Teddy Roosevelt is a genius. There are a few reasons. His reinvention of the New York Police Force was so highly regarded he got the opportunity to reform the damn nation’s Navy. And then he reinvented land. Land has been reinvented many times. Many people misunderstand that even something considered set in stone, like public and private land, was reshaped countless times and continues to do so. People assume that private land is the invention, that we all started on this public Earth. But when walking amidst dark woods and hearing a sharp rattle from parts unknown— well, that sure feels private, at least since nervous systems have existed. Public land is similarly a reinvention. While the people who have the aforementioned original public land theory have a point, the mistake here is that before Land was invented, there was no such thing as public land. It seems that the idea of public land had to spawn from private land. Concerned with private land’s encroachment on Land, Roosevelt protected swathes of Land by deeming it Public. All of this is a digression from the bus ride back from one of these Lands, wherein the private and public collided in my visit there.

I found true America in one of these forests, and it exists there still, as it has for the last hundred years sleeping in bunk beds in a notch in New Hampshire’s mountains with a redhead redneck French-Canadian, a tune-out drink-up Mexican kid from Compton, and a Cajun neo-Nazi army dropout— and there I am, the most faggy looking true blue Brooklyn kike of America, who prefers to explain haiku’s nonsyllabic American form or else be speechless to a crowd in deep observation. And none of them knew how to talk to me when I first arrived. But I could talk to them. Every topic of conversation was unusual, especially when begun right in the middle of an idea or sentence, as if we have usurped all of the boring small talk and run right past those confessional bits of early friendship where you tell your traumas and gotten right to the fun stuff.

I had been to these mountains on one previous instance to visit the same friend, who works in the Visitor’s Center, glorified by the Appalachian through-hikers lugging massive backpacks who sleep in the basement underneath the big cafeteria with stained glass and large painted images hung up by the rafters of the small huts that are reachable by foot alone among the mountains. It was only on my second night there that I discovered this basement space, where sleep-bags were set up not by decree or rule but necessity and they kept to themselves on the benches, each with their own unchosen version of bushy hair styles and dirty skin. It recalled visions of my early childhood in Brooklyn. Once a man begged for help ‘monetarily’. Asking my father what that meant, he told me, “You see, intelligence has nothing to do with it,” meaning that you can be smart and still end up poor. To him, there could be no other success besides monetary, and his life of great worldwide travels was only sufficient because it is how things turned out, despite more being possible. The through-hikers were successful, and not in a monetary way. My friend later told me the list of expenses that it takes to do the friendly-termed ‘AT’. Whew, boy, this too was America. The surrounding cabins in the Notch campground were built in an extravagant art deco, with a fine-crafted wood, and when I was lonely and wandering through the grounds once went inside one of the visitor’s cabins to find furs and maps and rugs that would be the child adventurer’s dream. The rooms cost something like one hundred dollars per person each night. The bus ride up was about a hundred round trip. There was no chance I would be sleeping anywhere besides one of the Croo cabins, uncleaned in eternity and crowded.

There is inherent loneliness in the mountains. I recall this fact of my previous stay in my first moments back on the grounds, whirlwind sky fading to darkness. There is no one to meet me except the frogs and crickets. And that sky. I hesitate with the idea that there is anything inherent or natural at all, but there is a quality of loneliness in everything— one might argue that everything is inherent because it exists. The loneliness is absolutely related to alone-ness. This would be a pervasive feeling the whole trip. Often by the Crystal Cascades, just a ten-minute walk from the Croo cabin, I could find myself completely surrounded by rushing water—

I, in an old black rundown suit with pants that have crotch-holes to hike with, and stopping by roots to look at the lush ancient moss, among families and couples in polyester hiking gear doing a too-short hike or not in the present and focused on a future mountain, found that old lonely feeling that invades me everywhere.

Your actions are not so wise as your thoughts.

Let your hand reach up to heaven and your personality follow.

