Where earth stretches towards sky in the form of mountain, sky sends rain as welcome and cloud as an embrace. A mountain is where Michelangelo saw the finger of man stretching up to meet the finger of God reaching down. We call this image Creation of Man. It feels perfectly plausible the primordial mist of a mountaintop was where man first cried, first walked, first stood. You feel the elemental essence of mountain and relate to it, feel part of it. As you shake the mist – cloud’s love – from your hair.
The inescapable outcome of mountain’s yearning and cloud’s gift is waterfall. It is the essence of play – dangerous but exhilarating, fun but tumbling out of control. Waterfall, recalling the mist hanging atop mountain, conjures its own micro-mist into reality. In Bierstadt’s Yosemite Valley, waterfall and mist play the starring role, even dominating the drama of granite chasm, bring life to dead rock. The painting’s third main character is light. Light enables mountain, cloud, mist, and waterfall to shine. Though cloud tries to suppress it, mist and waterfall thank the light by sharing their powers of refraction.
All of this is the context of Mt. Moosilauke, gateway to the White Mountains, a towering peak embraced by cloud, glittering in rain, ringed in primordial mist, featuring waterfall. The trail descent follows waterfall closely, sometimes teetering on the edge.
But the day was not all gorgeous and drama. It was ridiculous hard. Steep, rocky climbs totaling over 8000′ elevatiob gain. After leaving behind Moosilauke, the going got no easier. Rarely have I seen such rugged trails, and never continuously for an entire day. The entire trail was a sequence of deep mud pits, rock scrambles, boulder climbs, and creek crossings. Everything hurts, but something felt transcendent for a moment. From the top of Moosilauke, I tried to write down the feeling here.
