the fire for a smoke. Everyone was the flattest pounding rock around and relaxed, enjoying their first night out helped us hammer them back in. and feeling friendly towards Paul and The sky was clear, but the wind one another. Our group dynamics was blowing strong, and it was after were unique; there were four couples fixing the van that he first told me how and Jan (pronounced “yawn”) and this weather brought him back to his me. And Jan, too, was getting married days on the ocean so many years ago. in a few months, though his bride-to- I listened to his stories as I unloaded be was unable to make the trip. So my gear. I stood out a little from the group as I figured Paul had been climbing the only “single” and one of the two out here for all these years, but when who weren’t retiring to a tent with I started asking him about the best their significant other at the close of routes and boulders he replied in an each day. odd, evasive, nonsensical fashion. It So it was natural that I leaned up turned out that Paul didn’t climb at against the fireside boulder beside Paul all. I wondered what, exactly, he was that night. In fact, it would become

Spring 2004 19 a ritual for me to stay out each night mellowing effects of the good herb. as everyone else headed, one by one, The landscape around us only en- to their tents. And so that first night hanced it, and everyone was silent, marked the beginning of Paul’s and seeming to know, understand, and feel my nightly conversations. the same things that I did. Paul was on my left, and Tristan The joint had come around again and his girlfriend, Hannah, sat on and so I turned and handed it to Paul. the ground to my right. Hannah was As he inhaled, the tip lit up bright and trying to block the wind, cupping her red. Then he started talking again, hands in front of Tristan’s chest as he rambling about his past, his family struggled to roll a joint against the in Indiana, and something about the breeze that seeped through her fin- sheriff being out to get him and run- gers. Paul was calm and quiet, and ning him out of town. Occasionally he when Tristan passed the joint to me I spoke of the war and the many other sucked in deeply, twice, then handed injustices he’d been subjected to. I it over to Paul. He took it, mumbling, couldn’t really hear all of his words “Thanks, brother,” and raised it up to through the haze, and I wasn’t sure if it his lips and pulled in, then exhaled. I was his stories or my mind that wasn’t watched the smoke drift out his mouth making sense. and nostrils and fade up into the night sky. I asked him what he’d been doing  out here for so long. “Nothing, you know. Different The next morning marked the be- things. And I haven’t just been here. I ginning of our fifth day of climbing, come and go, you know. I like it here, and everyone except Tristan and I was though, like the people, just being out. preparing to go to Palm Springs for a It’s a good place.” day off. They left and we spent our day I nodded. Hannah and Tristan were on the Lost Horse Wall. We climbed listening too, until late after- and as Paul kept noon and sunset talking I looked found us wan- across the fire dering about, at the rest of the searching for group. Every- the path back to one was relaxed, camp. smiling, and I We finally could feel the made it to camp haze descend- a half-hour af- ing over us. It ter nightfall. I was a pleasant wasn’t sure what haze; one built we’d eat for din- on warmth, fa- ner, but, as we tigue, compan- walked up, Paul ionship, and the called out and

20 Woodsmoke I looked up at those stars whose reflec- the shore. tion I had just ruined. Then I began My canoe beached and upturned, to paddle forward, very slowly, for I my pike tied off for the night, I headed was in no hurry. I looked from the sky to bed. I dozed off almost immediately, to the water and back and suddenly still in a half-conscious trance. Before realized how obscure the distinction I finally slept I thought of being on between the two had become. One the water at night, feeling an absolute was the mirror image of the other, and immersion in the stars above, the it truly felt as though I were floating water below, and the hills and forests through space. I felt an amazing calm around me, the only reminder of my come over me at this realization, and physical existence the periodic sound I was sad when eventually I reached of my paddle gently going in and out

Finding Gold by Brenda Whitney ‘02

Gold, as found And we, too, are granite now, in water wet leaves carrying the tests of time, covering concrete weathered down no small amount, steps and pathways gullies and canyons and craters and on a rained out night rivers of fireplace sofa side crying: books and teas Yes, I have survived. Crying. Step outside, gold all underfoot, remember… Reading here, in the leaves at last, ancient memories, dialogues of fu- The forests, the rough granite ture. at fingertips; black moss wet, and, brittle dry; The morning we greeted the sun, the acres of fire red and holding up our gold, in our minds warm gold eye, so far below. chanting thankyou thankyou thankyou… The Raven above, calling thankyou… herself mountain rock, cawing: thankyou thankyou thankyou… Yes, I have survived. thankyou.. thanka thanka thankyou- thank you. The rocks come cry; thanka thanka thankyou- thank you. the valley flows rivers towards thankyou thankyou thankyou… the goal we seek.

