I’ve succumbed to the goal of climbing every single White Mountain taller than 4,000 feet and looking out over the range, undulating like ocean waves into the blue distance, again and again and again and again.
Though first on this recommended hiking order, at 4,006 feet, Mt Waumbek is not the smallest of the 4,000 footers. Mt Isolation, 4,004 feet, and Mt Tecumseh, 4,003 feet, are just a little bit shorter. Max DesMarais of Hunting and Fishing lists Mt. Waumbek in the easy category and I looked forward to a gentle challenge and, in happy contrast with the piles of boulders I scrambled over on Mt. Washington in July, an actual trail all the way up and down the mountain. He did qualify his “easy” by saying, “as easy as a hike up a 4,000 foot mountain could be.” It didn’t really sink in, though.
The trail head is at the end of Starr King Road, in a tilted, packed dirt lot with room for perhaps 8 cars. There are two entrances to the trail from the parking lot. I took the one at the far end with a sign next to it, but the other one tickled my curiosity. I could hear a stream in the woods and wondered where the alternate path might lead. It joined the main path a short distance up the trail and I told myself I would explore it on the way down the mountain. Starr King Trail first climbs Mt. Starr King, 3,907 feet, and then travels along a ridge to ascend Mt Waumbek. Thereafter, (though not my concern that day) it continues as the Kilkenny Ridge Trail, 22 miles of underused, back country hiking that runs over Mt Cabot, another 4,000 footer, and seven more of New Hampshire’s 100 highest peaks, before ending at South Pond Recreation Area in Stark, NH.
At the trailhead, I read “Life’s Address,” a page in Thich Nhat Hanh’s How to Walk, a small Buddhist meditation book I bring with me on hikes and walks. In part he wrote:
“The address of all the great beings is ‘here and now.’ The address of peace and light is also ‘here and now.’ You know where to go. Every in-breath, every out-breath, every step you make should bring you back to that address.”
As I walked up the Starr King Trail, experiencing my address in every footfall, I realized that unless I am home, on the postage stamp that I have the legal use of, I feel as if I’m a guest, that I don’t quite belong. Even in the woods, on public land, I feel this way. As I practiced the thought that where ever I am, this is my address, a knot in my stomach relaxed, and I understood what Woodie Guthrie meant in the song “This Land is Your Land.” Radically and deeply, every inch of the earth is my home and yours.
I came to a round stone structure, which the AMC White Mountain Guide says is the remains of a spring house, (p. 575) an old fashioned refrigerator where people chilled their food in cold water. The day I visited, it was dry, no chilly water flowed through. On the other side of the trail, a path ran down to a stream, the one I could hear from the parking lot, I assumed. I went to take a look, and practiced having my address next to this lovely brook.
After a while, I continued up the trail, and soon found myself sweating and out of breath. As I walked steadily up hill, legs burning, heart pounding, breathing heavily and dripping sweat, the distance between me and the summit felt intolerable. I realized as I walked up Mt. Starr King that patience is not the ability to wait calmly for some longed for thing, it’s accepting things exactly as they are.
“My address is here and now, just as it is, just as I am, with tired muscles and a long way to go,” I reminded myself and stopped to look around and take it in. I noticed a plant with heart shaped leaves that I’d seen many times but couldn’t identify and pulled out my cell phone to upload a picture to INaturalist. It’s common name, viburnum, rang a bell. I’ve read about it somewhere. It was so satisfying to connect the plant with the name that after that, I stopped every few minutes to look up plants, mosses, and mushrooms whose names I didn’t know. I was embarrassed when other hikers passed by and found me staring into my phone, but not embarrassed enough to stop identifying plants.
The more I looked, the more I saw. I found weird things I’d never seen before, like red raspberry slime mold, seen here in its immature stage (pink), and it’s mature stage (blackish brown).
