Princess Mountain
Twenty years ago, yours truly, her Royal Highness the Princepessa Alicia, didn’t do mountains. Hiking up mountains involves commitment to an activity, for maybe even...
Twenty years ago, yours truly, her Royal Highness the Princepessa Alicia, didn’t do mountains. Hiking up mountains involves commitment to an activity, for maybe even a few hours, that may be challenging and bugs, sweating and therefore bad hair, bad fashion, lugging – no. Maybe this is why Hashem chose this setting to have an audience with the princess.
My girlfriend Michelle and I were visiting her family home in Northern Maine, on the coast, and ventured inland to Baxter State Park for a little hike, one she, “… used to do with her Grandma.” That’s a quote for the ages. I clearly recall the fantasy I had conjured up, how it would go for the princess. Spring breeze through fluttering green leaves. Puffy white clouds that peak through the canopy, only temporarily interfering with the sunshine. And the path, the path would be curvy and meander, and the ups and downs would be only slightly more extreme than those one would find on a golf course. And the moss and the chipmunks and the picnic, then a dash back to the coast in time for a late supper.
Since we’re indulging in infantile fantasy, imagine Hashem sitting on the edge of his throne looking down and rubbing His hands together, grinning, surrounded by whomever He hangs out with, pointing at moi, as if to say, “This is going to be good. Let’s get her.”
We started up Mount Katahdin at a path, the name of which rang a bell for Michelle from twenty years earlier. But what does it matter? They all go up, no? About forty-five minutes later I was no longer noticing the fluttering and the chippies and the breeze. Geez this mountain is, like, really rocky. And who put that root there? And can’t people just clear this trail and make it, well, flatter? Michelle was looking too puzzled to listen, “This looks familiar? Yes, this is it. I’m sure, I think. I’m sure these trails all interconnect.”
An hour or two later, we were continuing up and the trees were not fluttering. Well, if they were I couldn’t see them because all I could concentrate on was the sloping field of gravel through which we were clambering, and tripping, and slipping. And the trees were behind us being pelted by the gravel we were launching backwards with every lurch. Apparently Michelle’s Gram-Gram was a sherpa of some sort. That’s when the breakdown occurred, a little humbling reminder that the princess works for someone else.
Hashem is benevolent, this is fact. Because when I started crying for my Mommy, He took that to mean Him, which was a generous interpretation. My fear of heights, which was intense, had kicked in. The sound of gravel tumbling down, the large field of said gravel, and the fact that I kept falling on my face and hands and knees, precipitated a full force panic attack. The world was spinning, I couldn’t breathe, I was clinging to the ground, and I didn’t care who saw me choking and sobbing.
The panic chased the princess away and left the real me, and poor Michelle who was wondering what she had gotten us into. Hashem patted me on the head a little. The world got quiet. I could hear the breeze begin. And as if to say, “OK, now the work can begin. She’s paying attention…” He brought in the troops.
Enter the boy scouts. At about this time a bunch of boys clad in navy with little striped kerchiefs round their necks marched past us, scaling boulders in a really happy, annoying, confident way. Who the heck did they think they were passing a twenty-year-old woman on a trail? Mocking my pain with their sprightly spirit? I was incredulous and mad and I wanted to chase them and make them share my pain. They were going to learn that ‘Katah-din’ is Indian for “Eat my dust, plucky boy scout”.
I got up, and we climbed. And we climbed and hiked and climbed. Until, sound the trumpets, many hours later, 5200 feet later, we had reached the Northern Terminus of the Appalachian trail. Ha! It was tremendous. The trees were so far beneath us they looked like matchsticks. The alpine flora and fauna were breathtaking, beyond any fantasy I could conjure. We lingered and grinned with the rest of the hikers. I was now a hiker. One who hikes. Unreal.
Instead of quitting and high-tailing it for the parking lot, we had forged ahead, and now we were bonafide hikers who had climbed a mountain. I love those words. Of course as this was only the beginning of the de-princessification program Hashem had planned for me, we had not given Him any credit. Which explains why on the way down, in the dark- when one isn’t supposed to be descending the mountain- hours before the end of the trail, I had another panic attack, and cried out again. You see, fellow hikers, one should plan these excursions so that one isn’t trapped in the dark groping down large boulders hanging such that one wrong move would mean falling off the mountain. Remember that.
But remember this too: Hashem breaks us down so that we will cry out to Him for help. He is really in charge. Our fantasies are pure silliness. And sometimes the only way we can really ascend is to descend a little, to lose the pretense and shed some tears.
I am blown away by Hashem’s generosity. As it turns out, I discovered many years later that Katahdin is a serious and challenging mountain that makes a lot of people cry. ‘Accidentally’ we had climbed a mountain experienced hikers find difficult. Discovering this gave me such confidence I became a bit addicted to hiking, which is an activity that transforms the spirit like few others. But I still don’t like boy scouts.
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