Leather Boots and Double Bits

I stride across the front porch of Limmer’s Barn, noticing planks worn to the bone by decades of customers, coming and going.  Like a ship’s deck, or a New England dance floor, endless footfalls have stripped the paint away. My steps echo their own hollow thud as I reach for the wooden door in front of me and give it a yank. 

Inside, the smells of bootmaking smother me - smells I never knew before my years of trailwork.  I take in the rich scent of leather and the tangy smell of the grease that gets rubbed into my boots before each trip to the White Mountains.   Another smell saturates the barn today, strong enough to make me grow woozy. I inhale deeply . . .

“If you smell sweet, that’s the glue,” Pete Limmer says from the back of the shop.  I inhale again, and sweetness described the smell perfectly.  I salivate at the scent.  “Sometimes people will come in here just to smell the place,” Pete tells me.  I ask him about the other smells of his shop and he replies, “Sweat and Love.” 

Shelves rise from floor to ceiling around me, lined with boots the way a library’s walls are lined with books.  Heels facing me, black, smooth and rounded.  On my right, rows of boots await repair, each one with their own stories from miles of trail.  Further inside, more shelves line the shop, with boots in various stages of construction.  There are tracings of feet on paper, rough-carved wooden molds, and cuttings of leather resembling a boot with no bottom.  At my side, a wooden bench and a single stool provide customers with a place to sit while being fitted. 

Photographs cover the walls, sharing the journeys of this shop’s most loyal customers.  In the pictures I see hikers, trailbuilders, and mountaineers grinning with the world’s mountain ranges in the background.  The photos show the Alps, the Himalayas, and the Andes.  There are Appalachian Trail thru-hikers, reaching Katahdin, and I find a few photos of the AMC Trail Crew - trailworkers standing shoulder to shoulder on the Great Gulf Bridge.  I look at them, holding their double-bit axes high, with a sense of relevance and pride, for I am a part of this crew.  Their muscle is thick, their workpants are tattered, and their boots are Limmers.

“Yeah it’s a pretty good boot isn’t it?  They’re a little heavy, but my grandfather designed a good boot,” Pete says. 

Pete’s grandfather built Tyrolean walking shoes in the Bavarian Alps a century ago, then brought his family to the United States in 1925, setting up a shoemaking shop in Jamaica Plain, of Boston.  In that shop, Pete’s grandfather taught Peter Sr. his Bavarian style of bootbuilding.  He found a market in adventurers heading north to New Hampshire’s White Mountains, needing hiking boots.  The Limmers even shaped the New England ski industry through its most glorious years, receiving the first U.S. patent for a ski boot in 1939.  During one ski trip, the family was struck with how the White Mountains reminded them of their home in the Bavarian Alps, and in 1951 the Jamaica Plain shop moved to Intervale, NH.  It was here in the Limmer barn that Pete Jr. learned his trade.

Pete wears a dark blue apron with the thickness of an old canvas tent.  His stout body pushes against it, and I notice the strength in his arms.  In his ear, a single ring of gold loops through the lobe.  He seems part blacksmith, part pirate, and since I know no other bootmakers, I decide they are all ancient blacksmith pirates, wearing Limmers.  His grizzled beard protrudes slightly over his t-shirt.   Pete invites me back into the shop, so he can keep working while we talk.

“I do about one hundred and fifty pairs of boots each year.  Knock on wood, but this year I haven’t had one return.  It’s nice to know that after thirty-five years I am getting better at it,” Pete says, with equal parts humor and seriousness. 

As I consider the math – thirty five years, one hundred fifty pair per year, more than ten thousand boots -- he reaches for a tool from his bench and focuses on the half-built boot before him.   The tool is a large pair of pliers, but with a hammerhead on the pliers' backside.  With a flick of his wrist, he puts it to work – pinching, stretching, and tapping twice with each pull of the leather.  I have never seen this odd combination of tools before.  Pinch, stretch, tap, tap, around the entire base of the boot.

“Lasting pinchers,” Pete says, pausing from the boot on his bench and showing me the tool.  He begins working again. His hands do not work in a blur, but steady, continuous movements that are precise, and allow the tool to do the work.  His forearms resemble the rippled trunk of a hop hornbeam, understory tree of the New England forest.  The skin bulges with the muscular movements beneath.