Haiku— being asleep on a train is the same as writing—

There’s a depression; I’m what comes after it—

And on the train in the city right after the trip, I sound like I am hitting on some guy when I am only interested in meeting more people, and when I ask: “What’s the dream?” and get ignored— it recalls the silent coach bus ride in the early evening to see a friend of mine. It was unremarkable and too long; I was thinking of William F. Buckley Jr.’s “Why Don’t We Complain?” when we stopped for thirty minutes at a station in the middle of nowhere, but just as much swore off the idea of complaining anyway. I had just remembered the logic derived a few months ago from a conversation with another dear friend Max— cherub of curiosity and master of meeting; I’ve loved his sister— when I declared that everything I am upset or anxious or annoyed at is all because of discomfort. It is this discomfort that leads to these negative reactions. I need the discomfort, and to tune into it rather than drop out of it because it makes me experience that negative emotion. Although I had been there before, it made me absurdly nervous to return and I almost did not because of my discomfort.

No circumstances demanded my being there, and the thought of sleeping pillow and blanket-less on a dry cot before waking up to ten-mile mountain trudges resembles nothing of a vacation for most of America. Was I looking for America? No— just a friend. He was already there, working front desk with an immaculate knowledge of the trails. We had met in college where our sociality was stunted by hard-line coronavirus school policies  (once I was in a girl’s room with five people in it and we were given probation because it was one more person than allowed— just five!) and we quickly decided to embark on a grand Lit Test which we named retroactively for the endless series of ritualistic elements that developed— this being a bad pun on the pH level test and schoolwork, and getting plain old soused— being especially true after we started the walks going on the nearest railroad tracks in Boston while getting as obliterated on weed, wine, and beer as we could and somehow still maintaining ourselves. There was something about the action of the walk itself— burning the high off just enough to function but substanced enough to fly— that received us as travelers who find the journey to be the answer within itself. The best moments found us seated on logs with a joint and wine to share, waiting to witness the force of a full-speed commuter rail pass us, or running down a short hill, wine spilling across my shirt, and speaking great thoughts to be forgotten later as their weight was only in saying them. The walks became tradition-heavy and more important to us and we expanded the substances and lengths we would take. On this previous final semester of our college lives— marred by constant protests on Israel— we ended up doing twenty miles one day, on a loop walk to Waltham along the foundation of the Charles River, and a week later another near-twenty out to a cookout with a lovely young couple— a Newton janitor and his one-day wife the animal behaviorist and gorgeous mother-of-all at the party. It was only near the end of our time in college that we recognized our simultaneous need to include others on the walk, not because we were sick of each other, but that it could only increase the sense of adventure. So too then did we have a comfortability in being uncomfortable together. A traditional and straightforward person, and of his word— even his mulleted, Jew-curl hair and Dharma Bum goatee mask nothing of this essence.

Somewhere, I heard my name called but I paid it no mind. That swirling sky again, what was I just thinking of? I couldn’t see anyone and no one was there. The glass visitor’s center greeted me with a reflection of the looming mountains all around. My friend appeared with an unknown man walking along the highway back towards the Notch. Ben! Back? What a funny place to start, I told him. He handed me some terrible mix of whiskey and soda.— Ah, that’s right I can’t stand cola. The man was the new chef at the kitchen and I offered up a joint that they gladly received on the dock among the misty ponds that I would return to the following night under different circumstances. The chef told me about how he came to the area from Indiana and, after a variety of skiing-related jobs, he found this one online, the latter point of which I would find commonplace among the Croo. He was not a young man, but his energy struck me as quick to learn and to come and go. We saw something moving in the bog and the chef pointed out that he thought is was a beaver, which we confirmed when it approached us and welcomed me to the Notch.

The cafeteria was closed, but being with the chef certainly gave us some standing to sneak in. He opened the walk-in freezer and let us delicately peel back the plastic wrap-covered industrial containers of cooked steak tips, leftovers from the night’s meal. Ah, fond memories of eating the patron’s leftovers from the previous trip, solid and hearty. It was just as good this time around. We bid the chef a goodnight and a great thanks, and talked on the long cafeteria benches with our food about what was going on since we last saw each other. There was not a lot that we did not already know. No love pursuits for him and nothing to work on besides work itself. We walked silently among the crickets to his cabin, Hutton (one of two), where the lights were down and everyone was already asleep. This surprised me to compare to the previous year, where nightly parties at least went until after midnight. Here we were, among the big couches and TV, the stack of dishes and stack of beer cans in the recycling bin. Little had changed except the people, I thought. There must be something here with all of those cans. It all came back to me when I looked down the long hallway with the Croo rooms, sleeping four per, and those old hotel wood panels lining the walls. And that porch. We’ll get to that later. He went to sleep almost instantly and I sat up for another hour, thinking about what I had done to get here.

