Skyline Drive

Logistically, the Shenandoahs are an odd place to hike. They are a long, thin range, with few outlying peaks, and Skyline Drive cuts along near the crest of the ridge for its entire length. Thus it is difficult to avoid encounters with the automobile when climbing any of the taller peaks. Just last weekend, my hiking partner Paul Singh and I emerged from the Bluff Trail onto a dirt road to a find a couple (mother clad in fur) wheeling a stroller. Not far beyond, we arrived at a parking lot where the trail (now part of the AT) crosses the Drive. A license plate read “1derer.”

With the exception of a jaunt up Old Rag, about which word is definitely out, I haven’t encountered many people on trails of the Shenandoahs this spring, even along the AT near the crest of the ridge. Though it is considerably closer to DC than the Whites are to Boston, its perceptual distance seems to be substantial to most Washingtonians. The ranger at the Drive’s gate was quintessentially Park Service chipper about “Wildflower Weekend,” but traffic was light on the road itself. Apparently fall is peak season.

Skyline Drive is here to stay. Built in the thirties, originally under the WPA and with help from the CCC, it is a National Historic Landmark. Entrance costs fifteen dollars, and as two of the park’s four campground were closed last weekend, the park can probably use every penny of the revenue. On the other hand, the 40% of the park that is wilderness is literally all on the mountainsides; the ridge is very much trammeled by man.

In New Hampshire, the closest parallel is probably the Mount Washington Auto Road, though its impact is proportionally far smaller given the size of the Whites. In the thirties, a road to run along the spine of the Presidentials was proposed. Potential construction and maintenance costs were vast, however (alpine freeze-thaw cycles are unkind to asphalt), and the plans were scrapped.

For the casual hiker, Skyline Drive does present an interesting ethical quandary. Should one condemn the road as a biological and geographical intrusion and forgo its offer to relieve tiresome hikes up to the ridge or accept its permanence and embrace the enhanced access?

Last weekend, Paul and I did use the road and had the unusual experience of starting our hike in descent. In fact, our midpoint, a gorge called The Devil’s Stairs, is only served by a trail descending from above that ends at the park boundary. The return across the ridge was mostly in emerald woods, with a few rocky outcrops interspersed. The AT crossed the road several times, giving the hike a rural rather than wild flavor.

Shenandoah Spring

Spring seems to be to the Potomac region what fall is to New England. I’ve been doing my best to get into the backcountry over the last couple months, and the Shenandoahs are only a couple hours to the west from DC. They have a bucolic, woody appeal. As with any mountain range within striking distance of the megalopolis, the famous hikes are overrun on the weekends, but much of the range, at least away from Skyline Drive, feels old and left behind. The fields adjacent to the first uplift are still cultivated, but I suspect that the mountains themselves are far more forested than they were a century ago. One path in particular, the Upper Dark Hollow Trail that crosses Broyle’s Gap, must have been built for wagon traffic.

I imagine the old hollows full of hardscrabble subsistence Scotch-Irish farmers, camps of Civil War cavalry pausing after a feint to draw out the troops in the valley, and CCC employees constructing retaining walls and switchbacks to curtail erosion. Old Rag, Mill Prong, Monkey Head—the mountains are saturated with memory. For now, while my affinity for the region is more perceptual than absolute, my imagination is free from the boundaries conferred by experience.

Truly Happy Cows

The organic label has lost some of its cachet in the last few years, supplanted by the local food movement. Largely thanks to Michael Pollan, who pointed out in The Omnivore’s Dilemma that organic certification does not necessarily preclude industrial production methods, awareness of organic shortcomings has grown immensely. Even as Wal-Mart and other mainstream supermarket chains introduced organic foods into their product lines, foodies reached a general consensus that localism is the most ethical way to eat.

They argue that industrial agricultural corporations, through influence in the business-friendly Bush administration, watered down organic rules to allow corporate farms to masquerade as small, sustainable producers. In the dairy industry, for example, organic rules only required that cows have “access” to pasture during the growing season. With such intentionally vague wording, farmers with thousands of grain-fed cows could keep their animals indoors as long as some obscure route outdoors existed. Such rules saved them the time and expense of moving the cows at the expense of health and happiness. Nobody likes a concrete bed.

As I wrote in a February 2008 post, Horizon Organic, which plasters its products with a drawing of a cow leaping in front of the earth while holding a flag that reads “organic,” exemplifies this cynical behavior. It began supplementing its production from individual farm members with milk from several enormous indoor operations that it set up in Idaho and Maryland. While plenty of alternative companies resist such methods (Organic Valley is the best-known), Horizon’s growth has been phenomenal. Indeed, in 2003, it was snapped up by the giant agribusiness corporation Dean Foods. (Aurora Organic Dairy, Wal-Mart’s main supplier, is even worse – apparently even the Bush USDA had to crack down on it for the way it treat its animals.)

Thus it was gratifying to read earlier this week that the USDA has at last clarified the meaning of access. Now, cows must spend the entire grazing season on pasture and consume at least 30% of their food from pasture during that time.

I’ve been aware of this issue ever since I started research on my undergrad thesis in 2004. There is nothing the USDA could do to help small organic dairy farmers against their industrial competitors more than issue these new rules. While there have been many disappointments so far in the Obama administration, I have only good things to say about the actions of the USDA and EPA under his leadership. Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture, has turned out to be a more zealous advocate for consumer rights, and in this latest decision, the hand of Kathleen Merrigan, the USDA Undersecretary who came from Tufts and once helped write the Organic Food and Production Act while a staffer for Patrick Leahy, is pretty clear.

