Sacred Trust: Chapter 2 - Brandt and Roy

Chapter 2
Brandt and Roy

A blood curdling scream rose up from the base of the cascade, loud enough to flush a pair of rotund spruce grouse from their low perch nearby, their flapping wings reverbrating through the woods. In reality, the scream was more a joyous celebration than a response to pain – though the temperature of the water cascading down Mahoosuc Arm delivered its fair share of pain as well; exhilarating pain, as in shocking, numbing, brain freezing, cold-ass pain. Daniel Fitzhugh Roy reached for the ball of horsetail he had gathered along the trail coming in, a lufa substitute that was very effective at removing the mud covering his calves from the boggy sections of trail skirting Speck Pond.

Daniel could have stayed at the shelter at Spec Pond but he was trying to avoid the thru-hikers - people hiking the Appalachian trail from Maine to Georgia. It wasn’t that he hated through-hikers, those peak bagging, know it all, speed freaks who had no appreciation for the journey because they were obsessed with schedules, food drops, mail stops, and the obstacles between themselves and their next camping spot . . . well maybe it was.

But he rationalized it by making the excuse that he just didn’t want to be drawn into a fight over hiking the AT as they called it. They didn’t even have time to call it the Appalachian Trail, “The AT” was their nom de plume. They were obsessed with doing everything as fast as humanly possible, though they would spend the rest of their lives torturing everyone they ever met with their tales of the trip. Dragging out every story until it consumed more time than the actual leg of the journey.

Besides, staying at the Speck Pond Shelter couldn’t compare with a quiet campsite far enough from the trail so that he would not run into any humans at all and he could just lay out his poncho and sleeping bag as long as the sky remained cloudless and the horsetail cirrus of an approaching front did not portend a coming storm.

He was just beginning to take on the grunge from the trail when she burst out of the trees at a dead run - a huge white wolf-like dog at her side. Pretty impressive as the steepness of the surrounding woods meant that she had to have descended through the birch forest at full speed, like a slalom skier weaving through the course at breakneck speed bent on a medal caliber run. Her raven hair tied in pigtails bent at angles attesting to the fact that she was halfway between launching herself upward high enough that she had time to assess the ground beneath her to land safely and launch again covering almost as much vertically as horizontally with each movement.

Her momentum carried her into the clearing at the base of Mahoosuc Cascade just as she looked up and saw his naked body glistening from the water as the droplets bursting with each contact of his skin created a glow in the late day sunlight.

“Jesus” she exhaled, though it came out more like Jeeeessssis, bursting out of her lungs like an 18-wheeler loosing its air brakes. Trying to gather her wits and her breath at the same time she bent over, hands on her knees. “I expected a dead hiker from the sound of your scream.” I figured someone had wandered too close to the edge of the cascade and gone over.”

Roy didn’t bother trying to cover his nakedness. After all he had endured the bracing temperature to get clean and he wasn’t about to get out until he was finished washing his body, even with a stunningly beautiful woman staring at him. So he finished up and for good measure tossed his towel over his shoulder instead of wrapping it around him as he walked from under the falls. a mischeveous look on his face and a twinkle in his eyes as he brought the towel up to his head to dry his hair. “What were you figuring to do if you had been right?” he asked. “Is mouth to mouth still an option? I mean, I can roleplay if that works for you.”

Anger flashed in her eyes, “why you arrogant son of a bitch”, she said.

“You God-damned through hikers go blindly through the most beautiful mile of the Appalachian Trail with no appreciation for it, bitching and moaning about how hard it is and how long it takes you to make a mile, and then you think that everyone you meet is going to kneel down before you and worship the ground you walk on. You . . .”

“Whoa there lady,” Daniel broke in, “first, I just finished coming down off The Arm, I haven’t even hit The Notch yet, and for your information I plan to spend the entire day tomorrow reveling in the glory of the experience. I brought some orange juice to make snow cones with the snow that lies hidden deep in the caves along the trail, my camera and tripod to document the experience; and a saw , chisel and wrench just in case I'm inspired to rework the trail sign to send the through-hikers down to Success Pond Road. They will be fighting off the mosquitoes and moose along Success Pond Road for half a day before they realize that Mahoosuc Notch was the other way. That will really put a crimp in their plans and they will be complaining for the next two hundred miles about the time they lost in the Notch. “

“I’m thinking that if I do that on both ends of the Notch I’ll have the whole place to myself or at least limit it to those who know the area or can read a map. Have you hiked it before?”

The fire in her eyes had dimmed some. He clearly was not a peak-bagger as they said in the parlance. The reference came from a book she had read from her father’s prized books shelf: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The author had devoted pages to outlining the difference between the Zen hiker who cherished the experience of the hike and the one obsessed with reaching the summit as fast as humanly possible adding it to his or her list of statistics, never bothering to chew on a sour spray of Wood Sorrel to quench his thirst or pause, watch and listen to a White Throated Sparrow’s lonely call as it rode the sweet Balsam breeze.

The obsessive hiker was the “Peak-Bagger” and while the phenomena occurred everywhere, nowhere was it quite so transparent as it was here in the Mahoosucs, a range of Mountains running from Gorham, New Hampshire to Grafton Notch in Maine just over the border. The Mahoosucs were the last great unrestricted Mountains in New Hampshire. There were bigger mountains, like the Presidential Range and the Carter’s just to the south; and, there were mountains where limited bureaucratic restrictions allowed one to experience the old-style freedom of hiking without selling your soul to the government with use permits and fire permits and where camping restrictions created virtual cities of overnight campers at some locations. But the Mahoosucs provided high country ridge hiking, even an alpine bog or two, and relative freedom from the prying eyes of Uncle Sam’s trek police.

Though it is on the Appalachian Trail - few enough hikers trekked this way so that the range has few of the restrictions that other more prominent mountain ranges have. In the Mahoosucs, one could still camp on the summit of a peak and fall asleep to the music and dance of the spheres.

And then there is The Notch.

A one mile stretch along a relatively flat col between two peaks. Rarely more than a few hundred yards across at any one spot, Mahoosuc Notch is a geological wonder borne of the last ice age some 11,000 years ago. From the valley at the base of the Notch huge granite and diorite cliffs rise on either side, denying the sunlight from providing warmth on even a summer day except for a few precious hours; dropping their ice cleaved bones into the notch over the millenia to form a boulder and moss strewn landscape with caves that hold their icy snow from the previous winter’s snowfall well into August - creating a natural air conditioner effect even on the hottest summer day.

Hiking through Mahoosuc Notch is a slow process best done with a partner with whom you can collaborate to negotiate the challenges of boulders with passages that require one to remove a backpack and pass it through first before squeezing through or passing the backpack down from a vantage point that provides a fine view of the challenges ahead but a drop that would severely injure a hiker who fell with pack still on.

For the adventurous spirit all of this makes Mahoosuc Notch the most thrilling and memorable mile of the Appalachian trail. But to the peak bagger, who measures the experience by the speed with which he completes the mile, it is the “longest mile” the section of trail that thru-hikers dread on their approach and curse at their back.

To Daniel Fitzhugh Roy it was, therefore, the measure of a man or a woman.

Apparently that view was shared by Sasha Brandt as well, because a smile crept over her face as Roy was winding up his naked rant and she reached out her hand to introduce herself.

It seemed an odd gesture under the circumstances. . .

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