There’s been a lot of rain around us lately, but we managed to slip in a hike to Holyoke’s Mt. Tom over the weekend. Not one of southern New England’s most stunning peaks by far, it affords a nice challenging four-mile-plus round trip to the top and back. It’s very steep to start out, with lots of stairs to climb, and then becomes more merciful higher up. Even still, at the peak, there’s a fair bit of climbing around some tight spots through the big rocks up there, and a freaky chunk of the trail that hugs the side of a cliff.
Such cliff-spots, naturally, were just the spot for my daughter to settle down and eat or whatever she was doing.
I didn’t mind the cliffs so much when they were dry. It’s when it started to rain that I began to wonder about the wisdom of continuing along the cliff path. By the time I had returned to the spot pictured, the rain was coming down in a steady shower, and everything was soaked. River had gone on ahead with two of the boys; Britt was somewhere ahead of me (she had ducked off to a cliff to enjoy the view for a few minutes), but I was worried she was lost; and Colin was way behind me with his two boys and my daughter, getting distracted by every small possibly-entertaining thing they could find. I think they spent 15 minutes just gazing into the thick cloud cover to catch glimpses of the Blue Angels, who were doing an air show that day nearby, breaking the sound barrier and doing various close-formation aerobatics. The view was horrible, but the sounds were amazing.
We finally made it out of the woods quite soaked, and intact, and pretty much all grinning, and worst of all, totally mosquito-bitten. Parts of the hike were relatively tolerable but most of the way—since the very air was itself a swamp—we were swatting and slapping and doing the family-friendly version of cursing. Much bug spray was used, until it more or less ran out (sorry Colin and Britt).
At least we remembered to bring snacks and some water this time. Last hike we did with Colin, we realized we needed lunch and we had only brought a few munchies. He kindly shared egg salad sandwiches with us that day. This latest hike, it was water we didn’t really bring enough of, and we lacked a backpack for carrying our food. We had come straight from a Bahá’í study group in Holyoke, and we barely remembered to bring the necessary materials for that; we felt we had accomplished something major just by showing up on time for the hike and with any food in our bellies. After seeing our embarrassingly goofy rucksack fashioned out of found synthetic rope and a small nylon zipper bag—the only stuff resembling a pack we could find in our vehicle, which is often a treasure trove of interesting left-behind stuff—Colin graciously offered (via Britt’s suggestion) to stash our food in his pack, which I do believe we weighed down a touch.
