Up Penobscot

I'm pretty proud of hiking up Penobscot by myself. It was a sudden impulse, after the skirts of the hurricane blew away and left beautiful blue skies behind. My route — up a steep, rocky series of switchbacks to the ridgeline, then along a rock slope to the summit, and down via a steep, slippery-wet rocky trail beside a stream, all with a ten-pound pack — came close to surpassing my ability; I had the shaky-legs on the way down. (Later that night, I realized I'd drunk over half a gallon of water on the hike and not yet had to pee.) But it was a sustaining, solitary experience, remarkably peaceful and beautiful. I mentioned before that the cathedrals of Rome made me feel spacious on the inside, as though I contained vast vaulted spaces; this made me feel spacious on the outside, like I was the tiny but integral center of an endless dome of sky and rock and ocean.

Then, as I was sitting on the bare rock of the summit (attempting to Tweet about it on my cell phone, if you must know), I heard a SPLOOSH! in the distance. I had just about put it from my mind as an auditory hallucination — I'd already "heard" voices a few times on my way up — when there came another SPLOOSH! followed by an "Aigh!" Two other hikers were jumping into chilly Sargent Pond, two tenths of a mile downhill from me — so much for being alone in the universe! I dipped my feet in as well, and took pictures of a frog and a newt, and as the sun began slipping away I headed back down to the Jordan Pond House in time to fortuitously and just barely catch the 7:15 bus back to town.

Good thing, too — the next bus was at 8:45, and I was meeting folks for dinner. I returned to find a town in the grip of hurricane rumors — eleven were dead! No, three! No, three had been pulled from the ocean, but many more were swept in at Otter Cliffs! We spent a rainy dinner trying to dig the news from the rumors, but I was still on top of Penobscot, tired and windblown and the only person in the world (for a few minutes).

( Hike photos within! )