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.