By Donald Axinn '51, '89 Doctor of Letters (Honorary)
Photographs by Dennis Curran
Mountain Abraham positions himself boldly,
Sitting like some medieval king
On the eastern horizon, staring out
From the highest ridgeline of the Greens,
The dominant prince among his peaked siblings.
His staunch shoulders carry a head
Wrapped in a sun that offers you
A view of time and perhaps eternity
I knew I'd return to the trails of Abraham.
For many years, from my deck in Weybridge, I've watched it, down in the flats of the Champlain Valley. Memories of freshman year 55 years ago would flood back, images of that first hike and all the others that followed, when we ran up with seemingly unlimited energy, young Greek Olympians.
Abraham has always seemed to beckon, like intoxicating memories of an old love that stay with you beyond the reality that that passion had ended many years earlier. As I've grown older, I have a conscious perception of this mountain as a symbol of stability. In an increasingly complex world, Abraham exists as it always has: independent, unaffected, strong.
One morning last summer, I set out for Abraham, driving over the Otter Creek "clatter" bridge, crossing Route 7, slipping through New Haven Mills, Bristol, and Lincoln, before shooting the Lincoln Gap. I signed in at the Green Mountain Club station in the shadow of the mountain and quickly began my ascent. As the trail greeted me, I thought I heard singing, possibly laughter. Nothing had changed.
There are other magnificent peaks (Camel's Hump, Mansfield, Jay) on the Long Trail, of course, but as I set out for Abraham's summit, the rugged—at times boggy—terrain, seemed to be leading me to the peak, the destination. I recall a fall evening, camping at the Battell Shelter lean-to, two-thirds of the way up the mountain, and how the eloquently designed arc of a charged-up moon rises in the night sky, waiting to play with Venus, its lifelong friend. Or how on a crisp morning at dawn, spectrumed pastels push up from the east, while waiting branches begin to print their lines against the wakening daylight. In winter the landscape is so different; Abraham is blanketed in snow, sensual fluffy feathers softening cracks and filling in corners.
As I picked my way along the trail, my mind became devoid of uncertainty. I no longer thought of the confusion inherent in the modern world. Instead I focused on the moment, on the dips in the trail, the tangled roots, the rock outcroppings. I focused on breathing: inhaling deeply, then expelling, an audible "poof" escaping my lips. A sense of peace permeated with overwhelming substantiality. All was in its proper place. There existed a distinct order; every turn on the trail presented another cathedral, each with its own balance and symmetry.
Taking a moment to sit on the forest floor, leaning against an Eastern white pine, I contemplated the silence and became aware of the shifting nature of time. In the modern world, one is controlled by time, from "the time to get up" to "the time to go to sleep." On the trail, the forces of time are fundamental and vital: light and darkness, warmth and cold. There's no fixed schedule to conform to, no deadlines to meet. John Elder, the College's Stewart Professor of English and Environmental Studies, has commented on the fresh perceptions nature can provide. He'll stop, kneel next to a fallen tree, and explain how it contains more life than it did when it was upright. He'll talk about the inescapable reality of succession, expressed simply in the natural world.
As I climbed higher, I thought of the times I'd flown over the Green Mountains in a hardy 1932 Waco biplane or my Piper Super Cub, a white bush plane. I've spied a series of beaver ponds, and once, on a sun-dappled pond, I spotted a moose standing knee deep in the water, chomping farcically on a batch of lilies. On the ground, absent the bird's-eye view, the woods are layered, but no less serene. Artifice has been stripped away, replaced by instinct. The air seems permeated with spirituality, and I'm reminded of a conversation Frost had with his Ripton neighbor Rabbi Victor Reichert. Frost asked the rabbi if he believed in God. "What do you think, Robert?" Reichert asked in return. "With so many ladders going up everywhere," Frost said, "there must be something for them to lean against."
Approaching the summit, my thoughts returned to our place in this world. Free from the modern "conveniences"—cell phones, laptops, PDAs—that clutter everyday life, I focused on the myriad dangers our natural resources face. If only policy makers could come here, I thought. Even the biggest egos could be humbled by the reality that we are but an infinitesimal part of the landscape.
It was, upon reflection, a message delivered from Abraham.
Donald Axinn '51 is the author of two novels and eight volumes of poetry. He lives inWeybridge,Vermont, andSands Point,New York.