The Franconia Ridge, one of the more spectacular sections of the AT in the White Mountains
I just finished my latest section of the Appalachian Trail: Glencliff, NH to Grafton Notch, Maine; a total of 130 miles through the entirety of the White Mountains. I completed this hike in 11 days, and it was the most continously physically demanding thing I have ever done in my life. The hike included an ascent of Mount Washington (worst weather in the world — the wind was gusting up to 60 mph when I summited), several miles of the Franconia Ridge, most of which were above tree line, and a trek through the Mahoosuc Notch, reputed to be the most difficult mile of the AT (it took me 2 1/2 hours to negotiate 1.1 miles of house-sized boulders).
I would rate this hike as not only the most physically difficult, but also the most dangerous or frightening piece of the AT so far. I was often descending very steep rock slabs with no steps to speak of. Several times I did so in the rain, and a couple times in fading light. Once or twice I found myself on an exposed ridge with a thunderstorm rolling in. Often on my AT hikes, I am able to pray pretty effectively over the course of each day for a short list of family and church needs. On this trip, I found that i spent a fair amount of time praying for God’s protection (from the weather) and direction (on those steep, slick slabs where one misstep could have resulted in serious injury or worse.
Notwithstanding the challenges and downright scariness of pieces of my hike, I enjoyed this trip as much or more than any other other. The views were spectacular (when the weather was cooperative), I saw alpine wildflowers and other plants that grow only on the high peaks of the New England mountains, and I saw wildlife that I had rarely (if ever) seen in the wild — porcupines, foxes, snowshoe hares, spruce grouse, and others. It was a time of giving thanks to God for having created such things as these in His world.
Posted by Lon on July 28th, 2008 in Hiking | 4 Comments »
Our downstairs bathroom has had problems for quite a while — six or seven years ago, we had a minor flood, which damaged the floor and caused several ceramic tiles to come loose. Of course, those tiles were no longer made, so I couldn’t just replace the things. We pretty much ignored the situation until six months ago, when one of the family put her foot through the floor. Now, I know that there are some home repairs that I’m just not capable of doing well — I don’t have enough obscenities in my vocabulary to tackle certain tasks, and laying a new subfloor for ceramic tile (with those heavy concrete-laced panels) is one of them. So I hired someone to do that job, and meanwhile had Katie figure out what kind of tile pattern would look good and be appropriate for the period of the house. We decided on a pattern, I gutted the bathroom in late April, and the handyman guy laid the new subfloor. And then we discovered the problem with our tile pattern: it was made up of 2″ tiles, and we had to place each of some 2000 of the things one tile at a time, paying close attention to the pattern to make sure it came out right. This process took quite a while — the bathroom wasn’t really usable again until early June. By the way, did I mention that our downstairs bathroom is the guest bathroom? That it has the only shower stall in the house? We have a bathtub, but if you’re a shower person, you get kind of desperate for a shower after a while. Well, I’d like to announce that after six weeks of single bathroom showerless life, the Mendelsohn household has a newly tiled, bathroom. We still have to finish the mouldings, and we need to replace the door (we’re using a curtain to meet the demands of modesty), but the room is functional. Once we finish the last bit of work, I’m tempted to have celebratory event of some sort…
By the way, lengthy home improvement projects are ordinarily a recipe for low-level strife in the Mendelsohn household. Everybody gets out of sorts, arguments happen, and members of the household, particularly husband and wife, end up saying things we later regret. We actually got through this project without it being a cause for sin. Sure, we disagreed on how to proceed from time to time, but even with all the unplanned-for challenges, life went pretty well during the course of the project (other than the lack of sleep — we stayed up really late almost every night that we were working on the floor to make sure that the room would be functional by the time Sam came home from Ireland).
Posted by Lon on July 12th, 2008 in Suffering | 1 Comment »
