Lost in Acadia National Park

Five hours north, north, north, just keep going north, of Boston, sprawls a paradise called Acadia National Park.

The first weekend of May, for my husband Dan's birthday, we drove that five hour route along I-95, filled with excitement at the prospect of exploring the park. We'd originally planned to go somewhere else--Mount Katahdin, specifically, which we'd talked about climbing for years, but given the heavy rains, Katahdin's trails had closed. Acadia, however, remained open, so the day before the trip, we'd called an audible, and changed course. This had actually worked out better, in a way, because we would get to use the America the Beautiful National Parks pass that I'd gotten Dan for his birthday. 

Scrambling
Dan had done extensive research on the trails we should hike at Katahdin--with only a day left before we would set out for Acadia, we wondered how we'd figure out what to do. Luckily, a coworker of mine had hiked there years ago, following the advice of a local in the area for the trails to climb. His eyes sparkled as he showed me on Acadia's map the routes he recommended we should do. I tore out half a page from my Mead Composition Book (yes, I still use those) and scribbled a rather useless map. As I drew Jordan Pond, Sargent Mountain and Kearsarge Mountain, I distinctly remember him saying, "There's a little scrambling--not much--but it really is manageable. Not scary at all." 

This is the point in the narrative where I can hear the magical, shrill voice of Mrs. Merry Weinberg, my former AP English teacher, curdling, "ForeBODING!" but at the time, there was none of that rumbling through my mind. I believed him. He's generally a very honest person.

Bring on the Rain
Feeling more confident with our vetted routes, we made our way up to Maine, staying the Friday night in Augusta and getting up early Saturday to drive the rest of the way. Nervously, we looked at the forecast--rain, rain and more rain, but Acadia prevailed. They hadn't closed down their trails. Armed with my feeble map--which may as well have been on a fast food napkin--and mildly water resistant pants, my husband and I entered the park and rolled out of the car with excitement.

We wondered briefly, "Do you think we should visit the Visitor's Center and talk to someone?"

And promptly decided against it, "Nah."

The park was only sprawled across 47,000 acres--how lost could we get? (Cue Merry Weinberg again.) We laced up our hiking boots and began our walk around Jordan Pond. 

"The views are incredible," my colleague had said, and the words rumbled in my brain as we walked up, up, blinking at the gauzy fog that draped itself along the water and mountains, obscuring whatever majestic views lay underneath.

The majestic views by Sargent Pond. (C) Sara Dyer West

We laughed, looking out at the rolling, murky white. "It's ok!" we shrugged. "We're adventuring!"

We felt powerful and special--we were one of three people feeling this way, as that's about how many people we came across on our walk.

The plan, according to the "map", was to walk up along the western part of Jordan Pond to hook up with Sargent Mountain, climb this and then make our way to Penobscot Mountain. 

Things Get Real
The climb along the western part of Jordan Pond is relatively uneventful. As we nip off at the top of Jordan Pond, though, we ascend along a small waterfall and come to a river that's charging, already borderline too high to cross. "Hopefully we won't come this way on the way back," I say. Handily, as we go on and up, there are stairs chiseled out of rock on the route, but unhandily, there's a small river running down the center of the rock staircase. In the center of the stairs, a river, I say. Dan, in trail running shoes, opts to walk alongside the stairs--I decide to succumb and walk through the river, praying my reliable Merrills will stay dry.

Even with the stairs, the "limited scrambling" I've prepared for mentally, that my coworker promised me, is in fact plentiful. And everything is wet, mossy and slippery as hell.

The white gauzy haze has not lifted--if anything, it's thickened. So we're not driven by the promise of beautiful views, but something else. The desire to summit, to be out there, to get after it, "it" being vaguely defined but felt substantially in the heart.

And we do--get after it that is--and summit. We climb to the top of Mount Sargent and we're greeted by assailing winds and water.

The weather has gotten worse. We're soaked in minutes. 

There's no time to enjoy the summit. "We've got to get off this exposed part," Dan shouts over the wind. I can see he's concerned--the weather can change quickly and although no thunderstorms are predicted, that's no guarantee.

So we have to decide--back the way we came, or over the hill into the unknown.

Dan's ghostly figure looms in the distance on the summit. (C) Sara Dyer West

"We know what we're up against if we turn around," Dan says. "But we don't if we go down the backside." We deliberate. Not feeling chancey, we head back down the way we came. I'm worried. Going down always feels harder for me. The monkey scrabbling I love turns into a "just don't fall!" situation and it bucks my sad knees.

Early on, I lose my footing and slit the knuckles on my right hand open--they're bleeding badly. At the exact same time, Dan feels and cracks his knee. I pull out my emergency kit which is comprised of exactly three tampons, a pad, a piece of black string (very Huck Finn of me) and a small bandaid. I remember we used to wrap our Ridgebacks' paws in feminine pads when they slit them open in the winter on the ice. So I wrap my bleeding knuckles in a feminine pad. Dan gives me an old clean sock he has in his bag to put over my hand. He shakes his head and says, "This is sad," and I agree that yes, it's a low point. We don't treat his wound--it's underneath his pants and we're sort of afraid to look. We keep going, and pray we don't fall again, which we don't. 

