Clouds in the Mountains

I recently returned from a hiking trip that my father, good friend (Calvin) and I had been planning for months and heavily anticipated. The hike was not supposed to be particularly long nor difficult, but because it traversed the popular presidential range in New Hampshire's White Mountains, we needed to reserve our spots in the huts many months beforehand. The huts are necessary unless you plan to hike the entire range in one day, which would be quite a feat, because camping above the alpine zone would be your only other option, which is both illegal and rather dangerous. So, while by necessity we had to plan our trip months ahead of time, the hike wasn't particularly anything special. Countless hikers with various experience hike the same trail of approximately 23 miles and eight presidential mountains, all well over 4,000 feet and six over 5,000 feet, including the tallest and most famous mountain east of the Mississippi River, Mount Washington.

Whatever special feelings one might experience on the hike are due mostly to psychological factors. One must plan months ahead of time to reserve a spot in the huts. That period of waiting creates a very intense knot of expectation in the hiker disproportionate to the length and difficulty of the hike (though, if I can do some bragging, an inexperienced hiker or one not in good shape will dream of a nice soft bed during the hike). In addition to that, you are well-aware the entire hike that you are scaling what is widely regarded as the hardest range of mountains on the Appalachian Trail; a significant percentage of the 40 4,000 foot mountains in New Hampshire; and one of the most famous mountains in the country. One cannot help but feel satisfied when they arrive at the Lake of the Clouds hut (named for the rather large lake one finds near the hut, over 5,000 feet above sea level), pick a book off the shelf of the library there, and realize that they are now reading a book from the highest library east of the Mississippi. Of course, the psychological wonder created by the waiting period and the checking off of various achievements on the hiker's bucket list is not the only reason why hiking the presidential range is so popular.

The advertised views one can see from the presidential peaks (by the way, it's called the presidential range because it includes Mts. Washington, Jefferson, Eisenhower, Madison, Monroe, Franklin, Pierce, Jackson, and some others) and the ridges connecting them are breath-taking. Not the least of which is the view from Mount Washington, which on a good day can extend to around 200 miles each direction. All-in-all, a hiker prepares for a hike along the presidential range expecting a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I spend so much time detailing the hike that I went on because I'm long-winded. You should know this by now if you've read my other posts. I also want you to get a feel for how special the hike can be to anyone who cares about scaling mountains either as a physical activity or an emotional/spiritual one, or both. For me, my love of hiking is inherently a spiritual one intimately connected to my love of Creation. It was just over two years ago that I first watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. We can argue about the science involved in that movie (which I might do in a later post), but it struck a chord in my soul and I was launched into a crash course in appreciating the world God has given us and a developing sense of how to better take care of the environment. It was only one year ago that I first went on a hike of any length. I had realized that one way to take care of the environment is to stop engaging in activities that required the use of a car or any other form of energy and instead hop on my bike. Soon thereafter I realized that the most adventurous (and, clearly, the most fun) ways to enjoy my bike rides were to find trails in the woods. Very quickly my love and care for Creation turned into an obsession with using non-harmful modes of travel to experience the natural beauty and wonder all around us. Even if you understand hiking to be a purely physical activity, though, I hope that since you are reading this post on an explicitly religious blog the metaphor of climbing mountains is not lost on you.

As a metaphor, climbing mountains is nothing but spiritual. Time and again we hear from the stories and traditions handed down to us that living as a disciple of Christ is much like climbing a mountain: it can be extremely difficult and painful at times, if not all the time, but the mountaintop view we are promised is extraordinary. Perhaps the most vivid story that comes to my mind is Dante's Inferno, even though that story refers to the after-life. To reach the gates of heaven one must first climb a mountain and conquer the various sins.

When on my hike, I was struck with a somewhat damning question: how many of us have put in the effort of the climb without ever experiencing the promised mountaintop experience? I know at least a handful of Christians who have renounced the faith because they never experienced that unexplainable experience we so often talk about and sing about. Is our experiencing of that mountaintop greatness simply a matter of chance? a matter of the causally defined situation we find ourselves in and how we respond to it?

I found that I couldn't budge the questions for two reasons. First, as much as I care for and appreciate Creation, I have not once felt what I expected to at the top of a mountain or at the bottom of a brilliant waterfall. Certainly, the experience has been inspiring, but as far as I know I have not experienced God any more at the top of a mountain than I could walking down the street. I began to think that climbing mountains had become a drug for me: a certain feeling was promised me, but, since I had not attained it and the experience seemingly grew more plain, I searched harder and harder for that other-worldly experience. Second, we were graced on our hike with terrible weather.

