Feeling Squamish
by Deborah Stoloff
I stand tentatively on ice covered rocks at an elevation of almost 1,300 feet. Wind whips my hood off my head and the air is too cold for tears. After three days on the couch sobbing and unshowered, this outlook onto barren Squam Lake pushes feelings of sadness away. I am in awe of both nature and what I have just accomplished. I climbed Rattlesnake Mountain in winter and, in this moment, have left grief behind. I am brave.
Standing upright and staying warm takes concentration in this wind. However, with effort this is easy. To really see what happens when clouds give way to the sun, in this moment, is challenging. I force myself to look up and then out. Squam Lake from Rattlesnake Mountain is illuminated in leafless winter and is beautiful.
Cold air hurts my lungs but I exhale as slowly as this wind will allow. I have seen this view many times before but never in winter. I see a few people summit that I passed on the icy trail. They seek a spot far from me. Winter hikers do not speak. We follow an unwritten rule of giving each other separate space. We are in solitude but united. I am not lonely because they are nearby.
My father died before this holiday season. I recall him laughing and saying, “I have no idea how you got your love of the outdoors. Certainly not from me.” My Bronx-raised father enjoyed his Cape Cod and Florida life from the porch or an easy chair in the living room. He was a transplanted New England snow bird with a New York accent. A couple of months before he passed he went on a cruise to Alaska that he loved. He told me of incredible beauty and said I need to go to Alaska too.
I will some day. But now I am not too far from home, on top of a gorgeous part of the world, and looking out at my favorite lake. Here I have a history.
Here is where I kayaked to an island and set up camp with my new husband. The next day an unexpected rain storm sent us kayaking to the nearest dock. We entered an unlocked house to escape lightning. A man walked in and nodded hello. We explained why we were in his home. He smiled, sat in a chair to read his newspaper, and left us alone.
Here is where I ended up after journeying with my month-old baby girl when I reached my saturation point of being housebound in early motherhood. I swam in Squam Lake for a nervous couple of minutes and she snoozed in her car seat on a dock. I remember the water felt glorious on my skin and for the first time in weeks I had me to
myself.
Another time, feeling ‘Squamish,’ I went to the lake with my friend Marion who is now an expat in Canada. She, too, loves this quiet New Hampshire lake. She is far away now but my memory brings her briefly back to me, while I breathe in this cold air.
I take one last look at the cloud-filled sky and this icy mountaintop, and turn back to descend. I was hot from the climb when I reached the summit but now I am shivering. On the way up I had chosen to walk quickly on the ice covered trail and had fallen a few times. On the way down I will choose the snow on the side of the trail because I want to feel safe. I will hear the crunch of this snow under my boots. And I begin to see the truth. I am lucky to be able to move, to climb, and to breathe in this frigid mountain air.
With eyes briefly closed I visualize the warm New Hampshire inn to which I will return. I see further into my home. My couch days are used up. Before reaching the trail I bend down, make a snowball and hurl it behind me in the direction of Squam Lake.
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