The Fourth of July, my first full-length day in the mountains, was marked by a pleasant hum hike for a couple of hours through the Great Gulf Wilderness with my friend. It was early and I was tired from my normal sleep schedule of six to noon being shaken up by an eight o’clock wake up time. The previous night of my arrival was not a late night but I could barely sleep in the most comfortable of beds at the time, let alone prison-style bunks.

There were certainly wake-up up moments that Independence Day where my body asked for more water and rest, of which I was in no position to give. My stomach was unreliable as usual and our journey came to a close with a short suspension bridge that overlooked a glittering stream.

We returned to the Notch to make his midday work shift in time, but not before a quick swim in the dam. It remains the worst kept secret among the Croo, but most critical to be kept secret from the visitors. The water was as cold as remembered and incited my vision—

The reflection of rocks in the dam—

spinning wheels on a highway

This being in the vein of connection as Ezra Pound had of Time Ephemeral, the new-metro old-face old-petals, train-and-bough equivalence tearing down belief that what is Human is not Nature. It helped that I could still hear the sound of the state highway in the adjacent woods.

The great loneliness set in, of course, when I was alone. Wandering the grounds of the Notch, I found myself without many thoughts— I can recognize this as valuable, even encouraged, in a vacation, but it was difficult to maintain contentment and I was in a rut. Being alone is never a solution for me. I won’t die, I thought, but I won’t live here either. I sat on a lacquered-wood stump and attempted to read a Henry Miller about traveling on the edge of World War II and it all felt so aimless, not acting with conviction or by choice. I was not interacting or relaxing or anything else my head demanded I achieve with others.

I went through the day as a hazy observer. I took dinner alone when usually it was eaten with the Croo on the front porch of the Visitor’s Center. I could see a few obvious Croo members who I had not met, and had no introductory means to do so. I walked around the campus in aimless loops only witnessing and saying nothing, reading signs that told me “Keep Door Closed; Bear Sightings”. There were many paths to follow, including one with an Indigenous name in some language but with English letters. But I did not take anything and returned to the cabin. Especially for a holiday, the grounds seemed void of human life. The Hutton cabin living room was still empty although I was standing in it, which is completely a drag of a way to think. I was thinking of the previous year when we partied a couple nights and I riled everyone up for a big bash and got hit on by Isla and had an emotional happy rollercoaster enough to satisfy. Now the lights were off, and evidence of previous events was here by the cans overflowing in the recycling bin. But where was everybody?

So in a moment when army-head basketball shorts Thomas and Turquoise rings ex-rich-wife Heather ages thirtytofiftywhoknowswhat I can hear them saying each other’s names down the long hallway until they appear giggling in the living room grabbing not-theirs cheap whisky from the fridge, not seeming to notice me at all until they turn to leave and Heather turns back as if to say a name but says “his friend?” And I say yes so that is deal enough for her to invite me to play darts and dice, and I am expecting two old pros and old friends playing craps on this, the loneliest Fourth of July. They bring me to Admin, the other Croo cabin, into a small living room with unpainted wood panel walls and what happened to us was at least wild drunkenness where Thomas attempts an explanation over and over of darts as Heather and I crack jokes and I beat him each round laughing when he sighs and it is obvious they are getting to know each other and I am in the way. We have the normal conversations of drunkards where Thomas asks if my friend and I are gay and I say HaH! No, and not with him at least, but Heather’s eye twinkles when I sit on her left after the dart game and says how she can see why we are friends, which is essentially sweet-meaning and I took it any which way I needed to.

When we are alone, as Thomas steps out to gather more drinks, she asks if I am Jewish which I answer and she describes how she has seen the Southern army-dropout kid Mike, who joined just a few days before I got there, muttering to himself in German. She wants me to make a connection— I reject the premise smiling— “I’ve talked to him and he is odd, but means well.”— “He is very simple,” she says. I can tell her disdain, and I can tell there are many people she has a problem with. There is an immediate distance that I do not let show. I will not fully explain myself to her.

