Hedgehog Mountain (15) – A Very Good Wolf

January, 2022

Several years ago I finished climbing all 48 of New Hampshire’s 4000-foot mountains. Now I’m climbing some of them again, in a second season.

So now, at the same time, I’m working through another list: New Hampshire’s “52 With A View.” As readers may have noticed, while the 4000-footers are all interesting climbs, and usually quite challenging, some of their summits can be a bit disappointing. Many have obstructed views at the top.

I’m tackling this second group with the hopes that their summits will all be interesting. The two lists don’t overlap, so the 52 will be new here, and none will be over 4000 feet high. That doesn’t mean they will be easy…

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In each of my 4000-footer posts, I combined a description of the climb with a discussion of some part of my (so-called) career in international development and social justice. In this series, I take a similar approach, though the posts will be briefer: sharing a couple of photos and a brief description of each climb, and a few paragraphs on current events.

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.

Hope you enjoy it!

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One of the very best of the good wolves – Thich Nhat Hanh – died this week in Hue, Viet Nam. An icon of peace and compassion, he was a big influence on me. His emphasis on mindfulness was especially insightful and inspiring. And challenging.

From the Plum Village website:

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh is a global spiritual leader, poet, and peace activist, renowned for his powerful teachings and bestselling writings on mindfulness and peace. A gentle, humble monk, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called him “an Apostle of peace and nonviolence” when nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Exiled from his native Vietnam for almost four decades, Thich Nhat Hanh has been a pioneer bringing Buddhism and mindfulness to the West, and establishing an engaged Buddhist community for the 21st Century.

Probably the first of his many books that I read was Being Peace, one of the few books I’ve dared to give to others. Jean and I were lucky to attend a talk he gave in Boston, long ago. Sitting fairly close to him, we still found it very hard to hear his soft, French-accented voice. We discovered later that our experience was very common – you had to listen carefully!

Later, https://markmcpeak.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/mt-hancock-17-hanoi-1998/living and working in Viet Nam, we were able to visit his home monastery near Hue. This was before he was allowed to return to his home country, but you could feel his presence there. I still have the business card the Abbot gave us!

I think this was taken at Thich Nhat Hanh’s home monastery in 2001…

After reading of his death, we watched this video in which he talks about “where do we go when we die.”

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Personally, the concept of karma makes a lot of sense to me. It’s another way of thinking about cause and effect. Very scientific, very pragmatic, very related to the “effect” of the good and bad wolves on ourselves and our surroundings.

Of course, religious Buddhists and others sometimes take this concept and push it beyond the framework of our lives. It’s easy for me to see that the impact, the “effect” of the good wolf can live on after his death. Just looking at the impact of Thich Nhat Hanh himself, which lives on – as he foresees in the last part of the video. Likewise, the impact of a bad wolf can linger for a long time. Plenty of examples of that.

But another buddhist concept helps here, I think: “dependent co-origination,” something that Thich Nhat Hanh refers to in his writing as “inter-being.” It’s the notion that “all things are interdependent, arising continually through the influences of causes and conditions”:

What may be gained from this is

1. “a broader view of the world, as proceeding according to the flow of causes and effects and bound to the conditions found in the natural process. There is no Creator or Appointer, nor is the world a series of aimless accidents. Objectives cannot be realized through merely wishing, supplicating the gods, or luck, but must be effectuated through self-reliant effort based on an understanding of causes and conditions.
2. Creating the right causes for desired results can only be done when there is an understanding of those causes and the way they connect with their respective results. This necessitates the presence of an understanding which is capable of discerning these complexities; life must be dealt with and related to with wisdom.
3. An understanding of the natural process as subject to the cause and effect continuum can be effective for reducing the delusion which causes clinging to, and identification with, things as self. Such a perspective enables a sounder and more independent relationship with things as they are.”*

So, in the video, when Thich Nhat Hanh shows the “light and heat” from the candle having an effect on the candle itself, that’s a great way of understanding that the good wolf helps others and helps himself, and that the bad wolf harms others and harms himself. And when he shows that light and heat having an effect on the candle itself after it’s gone, I think that’s a reference to how our thoughts and actions live on.