Lower down, near the trail head, the woods were a typical New England deciduous forest with plants, shrubs and dead leaves in the undergrowth. Further up, where the clouds hang on the mountains, moss gardens draped rocks and logs in combinations that took my breath away, so lovely. A variety of mushrooms with poetic, whimsical names like dryad’s saddle, chicken of the woods and violet milk cap, sprinkled the moss and snuggled up to boulders and dead trees. Everywhere, I could hear a sound like a ticking clock that I’ve yet to identify.
I looked up so many plants that it took me five hours to walk to the top of Starr Mountain, but I wasn’t tired when I arrived. The view was limited, mostly obscured by trees. There is a better view of the Presidentials in a wide field below on Rt 115A. I took a look at a brick and stone fire place, the remains of an old shelter according to the AMC White Mountain Guide, (p. 575) and continued along the ridge to Mt Waumbek. The trail dipped down and then rose steadily through pine woods with a lush undergrowth of ferns and moss. I could see open sky though the tree trunks on one side, but still no view.
In his Wilderness Survival Field Guide, Tom Brown describes how his friend’s grandfather, an Apache Scout who taught the two boys about tracking and finding food and creating shelter in the woods, would gesture toward a plant and say “Plant have much to teach.” They would get down on hands and knees and look closely at the plant, observing, touching, tasting, returning again and again to learn as much as they could. (p. 18) My lazy reaction to this was, “I’ll just read about plants. I’m not doing that.” But as I stood in the woods between the two peaks thinking, “I am here, this is my address,” I realized that knowing the names of plants and their general habits barely scratches the surface. I had no idea what was happening in the ferny underbrush below the pine trees, or deep in the soil where the plant and tree roots talk to each other, or up in the branches, whooshing as the wind rushed through. I was curious about my address and all the living things I shared it with. I wanted to have time to watch the bugs, stick my fingers in all the damp, muddy places, and yes, touch, taste and passionately observe. But I had a schedule and a plan and a long drive home. I continued walking.
The summit of Mt Waumbek is marked by a pile of rocks surrounded by forest. A little further down the trail, a swathe of trees blew over in a storm, opening up the view above. I sat on a fallen giant there to eat lunch and gaze at the pale, blue silhouette of the Presidential Range. It was beautiful, but not the undulating expanse of peaks I’d seen from the Bald Face Mountains and Franconia Ridge. The real charm of this mountain is not the culminating view, it’s the rocky, root entwined, mossy trail, and the wild forest it travels through.
Though I took pictures of unfamiliar plants on the way back down the mountain, I didn’t stop to look them up. This saved me time, but my thigh muscles were aching and trembling by the time I neared the end of the trail. I definitely need a better work out plan if I am going to bag all forty-eight 4,000 footers, and I need one targeted for walking down hill when my knees hurt most.
Just before the parking lot, I came to the split in the path and turned right, onto the one I hadn’t explored on my way up the mountain. I found a little pond with a dam across one side and a small water fall spilling out of it.
I unlaced my hiking boots, peeled away my sweaty socks and soothed my sore feet in the icy stream below the dam. My exhaustion felt good now that I had stopped moving and I sat for long while, letting the day sink in.
Next up Mt. Tecumseh.
Works Cited
Brown, Tom, and Brandt Morgan. Tom Brown’s Field Guide to Wilderness Survival. New York, Berkley Books, 1993.
DesMarais, Max. “The NH 48 4000 Footers – the Hiking List & 8 Tips for Finishing Them.” Hiking and Fishing, 19 Aug. 2018, hikingandfishing.com/nh-48-4000-footers/.
Iaccarino, Ari, et al. “Hike the White Mountains in This Order.” Ridj-It, 27 Mar. 2018, http://www.ridj-it.com/single-post/hike-48-4000-footers-New-Hampshire. Accessed 4 Mar. 2022.
Smith, Steven D, and Appalachian Mountain Club. White Mountain Guide : AMC’s Comprehensive Guide to Hiking Trails in the White Mountain National Forest. Boston, Appalachian Mountain Club Books, 2017.
Thich Nhat Hanh. How to Walk. Parallax Pr, 2016.
Jennifer Outside 