Spring 2004 29 A Voyageur at Night by Matthew Richardson ‘07

I sat in my canoe and watched 11, and definitely time for bed. I sat the sun set, my fishing line dangling up, turned around and tugged on my loosely in the water before me. As the stringer. I felt the weight of my catches twilight came, I knew the mosquitoes for the day: two pike, neither longer would be especially bad on land until than a foot, but enough for a good meal darkness fell, so I decided to stay out on the next day. Good, they hadn’t man- the lake until then. I reeled in my line aged to swim away. I felt around until for the final time, unbaited it, and tied I found my paddle, which I set in my the hook off lap as I took on the pole. my bearings I lay down in to find my the bottom campsite in of the boat, the dark. beneath the I could see thwarts, us- well enough ing my fleece the rock out- as a pillow, c r o p p i n g and stared a c r o s s t h e at the sky lake where I as the dark- had pitched ness slowly c a m p t h a t fell and the afternoon. I faintest hint usually chose of starlight rocks because b e g a n t o they are un- shine. I could hear the insects along protected from the wind, and therefore the shoreline, and I was thankful for the mosquitoes usually aren’t as bad. being far enough out to be safe from There were no lights on the lake and them. I dozed off, my mind totally no unnatural sounds. As far as I knew blank, my body warmly fatigued by a I was the only human being for miles day of hard paddling. around. No moon was out, and even A loon call awoke me, an eerie but in the hazy glow in the north still made somehow comforting sound. It was by the sun, the stars shone brightly. As totally dark now, or as dark as it could I shifted to put my paddle in the water get. My eyes slowly grew accustomed I noticed them reflected perfectly on its to the dim glow that still emanated motionless surface. I felt a little sad from the northwest horizon. I had no disrupting the perfect calm, but I did idea what time it actually was—I never so with as little movement and noise keep a watch when I paddle—but I as possible. knew it had to be late, probably past As I aligned my boat toward camp,

28 Woodsmoke asked if we wanted some spaghetti. and I were sitting on top of the boul- “Sure,” I answered, and we set down der we’d just scaled. The whiskey our packs and were soon huddled at was warm in my stomach as I looked the entrance to Paul’s tent, warming down at Paul beside the fire, then up our hands around his small stove and at the clear night sky. The moon was waiting for the sauce to finish heating. just coming up over the mountains in Paul asked what we’d done that day the east and was beginning to outshine and we told him. He then told us that any stars near the horizon. it would be a full moon that night and “Almost got lost out there today, that the coyotes would be out. man,” Tristan said, as he too looked out As Paul lumped the spaghetti towards the moon. “Would have been into my bowl, I realized that we were pretty cool. Maybe we will tomorrow. crossing the midpoint of the trip. I You know, get lost.” wondered if another day would be as “Yeah,” I said, thinking that, per- good as the one I’d just had. I didn’t haps,Editor’s we already Note: had.The trip recounted know that it wasn’t done yet, that over in this article was unaffiliated with the the next several hours I’d climb a new DOC. The DOC does not endorse or boulder and search for mountain lions condone any of the actions of the par- in the moonlight. ticipants. Hours later, before the lion, Tristan

(Photo: Barry Hashimoto ‘06)

