A Mountain of Grace

It was a sunny February day. The guidebook said the 1.5-mile climb from trailhead to summit, “should take about an hour, depending on how many times you pause for a rest.” (This blog post should take 2.5 minutes to read, depending on how many times you start daydreaming). Our three mile hike took four and a half hours, they don’t call me dawdler for nothing!

I can’t take all the credit though. Two external forces helped cool my heels: the snow and the child. Though we didn’t have any of the appropriate accouterments strapped to our feet, I have to give the lion's share of the credit to the kid. Nobody can dawdle like a child. She crumpled to her knees, crawled, lay flat on her back and at times was dragged bodily up the hill.

Note to self: next time bring another kid to play with along the trail. Oh and the parents too, in case the other kid needs tending.

Atop the “mountain” (I have to put “mountain” in quotes because I grew up nestled between the Olympics and the Cascades, two mountain ranges whose high peaks remain snow-capped through August and whose treacherous terrain take the lives of several hikers every year.)

Ok, lets start again. Atop the “mountain” (although I use the quotes to denote a smallness, this is out of fondness not meanness. The quaint notion of a New England "mountain" is actually a more reasonable conception as far as I'm concerned.)

Alright, third time’s a charm. Atop the “mountain” we paused for lunch under the shadow of an old fire tower and sat in old snow that had seen the freeze/thaw cycle a few times. Each of us had one perfect hard-boiled egg. The hard-boiled egg, an old-timey travel food, is ready for a comeback. The packaging is strong, light, durable and natural. Plus, unlike a sandwich it doesn’t get soggy while you hike. One egg each wasn't quite enough to slake our appetites, though. At dinner we ate like pigs at the trough.

Funny enough our amazing dawdler became a flier on the way down, her batteries charged from our rest at the summit. She took the trip back down at a run and smiling.

Just like us, the trees were smiling too.

[Headed back down from the summit of Mt. Grace in Warwick, MA. on 2/20/2010 we found this smiling face pictured above. We were northbound on the Metacomet-Monadnock Trail. Hike-NewEngland.com has very thorough information on Mt. Grace. The hiking guidebook quoted was "Hiking the Pioneer Valley" by Bruce Scofield pub 2003.]