In Forest and Crag, White Mountain historians Laura and Guy Waterman write:

"A special niche was carved out in Northeastern hiking by an Austrian bootmaker who emigrated to Intervale, New Hampshire, within sight of Mount Washington, where he set up a family business producing limited numbers of custom-made hiking boots.  Three generations of Peter Limmer & Sons churned out an unchanging, fashionless, colorless (black) product, winning a degree of loyalty among Northeastern hikers that is perhaps without parallel in the annals of the outfitting business. 

Limmer boots were the uniform of White Mountain hikers from the 1950s on, even when demand outpaced the family's ability to produce them so that the waiting period for a new pair ran as high as three-and-a-half years.”

Pete still makes the custom boots in his New Hampshire workshop – each pair, by hand, takes about six weeks – but the waitlist has grown since the Waterman’s assessment, now to about five years.  To satisfy customer demand, Limmers also offers factory stocked boots, made in the same Bavarian town of his grandfather’s past, on a handshake agreement. 

“I’d have to say if there is one justification for the custom boot, it is the quality of the fit.  What I’m doing right now is pulling all the stretch out of the leather.  When hand-lasting leather, I can differentiate between one piece of leather and the next, so that I can pull it all to the same tensile strength.  A machine wouldn’t be able to do this.  So, in my stock boot, lotta times you can try two ‘r three size nines, and they could feel kind of different.” Pete explains, “With heavier leather, the machine stops pulling at twenty pounds, when it should’ve pulled to twenty-five or thirty pounds.  That boot’ll have a little more volume. I work within two millimeters of a person’s foot shape.  There’s no compromise there, and not a lot of room for error.”

I lean against the old Singer sewing machine, pick up the wooden carving of a foot, and hold it next to my boot, just re-soled.  My most recent week in the Mahoosucs had worn down the Vibram to a useless state.  I took on a badly eroded section of trail on the Mahoosuc Arm.  The trail curved steeply through the conifers, had become gullied, and then widened considerably from hikers avoiding the eroded section.  My goal was to solidify the trail with rock steps.   I spent two days quarrying stone from the surrounding forest leaving the remainder of the week to sculpt the staircase by Friday’s hike out.  I guided each boulder into place with the pick-mattock, building on the step below.  As each stone rested in its place, I pounded and pounded with my boots to drive the stones deep into the soil, watching to detect the slightest quiver.  The result was a winding staircase of stone, spanning five feet and rising twenty steps, in a zone that had previously been an eroded gully of muck.  The finished project portrayed function and beauty – just like a good boot. 

“You know, the most artistic part of it is taking a two dimensional mold and creating its three dimensional shape.  That’s also what takes the longest.”  Pete tells me.

Limmers are reliable.  They last, even when being abused by trailwork.  After a decade of trailbuilding and mountain guiding, I seek a boot that is all leather, has minimal seams, has stitched on soles, and fits well.  At Limmers, each boot is made from a single piece of quality leather, and thus has a single seam – never have I seen another boot match this craftsmanship.  Additionally, that seam is on the instep, above the arch – a place that receives little stress.  Of course, custom boots fit like a dream, but even when buying the stock boots, Pete will spend an hour measuring your feet, trying sizes, showing different lacing techniques, and even re-shaping the leather at pressure points to keep your feet free of blisters. 

“I like what I’m doing, been doing it for thirty-five years.  It comes so naturally now that it is hard for me to put it into words.  So, how many years have you built trail?”

“This is my fourth year with the crew” I say, “We spent early June chopping away fallen trunks and clearing debris from drainages.  It took us three weeks to cover about four hundred miles of trail through the White Mountains, carrying light daypacks, our double-bit axes, and hazel hoes for the drainages.”

“Now that the trails are clear, we begin our longer projects in the backcountry.  The twenty of us will split into four smaller crews to rebuild eroded trail throughout the national forest.  I’ll be leading the crew into Tuckerman’s Ravine to solidify the rockwork ascending the Headwall.”

