My father and I were sitting in my great aunt's Belgrade farmhouse, glancing at the state map in hopes of finding new adventures. We came across a green rectangle called Baxter State Park.
So we gathered all our non-camping equipment, since we hadn't planned to camp this vacation -- pans, cans of beans and tins of Spam, heavy blankets, flashlights, and matches.
We set out the next morning, a cloudy August day, and headed up toward Dover Foxcroft and Route 11 for Millinocket and Baxter State Park. This long-ago trip was before I 95 had been completed north of Augusta, so we took the wiggle-around-the-countryside route.
We made a wrong turn in Dover Foxcroft -- the same wrong turn we took several times in later years, which maybe is an indication that not only you can't get there from here but in Dover Foxcroft it is hard to get anywhere. Unless you're actually aiming for that wrong turn, which we weren't.
We found Millinocket somewhat adventuresome, the great frontier outpost before Baxter State Park. On a later trip, we found the roads in Millinocket under repair and ourselves driving on dirt roads. Wow, now it was the great frontier outpost. The price of gas was outlandish, 37 cents per gallon!
By late afternoon, I was weary from driving my great aunt's 1949 Plymouth sedan through pouring rain on the winding park perimeter road. In those early days, while perhaps Millinocket was not actually a great frontier outpost, the perimeter road was. It was literally one lane with a sign at each sharp curve -- of which I think there might have been several thousand -- warning the driver to blow the horn to avoid colliding head-on with a car that might be heading the other way. The center of the road, between the two ruts, held grass and dirt. I was essentially following two tire tracks.* The whole world poured rain.
(A few years ago I told a young park ranger about the one-lane road, and she assured me that it had never been that way. Okay, so one of us was senile. I think it was she. I would not have made this up, and I pretty much was not senile at 19 years of young.)
I became discouraged enough driving in this constant, depressing rain on the narrow road that I announced I was getting tired, and if Katahdin Stream Campground was not around that next bend we would be sleeping right here in the road. The campground was around the next bend.
We registered with the campground ranger. In those days of yore -- anyone know what yore is? -- you didn't need to make reservations, just show up. The lean-to was about 15 feet from our water supply, the racing, roaring Katahdin Stream, which provided a noisy but peaceful background for our stay. The night, my father, mother and I under our blankets and quilts in the lean-to and my great aunt under hers in the back seat of the car, began feeling cold. We later learned it had been 30 degrees that night.
While my parents cooked breakfast the next morning, we had company -- a young buck with three legs that turned out to be a kind of campground mascot. As fast as we put the various breakfast parts on the table, Mr. Mascot would reach his little nose over and nibble a bit. At this point in my damp, cold young life, I was starved and grew weary pretty fast of watching Mr. Mascot enjoy our food. So I pushed him by the nose, directing him to go find another happy camping family.
I never had before nor have since so appreciated antlers being in velvet. He placed those velvet-covered antlers in four places on my chest and stomach and shoved. Hey, he was Mr. Mascot. We were the guests, and this guest found himself backed up against the lean-to wall. I'm pretty sure that velvet saved me from a good running through.
Somehow I lived without injury, and we ate. Then we started up the mountain, which was a bit new for we suburban Philadelphians. The highest "mountain" with which I was familiar was Mount Misery in Valley Forge State Park, now a national park to give you a historic time frame of our first great Baxter adventure. That hill was several hundred feet high, ascended by driving up a paved road or walking a path up through the woods. My father was not good in high, open places. Let's hear it for Dad and Katahdin. That didn't stop him. We went up and up and up and up, not sure how much more up there could be on this mountain.
Finally, Dad and Mom decided they'd had enough and announced they were returning to our campsite, Great Aunt Amy, and Mr. Mascot. I knew we were almost to the top, so I ran up hill, thinking I would be there in no more than ten minutes.
And I ran right into a family, who were walking, not running, up the mountain. At the moment, they were sitting, resting. They invited me to join their sitting and resting, which I was only too happy to do. Then they invited me to finish the climb with them, which I also was only too happy to do.
As we walked, not ran, up and up and still farther up, the father, a retired cartoonist shared with me a couple of secrets. If you get a stone in your shoe -- I was wearing a pair of leather-soled suburban Philadelphian street shoes -- stop and take it out to avoid becoming a Katahdin cripple. Secondly, take short steps. Your body is climbing steeply, so do it in low gear. Even the '49 Plymouth knew that. But it wasn't a suburban Philadelphian.
Next we came to timberline, where some of the huge boulders had iron rungs hammered into them to make climbing easier -- or possible in my case. At this point, I now know after a half-dozen more Katahdin adventures and my vast knowledge gained through being a long-time member of the Maine Appalachian Trail Club (since 1980) and reading the MATC guidebooks and maps, we were about 2.5 miles up with another 2.5 longer miles still ahead of us and very much up -- and along an open ridge and then a rocky, open plateau, and then a sharp "hill" just before the summit which boasted a large wooden sign, boasting that we were at the summit and the northern end of the Appalachian Trail.
Looking around and down, down, down in every direction, I didn't need that sign to tell me we were at the top.
The trip down was wearying and a knee breaker. I now tell tourists that going up will let them know they have lungs, and coming down will let them know they have knees. None, who have hiked one of our many mountains after hearing that great tidbit of climbing knowledge and then talked to me again, ever disagreed.
This summer, I had suggested a couple of Acadia National Park's much-lower mountain hikes to a couple "from away." When I picked them up again on my Island Explorer bus some hours later, I asked, "And what did you have planned for tomorrow?" Of course, I meant which trail.
"Staying in bed all day and hoping we'll live," the wife responded.
I haven't yet added that to my vital advice for tourists, but I think I should.
Anyhow, we made it down from Katahdin from the first of a half-dozen times I made the lungs-acknowledging trek up the Hunt Trail and the Abol Trail. My mother was great at making Spam and beans taste like no Philadelphia restaurant could.
The next day we visited Roaring Brook Campground, where my father and I, being faster walkers than my good mother the great Spam-and-beans chef, met a cow moose standing across the path with my mother out of sight behind us. When we walked back and met her, my father announced, "Edith, you should have seen the moose. It was 14 feet tall."
"Mom, Dad is exaggerating. It was only 12 feet tall," I corrected.
We drove out of the park, silenced and awe struck by all that great beauty. We stopped at the top of a hill to look back at the Greatest Mountain's majestic profile.
And I fell in love with Maine.
A week later, back in those Philadelphia suburbs, the leather soles fell off those street shoes.
I moved to Maine right out of college.
*Some years later, when I was driving out the newly-graveled perimeter road after taking a group of church kids camping and climbing, I had to jam on the brakes to avoid a head-on with a car speeding in on that "improved" perimeter road.
Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.
Milton M. Gross Copyright 2008