Spring 2004 21 Cabins and Trails by Kelly Swartz ‘05

There is a trail that goes north into community members and students for the woods just behind the Hanover everyday use—is heavily traveled. Food Co-op. It takes seven minutes to Despite all the snow we had in De- walk there from the Green and about cember, in January Velvet Rocks was thirty minutes to get to a lookout point passable in tennis shoes. Foot traffic from the sign at the trailhead. Plain packed the snow and were and simple. You want to take a walk completely unnecessary. There is a in the woods? Follow former Hanover three-sided shelter less than a mile up resident Bill Bryson’s the trail meant to ac- lead. commodate hikers and The Velvet Rocks campers year-round. trail is part of the This shelter and the Appalachian Trail, a privy nearby were 2,160-mile footpath built and are main- that runs from Springer tained by Dartmouth Mountain in Georgia students. Lauren Hen- to in drickson ’04 organized Maine. Cabin and Trail, the building of a new the hiking and trail- Velvet Rocks privy just work division of the last spring. I hiked to Dartmouth Outing Club, maintains the site with the privy’s wooden seat seventy miles of the trail from Vermont around my neck, and others brought to Mount Moosilauke near Warren, up more wood, tools, stain and alumi- New Hampshire. Trail maintenance num roofing. is necessary to not just keep the trail This summer I hiked up Moose passable for hikers but also to protect Mountain with other members of the environment from water damage Cabin and Trail and helped fell trees in and erosion. It’s also a great way to order to build a new Appalachian Trail get outside, whether one’s plodding shelter. Moose Mountain is a small through snow or leaf piles. mountain about ten miles north of Student volunteers on Cabin and Hanover. The trail is very similar to the Trail work trips build water bars to Velvet Rocks section and also popular divert water from the trail in order to with community members and any prevent erosion, clear fallen trees from student willing to make the trek on the corridor, build wooden bridges bike or by trail from Hanover. Rory over rising streams, and maintain trail Gawler ’05 has been in charge of the signs and blazes. This work is neces- Moose Mountain Shelter project since sary because the Appalachian Trail— last summer. He worked everyday especially in areas like Hanover where with Ben Honig ’05 and other students the trail is extremely accessible to during the interim before Summer

22 Woodsmoke had inhabited this lake many centuries before I was born. I hoped they would continue to inhabit it many centuries after I was gone. Watching it as it watched me, I thought the species must be one of the most beautiful under the Big Sky. Its colorful body incorporated much of the spectrum—from pink belly and yellow gills, to pale white sides, to dark green back. Black dots speckled it from head to tail. it was over, and my hands gratefully And, in the sunlight, the colors responded. I flicked my wrist back; the changed and shifted—each individual hook was set. The battle had begun. scale flashing and fading as the gills My adversary fought bravely, but expanded, contracted, and the tail it was over quickly. I risked snapping swayed, almost imperceptibly, work- the line in getting it in quickly, for I ing with the extended pectoral fins to never liked playing a fish to exhaus- keep its body balanced and upright. tion. I brought it in to the shallows. The tiny, meticulous movements re- Fortunately, the hook was caught just minded me of watching a red-tailed on the inside edge of the jawbone, hawk glide into the wind, using the and the fly protruded enough so that horizontal rudder of its tail in tandem I could easily pinch it with thumb and with just the very, finger-like tips of forefinger. Without even having to its wing-feathers, making only the touch the fish, I gave a sharp tug, and smallest, most necessary adjustments, because the barb had been clipped, the while the rest of its body remained hook slid smoothly out. rigid, soaring. Not yet realizing that its surgery Eventually, the fish realized it was was over, the fish remained motion- free, and with a quick and powerful less, eyeing me. It was a cutthroat—a flick of its tail was gone, disappearing Native Westslope Cutthroat Trout— back into the deep to tell its friends named for the two bright reddish- about its adventure, and no doubt feel- orange streaks running down the ing robbed of midday snack. I checked “throat” beneath the lower jaw and my fly. One or two frazzled threads, gills. Cutthroats were one of the few but overall really no worse for the fish species native to Montana. They wear. No new nicks marked my leader. were tremendous fighters, and it was A successful catch and release. with a sense of privilege and deep respect that I looked into the prehis- toric eyes of this warrior, and realized I’d done battle with a species that