Thanking Pete, I place my boots, new laces, and Limmer grease under one arm and walk outside, then drive north along Route 16 to Pinkham Notch.

*

Monday morning, my crew makes preparations in Hutton Lodge, the trail crew living quarters and center for operations in Pinkham Notch.  Today it feels like a pre-game locker room, filled with purpose and intensity.  Led Zeppelin riffs sizzle through the air.  Twenty trailworkers hustle to their tasks: mending packs and rain gear with duct tape, inspecting their feet for sores, packing sleeping bags and gear.  Crew Leaders highlight topographic maps and test handheld radios.  The twin toilets, down Hutton’s hallway, flush relentlessly.  A large tub of Limmer grease sits on the crew room table where workers wipe the spruce-scented glop into their boots. 

Downstairs, on ground level, is the crew’s workshop.  Sunlight angles through the windows in the workshop’s garage door, reflecting against rows of metallic shovel heads on hickory handles. Against the wall lean the tools for moving boulders - pick-mattocks and rock bars.  The swept floor and broad, bare workbenches lend a moment of stillness to the room.  Framed above the workshop door are the words of Abraham Lincoln, “If I had five hours to chop a tree, I’d spend the first four sharpening my axe.” 

Outside, workers test double-burner stoves.  The grinding wheel spins against root-axes and clippers, sending a shower of sparks.  A few workers sit with mill-bastard files, sharpening their double-bit axes with a slow precision that risks being forgotten in these times.  Our tools and supplies are lashed to wooden-framed packboards, hundred-pound loads leaning against the stone wall, waiting to be carried.  With a single word - foo – the crew gathers.  We heft our packboards and hike into the ravine for the week. 

The stonework of Tuckerman’s Ravine is glorious, writing itself into the trail like words on a page.  Each boulder quarried from the earth, muscled to the trail, becomes a line.  Each step-stone set into place creates it rhyme.  Once embedded into the tread; staircases, scree walls, waterbars, and bridges form an epic of northeast trailwork that began in the ravine two hundred years ago, and continues today with our labor.

In 1809, there was no rockwork in the ravine; its slopes were inaccessible to all but the most determined.  Colonel George Gibbs, determined, cut the first trail into the ravine, and its name became Gibbs’ path.  Once this trail was cut, a small group of adventurers scrambled up every reachable drainage and ridgeline.  These hearty adventurers were botanists, searching for rare alpine species.  Clad in wool, on hands and knees, they examined every inch of alpine habitat.  Like Gibbs, these botanists of the early 1800s left their names in the mountains – Tuckerman’s Ravine, Boott Spur, Cutler River, Bigelow’s Lawn, Oakes’ Gulf.  I picture each botanist, alone on his namesake, hiking over rocks and squatting to admire Dwarf cinquefoil (Potentilla robbinsiana), Boott’s rattlesnake root (Prenanthes boottii), White Mountain saxifrage (Saxifraga aizoon) or Bigelow’s sedge (Carex bigelowii)

Roughly a century after Gibbs’ efforts, the nation’s first professional trail crew was born, when in 1911, the Appalachian Mountain Club hired one person to maintain their sizeable trail system in the White Mountains.  By 1919, a steady, committed crew had formed, and that crew has led the nation in trail maintenance for nearly a century. 

Reflecting on her seasons of work, one of our crewmembers, Elyse Fenton, wrote in Hammer Struck Music:

I am a trailworker.  I say this not solely as metaphor.  Summers, I work on a trail crew, building and reconstructing trails in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.  This mostly means quarrying rocks and setting boulders in the trail for staircases and drainages, protecting the soil from erosion . . . Like most manual labor, it also means long hours and short pay, and a general public that is, for the most part, unaware of the work involved.

 The same, I think, can be said of writing poetry.  The poet probes, pries up individual words like boulders from the rich soil of language, and sets them in the trail with a precision that belies their startling bulk.

Fenton, and others with trail names like Goat, Young Dave, Peanut, and Slim, labored in the talus fields of Tuckermans.  While rebuilding White Mountain trails, we were aware that we were continuing a tradition of work in the mountains that has been a part of the North Country for centuries.  Botanists, loggers, hikers, trailbuilders – we love the work we do.  Our energy comes from the mud, rock, rain, and sun of the northern forest.  It is endless.