Thich Nhat Hanh leaves an enormous legacy of peace, if we can see it.

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I climbed both Mt Hedgehog (2,532ft, 772m) and Mt Potash on a spectacular day at the end of July, 2020, and again almost a year later on a nice, but cloudy day . These are almost two separate hikes from the same parking lot off the Kancamagus Highway – you have to return almost to the parking lot between the climbs… or so I thought!

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In 2020, I had planned to climb Hedgehog Mountain first. It’s a loop, which I planned to complete in a clockwise manner, taking the left fork at the 0.8 mile mark. My idea a year later was to climb Potash Mountain first, but because this was a rare weekend hike, there were so many climbers headed that way from the trailhead that I decided to head towards Hedgehog.

I got on the trail at about 10:45am and took a left turn onto the UNH Trail almost immediately after leaving the parking off of the Kancamagus. The trail loops up and around Hedgehog:

Here I’m looking back towards Mt Potash, which I would climb a bit later on both days:

Right where I took that photo looking back at Potash, I missed a turn and continued straight on the “Oliverian-Downes Bridge ski trail” noted on the sign above, towards the White Brook. It took me a while to realize this mistake, and I lost about 30 minutes that way.

Near the top of Hedgehog there are some great ledges with beautiful views towards Mt Passaconaway, which is a 4000-footer.

A year later, I had planned to climb the two mountains in the reverse order: first Potash, and then Hedgehog. But I went on a weekend, which is always a mistake because the trails are always more crowded. On this day, it happened that there were a couple of big groups leaving the parking area at the trailhead right at the same time. They were quite talkative and social, and were not very aware of anything but themselves. So I waited to see what they would do, and when they went towards Potash I adapted and went towards Hedgehog first.

This time I didn’t make the mistake of following the ski trail, and went on up without incident. It was cloudier that day, but the hiking was great!

Here’s a photo from the spot where I had taken the previous image, a year earlier. Once again, you can see Passaconaway over my right shoulder:

Here, from the same spot – this time I’m looking more towards the east, and you can see Chocorua on the left in the distance, and Mt Paugus (both on the “52-With-A-View list) on the right, closer:

Hedgehog was not a tough climb, but still a good workout and worthwhile for the great views looking east and south.

On both climbs, I descended on the UNH Trail, completing the loop, and then tackled Mt Potash, where the views were similar but, from the top, there were great views north towards the Presidentials! I’ll describe those climbs, and other issues, next time!

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* Quotes in this section are from “Dependent Origination, the Buddhist Law of Conditionality” by P. A. Payutto.

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

1. Mt Shaw (1) – Which Wolf To Feed?;
2. Mt Roberts (2) – We Are Feeding The Wrong Wolf;
3. Mt Jennings (3) – Pandemic Fever Dream;
4. Sandwich Dome (4) – Justice in America;
5. South Moat (5) – The World We Create When We Feed The Wrong Wolf;
6. North Moat Mountain (6) – Social Inequality in the United States;
7. Mt Crawford (7) – “National Disgrace“;
8. Stairs Mountain (8) – Two Quiet Interludes”;
9. Mt Resolution (9) – Abundance;
10. Mt Willard (10) – The Two Wolves Face A Tax Bill!;
11. Mt Avalon (11) – Standards? Or Expectations?;
12. South Baldface (12) – “Feed It With Love”;
13. North Baldface (13) – Inspiring Words from Albert Einstein;
14. South Paugus (14) – A Political Home For Good Wolves;
15. Hedgehog Mountain (15) – A Very Good Wolf;
16. Mt Potash (16) – Love;
17. Mt Cube (17) – “Without a Vision, the People Perish”;
18. Welch-Dickey (18) – “With a Vision, the People Flourish”;
19. Smarts Mountain (19) – Between Stimulus and Response;
20. Mt Webster (35) – A Hopeful Sign?

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

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!