November | 2021 | Mark McPeak

November, 2021

I’ve been working through another group of mountains: New Hampshire’s “52 With A View.” Obviously, they are all supposed to have interesting summits. And, so far, they do!

In fact, as I write this post I’ve climbed 47 of these mountains, so I’ve fallen way behind writing them up.

Compared to my “4000-footer” series, these posts will be briefer: sharing a couple of photos and a brief description of each climb, and a few miscellaneous thoughts on current events. I’ve also been sharing some music I’ve composed and recorded during the present pandemic.

So far I’ve been writing on the theme of feeding the wrong wolf: thoughts that come to mind when I think about our society in light of current events.

While preparing for a possible consultancy (fingers crossed), I came across a great quote from Albert Einstein:

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe’ —a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty”.

Isn’t that great!

Seems to me that Einstein presents the challenge we face as we feed the good wolf. And I love the metaphor of the “optical delusion of his consciousness.” Because it’s not so easy to widen those “circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures…” A good challenge to work towards…

And now, the climb. Our friend Draco and I climbed both Baldfaces, starting with South Baldface (3,570) on a beautiful but humid day in early July, 2020. These mountains are right on the border with Maine, a long drive from Durham.

Our idea was to ascend Eastman Mountain, which is also on the “52 With A View” list, but we decided to just climb the Baldfaces:

We left South Baldface at around 2pm, for the easy walk 2.6 miles over to North Baldface (3,610ft). Along the way we saw a wild chicken:

We got to the top of North Baldface at around 3pm, where the weather we had seen to the west was arriving:

You can just see some snow still on Mt Washington on the far right of this image:

But it soon began to rain and we felt rather exposed up there on the ledge. So we headed down, leaving the summit after only 1/2 hour or so.

We took the Bricknell Ridge Trail down, passing by Emerald Pool at around 4pm. My phone lens was fogging up from the humidity! And Draco was getting tired…

It was a challenging and fun climb, even though we weren’t able to climb Eastman Mountain. The next year I would climb Eastman, both Baldfaces (again) and Eagle Crag all in one long day!

Here are links to the other posts in the “52-With-A-View” series:

All posts in this “52 With A View” series will be collected here.

There are three other collections of posts on this blog:

— I’ve been writing and recording a series of songs, with the general theme of the COVID-19 pandemic. As each is finished, you’ll find it here. Hope you enjoy them!

— Check out my “Everest Base Camp” series: four friends and I hiked from Lukla to the Everest Base Camp in November, 2019. It was incredible, spectacular, and very challenging.

— And don’t forget to visit my “New Hampshire 4000-Footer” series, for reflections on a career in international development and social justice, along with descriptions of climbing the 48 highest peaks in our state!

November, 2021

I’ve been working through another group of mountains: New Hampshire’s “52 With A View.” Obviously, they are all supposed to have interesting summits. And, so far, they do!

In fact, as I write this post I’ve climbed 45 of these mountains, so I’ve fallen way behind writing them up.

So far I’ve been writing on the theme of feeding the wrong wolf: we all have a good wolf inside of us, and an evil wolf, and we get the one that we feed.

In this brief post, I want to link to something that Jean has been doing, something that I think really resonates with the theme I’ve been exploring here.

But first, the climb!

Our friend Draco and I climbed both Baldfaces, beginning with South Baldface (3,570) on a beautiful but humid day in early July, 2020. These mountains are right on the border with Maine, actually quite a long drive from Durham – up Rt 16 to Conway, then over into Maine and north from there.

Our hope was to climb both South and North Baldface and, maybe, Eastman Mountain, all of which are on the “52-With-A-View” list. As is indicated on the map, we decided to forgo Eastman this time:

Since the COVID pandemic was raging those days (and, really, it still rages), we drove up separately beginning the climb around 10:15am. We reached the beginning of the Baldface Circle Trail at around 10:45am:

Draco was having fun!

Here we took the left fork, and soon (0.2m) left again onto Slippery Brook Trail. It was pleasant but humid hiking, gradually becoming quite steep as we approached the saddle. We were sweating in the June humidity when reached the junction with the Eastman Mountain and Baldface Knob Trails at 12:30pm, and turned north:

Even though the days in July are long, and we probably had plenty of time, we were starting to feel fatigued after the hot climb, so we decided to continue north towards South Baldface instead of climbing Eastman. (I would get up Eastman in 2021…)

Soon we emerged onto ledge at the rise between Eastman and South Baldface, where the views were great:

What a beautiful day.

We reached the top of South Baldface just before 2pm, and had a late lunch here:

Looking east towards the ocean, just above the cairn below us you can see the path that we had come up; in fact, that’s where the Baldface Circle and Slippery Brook Trails join:

Looking to the west from the summit, we could see the northern section of the Presidential Range, with some snow on the top of Mt Washington (on the far left of this image):

You can see that the clouds are building. We would run into that weather at the top of North Baldface… which was 1.2 miles ahead.

We were tiring, but the day was great. So far. We continued along towards North Baldface…

Jean filmed twelve short videos at the Old Reservoir, on the UNH campus near where we live. All those videos, some with original music, can be found here.

At the same place, Jean has been conducting an interesting experiment. She left a blank notebook by the reservoir, on a chair, with an introduction inviting passers-by to leave some reflections.

She carefully protected the book from the rain, included a pen in the sealed, zip-lock bag, and left at a beautiful place near the water.

We brought it home for the winter of 2020-2021.

We were both a little bit nervous – after all, the reservoir is on a college campus, and students can get rowdy. So we didn’t have much of a sense of the kinds of reflections that they would share, if any, but decided to give it a try and see what would happen.

We needn’t have been nervous, because the vast majority of the over 80 entries so far have been great – reflective, appreciative of the beauty and peace of that location. A few have been a bit juvenile, but most have been thoughtful. And, in fact, a second book has now been left on the other side of the reservoir, by someone else!

I wanted to share an image of a recent entry, which reminds me very much of the “good wolf / bad wolf” theme:

The location lends itself to reflection and would bring out the “good wolf” in most people. And it could still go wrong in the future, with bad wolfs polluting this experiment. But so far we can report that most young people are feeding the right wolf.

Here are links to the other posts in the “52-With-A-View” series:

All posts in this “52 With A View” series will be collected here.

There are three other collections of posts on this blog:

— I’ve been writing and recording a series of songs, with the general theme of the COVID-19 pandemic. As each is finished, you’ll find it here. Hope you enjoy them!

— Check out my “Everest Base Camp” series: four friends and I hiked from Lukla to the Everest Base Camp in November, 2019. It was incredible, spectacular, and very challenging.

Mark McPeak

"Peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace is the ability to cope with conflict" – Gandhi

Monthly Archives: November 2021

North Baldface (13) – Inspiring Words from Albert Einstein

South Baldface (12) – “Feed It With Love”