*

Limmer and Sons bootbuilders seem as intrinsically a part of the Mount Washington Valley as hiking and trailbuilding.  And so I was shocked recently, when I saw a ‘For Sale’ sign hanging at the workshop entrance.

“The big happenings right now is the selling of the building.  My cousin and I are heading in different directions.  The ‘and sons’ part of Limmer and Sons is my dad and uncle.  They were brothers, but as the family tree starts getting bigger, the boughs get further and further apart.”  Pete said.  “I’ve been pushing that door open at 8:00 a.m. everyday for thirty-five years.  I always thought I’d be doing it till the day I retired.  I told that to Ken the other day and he says to me, ‘Well Pete, let’s take the fuckin’ door with us!’, and so wherever we wind up going, the door is gonna get plunked down.”  After thought, Pete added, “I called the realtor’s office and told them I’m cutting the door jam out.  Realtor said, ‘yeah, I expected that.”

Before becoming home to Limmer Boots, this pale green barn with red trim and a tin roof had been a carriage house for an inn.  After that, it became a dance hall.  Even with these historical changes, I always imagined it would remain a bootbuilding shop ad infinitum.  But the future for Limmer Boots is uncertain.  Perhaps this is true for many businesses in the North Country.   The roots of the business are strong, but youth often seeks opportunities and adventure elsewhere – as the family tree gets bigger, the boughs get further apart. 

“Unfortunately, it seems like this may be the last generation here because both of my boys have elected to go to college.  My oldest boy, Trevor, is studying CNC machining.  Got a job in Westport and is already making more than me.  He grew up through all the stories of the business.  And he’s got a real good understanding of leather.  The kid’s got it, so it’ll be real interesting to see.”  Pete said.  “Nobody ever pushed me into the business.”

He seems to love his sons, and admires the lives they lead.  He provides them room to make their own decisions, understands they might screw up at times, but will still wrap his muscular arms around them if they ever need it. 

“My youngest boy just found out there’s football and women out there.  You can’t blame him for that.”  Pete says, with a chuckle. 

Limmers are crafted so well, they often outlast the durability of their parts.  My boots are on their third sole, having been worn away by miles of backpacking and years of trailwork in the White Mountains.  So will Limmers even outlast the life of their workshop - the barn nestled in the woods off of Route Sixteen?  With new soles, I know my boots will last a while longer, supporting me for another season of trailwork.  And if they do wear out, I am sure Limmers will still be crafting the finest boots in the Northeast, wherever that door gets plunked down. 

Migration

Pronghorn have arrived for summer.  Little hooves and sideburn fur.  For six thousand years, they’ve come to graze the sagebrush along the Snake River. The elk are high in the mountains.  Moose have climbed the canyons to the cool water of snowmelt streams.

By June, hundreds of shining motorhomes pull into the Gros Ventre campground, two miles from where I sit.  They carry kids and grandparents.  Picnic tables become covered in food, and cold sodas sit in the coolers.  Men and women go fishing.  They hike through fields of Balsamroot with their kids and are generally kind and happy. 

In October I ride my bicycle to the same site, two miles away.  The summertime campers have left.  Hunters have taken their place.  They carry on the tradition of feeding their families with wild game.  The migration shifts.

As winter nears, Moose gather in sageflats to browse bitterbrush, or they stay hidden in the cottonwoods for warmth.  Bighorn Sheep move to the south sides of the buttes where the grass can still be nibbled.  People stack their wood.   Meanwhile the pronghorn lose access to their food source as snow falls.  As it deepens, they then lose their greatest survival ability – to run.   So they hustle east through the Gros Ventre mountains and emerge along the Green River and the warmer valleys west of the Winds.   In February, I ski the same trail along to find only emptiness. 