The river we met on the way over is now charging like the band of Celts in the movie Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. Dan heaves a large trunk over the water, and I breathe, apologize to the universe for flouting the laws of Leave No Trace, get brave and cross it without issue.

Saved, for a Brief Instant
We rejoin the trail that circles Sargent Pond and feel triumphant and saved and alive. And then, we make a decision we'll pay for.

"Why don't we go around the whole pond?" IE, rather than back the way we came, which is a straight and sure path.

It doesn't matter who suggested this alternate plan (it wasn't me) but we figure--how hard could it be? Thinking of it now, we were two fools of hubris in a Greek tragedy.

We walk, very happy to be back on solid, non-scrambly ground. The dewy fiddleheads with their shy, curled heads dot the path alongside us. This revives us. The birds are twittering and even the fog looks less dense.

We come to a set of signs and we hug right. It can't go wrong, we think. But you know now, reader, that it does.

We walk, and we walk, and we walk more. We see water to our left. This is a very bad sign. It should be on our right. We hope, perhaps, the map we're consulting is wrong. Because it's 1822 and the world has not been explored so thoroughly yet. Right. We look a bit down the path at Dan's electronic map he's pulled up, finally, and Dan's map tells us that we are in fact wayyyyy off our path. My hand is still bleeding, it is raining, we are hungry, and we are cold.

One Foot in Front of the Other
So we put one foot in front of the other. We walk endlessly until we finally come to a paved road, which we follow for two miles.

Dan's nervous that I'm not having any fun, but I tell him, "On the contrary, this is ten times better than sitting dying slowly in my cube." I'm only able to say that because we are now fairly certain that we'll make it. Cresting every hill, we pray we'll see the turn for the parking lot. After a long time we do. We strip down, get into warm, dry clothing and turn our thoughts to a cold beer in the quaint town of Bar Harbor. All is well.

Getting lost in Acadia is not like getting lost in the South Shore Plaza mall. For one, there's no directory, but more importantly, there's no Auntie Anne's Pretzels just around the corner to soothe you and inspire you. However, getting lost and rained on in the beautiful woods--fiddleheads, pines, low hanging mist--it could have been worse. I can't say (now that I'm sitting under my favorite blankie sipping tea) that it was a bad day. In fact, it was a very good day. My husband and I were together in the woods, witnessing nature and moving our bodies. But I've decided that next time, we're talking to the ranger and I'm buying one of the laminated maps.

Communing with our Cartilaginous Brethren

I stood over the tank, my arm plunged elbow-deep in the water, praying the shark would come to me. "Remember to keep your palm flat, and touch the animals in this area--the middle of their back," the New England Aquarium (NEAQ) staff member said. She was perched on a rock within the exhibit--the Shark and Ray Touch Tank--and so far I'd been there for a couple cycles of her reminders. The kids around me seemed to have trouble remembering this--they lunged towards the cownose rays, Atlantic rays and epaulette sharks, poking them, grabbing them and--occasionally--keeping their palm flat and touching the animals in the middle of their back.

But who am I to talk? The second that a cownose ray got close to me, I had the overwhelming urge to do the same. Fighting that urge took all the strength I had, and suddenly, there he was, gliding under my flat palm with his smooth, slick back. It was like a flare had shot off inside my belly; it was, thrilling.

My husband Dan and I had gotten married at the NEAQ the past fall, and we'd received a free one-year membership. On Monday, (President's Day) it seemed only right to honor our previous leaders by romping about the aquarium. Every mother, father and child within an 80-mile radius of Boston had the same idea.

I was most excited to see the chondrichthyans--a group comprised of sharks, rays and chimaeras--because I've been auditing an edX course online exploring sharks called Sharks! Global Biodiversity, Biology, and Conservation. The exclamation point in the class name is well-played; chondrichthyans have weathered many evolutionary storms (aka mass extinctions, of which there have been five throughout time) throughout their 500 million years of existence. New members of the group are still being discovered to this day.

Through the class I've also learned that scientists believe we may have entered earth's sixth mass extinction due to the impact of human activities. I had this thought in mind as I stood at the tank on Monday, watching the fluttering and flapping arms of the rays, and the graceful serpentining body of the small sharks. Touching the tough skin of an epaulette shark who was lounging on a rock (under the benediction of the NEAQ staff member), I felt like I was touching a secret deep in the earth, something precious and vital. The thought clung to me as I left the exhibit, washed my hands and watched an impossibly small shark embryo wiggling in his pod in another exhibit on epaulette sharks. With the pod backlit, I could see his pinky-finger body length writhing, eager to break free and enter the dangerous and beautiful world. 

Ride or Die: Scooting in Bermuda

Recently, my husband Dan, my father and I headed to Bermuda to visit with our longtime family friends who live there. Besides visiting with them, one of the things I was most looking forward to was riding my own moped again.