Spring 2004 27 rod and line, my eyes to the fly. And saw it until the fly was already in its as I stared, it seemed to grow bigger. mouth, so the quick reflex was neces- Minute details became more and more sary. But this was a lake; the fish was distinct. Soon the fly filled my entire still rising, I had to wait until it had field of vision—a giant, synthetic bug, the fly, until I could see it had taken afloat upon a puddle. I existed solely the fly. It was hard, but in my mind, for that bundle of thread and steel, amidst wailing sirens and bursting, for each individual hair—and for the blinding fireworks, the quiet voice explosion I hoped the collected whole of patience prevailed, overcame my would produce. trembling fingers and forearms, and I The heat grew heavy, heavier. The waited, and the fish rose. still air pressed down on my shoulders, Hours passed, days, the fish would squeezed my back and chest, making never get there! It would see me, and it difficult to breathe. The dead quiet spook. It would get bored. A million of the lake, and the forest, crept into things would distract it. It would die my head, inside my mind, asking it of old age. to let go—of fishing, of waiting, of But the beast rose. And now it was consciousness. I blinked, and my too close, it had to be now, I had to pull head nodded once. My eyelids tried now. The voice of patience was falter- to resist, fought valiantly, began to suc- ing, fading. Steady! It gasped, on its cumb. I nodded again. The fly became last breath. Hold! Hold! But the fish blurry, seemed to retreat, seemed to be had arrived. very, very far away. The wrist holding The lake blew up. my rod relaxed, dropped, snapped And out of the shattering, sparkling awake, began to drop again. The eruption, a fish as big as the universe world stood still. came completely out of the water and The sun yawned. froze—a great, gaping, wide-eyed It was with almost closed eyes that jewel, outlined against an endless sky. I sensed, more than saw, the flash. I could see the fly in its lower jaw. It It came, faintly, from the very edge brandished its tail once, twice, then fell of the shadowy deep. Immediately, back into the water with a splash that I was awake. My heart leapt to my soaked Heaven itself. throat and began working its way up, There comes a moment after every threatening to pump my head right off. strike, when the brain has compre- There it was! The monster emerged hended that a fish is on the end of your from the darkness of its lair, aiming for line, but the message has not yet trav- its prey, rising quickly—quickly, but eled down your body, through your so, so slowly! Every instinct told me arms, to your hands. While in reality to pull—pull now!—to jerk the line, to this process lasts only a fraction of a heave back with all my might. From second, psychologically, of course, it a life of stream fishing, that reaction— lasts an eternity. As ready as I was, I flash, take, pull!—was ingrained into still experienced this moment of sur- the very core of my being. In a stream, real paralysis, when action had to be you never saw the fish coming, never taken, but I could do nothing. But then

26 Woodsmoke Term felling trees and stripping bark. Members of Cabin and Trail have In helping, I learned how to swing an been maintaining trails and shelters ax, though I’m still pretty pathetic, and within the Upper Valley for ninety- tasted fresh split wood that perspired five years. Fred Harris ’11 founded the with sap that was still running. DOC in 1909 and quickly began blaz- The work on the shelter continued ing trails in the surrounding woods into the fall. Two Freshman DOC Trips for cross-country skiing and winter worked on the structure and the privy, sports. The trails maintained by the also clearing a new trail to the shelter DOC existed before the idea for the and readying the foundation for lay- Appalachian Trail was conceived and ing logs. Alumni Magazine did a story organized and will hopefully continue about the students working on the to provide a simple and lasting way to project and photographed Gawler and experience the outdoors—both for the company. The group looked stunning students doing the trailwork and for in Carhart overalls, holding axes and those who decide to explore the path showing sap-stained faces. heading north from Hanover. One of Rory’s goals from the begin- ning was to construct the shelter using only hand tools. He never hauled a chainsaw up the moun- tain or used any energy other than manpower. It sometimes took more than nine people to maneuver one cross-hauler in order to carry a clean log to the roped-off site, yet the bulk of the work was completed before winter. Some days in the summer more than fif- teen students volunteered to work on the shelter. Thanks to student help and initia- tive, construction progressed quickly and Rory plans on completing the shelter this spring. The old shelter on Moose Mountain was in very poor condition, but because of student interest in trailwork, despite academic pressure and often undesir- able outdoor conditions, it will soon be replaced.