Jackson Hole has always been a transient place.  No native tribe called this valley home.  Instead many tribes – Shoshone, Bannock, Blackfeet and Crow - would follow the migrations of elk and bison herds.  The Gros Ventre traveled from the northern plains, and had violent clashes with fur trappers. These mountain men came in search of beaver pelts and adventure in the early eighteen hundreds.  They made their fortunes with fur, and then the stylish others in Boston and New York decided on the next style.   Mormons built barns and tried to cultivate the glacial debris of Antelope Flats, then moved on.   

I had never been to the Rocky Mountain West, but felt its pull when I turned twenty.  One week after leaving New Hampshire, I woke to the snort of a bison.  It was rolling in the red dirt of the Badlands.  Never had I seen a bison.  I lay still in my sleeping bag, fearful.  The rest of the herd, browsing grass, had me surrounded.

They moved on towards sculpted sandstone cliffs.  I breathed more easily, then rose to make coffee for myself and two traveling friends who had picked me up in New Hampshire.  Newlyweds on their way to California, willing to wind through Yellowstone and leave me looking at the Tetons.  They unzipped their tent, smiled, and joined me for coffee.

We rode through Yellowstone in the middle of the night.  A cloudless full moon laid a silver sheen over the landscape.  We saw silhouetted elk and bison as we floated past.  A million charred trunks, naked from the fire, and a million young green ones taking their place.  I bid my friends goodbye as the sun rose, then stood alone at Moran Junction.

Bluebird and sunlight.  Granite and gneiss.   Peaks capped in June snow.  The Grand Teton, with a dozen other peaks standing sentinel to its north and south seemed different than any mountains I had seen.  But I moved on, putting my thumb out, hoping for Lander and the Winds. 

Ten years later, I married the girl I met in those mountains.  I hiked all day to bring her ice cream while she camped in Dickinson Creek.  That about did it.  We lived in a yurt for our first year of marriage.  Me, My wife, our dog, and all the toughness we could muster.  Most of the time, we loved the yurt.  Sometimes, Liz cried.  We’d trudge ten minutes through the snow to fill our water jug.  A solar panel powered our radio.  A woodstove heated.  We peed outside, and I paid more attention to the stars that winter than ever in my life.  Once I saw Aurora Borealis hovering over Yellowstone and once I heard a cold wolf howl.

So you see, I’ve come here.  I am a stranger in Wyoming, no different than knapweed.  This landscape has etched in all of us.  Don’t know if I’ll stay or if I’ll migrate like the pronghorn.  I believe you don’t need to live your entire life in a place to respect it, or for it to stir your soul.  So, I will listen to coyotes yip and elk bugle at night, then go have coffee with my neighbors in the morning.  I will ski and chop wood and love this landscape while knowing it is not mine.

Riders on the Range

Another Tuesday night and thirty cyclists pedal to another group training ride in Jackson Hole.  The group wears a colorful mix of team jerseys, dominated by the orange and green shamrock of our local shop.  We mount and ride north out of Jackson towards Kelly and the long, straight roads of northwest Wyoming.  A sea of sagebrush flows to a backdrop of granite.  Our speed increases as snowcapped Buck and the Grand Teton come into view.  The peloton lengthens to a paceline, two abreast, as we near the Gros Ventre junction.  I fall in with a veteran rider, Doc, in the orange and green, with shaved calves of solid rock.

          “Looks like we’re coming up to a herd” Doc says to the group,“Buckle your lids lads.  These ones are right along the road.”

I look and see the rounded backs and broad woolly heads of two dozen bison. Of all the large mammals found here in Jackson Hole, bison seem to burden bicyclists the most.  Six feet in height, eleven feet in length, 1500 pounds, and tipped with horns - Bison bison.  For reasons unknown these grass-eating ungulates ignore vehicles, give runners a few moments of pause, but make it clear to cyclists that they are not welcome near their herds.  The bison runs at thirty-five miles per hour and can leap a five foot fence – surprising for such a massive beast.  Even on my racing bike, I could not ride from a full-speed bison.

We ride within one hundred yards.  A few large males stop chewing and glare as we approach.  A thick, black nose rises and grunts. 

From the front, a rider yells back, “I don’t think this one wants us to pass.  Let’s pick up the speed.”  The bison grunts again and steps forward, now within twenty feet of the road.  The peloton surges ahead, but the surge startles the beasts.  A large male lowers his horns and charges.