Although the forecast promised us good weather, at least by day two, we encountered no good weather whatsoever. In fact, the weather worsened on day two. Imagine how hard it is to bear climbing mountains you've been planning to for months only to be unable to see anything because you are stuck in an unending cloud. Imagine how hard is to bear a 30-pound back and thousands of feet of elevation when you can't see anything. Imagine how hard is to bear when, not only can you not see any wonderful sights, but you struggle to see through the fog the next trail marker. Imagine how hard is to bear when you've climbed thousands of feet for hours and, instead of sitting on rocks and enjoying the view, you are crouched between rocks to shield yourself from the cold, blasting wind. We were even more cursed on our hike when we had a view of green down in the valley through the clouds for a few seconds. We thought it was a sign that the clouds were breaking as the forecast promised. In fact, no such thing was happening. The clouds and heavy wind would stay with us the entire way.

By dinner-time we arrived at the Lake of the Clouds hut. Unfortunately, we could only see about twenty feet of the lake. We had high hopes that the next morning we'd be able to see everything, as we were promised, and everything would be worth it. We awoke the next morning to some very troublesome news. The hut crew informed us that the wind chill had crept significantly below freezing, the wind had increased to 80-100 miles per hour at the top of Mount Washington (60-80 along the 5,000 foot high ridges that we would be on all day long), and visibility had shrunk to a maximum of 75 feet. In sum, if we decided to hike the 8 miles we had planned that day along the exposed ridges, up Mount Washington and 3 other mountains, we'd be hiking through conditions ripe for hypothermia if we were lucky and being swept off the mountain by a wind gust if we were fatally unlucky. Calvin and I desperately wanted to continue anyway, a third in hope that the clouds would clear at some point that day, a third because we had come far as it was and had waited so long to do the hike, and a third because risky yet calculated adventures are exciting to us. My father overruled us. Rather than continue we'd climb down the mountain and end our hike.

Now, here's where I get to the point of the story. My father's ruling that the weather was too dangerous to continue on disappointed Calvin and me without end. We actually briefly considered running off on our own. Looking back on it all I regret to say that the only thing that stopped me from going off on our own was that we realized my dad was our only way home. But Calvin had a better reason for dealing with our disappointment and heading down the mountain with my father. "We're a party," Calvin said, "we have to stick together." Calvin isn't exactly the type of person that you'd think would be guided in life by solid principles. As much as I know that not to be true, his comment still surprised me. I asked him why sticking together matters, and he replied, "Well, hiking alone can still be fun and enjoyable in many ways, but when you're this high up and exposed to the elements like this it becomes extremely dangerous to do anything slightly risky by yourself. But being a party is more than just a means to safety. When you head out in a group, you've made a commitment that you'll do the hike together. If one hiker slows down, we all slow down; if one hiker doesn't feel comfortable fighting the weather, then we all feel uncomfortable. That's just the way it is."

At this point you might think Calvin is a saint in my life. I won't stop you from thinking that. I will say, however, that I detected in his voice the same intense disappointment that I felt. I don't know about Calvin, but I was partly so frustrated with the decision because, despite my father's constant badgering about being prepared for a hike and for all types of weather and circumstances and being careful, as if Calvin and I were hardly mature enough to be responsible, my dad was the only one of the three of us who wasn't prepared for the weather. My dad never said anything about his not having the right gear, still I couldn't help but think that he wanted to get down from the mountain only because he was unprepared. As Calvin said, though, I just had to deal, because we were a party.

Though I'll always remember the trip as the time I should have climbed Mount Washington and didn't, the hike down was still quite a thrill. The visibility was so bad that when I stopped at one point to fix a strap on my pack, I couldn't see anyone when I got the pack back on. They had only walked about 40 feet and I couldn't see them. I thought that was really cool. Obviously I recognized the danger in that. I had told the others that I needed to fix something, but because the howling of the wind was so loud no one heard me. After I caught up with them I told them that we needed to walk closer together and look behind us more often to make sure we're all still together. I think we all realized just how adventurous our hike down the mountains could be. It wasn't the, "Hey, let's go on an adventure!" type deal, it was the more real, "Hey, this is actually dangerous" type of adventure.