I first rode a moped on my own in 2013 and I don’t recall being particularly frightened that first go. As our recent trip this year began to loom closer and closer, though, I suddenly felt mixed feelings about the prospect--equal parts excited, equal parts terrified. Dan kindly offered to rent a two-seater--he could drive the two of us, he said, but I was determined to ride solo. Riding a scooter felt like it aligned perfectly with my new year’s goal of being more capable, and what’s more, it had just been plain untainted fun when I’d done it before.

Renting the Bikes

The morning after we arrived in Bermuda, we walked down to the local cycle shop from our friends’ house. I had forgotten the process of renting one in Bermuda was bewilderingly easy.

It went like this: My husband, father and I walked into the cycle shop. Ding, ding, chimed the bells announcing our presence.

The white-haired man behind the counter piped, “What are you folks looking for?”

Dad explained we’d need three mopeds for four days.

“Ridden before?”

“Yes,” our three voices said, with varying degrees of confidence. I clamped my mouth shut to quell the wave of nervous nausea that threatened to spill over.

“Great,” he said.

The man filled out paperwork, said “Sign here, here and here.” Should we read the fine print? I wondered, looking around as Dad and Dan pacifically signed their paperwork, their brows unfurrowed, relaxed.

As the scooter gent swiped our credit cards, I tucked my license back into my wallet--apparently proof of vehicular ability was not necessary. Hmmh, I thought, feeling slightly unsettled.

“All right,” the man said. “Anthony will give you a quick refresh on the bikes and you’ll be on your way.”

We grabbed a few helmets--Dad’s, of course, failed to fit his large head--and we headed out to the parking lot. Perhaps Anthony will be in the bathroom, I hoped fervently, or taking a walk, or otherwise engaged elsewhere for a very very long time. Anything to buy a bit more time before the scooter test! I thought desperately.

But as fate would have it, faithful old Anthony was outside waiting for us. My heart had been fluttering about this moment for weeks and, upon seeing him, it began to cough and sputter.

“Right,” Anthony began, sitting sidesaddle on a parked bike. “Gas, brakes, signals, kickstand, starter, horn. Ready for your test drives?”

His syllables came out in one quick puff of steam, leaving me sweaty and unsure.

Dad and Dan, on the other hand, nodded in unison like the Bobsey twins: we’re ready!

I cleared my throat. “Riiiiiight,” I said. I, uh, still had some questions. “What do I do for the gas again?”

I wondered if this question would result in my being demoted to riding tandem on Dan’s bike, but Anthony smiled kindly. He went through the bike’s anatomy once more, nodding encouragingly you’re getting it right? Despite his endearing outward display of faith in me, I got the feeling he expected I would be covered in road rash after my test drive.

Testing 1, 2...3

Theoretically, the test drive was simple: Pull out of the parking lot (remembering of course that they drive on the left side of the road in Bermuda), go up the road a bit and turn around and finally pull back into the parking lot. Elegant and simple in its vagueness to everyone but me.

With easy flair, Dad and Dan kicked off onto their test drives. They smiled rakishly. No big deal! they said, pulling into the parking lot after they’d done their loop. I scowled at their ease and beatific smiles and finally had to admit that the time had come. I was up. My knees were knocking a bit and I was afraid to move in case the ground fell out below my legs.

Anthony looked at me. I attempted a smile and hopped on the bike, accidentally popping the horn. “Oops!” I said, flashing another unconvincing smile his way yet again. He nodded, good old Anthony, and I gave the scooter a little gas. It bucked like a bronco. Jesus CHRIST, I thought, as I broke out into hives. To describe the moment as “wobbly” would not do my take-off justice. I was off though, embarking on the test drive.

I puttered forward, getting out of view of the cycle shop before panicking and pulling into a nearby driveway. I had scooted approximately 20 feet and I was shaking like a set of wind-up teeth. I am very scared, I thought. I breathed deeply. I realized as I breathed deeply that I had pulled into a driveway with a textbook blind corner. I couldn’t see anything around the bend. In other words--be it a massive Isuzu truck, another moped or a poisonous cane toad coming around the bend--I would not be able to see it as I pulled out of the driveway and back into traffic.

I thought about the mindfulness meditations I'd tried so hard to practice--the breath was supposed to fix everything! I thought mournfully. The breath would get me part way there as I collected myself, but I realized I would have to simply commit if I was going to do this.

I studied the corner. Vehicles rushed around it unforgivingly, at full throttle. If I reentered the road meekly from where I was, and a vehicle happened to be coming, I’d be roadkill. Well this sucks, I thought.

I breathed again, prayed my friends and family wouldn’t read my journals that I had always meant to redact and let it rip.

Somehow, I did not die.

Glory

As I puttered along, feeling the rain of relief falling on my insides, I saw Anthony speeding up the road in the opposite direction, no doubt looking for me, images of horrific road rash flaring in his mind. I flashed him a winning smile oh hello! No problems here!, clicked on my blinker and turned back into the cycle shop.

“How was it?” Dan asked. “We were worried you crashed!”

“Totally fine,” I smiled, praying the hives had faded.