Spring 2004 23 Excerpts From “Big Salmon Creek” by Zack Strong ‘05

The scent of pine trees and horses us—wranglers, guides, clients. Me. It drifted into my dreams. Nearby, the was the largest party I’d ever camped noise of the River began filling the with. It felt almost silly—so many sleepy emptiness behind my eyes. of us packed together on this little It was a familiar sound—muttered gravel bar in the middle of a universe conversation between rock and water. of wilderness. But, I thought, look- They talked quietly this morning—no ing back up at the few scattered dots arguing rapids here; not even the spir- still barely twinkling in the lightening ited debate of riffles. The water around sky, people aren’t like stars, and they this bend was smooth. But it moved aren’t like planets either. They like to quickly, and it whispered to the rocks clump, to touch, to crowd. Then they as it slid by. It seemed to whisper to me can’t figure out why they’re so damn as well, urging me awake, to get up, to uncomfortable. Maybe they weren’t move on. Always, move on. uncomfortable, I reminded myself. I felt a breeze move across my Maybe that was just me. face—cold air following the current downstream. With closed mouth I in-  haled deeply, and the sharp sting high in my nostrils brought warm tears to I found the turnoff, followed the my closed eyes. I let the breath back trail, and twenty minutes later the trees out slowly, and lay still, listening. fell away and a great blue plain opened On the far shore, a horse whinnied. up before me. Big Salmon Lake. A For a second, the echo haunted the still few yards to my left, it emptied into a woods where it was hobbled. From a narrow stream, which wound between high branch above camp, a single bird shadowy banks, and quickly disap- chirped. Then all was still, again. peared into the mystery of the forest. I opened my eyes. That always Big Salmon Creek, I thought. Today, came last. Once your eyes are open, I will fish Big Salmon Creek. But I you stop learning. You’re just reacting. would warm up a bit first, and this lake Through clouds of breath, I stared up would be a good place to start. at the deep purple of the dawning sky. A few stars were still visible. Planets,  too—there was Venus, and was that Saturn? Jupiter, maybe. I shut my eyes I got out my box of flies, unwound again and waited for the rest of me to the rubber band that held it shut, and come to life. opened the aluminum casing. It was We were camped on the shore of only about the size of a pack of cards, the South Fork of the Flathead River, maybe the depth of two, but to me, in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilder- it was like opening a treasure chest. ness. There were more than a dozen of Three or four dozen neatly organized

24 Woodsmoke flies greeted my loving eyes, and I cast. It would have to be a sidearm savored a moment’s indecisiveness. cast—and low, as dangerous snag- So many choices, and in these wild hungry branches overhung the water waters, probably all of them good. on either side. I paid out some line, At last I pulled out a Royal Wulff—a letting it fall in white loops onto the personal favorite—and held it up to muddy gravel at my knees. I pinched the sun. I could see this wasn’t its first some mud, rubbed it onto the fly, and dance—both wings were mangled and rinsed it, getting rid of the human some of the tail hairs were starting smell. Then, rod in my right, line in my to molt—and I knew the old veteran left, I flicked horizontally once, twice, must have served me well many times and the fly shot up and out over the before. And today, I thought, he would lake, missing the reaching branches, serve me well again, for beneath the and landing peacefully on the glassy beat-up appearance, the black and red surface, about fifteen feet out. thread still glittered, and their precise wraps still clung tightly to the shaft of  the hook, holding the forward tufts of hair—deer? elk?—sturdily in place. I A minute passed. Another. It was touched the point, turned my finger hot, even here in the shade. A single over, and nodded at the small bead drop of sweat tickled partway down of blood. The barb, I noticed, I had my cheek, lingered, tormented. But I clipped long ago. My soldier was dared not risk a hand to reach up and ready. I wanted to salute him before wipe it away. The window of opportu- sending him out on this next, and nity, if it came, would last only a split possibly last—always, possibly last— second, and then it would be gone. I mission. Instead I paid him the high- doubted if I would get a second chance. est tribute I could think of. “If I was a So my hands remained glued to the fish,” I whispered, “I would eat you.” Threading the rod and tying on my fly was a matter of prac- ticed seconds. Then, crawling on hands and knees, I moved out of the brush to the very edge of the water. Kneeling, I glanced around, con- sidering my options. Even this close to the lake, the trees rose all around and above, eliminating any back

Spring 2004 25