I often ask people what the best thing that happened in their week is— “You can lie, I wouldn’t know…” with a grin— there is a string of premeditative questions that make not knowing what to say easier. Most people laugh and say something like hey, what a good question. Thomas paused for a moment and then stood up and blew up. He muttered something in Arabic and then yelled about how we have never killed anybody before promptly apologizing and scooping up as many hard seltzers as he could grab and heading for the door. Heather and I, unmoved, told him that it was fine and if he wanted to stay he could. The instant the door closed, Heather’s face of kindness towards him turned to deviance. “That was so rude.” “Yes, it was…but that is OK. I am more sad for him than anything else.” “He was just trying to fuck me and I wasn’t going to,”— the latter part is hardly true, I thought— “I brought you so he would get the message, but he was just jealous.” I see her beginning to ramble or spiral and the cracks in the wood panels fill with anger so I give a toothy smile. “Well shall we keep playing?” I was not going to let her bring me back to the drag. She shuffled the cards after seeing me botch a fold. Her (recently) ex-husband worked in a casino, she told me. It was a sore subject.

Everyone who works here is broken except my friend who truly loves the mountains and maybe wants to fix the people there. Thank God I am only visiting. He comes in and we play a couple rounds of poker before another girl comes in because she heard us in there and asks if we want to go smoke on the porch. Ah, so there are others.

A porch is a privileged thing and for the Croo, is the general meeting point. More on this later. Cannabis is not legal in the state but it is integral to the lives of the Croo. Many bookend their workdays with smoking, and many as daily habits. I felt lonely in the mountains— I don’t believe this to be my own. A certain spice may be necessary for comfortability in such an uncomfortable environment.

After a smoke and spree where Heather downed half of a Rufino bottle, my friend decided it was time for a Beaver Hunt. Sometimes the right people have to move to the right place and it is a good high school excuse that establishes a closer specific connection. No, we were not hunting for beavers— but rather more in-depth conversation that we could not get on the porch. We were Heather’s crutches of sight and movement. We three stumbled across the state highway to the small boardwalk trail I visited the previous night with the chef, above a series of ever-misted ponds. My friend asked her about what happened tonight and I felt again back in school (middle school even) with the amount of drama at this place. She mentioned both Thomas’ confusing response and warned Ben about the sympathizer, repeating what she said to me about Mike’s German-speaking. I began to dissociate from the conversation and enter a celestial vortex. I was under the most stars I had ever seen above me, and I recognized their eternity above me. The sky had a multidimensional aspect, as if I was among the stars instead of beyond them. I briefly shed my earthly ties, and the shape formed around me was not of a comprehensible or variant constellation but an everlasting polyhedron of infinite sides, and of light and dark alike, that did not go around me but through me. In that moment, I ceased to be lonely by myself and was lonely as a star unto myself.

I was brought back from myself by Heather’s commentary on the constellations, speaking with a deep sense of familiarity— Showing my friend Oh-ree-on’s belt— “Easy to see,” I said. “Look at how equidistant those three are.” Heather got started talking about the stars again, and somehow began at mumbling lengths about her Native American ancestry.

I smiled. “Ah then I am wolf.” She seemed confused. “Trickster God.” She grinned that bucktooth smile and gasped, asking how I know of these things. I copied her toothy smile and sighed dramatically, “I read!” and shook my head around as a wolf. Heather the spider and I the wolf are the Trickster Gods and are one with Orion’s Belt, as well as the eternal polyhedron of the heavens, and we must never cease to remember that it is all of us, and no one is excluded. Even a skinhead.

We did not see any beavers that night. We were collapsed on the boardwalk, and when my friend laid out straight, propping his head up on the ledge, Heather rested her head on him. She— at least double his age— leaned back on his chest and he turned on an obscure German prog-rock band from the early 70s that I first experienced on a Lit Test among the train tracks. I was bored of the conversation so I left the boardwalk, and after a few minutes they began to search for me. I could see one of them turn on their phone flashlight and their voices travelled over the pond. They called for me. I stood still on the edge of the highway and did not answer. They eventually came up from the water and we carried Heather back across the highway. At the end of the night, as we dropped her off back in Admin, she would ask him to come into her room and questioned if he thought she was beautiful. He said he would be honest and that he was not attracted to her, but yes, he said, you are beautiful.

We were hungover (duh!) when we planned to hike the largest mountain in the range, a fourthousandsomethingfoot elevation gain. I thought I was not going to make it. I was not conceding with death on the rocky ravine path— I may choose how I die, or it may be random; once Max, among friends, told us how he was depicting his methadone patients’ deaths to them— they were astounded and regarded it as prophecy— so tried to tell me mine, stating “you’ll be alone…” “I didn’t ask,” I interjected. “So don’t subject me to it.”

