LOSING ONLY MY SHIRT ON HUNGER MOUNTAIN
“I was naked and you clothed me…”
Where I flew in New England, the nearest hill begins three miles east of the airport and runs ten miles straight south. Only two formal trails lead through head-high brush and dense canopy forest to the top: a short one for the little peak at our end and a very long one to reach the highest at the other, aptly named Hunger Mountain.
I knew that stony outcrop above the krumholz intimately after soaring close around, and even below it hundreds of times over the years, but had never once been there on foot. (Same as most peaks here in the San Gabriels, I must confess…) This was to be my final autumn back east, so a ceremonial pilgrimage to Hunger Mountain on foot seemed almost a solemn duty, and I made a point of going just as the storybook leaves were beginning to fall, Indian summer after an early frost.
Deep in the woods it was humid as usual, with adiabatic cooling offset by the swell of body heat as I climbed. My shirt was soon soaked in sweat, but I dared not take it off for fear of mosquitoes and those little biting black flies. Best I could do right then was daydream of refreshment in the breeze on top, and continue marching.
Anyone who’s summited a mountain by way of thick woods knows the feeling. You trudge hypnotically one step after the next, watching shards of sky up ahead. Time and again you think you’re almost there, but no, not yet. Only after it seems you’ll never make it, do those shards start mending together and the trail widens, long anticipation rewarded with expanding views and the contented glow of accomplishment.
While each mountaintop is unique, big or small, they all possess degrees of a certain ‘island in the sky’ magic. There’s a subtle but distinct change in (dare I say it?) the noosphere, as that quiet symphony of the land and its denizens yields to a very different hollow whisper roar in the free air above it all, auditory signatures of every highway, mill, and village for miles, attenuated and swirled softly together from all directions in a vast dimensionless SIGH. Of course ambient wind over the peak often drowns that out…
This time though, emerging at the rocky top, the cool breeze I’d been promising myself was absent. It was eerily warmer, even out in the open, than at the trailhead two thousand feet below! That seemed odd, and I promised myself to think about it later. But right there in the moment, dripping sweat, I new very well what to do about it. I looked all around and shouted loud as I could, “Anybody there?” Only the empty sigh… Okay then, as the only human within earshot, it became imperative that I don my birthday suit forthwith, and throw it all down on the highest flat rock.
Ah yes! Satisfying as can be IMHO, embracing even my rumbles of non-metaphoric hunger as integral to the rite… and that’s all it took to conjure the only dust devil I’ve ever been actually part of — while naked on a mountaintop, that is. Not so much dust, as a prickly whirlwind of twigs and sticks and year-old leaves from down between the rocks, sandblasting my birthday suit and vacuuming up all that balmy air in seconds flat.
I grabbed for my shirt as it took flight, but too late; it got away. Mayday! My jeans were somewhat less airworthy, and I luckily snatched one leg mid-launch. Eyes back to the trajectory of that shirt in hopes of… Nah. It did drift back down eventually, so far over the wrong side of the mountain my hide would be a tattered mass of bug bites if I ever found which tree it was caught in.
Meanwhile, well before the sweat had time to dry, an instant wind, much cooler, swept in from all sides. No comment on the spectacle I must have presented during that busy little minute or so; you’ll probably have more fun imagining that for yourself.
Then, jeans back on and tying my shoes, the breeze settled to something like normal, and a lilt of human voices began drifting up from the woods below… As somebody once wrote, timing, sometimes, is everything.
We all had a laugh about how I lost my shirt, though by then it wasn’t so funny, for me. Surely someone had a spare garment in their backpack, but I was too proud to say anything. Fortunately, these hikers were good folk, and one woman pulled from her backpack a rain slicker printed with hearts and flowers, apologizing for its girliness. I said no worries, unless the flowers attract mosquitoes. And when asked where to leave the slicker in the parking lot below, she waved that off. “It was always too small for me anyway.”
It was way too small for me, but did keep some mosquitoes off, and coming down was not as sweaty as going up. Back at the bottom, only one vehicle was parked there besides my own, so I gratefully ran both sleeves of the slicker down over her car’s arial to keep it there until my benefactor returned. Thank goodness for… goodness.
That final season wasn’t quite over yet, and I had several opportunities to soar again over Hunger Mountain. Each remaining flyby, I impulsively searched and searched down the back side for a plaid rag flapping in the top of a then leafless tree. Not for any logical reason, I just couldn’t not look, that’s all.
One thing for sure, from now on whenever I climb a mountain, I’ll make a point of trying to keep my shirt on — and as a prudecaution, my pants too!