Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Anniversary Saga - Pain…Lots and Lots of Pain

I wonder did anybody get the reference in the title to A Knight’s Tale.  Anybody?  Anybody?  Ah well, it’s one of our favorite quotes from that movie, and it definitely applies today.  But before I get to that, let me give you a little set up first.

We decided to drive up to northern New Hampshire today to see EE Cummings’s house, but the house proved to be just as elusive as the poet.  Okay, I’m not sure if EE Cummings was all that elusive, but his house sure was.  We even stopped at the Madison Town Hall to ask for directions, but even though the ladies there were extremely nice, they weren’t really sure where the house was either.  But they did give us another place to go visit…the Madison Boulder.

The Madison Boulder is a glacial erratic, which means it’s a huge rock left behind when a glacier moved across the area 25,000 years ago.  It’s one of the largest glacial erratics in the world at 87 feet long, 23 feet wide, and 37 feet high.  To say it was impressive is an understatement.  How we have managed to luck into these cool things, I don’t know, but I’m sure glad we did.

After the Boulder, we kept going north to find Arethusa Falls.  The highway to get there was incredible.  It was an explosion of color on both sides.  We had seen trees decorated in fall colors here and there, but this was the first time we had seen it in such large quantity.  We took a wrong turn trying to get to the park, but we were fortunate enough to run into a very nice couple from Massachusetts that directed us back to the correct road.

We found the trail to Arethusa Falls.  A 1.5 mile hike straight up a mountain?  No problem!  An hour before it gets dark?  No problem!  Huffing and puffing our out-of-shape bodies over a boulder field in continuously thinning air?  No problem!  Ten steps into the trail…problem.  Whoever thought this trail up was a masochist.  It was grueling.  It pushed our endurance.  It nearly killed one of us.  Boulders, trees roots, one to two-foot step-ups, and elevation were constant throughout the entire trail.  I just knew that after making it through this test, after suffering up this stupid mountain, I was going to get attacked and killed by a moose at the end.  Because that would have topped off this hike perfectly.

But we survived.  It took us over an hour and half to get to the falls, but we survived.  I had one of my hands gnawed off by a Monty Python rabbit in the woods, but we survived.  I lost about 60 pounds in sweat and internal organs, but we survived.  We survived, and it was worth it.  The falls were a little light due to the lack of rain in recent weeks, but it was still beautiful.  Of course, we could have just thought that because of what we endured to get there.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay long as it was already getting dark by the time we arrived.

The hike back was torrid.  It was as if we were being stalked by a mountain lion or something.  We blazed down the trail, trying to beat the impending darkness, twisting ankles on unseen rocks and tripping over darkened stumps.  The gloom seemed even thicker under the canopy of trees without even the light of the rising moon to light our way.  When we finally arrived back at the car, it was pitch black.  I looked back at the trail and wondered how we ever made it down.  But we managed it in the ever-growing darkness in just about 50 minutes.

Sore, tired, and sweaty, we started the long drive back to the hotel.  My wife said that it would be too late to eat when we got back to Portsmouth and we should just find a hole-in-the-wall place to eat in North Conway.  And that is exactly what we did.  We stopped to eat at Delaney’s Hole in the Wall restaurant and tavern.  (I kid you not, that was the name of it.)  While we watched the Red Sox finish off the Tigers amid a raucous crowd of Red Sox fans (my kind of people), my wife continued her sampling of every type of hamburger imaginable, while I opted for a Stromboli.  And it was to die for!  (Which considering the hike we had just done wasn’t too far off the mark.)  Another great recommendation if you come up this way.

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