Thomas F. Ryan - Following Atticus: how a little dog led one man on a journey of rediscovery to the top of the world

How a little dog led one man on a journey of rediscovery to the top of the world

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published in the USA by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 2011

First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph and Penguin Books 2011

Copyright Tom Ryan, 2011

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All photographs courtesy of the author

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-196064-7

PENGUIN BOOKS

Tom Ryan was an editor until 2007, when he sold his newspaper and moved to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where he hikes and writes. In the last five years Ryan has climbed more than 450 4,000-foot peaks.

For R.R.always in my heart

Theres no sense in going furtherits the edge of cultivation,

So they said, and I believed it

Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes

On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeatedso:

Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges

Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!

RUDYARD KIPLING , THE EXPLORER

We must be willing to get rid of the life weve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL

October 8, 2006

Dear Dad,

I have a new favorite photo. I took it on Saturday while walking down the Polecat Ski Trail on Wildcat Mountain.

Off in the distancestately, proud, and jaggedstands the gigantic duo of Mount Adams and Mount Madison. Sloping down from their craggy summits and from the low shoulder of Mount Washington spreads an infinite army of trees stationed by rank. Highest are the evergreens, those hardy trees that never change throughout the seasons. They extend up to tree line, just below the summits, and slope downward until they mingle with the deciduous trees in their October war paint. An infantry of red, orange, and yellow that rolls forward like a great wave from an ocean swell. By the colors and the undulating hills at the foot of the mountains, you can almost see the trees pulsing, like an army ready to charge into battle.

This army flows ever onward toward the camera until it forms a battle line both tense and even, ready for the order from high above to advance.

In front of the trees there is a fielda mixture of faded yellow and green, flattened through the years, as if many battles have taken place there. In the foreground, separated from the front lines by yards of grass, sitting with his back to the camera, is a small, solitary figure looking at the legions of trees as they stretch on mile after mile.

The lone figure sits erect, ready for the wave to break, ready for whatever the world is about to unleash upon him. He is serene (or perhaps resigned to the coming test), humble and undaunted because he has faith that he will find a way.

He is Frodo Baggins; he is Don Quixote; he is Huck Finn. He is every unlikely hero who ever took a step out the door and found himself swept up in adventure.

Looking at the photo, I think of what the poet William Irwin Thompson wrote: When we come to an edge we come to a frontier that tells us that we are now about to become more than we have been before.

For there he sits, alone in that field, facing an edge, facing a frontier, facing a wilderness that dwarfs him. And yet he sits. Facing it. Not turning away. Not running away.

The little fellow in the photograph is my hiking partner, Atticus M. Finch, named for yet another humble and unlikely literary hero.

Since May 21 of last year, he has been kind enough to put up with me as Ive flung the two of us into our mountain adventures. Up until then we werent all that active. We mostly sat around Newburyport. We took little walks in the woods or on the beach, but never too far because I was too heavy and out of shape. Then, last year, after being introduced to the four-thousand-footers, we immediately fell head over heels for them and hiked all forty-eight peaks in eleven weeks. We so rushed through them all that I decided to do them again throughout this spring, summer, and falland this time we took our time to enjoy them more.

Watching Atticus gazing upon those trees was when I started to celebrate this round of the forty-eight, but more than that I celebrated this curious little dog. How lucky I am to have him as a hiking partner. Come wind, sun, snow, or rain he has been with me every step of the way. Most of the time its just the two of us, and our tight bond has grown even stronger.

When I saw him sitting, facing that wilderness, I thought of all those unlikely heroes in literature who have faced unimagined challenges and come out seasoned and strangely different. In the end they became more than theyd ever been, and you just knew that through sadness and joy, through good days and bad, no matter what happened next, after the story ended and they walked off into the sunset, they could handle all the trials and tribulations that life had in store for them. But while knowing that, I also knew the sadness that comes with the closing of a book, in saying good-bye to my favorite characters. I often mourn the end of an adventure for that very reason. I have come to judge a good story as one that makes me feel as if Im losing a friend when I read the final page, close the book, and put it down for the last time.

Luckily for me, this is not the end of a book but merely a chapter. Atticus and I have many adventures to go before our days are done. As a matter of fact, the next one starts in just a couple of months, and that will be a story unto itself, Im sure.

While walking farther down the ski slope through the shaded green grass and between sun-soaked golden trees, I took note of everything I was feeling, absorbed the beauty like a sponge, and looked upon Atticus with the same wonder I have for these mountains and for the trees and for the wind that knows them both. In watching him bounce down the slope in his carefree style, I smiled. How could I not?