Our peloton splits in half.  Those in front sprint hard to slip by the beast.  Those in the rear hit their breaks and drop their jaws as the episode unfolds before them.  The cyclists bunch tightly.  The bison, with lowered horns, advances.  Their courses will collide.  The cyclists see this and demand all their legs will give.  They group more tightly and accelerate.  Within three yards, the bison charges, then suddenly veers away.  He leaves the riders to their journey and, standing in the middle of the road, turns towards us.  His wooly head swings like a barn door on thick hinges.  We stare at one another, on an empty Wyoming road, fifteen yards apart.

Half of our riders slipped by, but I don’t think the rest of us will win this battle.  Some riders turn bikes and proceed to Jackson with a wave.  I suggest to others that we wait a few minutes and try again.  A half dozen agree and we circle a little to provide space. During those minutes the bison return to nibbling grass.  Finally we approach again, and this time three wooly heads lift.  Within moments, a dozen hooves – the three largest males of the herd – charge onto the roadway. 

Being the leader, I stop.  My shoes click down on the pavement.  The bison continue to advance.   I hop off my bike and lift it, holding it as a shield, quickly realizing I’d be better off on top than behind it.  The rest of the group immediately turns and flees, except Doc and one of his pals.  I look quickly to the two men for help, but instead find two ol’ timers chuckling in their tights.

“WHOA” I shout at the bison, sounding as tough as possible.  “WHOA now – Huuh” 

They advance.

“Hmpph”, I say, pumping my shield.

It works.  The bison stop their run, two yards from my shield.  I’m frozen.  They, five thousand pounds, all horns and snouts, walk forward.  I click backwards.  I consider leaping onto my saddle and racing away, but fear they’ll trample me in the two seconds it takes to mount.  Finally I’ve retreated enough for the bison to relax.

The two ol’ timers are still chuckling.  Everyone else has pedaled away.  “You call yourselves Wyoming cyclists don’t you?” Doc hollers over his shoulder at the fleeing riders, but they are long gone.  I am left to answer.

“Um, yeah, er”, still startled from three charging bison, “I think so, yes.”

“Well?” he said. 

            I could only think of three places where it would be possible to cycle with bison on a regular basis – the Tetons, Yellowstone- our national park neighbor to the north, and the Badlands of South Dakota.  Bison once roamed throughout our nation, numbering 30 – 60 million, but now wild bison herds have shrunk to 20,000, with the largest herd being in Yellowstone.  (cit. Wildlife Conservation Society)  Outside of National Parks, they are often killed for fear of transmitting disease to cattle, or are limited in range by fences and private land.

“I don’t think I’m gonna get by these boys” I say, “do you want to try?”

“Sure son, we still got half a ride left.  Let’s head into the sagebrush flats, alongside the Gros Ventre River, making a big loop around them and back to the road.”  Doc tells me and his pal.  “If he charges again, we’ll leap from the bank and into the river”

Leap into the river?  While riding our speedy road bikes through sage singletrack? He’s serious.  The vertical drop to the whitewater below is fifteen feet, and the Gros Ventre is swollen with snowmelt.

 

“I wouldn’t touch that with a whitewater kayak, never mind on my bike.”  I say, “Aren’t bison pretty good swimmers”

“Yeah” Doc confirms, “you should throw your bike first.  Keeps it dry and it distracts the stampede while you swim for it”

“Oh.”

I take another look at the bison.  They chew silently, but had not moved.  I scan the road for an approaching truck, one that I could hop in the back of and be transported to safety.  Or if a car arrives – I could ride close to its bumper, coasting through the herd, with the car as my shield.  I’ve used these techniques many times to ride through herds.  Today, no vehicles approach.

“Come on son – you ain’t gonna win that fight” They say, riding off together into the dirt and sage. 

“Yeah, I’m coming right behind you.  I just gotta spin around.” 

They leave the road and began bumping along the dirt trails.  I see their calves pumping smoothly over the rough ground.  I thrash through shrubs of sage.  My skinny wheels rattle over potato-sized stones.  I find a remnant of a trail, probably made by deer and elk, and I follow it alongside the river.  I loop half way around them; the bison are parallel to me.  The Gros Ventre River flows below me.  I look up to see Doc and his pal reaching the pavement, and then suddenly I hit a badger hole.