He stopped and took my words fairly. As much as I have seen that the path to letting go is to make only decisions for myself and not impose on others, some things are beyond control even for myself. Then you still let go.

I was not in touch with my legs as we ascended the ravine. It was a classic mountain path, where rocks jut out like steps to climb by hand and foot. Maybe some of it was already there. It is clear the trail club put a lot of effort here. Clockwork French-Canadians passed us in too-much gear at various junctions when we needed to sit and collect our conscious, before the next group would come and their kids and a run-away white dog chased us up the ravine. At the first plateau— where you can see the tendrils of fog just beginning to spiral up the initial summit of the mountain— we met a group of similar age kids who gave us sunflower seeds which came as a slight blessing to our hungers (we had forgotten food), so we graciously paused and talked about New York where one of them went to school, and I mentioned Dr. Carl Hart— I hope he looks it up— and when we continue I am reminded of the hangover when after a night of drinking absinthe at a friend’s house where we rose in ecstasy of music and creation and then wake up and first take mushrooms in water and put paper and books around her apartment and find we cannot do any of these things we believed were productive and when I saw Harry Smith’s shroomface on the cover of a photo book I ran outside to a rainbow road, grass breathing, and throwing up orange as the birds jeer above for being in their private space, not afraid or imagining false reality, just overwhelmed by the idea of my health. In the comedown, we sleep together, which is never a great choice for two close friends, and in the aftermath I think of all these messages I got out of it when really the need for health is (not a message at all) the simple outcome.

There was a similar force to these experiences, and a desire for health afterwards— we continued with our pauses to let guests coming down the mountain pass us, and although they were involuntary pauses due to our unhinged state and the path being steep and narrow, we were able to take in the beautiful scenery. Flowers were just beginning although it was already early summer, and the ones that bloomed were rugged and reminded me of someone like Derek or Thomas back at homebase, who have no choice but to be up here and grow.

We made it to the edge of the alpine zone where the flowers and bushes begin to disappear after the tall trees already ended some hundreds of feet of elevation before, and with no dirt on the ground, when we stopped to sit, we leaned back onto stones. Despite a fit of aches, I still went beyond myself to see past the cliff into the grand ravine below:

Fog rolling over the cliff-faces—

chicken bones into hot soup

On our last legs we ascended past the rocky crags and arrived at a hut where we were greeted by a wild Croo of orgiastic siblings, Ben and I first spotted in the foothills of the cabin gathered by one of the reflective ponds that surround the hut, playing janky Celtic flute waltzes and giggling as we shout to them that we like the noise, before they all join in together to cook dinner in big batches for the near one-hundred guests staying showerless in bunk beds, in the large wood cabin on the edge of the mountain. Waiting to eat again lead a lonely series of moments. A Croo member showed us our room, which was some corner of the attic with two cots and old wool blankets around boxes of costumes and food supplies. Ben dozed off instantly as usual, leaving me alone as the Croo maintained their work positions in the kitchen, singing chants that marked some ritual for them. And even with a borrowed Spanish guitar, sat by a cliffside of green grass and a drainage pipe— looking over dozens of miles north, and with the shimmering series of lakes behind me—I played only sad chords that all of the workers and incoming hikers notice, considered, and still passed by. Dinner came soon, but as per usual, was first served to the paying guests. Even the Croo had to wait. And while the guests sat in the main dining room, the Croo hung on and around the industrial metal kitchen prep-desks, eating mashed from big pots and still preparing the visitors’ endless portions. We followed some Croo members who finished their work outside to near where I had played guitar an hour earlier. Wandering around the boulders that dot the landscape, close enough for the conversation but clearly out of it, I saw a figure approaching that I knew immediately in one of the late-arrival groups. I heard whispers that there were two groups coming late and figured this must be usual up here. I whispered to my friend that I know someone and he was shocked, as was the rest of the Croo when I shook hands with an old teammate of mine from the soccer travel team I played with in Brooklyn. Asking how he ended up here, his response was the same as everyone else: just looked it up. We didn’t talk much as we never have, but even his Brooklyn blue-eyed presence gave another hint at the magical reality of the place. We sat together underneath the wooden beam structures of the cafeteria, where the windows were massive and the mother-chef-of-it-all announced lights out some ungodly early time for me say nine o’clock.

