Throwing Dreams Into Space

Remembering why we came here, and why we are leaving.

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.” ― Anais Nin

The “Little Giant”, Atticus M. Finch, on Mount Jackson with Mount Washington in the background.

Good morning.

Some news came yesterday, carried across the miles by a text. Things are getting real, possibilities are taking shape. In the last two days, options have become clearer, and life here in Jackson is soon to end. I should be able to announce within days where we’re off to.

My brother asked me if that made our move easier. Yes, of course—well, kind of.

Atticus and I moved from Newburyport, a place that felt very much like home, after 12 richly textured years where my writing life began. We followed the call of mountain trails and four-thousand-foot peaks.

Two new hikers fell head over heels for the White Mountains during our first climb up Mount Garfield. We made that trek with three of my brothers in September 2004. The following summer, Atticus and I returned on many weekends to do all forty-eight four-thousand-foot peaks in eleven weeks. The adventure intoxicated us.

And when we finished those, we did not stop. That winter, we attempted to replicate that feat as woefully ill-equipped newcomers. Hiking all 48 in a single calendar winter was something only a dozen experienced hikers had ever accomplished, along with one dog, a Newfoundland named Brutus.

We fell short of our goal by two hikes. But that only made me want it all the more. We continued hiking in spring, summer, and fall. And then the outrageous happened.

We never know when dreams will move us, when love whispers, “Go for it! I know it’s mad, but you can do this—maybe.”

When our friend Vicki Pearson died, we were extremely close. On her deathbed, she asked me to give her eulogy. I hedged, and she squeezed my hand, letting me know that the thing about deathbed requests is that you cannot turn them down.

However, when Vicki died, her family changed her wishes. The controversial newspaper editor and publisher was pushed aside, while a reputable bank president spoke instead.

Atticus and I skipped the funeral, I’d like to think with Vicki’s blessing, and a feverish idea took hold. We would honor Vicki by doing something no man or dog had ever done—hike each of New Hampshire’s 48 highest peaks twice in one winter. It had been done, but only once, by the accomplished hiker Cathy Goodwin.

Because Vicki died of cancer, we honored her by raising money for the Jimmy Fund and Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

The quest would be even more difficult since we’d attempt it while still living in Newburyport. There were many mornings when we left Newburyport at 3 a.m. to reach a trailhead in zero-degree weather, only to return late at night. There were weekends when we stayed at the Pemi Cabins and hiked three days in a row through snow and ice.

In the end, and you know this from reading Following Atticus, we fell shy by only three hikes.

A person does not undergo those kinds of tests without changing. Before we hiked Mount Garfield that first time, Atticus and I walked on Plum Island and at Moseley Pines. That was it? Who were we to dream of such grand feats? And yet we’d come so close.

I was so mindful of how outrageous our quest was that I did not announce it on the hiking websites I frequented.

There was a moment that second winter when we were descending a snowfield from our highest peak, Mount Washington. We were headed for Mount Monroe, Mount Eisenhower, and Mount Pierce. It was a fifteen-mile hike with windchills below zero.

Atticus M. Finch, in his scuba suit and Muttluk boots, descending Mount Washington in February at 15 below zero.

We both stopped, with Atticus in front, of course, and gazed out at the white-draped mountains flowing off forever beneath us like some great sea.

We knew then there was no going back to the life we’d known, to the first place that ever felt truly like home.

A Newburyport blogger later wrote that after that winter, she looked at my eyes while I was reporting on city hall meetings, and she just knew that they’d lost me to the mountains.

I soon announced I’d sell The Undertoad and that Atticus and I were moving to New Hampshire to hike and write. It happened within a few months.

Strange how history repeats itself, isn’t it?

Travel has opened up our world. Social media-driven throngs on trails, Samwise’s age, and my health issues in the summer swelter have made hiking these mountains a thing of the past. Not that Samwise, Emily, and I ever hiked like Atticus and I had. Hardly anyone has ever hiked like Atti and I did.

However, our marathon road trips have expanded our possibilities. There is a longing to find a new place that sings to our hearts.

Once again, I woke up one morning knowing it was time to leave. That was only three months ago. I did not know where we were going; I only knew that what kept us here was the past and not the present. New dreams whispered. Since I’m in an Anaïs Nin mood as of late, I’ll borrow from her again: “I’m restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.”

In the busyness of life, I often lose touch with why Atticus and I moved here, back in 2007. A lot has happened since then. Lifetimes have happened.

What heartens me is that I am at an age where most have settled down, but my dreams are whispering again. I feel like a high school kid again, ready for college, ready for entirely new horizons.

And so Samwise, Emily, and I are off to new lands, new places, and faces, to be where nature calls us, once again. Two locations have been the goal. One by the sea, the other in the desert. And now that the answer is about to be confirmed and a decision made, I’m once again ready to make a leap of faith.

Nine years ago, having escaped Maine Med after suffering heart and kidney failure, a stroke, sepsis, and other maladies, two doctors could not believe I was still alive. When pressed, both suggested I’d be lucky to make it five years. A third added that I had ten years, at most. What better time to leap into new chapters than now? I look forward to celebrating the tenth anniversary of my NOT death this coming May first.

Changing a life is scary. It’s also exciting. Things are getting real. Stay tuned, an announcement is coming.

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.” — Anaïs Nin

Onward, by all means.

Samwise & Emily last week at Thorne Pond.

We were so young then. Atticus and I on Mount Tecumseh, our first winter summit. The first of hundreds.