“I just finished a solo Presi traverse.” This was shorthand for a trip across New Hampshire’s fantastical and foreboding Presidential Range, which involves climbing roughly 10,000 feet over 24 miles of rocky terrain, most of it vulnerable to some of the world’s worst weather.
“How far ya going?” he said as I approached with trekking poles, a light pack and a goofy sun hat suggesting that I’d never drunk my own urine to survive, much less seen a star-choked sky. A young man was draped, heroically, across the Valley Way trailhead.