Ben and I snuck outside and went to a bench that faced the short stack of mountains that we had climbed just before dinner— We each took edibles and hopped up and back on some of the presidential mountains and I was dying but because it was all so new it could only be like death— and we took them again as it grew dark after lights off and we are in a vortex again. A light shines behind us right away, and sparse groups descended the planar rock formations that make up the foothills to the ponds. We had heard someone was injured and was coming back late. I thought they had meant my Brooklyn friend’s group, but it looked more serious than expected. They came slowly. Ben was calm and told me we should wait and not go out to them. If there are guides with them, they would know what they were doing. And we spoke about the day and it was dark and the lights from the group grew closer. The air was misty and the group huddled together and held up a limping man. Ben and I approached the front door but none of us spoke. They shuffled out of the mist and into the cold wood of the cabin.

We did not return to the bench, instead hopping down the side of the building and squeezing into a crevice on a semi-steep cliffside where we would step off the mountain if we stood up and stepped forward. We laid there, by the back door where all hundred guests were sleeping under their wool blankets provided at the end of their long days on a cot— real and hearty— well, Ben and I were going to sleep among the rats in the attic who were tough enough to survive generations up there. And we leaned back into darkness and begin to each other about our dreams of recent and we see light in the distance. We sat up and saw into many towns, noticeable in small patches of light, scattered across the landscape. In one town’s airspace, an explosion goes off. It starts with red and then vanishes into a bright green, and we gawk and call out expletives. “Fireworks?” It was a day late. We laughed and both said we were thinking that. What was more substantial was that after the moment where one town let off fireworks, another began and then another, and soon, across the landscape of hills and small towns in between, the air was filled by patches of light above the towns themselves, as if the towns were reflecting their light into the air. The light travelled, but the sound did not, and the balls of light floated above the towns, but below us in space.

And it was silly because it was fireworks but I was having trouble shaking off the notion that we were experiencing space warping around us. When looking out at skyspace of warped dimensionality, and the above and below of it all was staggering. Ben and I were only in another dimension in our minds but I was feeling the warped essence of space and time. It was trippy and we both said we were glad to see it rather than not. There was something otherworldly but truly Human about this moment. This was the Human firework and the Human lodging and even the mountain trails were by Us. But we did not define the dimensionality. And though we have commanded airspace, there is a key secret as to its origination. No matter what we achieve, we have much less time than our achievements to be ourselves. And as we continue to project into the future, we continue to leave no time for our abilities or achievements to settle— no room for stagnation and full being. Yes, the mountains were not always like this and they are changing, but they have been this way for longer than any stage of humanity or its formation— change may be an answer, but quick molecular change is dangerous without time to let it be. We must stay human for as long as we can, to ascertain our next stage of evolution be well prepared for. And yet again, all the change was simply of air. The fireworks were there and then gone, and nothing of the fundamentals had changed. We kept laughing about the fireworks arriving late, and that was all we needed. Maybe they had extras or maybe it was always that way for the people who missed it at first. I never enjoyed fireworks so much, and it was even more perfect that both of us missed them the day before and saw them now. It had been a decade since seeing this person who arrived suddenly. It didn’t matter if we were ever great friends or have changed as people, it was just fantastic to see him. I may never see him again.

