(If you look in the lower left-hand corner of the picture,
you'll see me and Len posed to provide some scale.)
This day my companion you have chosen a path of greater wisdom.
You neglect not the inheritance of homo sapiens,
The abundant grey matter that crafts numberless tools from the rawness of the earth,
The accumulated wealth of experiments trials and errors
Until with the ease and swiftness of a vast herd of horses
We may travel this mountain from its foot to its crown
Conquering in the space of one brief nap the ascent that before
Consumed of us many hours and much labor.
(Do you then ask of me what goodness we find in our daily perambulations?
Should we not quickly upon wheels of mineral and sap advance each morn to our destination?
Nay, this question is foolishness, for the destination you imagine is no purpose
But only a point in the compass of the pack's knowledge.
For we traverse the ground upon our paws to know its smells and its sights
To trace the history of other packs as they have followed this path
And to know if they are good to avoid, good to meet in fellowship,
Or good to chase and growl upon.
In the grasses and the sod of our quartering, accident may bring unto us
Rich odors erstwhile unknown--for in other wilderness have we not discovered
The droppings of large hoofed hinds or small canines who are our cousins?
Therein we enlarge the territory of our mind.)
So my companion I offer my praise for this ascent and for this walk it allows unto us.
Oh for this here is a wondrous confluence of condensation and suspension
That makes the atmosphere all about us as a cooling bath.
Yea, tho' we tread the sharpened edge of the earth's incisor
Several hundreds of rods above the vast salted water of our home
Towering even above the broad valleys whose roads we traveled only this forenoon,
All is hidden now from us in this curtain of moisture.
Tho' the heat of the sun could parch and again weaken us
Yet these mists caress and protect us
So dense that even should a pack of fogdogs come to walk with us,
Letting us to see with our eyes the territory below
Allowing the sun in gentleness to warm the furless hide of humans
Doubt not that it is a righteous place for your canine companions--
See upon the very pinnacle of the summit of the mountain of mansfield
This cooling and murky pool
In it I shall make my bath taking unto my coat its good water
And anointing it also with my water, the mark of Frida.
Exegesis and Commentary
Yes, we drove around Mt. Mansfield, through Stowe, and up the road that meets the Long Trail. It is still necessary to hike a bit of a ways from the parking lot to the summit, tho' as Frida here reminds us, the summit in and of itself is a meaningless goal. But of course that pool of water that was, literally, only a yard or so from the summit marker, gave her considerable satisfaction. And she did pee in it, only I didn't get a picture of that.
Our trek the day before had been on the Sunset Ridge Trail (which I think we misidentified in a previous post as the Crescent Ridge Trail), and here we found the sign for where it meets up with the Long Trail. After Len's report on the intervening bit, I'm glad we didn't try to hike it all the way with the dogs.
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