Cheryl Suchors - 48 Peaks: Hiking and Healing in the White Mountains

Copyright 2018 by Cheryl Suchors

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Published September 11, 2018

Printed in the United States of America

Print ISBN: 978-1-63152-473-8

E-ISBN: 978-1-63152-474-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018939600

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She Writes Press

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She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Interior design: Tabitha Lahr

Map credit: Mike Morgenfeld

Line drawings: Windy Waite

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

For Larry, this books and my sine qua non

T he memories and interpretations of events are mine and mine alone, told as truthfully as I can by relying on journals kept over the years. The only things that have been changed are the names and details of friends and one institution.

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Hours of tunneling through clammy forest up the shoulder of a ravine bring us to the invisible line beyond which trees do not survive. Our boots strike only stone, an endless upward tilt of stone. Emphatically not noticing the steepness of the ledge, I pause, catch my breath and wait, my hand straying protectively to my hip pack. Again I wish I werent so slow and wonder if, pushing fifty-two, Ill make it to the top. Im afraid I may not, but Im afraid of more than that.

Though midsummer, the White Mountain sky hangs low, a cold and mournful gray. Rain threatens but so far hasnt fallen, and Im grateful. The trail is chancy enough without being slick. Im already worried about the descent. Climbing up allows me to face into the mountain, but climbing down means swallowing vertigo, relying on muscles stiff with fear and ignoring the shrieking in my head.

Thirty feet below me, Sarah yells that shes scraped her shin on a boulder, one of many that constitute our trail. Though she has joined me on a journey that most would have found any excuse to avoid and I love her for it, I cant summon the energy to reverse course and help her. I simply stand, locking my knees, and rest on my bones.

Sarah drops her pack to search for the first aid kit. So far the slow pace she allows me to set doesnt seem to frustrate her too much. Bless Sarah. We both know I couldnt make this journey without her. Today I cantI refuseto worry about my larger quest.

Which brings me to Kate, as most everything these days does. Would my best friend have liked todays hike? Would our first climb in the craggy Presidentials, the mightiest range in the East, have taxed her too greatly? Or would she have soldiered on the way she did, breaking her silent counsel to find things along the way to delight and fortify us?

Though I cant be certain, I think Ive chosen wisely with Mt. Monroe, the fourth highest peak in the Presidential Range. This way Kate can join us to test the Presidentials together and she can remain in a place known for its expansive, heart-thumping view. I considered Mt. Washington, the biggest of them all, but Im not strong enough yet. My second choice was the 360 panorama atop Mt. Eisenhoweruntil I reconsidered. Kate would never have forgiven me for leaving her on a mountain named for a Republican.

I wont know for sure about Monroe until Sarah and I reach the summit and something inside me says yes or, God forbid, no. If its no, I dont know what I will do. Leave without performing the ceremony for which Sarah and I have hauled ourselves up these body-busting rocks and slabs? Or will we figure out some way to make this mountain the right mountain?

Maybe its crazy to think I can manage this seven-mile trail with an elevation gain of 2900 feet, the final third of which the White Mountain Guide characterizes as extremely steep and rough. My will may be sharp as a spike but the body I inhabit is small, flimsy, and middle-aged. One knee hasnt worked properly for decades. My spine twists from a scoliosis that causes everything else to hang off-kilter.

Perhaps my limitations themselves propel me toward mountains that wring from me everything Ive got. I want to be sleek and fast and tough. I dont tell anyone, I hardly admit it to myself, but I want to be every bit as good as the men who wrote the White Mountain Guide. I want to lope up and rattle down something as big and demanding as these intimidating mountains, confident and unafraid. If the hiking book guys say a hike should take seven hours, I want to do it in six.

Time gnaws at me. At my age, climbing wont likely get any easier.

The small sounds of Sarahs tearing open adhesive strips float up to me. I remember Kates making those same sounds, our first big hike together. Sarah was with us on the Mt. Tripyramid venture and cut her leg then, too. I applied the antiseptic and Kate applied the Band-Aids. As usual, we worked as a team.

On that same hike four years ago, we learned there was a list of forty-eight mountains over 4,000 feet in New Hampshire and that the titan we women had just climbed was one of them. Peak baggers who finished all forty-eight could apply to the venerable Appalachian Mountain Club, caretakers of these and other mountains in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions since 1876, for membership in the Four Thousand Footer Club.

Novices still, Kate and I vowed that someday we would join that elite society. That is, I took up the quest and Kate didnt say no. For the following year, she planned and trained and learned right beside me. She hadnt yet committed herself to more than one trek at a time, but I believe wed have wound up doing The 48 together. In one way or another, we had carried each other through a number of things.

I carry her today. She is a weight of ashes that can be measured in pounds and a weight of memory and loss far greater, one that cannot be measured at all. I am on my way as promised, to set her free at 5,372 feet in the raw wild winds atop Monroe. I can only hope that when the moment comes Ill be able to let go my last physical hold on her.

She and I had presumed we had a future together. In that future, she would overcome the six years and extra pounds she had on me and I would conquer my troublesome body and fear of heights. However long it might take, we would meet the 4000-Footers together.

Now I must do them without her. If I can. For both our sakes, although at the moment the precipitous trail weaves knots in my stomach and Im so drained I dare not sit for fear I wont pull myself up again.

Sarah has finished bandaging her leg and I see a flash of red as she tucks away the nylon aid kit. I hear her small involuntary grunt as, in one motion, she hoists her pack and swings it onto her back. Her hip and chest belts snick shut. If Sarah and I are able to make it up and down Monroe today, if I am able to let Kate go, if after that I can find the heart and the strength and the will, then I have thirty-nine more mountains to climb.