In the morning, I sat on a long bench in the cafeteria, starving, looking out of those windows— so high up you could only see blue sky where the fireworks had been the night before and everyone is eating in their sweat-tech hiking gear, meanwhile I’m in the same outfit as yesterday— Roman pillar white button-down white pants white everything, all Lake Jesus and they all eat as if I do not eat. Ben comes down to join me and reminds me we are there to see a show, which I do not understand until some Croo members come out from the kitchen and announce it is time for the daily show. The cherubish Brit girl pretends to sweep around the aisles, and one of the Croo members introduces her as Dorothy— Ben was waiting for this all week— “Time for the BFD!” The eating clanks and chomps settle down, and the kids in attendance giggle and look on at the surprise. First she finds the shedding scarecrow, dropping trash along the trail, followed by the tin man who goes off-trail and stomps on the plants, and finally the lion who is too scared to tip. The audience— now fully transformed from hikers and tourists— laughs and applauds in stride, and shouts in excitement when a voice calls down as the ‘Wizard of Obs’ (he weaves in an explanation about the Observatory at the top of the mountain being his domain). “I am just dropping in.” Tom says, hanging upside down — resident comedian, and likely gigolo for the ones that aren’t gay (despite my friend saying that it is “absolutely criminal” to commit Croo’cest)— in a fluffy crown, from the hole that goes right through the cafeteria ceiling to the attic. To the crowd it seemed magical, but Ben and I had slept next to that hole and the costumes, and so was amused at our behind-the-scenes knowledge. He announced solutions for these problems: providing the scarecrow a bag to keep his trash, the tin man a trail map to find his way, and the lion a blanket, to demonstrate how to fold the blankets they provided for you overnight. Reminder to tip your workers and then it’s all done. All that for a blanket folding demonstration. Ah, the BFD! That’s all it means and definitely nothing else. The guests left after a quick ceremony for the two that completed the hut activity book, a little girl of five and my old soccer buddy, who was absolutely thrilled to receive a special trail patch, hanging the cardboard medal around his neck like an Olympic gold, to the immense humor of the older crowd he was leading on the trail.

Once again, we ate leftovers last, and so missed the sunny skies of the early morning and went out into a torrential downpour, back up over the reflective ponds now occluded by mist. Just below the ridge of the tallest point in the range, we wandered up through something of a moonscape, around big white rocks that you could hop between as the only walkable ground. There was no dirt, and very little plant life. But the fog added a great sense of seclusion, and there were points when Ben wandered some twenty feet in front of me and completely disappeared into the mist. We eventually returned to the spot where I had the image of fog rolling over the mountains, and it gave me a strong sense of completion, as I was sure I could make it the rest of the way. We went back over the windy Lion’s Head, a crooked ridge that eventually turned into boulders to hop down onto each of them, where the rain stopped and we followed the temporary stream down. We made it back with little strife in about half of the time it took to go up.

Back at Hutton, we sat in our wet shoes for a long time and indulged in weed on the porch. Across from the porch and the long parking lot lies another balcony on the second floor of Admin, set in front of the great mountain we had just come down on. True son of New Hampshire Derek was describing how he tried to hitchhike up to Gorham and kept missing and a redneck woman hanging out of the sunroof of a car flashes him and he flows into the sex appeal of redneck women…

“Oh yah know,” so New Hampshire he sounds Canadian, “when ya see those liddle shorts.” He gives a grin with his liddle teeth and red face almost the color of his school-shooter haircut and leprechaun-point beard. He shifts his camouflage trucker hat. “So many girls at the fair.” Everyone is smoking something on the porch.

A few girls come out onto the Admin porch, which I didn’t even know was accessible to people, and yell over that it is someone’s birthday.— “You want to smoke?”— My friend is never one to turn that offer down and Derek’s comments have revved me up so I follow. We go and chat with these girls in between hits, doing the normal introductions, and little Addie is the sexiest person to ever describe spiderwebs in those liddle shorts and her mountain-tan skin and they are a handful of giddy girls excited at new people, so they ask us to take one of Hutton’s benches that no one uses it and we bring it to Admin porch full of massive translucent dormant spiders in spiral firework webs— the girls want to go swimming which excites me but brings great fear; my shoes are wet is the minorly valid excuse. But excuses are odious and it is the fear. I remember again the framework on comfort and see my lust related to discomfort and so is speaking to anyone— Ha! I speak as my chosen life and I have always spoken— what now brings me to fear it? There are fifty people who work here— there are pretty great odds of getting along— why be the one out of fifty drag?

I sat alone in the living room, trying to write out my experience thus far. My friend had just gone out to go swimming with the girls and it started to rain. I pictured them dancing in the rain, and the thrilling presence of young women in the wet and the trembles of the new mountain water. Besides by ascertaining ideas of the necessity for discomfort, nothing else came to mind, and I could barely write about any recent experiences. Mike entered the room from the porch, where he had stayed with Derek and Alex, probably still on those redneck girls, yapping to no one in particular about chili, and how he finally got his Walmart beef and onions. We mostly paid each other no mind, except for brief exchanges, and he began chopping. He had headphones on and was mumbling something in that true Southern voice, almost Cajun, and bouncing his head. It sounded like just about another language. But I could hear it through the headphones. Sure as all hell, the ‘simple’ and ‘dangerous’ kid was just listening to his good old American country music.