Down I tumble, though not too hard.  I stand up, lift my bike, brush dirt from my side and get ready to go.  Then the bison come, one last time.  I can’t pedal very fast in the dirt.  “Whoa” I say, but they still charge.  “Whoa!” I shout again.  “WHOA” one more time but they keep on running.  I toss my bike and jump.

Rocky Mountain Poem

rocky mountain poem

camped in sagebrush and ponderosa pine

we searched for prickly pear cactus before

laying our mats down for sleep

watched the big dipper rise over meteetsee creek.

my dreams were of weather and stone

early morning, dawn lifts

wet clouds from mountainsides

a lone horsepacker and her team descend steadily

bringing letters and food

you roam through canyons and dried-up washes

towards the north rim. 

snake river gulch.  sandstone walls. 

sage, juniper, cholla,

ancient cave paint hints at wisdom lost.

your morning begins under fresh snow

still like windmills on a wyoming ridge

snowfences stand as pineboard sentinels

waiting for winter storms.

i am halfway to you

riding through thunderheads

grey skies drip

the fire goes out

there is no place more lonely than this.

i am halfway to you

then you drift toward me like a sunwarmed log

and i am a turtle. 

half awake your slumbering mumblings make no sense.

i hang on every tumbling word

hanging on until you drift off

Junbesi

Ahh . . .Junbesi sundar gownle ho (Junbesi is a beautiful town) – the most picturesque we have come to yet.  We have choice of lodges, good food, even a bakery, and the oldest monastery in the region.  We now see the first of the snowcapped Himalayan peaks looming above us – Numbur.

                We descended from Lamjura Pasa at 12,000 feet, through Trogdubuk and Serlo into the serene village of Junbesi.  The stone walls and homes along the way are the most impressive I have seen.  One dry-set wall of stone stretched for miles along the outer edge of the trail, like a stone serpent.  On its other side, the valley dropped precipitously one thousand vertical feet into green fields of millet and the Sun Khosi.  It would be a dream to build a trail like that.

                Tomorrow if weather parts, we may catch our first view of Sagamartha – Mount Everest.  We will cross Khurtang and the Shingsere Danda, also reaching the great monastery of Trakshindu perched high on the mountain pass Trakshindu La.

                Outside is a lodge once owned by the late Babu Chiri Sherpa – the famed Sherpa who climbed Everest ten times, spent twenty-one hours on the summit, and holds the speed ascent record from basecamp, summiting in sixteen hours.  He died on the mountain two years ago.  Tragic, I suppose.  But the Sherpas revere him, and Tibetans accept death as part of cyclic existence.  I can’t imagine Babu Chiri Sherpa would choose any other place than Sagamartha to pass on.

Winding walls and fields of millet

Dokedai and Twonkedai

The next morning Chris and I depart from Shivalaya.  The old man emerges from his basket shop and waves farewell as we cross the Chamja khola and ascend towards Bhandar. A few of the children we had met the day before join us, on their way to school.  Just as our loads are now hung across our heads in dokos, so rest their bookbags, hung by cloth or leather strap.  They laugh as we try to ask them “Thik cha?”  We smile and clasp our hands to those we pass on the trail.  ‘Namaste’ is exchanged.  Davis and I walk.  Our necks ache already.   We wonder if our spinal cords will compress after a month of this.



Nepali children on their way to school

           Late afternoon we stop to rest our necks and drink tea.  The hostess asks why we carry these dokos.  We stumble over some words trying to show we love Nepal ‘Nepal raamrolarghea ho’ and ‘doko bokeko raamro’.  She asks, perhaps seriously, if we are half Nepali.  We smile and say no.  ‘Dokedai’ she calls me – The guy carrying the doko.

