May | 2022 | Mark McPeak

May, 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…

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. This time my theme is related, but different!

Hope you enjoy it!

The climb up Mt Potash is fairly simple, with views towards Mt Passaconaway from a ledge near the top, and spectacular towards the Presidential Range (Franconia, Garfield, Bonds, etc.) after a steep climb up more ledge to the top. The round-trip, up-and-back, takes around 3 hours, but I combined this climb with nearby Hedgehog both times, making a good day out! Highly recommended!

Yesterday I listened to another great episode of Sam Harris’s podcast. This one features Sam speaking with Jay Garfield about the “illusion of the self.” The conversation is prompted by Garfield’s new book, “Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self.” I found their conversation to be fascinating, enlightening, and challenging.

One thought it prompted relates to love.

In the conversation, Garfield makes a distinction between “self” and “person,” which I think helps demystify the confusing buddhist notion of non-self. The “person” is a very real physical manifestation of causes and effects, something that arises and passes. This is what we see in the mirror, and there is obviously nothing illusory about it.

The “self,” on the other hand, in this distinction, is the mirage of permanence, a powerful trap that is built and maintained by our egos, driving us to grasp and cling. The human ego is a powerful force, having been constructed through eons of evolution through the mechanism of competition in the natural and social environment. So it’s, by definition, a trap that is fit for purpose – for survival of the species.

So the idea of non-self is an empirical insight that comes from recognizing that we (the “person”) will die, that there is no enduring “self.” There are three illusions here:

The illusion of permanence. Clearly, this person will not last forever, so there is no enduring “self” to be found;
The illusion of independence. The person in the mirror is present, for now, because of a large causal pathway. Tracing it back a ways: the person survived until the present moment, it was born, its parents met and created the child, the parents happened to attend the same high school … the earth was created from remnants of stars …;
The illusion of self. This is the most difficult illusion to dispel and, in my experience, it is only clarified during meditation as an experiential truth. Buddhist teachings show us how to transcend the trap of “self” through meditation.

Many spiritual and religious traditions (including buddhism, via “metta” meditation) emphasize the centrality, and importance, of love. Some framings emphasize romantic love – realizing ourselves through authentic, deep commitment and partnership to another being. Which is important and true, lived by most of us. Other times the importance of love seems to flow from its importance in the construction of social stability: loving one another produces a more-harmonious and less-conflictive society. Like the “Golden Rule.” And there are obviously biological roots of our drive to love. All true.

The insight that I came to listening to the podcast – and which is nothing original! – is different. The suffering produced by our egos is directed inward, towards the “self.” That is to say, our grasping for things that escape us, including eventually life itself, relates to the “self.” But isn’t it true that when we love another we transcend that grasping, because we direct our attention outwardly, to another?

Of course, love can be grasping, obsessive. But maybe that’s something else, not authentic love. When you love another being, you seek their happiness more than your own, even as that love (if reciprocated) also makes you happy.

Meditation is a powerful tool for transcending the “self,” because the meditator comes to see, with direct, inward experience, the transitory nature of reality. It seems that love, in addition to other virtues, is a powerful outwardly-directed tool for transcending the trap of “self,” of ego, so that we as “persons” can live properly, stepping out of the trap laid for us by evolution.

Thank you, Jean!

I climbed both Mt Hedgehog and Mt Potash (2,532ft, 772m) 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!

After getting to the top of Hedgehog Mtn, I arrived back at the junction near the parking area at around 2pm. From there the hike up Potash is about 1.9miles, 3.8 up and back.

It’s a steady climb up, with a steep section just before the top of Potash Mtn, where views of Chocorua and Mt Passaconaway emerge.

At the top, there’s a a nice, large ledge with great views all around, including towards Franconia Ridge, and many of the Presidentials.

I got back to the parking area at around 5pm, after a wonderful day in the White Mountains.

Nearly a year later, I tackled both of these mountains again. My intention was to climb them in the other order – Potash first, and then Hedgehog. Since there is only one trail up each of these peaks, that would have been the only way to vary the experience.

But this second climb was on a summer weekend (11 July 2021) so, unlike in 2020, it was VERY CROWDED. In fact, when I left the parking area, planning to take the Mt Potash Trail first, there were so many people headed that way that I changed plans and took a left towards Hedgehog. That was a good choice, because everybody else went towards Potash that morning and by the time I started up that second peak, they were gone.

There was one major change, however. Instead of having to go all the way back down nearly to the parking area after climbing Hedgehog, I found an unmarked ski trail cutoff from the UNH Trail to Mt Potash Trail, crossing Downes Brook Trail. This saved me quite a bit of time, maybe a half hour.

Otherwise, it was a great hike, quite similar to the previous year. Highly recommended!

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.

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!

Mark McPeak

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

Monthly Archives: May 2022

Mt Potash (16) – Love