We were encountered with some more danger not much after I couldn't see anyone. We were approaching a little ledge that we'd have to climb down, and right as Calvin was about to turn around to start climbing down, a huge wind gust blew Calvin forward and almost blew him right over the ledge. Thankfully, Calvin has reflexes like a cat and bent down to grab on to a rock and stabilize himself. After we knew he was ok, we all started laughing. This was going to be fun!!

As we were climbing down the ledge, we realized just how serious the wind gusts could be. At times when we tried putting our feet down a gust would come and move our foot a few inches, causing us to step awkwardly and off-balance on whichever rock we were aiming for, then we'd lose balance. Sometimes quick thinking and fast reflexes weren't much of a help in regaining our balance because another gust might come and throw us off even more. There were a couple of slips with plenty of scrapes.

Not much later, as we were walking along a ridge, a gust blew my foot off the path completely. My foot landed awkwardly on a rock, I lost my balance, and because we were on a ridge I had nothing to grab on to, nothing to protect me even in the slightest from the wind, so it was near impossible to regain my balance. I never did regain my balance. The wind took advantage of my imbalance and blew me off the path along with my foot. I was a few feet off the path, not far away from a big drop-off that would have broken some bones at least, before Calvin was able to grab onto me and and hold me steady. The ridge was only half a mile long, perhaps a bit longer, but it took us well over an hour to get to the end of it. We learned from my experience and kept having to crouch down whenever a gust came and wait for the wind to die down to the 50-70 mph range again.

When we finally got to a place that dropped down that would provide us with some rock cover from the wind, we saw a couple on their way up the mountain. The couple had stopped because of the wind and were hoping that it was only temporary. Our conversation with them, urging them to head back down if they didn't feel comfortable hiking in the high winds (which they weren't, and because the wind most certainly was not temporary), was more like a screaming contest. The wind howled so much that it felt like we were talking on opposite ends of a football field.

Obviously, we survived the whole ordeal. Getting to the bottom of the mountain was quite a disappointment, though. We were unable to finish the hike that I had been anticipating for so long. We were also unable to do the most exciting parts of that hike, or to see anything while doing the little bit that we did. The disappointment was particularly intense for me because my knee didn't exactly hold up very well on the way down, and I was facing the very real possibility that this would be my last hike. All in all, I never had the long-awaited mountaintop experience I expected.

I've told this long story basically to share two things. Reflecting on the experience made me realize just how important working as a team or a community is. Certainly, I very well would have fallen off the mountainside if Calvin weren't there to steady me. The trip would not have been enjoyable for my father in the least if he felt obligated to keep up with the extremely fast pace Calvin and I are capable of, or if Calvin and I went off on our own to complete the hike despite the danger. While one person might hold a group back, it's important that the group stay back with that person and lift them up. Hope and peace to all is far more important than selfish regard.

More importantly, though, I realized how enlightening my experience was on the metaphorical spiritual mountaintop experience. All of us Christians hear about the wonderful moment where we feel on top of the world spiritually and everything looks beautiful. Climbing a mountain is a great metaphor for that experience because most of us will only get there after lots of struggle and effort. We have to come to terms, however, with the fact that sometimes we'll climb the mountain, struggling and fighting the whole way, and not see anything beautiful or what we expected. We can't let that deter us from a deeper relationship with God. Sometimes the weather just doesn't cooperate. Sometimes the weather of our own soul is too clouded when we get to the top of the mountain. Whatever the reason, we can look back with some reflection and see that the climb up to the top and down to the valley again was in itself a thrilling adventure. Calvin and I were upset that we didn't get to do or see what we wanted, but all of us talked and laughed on the ride home about how much fun we had, how many close encounters with serious danger we had, about the people we met; and we were busy planning other hikes we could take in the future.

The expectations of what we will find, or be rewarded with, when we finally get to our mountaintop experience can often be a burden to us. We should rather not expect anything, and instead see the thrill and the joy of the climb itself. It's difficult work climbing over and through the vicissitudes of life. But I can't tell you how many times the three of us laughed when we could no longer make out the path through the fog and we said, "Where the frick do we go now???" or after climbing a particularly steep section we'd say, "Ah frick, man, that has to be the last serious climb... right?" Travel in a supportive community and the journey itself will show you the most beautiful, awesome, and funny things you can imagine.