And later that night, rarest of rare, I get to see my old friend Davis get tipsy on the local brew chang, he earns the nickname “Twonkedai” - Drunken guy

Finding my doko

Rural Nepal, to me, represents all that is impressive in a culture deeply connected to its land.  Upon meeting the Nepali, my respect for them grew beyond limits.  Their heartiness and toughness resonated with my New England roots.  They live in tune with the seasons, clearing stones into stacked walls, tending to millet on the terraced fields, enduring the monsoons of summer and the cold of winter.  Never is there a lack of tasks to be done in their stone homes, but with smiling warmth and a love of company, these mountain Nepali always make time for a cup of tea.

                The road ends at Jiri and to the east only trails connect the villages for a hundred miles or more to the Tibet and Sikkim borders.  All essential supplies come on the backs of yacks or in woven baskets hung from the heads of porters.  Many men, boys, and a few women carry loads to earn money and connect their villages. 

Porter carrying doko

                 Their loads hang from their heads, with rice sack and rope across the forehead – the naamlo.  This rope slings a girthy basket – the doko - that rests upon the porters back.  Most loads tower over their heads, weighing one hundred pounds or more.  Lumber, crates of food, even pieces of furniture get fastened to the baskets.  As they stand, the strain shows in every sinewy muscle of these small-framed workers.  

                The porters rise at sunbreak to begin their trek and continue well into the evening.  Their pace is slow from the titanic loads, yet they travel as much ground each day as Davis and me.  Their ease and kinship emerge once dokos are set down, and the porters talk at the freshwater springs trickling in each town.  They balance their dokos on the stone walls of the village and drink deeply.  I wish to know their language well, to understand more than a few stray words. 

                Davis and I discuss this in Shivalaya.  We carry our own loads in backpacks.  But meeting these porters on the trail and assisting with the first aid training in Kathmandu urges me to learn more.   I yearn to feel connected again to my own homeland, as they seem to be.  I think of Trail Crew in the White Mountains, and the tools that we carry.  Labor in the mountains purifies; I understand that now.  The thing is the porters understand that too.  That’s what draws me towards them.

                At night, in Shivalaya, Davis and I discuss this.  I tell him I want to continue our trek carrying dokos. 

                “Are you serious?” he asks.

                “Yeah, I want to understand Nepal.  That seems like a good way to do it.”

                The next morning, I walk the short, dirt thoroughfare of Shivalaya and find the only apparent basketmaker.  I peer inside his basket shop.   Iron pots hang from pegs, reflecting daylight into the dark hovel.  I see lengths of cloth, folded and stacked.  Lumber leans against a wall, and large sacs of grain sit next to his reeds.  These reeds are woven into dokos.

                The basket maker emerges.  Golden brown skin stretches tightly across his old bones.  A trim beard matches the grey hair combed beneath his traditional cap.  I notice his eyes are dark and steady as stone.  He clasps his hands and I see they are strong with fingers long.  These hands knew work.   

My doko costs one hundred rupees, or about a buck fifty.   After speaking Nepali words I had rehearsed the night before, the man soon understands my request, though doubts I am serious.  A few onlookers join us as we walk outside to try a few sizes of basket.  Young children stare and giggle.  With adjustments to the naamlo - the forehead strap, I feel pleased with the doko’s fit.  I give the man the crumpled bills and put my belongings in the basket.  Davis lifts another doko and finds his hundred rupees.

Nepali porters carry a T-shaped wooden staff when they travel.  These staffs reach the height of their buttocks and allow porters to sit, and rest.  On the Trail Crew, when carrying massive loads, we would often look for boulders, about butt-height, and rest our packboards upon them.  ‘Crumps’ we called these brief rests.  And a good crump-rock would steady and take the weight of our load while we crumped upon the rock for a rest.  To my amazement and great joy, the porters carry crump-sticks.

The basketmaker hustles back into his shop to show me a crump-stick.  With the weight of my doko on my head, I take the T and squat down.  Lower, and lower – the average Nepali is barely five feet tall.  The crump-stick is too short.  I collapse and my doko spills its contents to the ground.  A few strangers are watching, mostly children, and laughter erupts but quickly is muffled.  I stand up, smiling, and give the man back his crump-stick.  They were not meant for my height.  Davis, standing well over six feet tall, chuckles and tells the man he doen't need to try the stick.  We thank him for the dokos and continue our trek.

Davis and Doug