A writer in The Times notes that the rules also pertain to cattle operations except during finishing . This is a fairly useless point, since ranchers only confine cattle and feed them grain during that last period just before slaughter. However, I vaguely recall reading that the USDA is also taking a hard look at pesticide use in feed lots (I cannot find a related news clip, unfortunately). Given its aggressive posture so far under Obama, I would not be surprised if the USDA goes after this particularly filthy and cruel aspect of American agriculture—if Obama lasts eight years.

Mount Abigail Adams?

The toponymy of the White Mountains is typically early American. The settlers who displaced the local Abenaki chose for the most part to honor political, scientific, and local leaders in the names that they bestowed on the peaks, rivers, and notches. A few landmarks reflect the physical landscape (Whiteface, Tripyramid), and a couple even commemorate indigenous leaders, though of Chocorua, Tecumseh, and Osceola, only the first was actually Abenaki.

Note how few females are memorialized in the landscape. By the 20th century, the Forest Service and local clubs began to name a few landmarks after women—the Dolly Copp Campground or the Kate Sleeper Trail, for example—but such monuments are still rare.

The paucity did not escape Bethany (Benny) Taylor, a former AMC croo member who is now finishing up grad school in Montana. Noting one of the peculiarities of the toponymy of the Presidential Range, she has proposed changing the name of the bump now known as Adams Four to Mount Abigail Adams.

Mount Adams, the second highest peak in the Whites, has several satellites, of which the two largest, John Quincy Adams and Sam Adams, are fairly well known, as the Gulfside Trail traverses past them on its way to Mts. Madison and Jefferson. Adams Four, which rises to the northwest of the true summit at the end of Nowell Ridge, is somewhat smaller. Along with its even more diminutive sibling Adams Five, it completes the Adams Family. While the use of numbers in the names of these nubbles perhaps adds a remote quality to the local landscape (think K2), Benny has espied an opportunity to add a little gender diversity to the Presidentials.

Abigail Adams is best-known of the early Presidential wives due to the survival of the prodigious correspondence that passed between her and her husband. David McCullough’s biography of John (not to mention the HBO miniseries that aired a year or two ago) brought a wave of attention to the relationship. Abigail is an easy woman to like, as her letters reveal a lively wit and an engaging intelligence. Additionally, she was outspoken in her opposition to slavery and advocated for women’s rights such as property ownership.

Benny submitted a proposal to rename Adams Four to Mount Abigail Adams a few months ago. If you favor the change, please write an email in support to the USGS. The relevant email is bgnexec@usgs.gov.

Thelma, Louise, and Landscape

What is it about inland western landscape that makes it such a rich setting for film? Its features are emblazoned in American consciousness, woven into perceptions of our history and identity. Perhaps its stark, arid texture is intrinsically suited to the violence and romance of drama.

In Thelma and Louise, a landmark movie still too recent to gain popular recognition as a classic, director Ridley Scott develops landscape into its own character. Its evolution matches the maturation of the two main characters themselves.

When it was released in 1991, Thelma and Louise thrilled feminists. Janet Maslin, the outspoken critic at The Times, penned the movie a love letter of a review, citing its “sense of freedom and excitement.” Yet in 2007, Judith Warner, another Times columnist, wrote, “Remember, in 1991, how topical the movie seemed? How revolutionary, how thrilling, how cathartic?” Now, after watching the movie again, “It simply seemed depressing, oppressive and hopeless. It seemed like a relic from the past, a buried memory. It was dark. It was disturbing.”

Thelma and Louise polarized viewers in 1991, often by gender. Some male critics rather defensively criticized the movie’s one-dimensional portrayal of its male villains. Their point is literally true—we never learn why Darryl, Thelma’s husband, is so abusive —but misses the point that intimidation is usually one-dimensional to its victims.

At its core, as Warner points out, Thelma and Louise is about sexual violence motivated by male fears of female empowerment. The attempted rape in an Arkansas truck stop that sparks the movie’s plot is much more chilling than Louise’s shooting of the assailant. Tension infuses every one of Thelma and Louise’s interactions along the road, all of which are with men. The dynamics shift, however; when they reach the towers and buttes of southern Utah, the once spacey and submissive Thelma locks a state trooper in his trunk and blows up a tanker belonging to a misogynistic trucker.

As the two drive deeper into canyon country, Scott lingers on the empty, barren landscape, and he also uses more close-up shots of their faces, emphasizing the dust and absence of make-up. “You feel awake?” asks Thelma to Louise. A moment later, she continues. “Wide awake. I don't remember ever feelin' this awake. Everything looks different. You know what I mean. I know you know what I mean. Everything looks new. Do you feel like that? Like you've got something to look forward to?”

Cigarettes and whiskey bottles are piling up by this point, and the film’s last twenty minutes, with its guns, chases, and vast panoramas, are worthy of a bona fide western. The film’s most ominous shot is a chilling panorama showing their Thunderbird kicking up a long tail of dust along the lip of the Grand Canyon. Slowly, a helicopter glides out from behind the cliff like a bird of prey, unseen by the car’s occupants.

Roger Ebert has justly criticized Scott’s lack of faith in his ending—the freeze frame of the car shooting across the Grand Canyon fades to white far too quickly, and the subsequent shot of Thelma and Louise in happier times robs the moment of its emotional impact.

Nonetheless, Scott makes an important point through this allusion. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, these two outlaws choose to go out on their own terms. Women belong in the history of the west, and not simply as appendages.

The Starting Point

The following piece, sadly homeless, dates from July:

“I’m a lazy farmer,” says Carolyn Fryberger, contemplating a fried Duck egg. Indeed, an 8 AM wake-up is late, especially if midday heat is to be avoided. But it’s an unusually cool summer in Swannanoa, North Carolina, where she is halfway through the first season on her new Crossing Point Farm.

This morning, she’s helping a friend harvest chickens. Crossing Point is small, just under an acre, with a ten member CSA, so to make extra money she hires herself out to other farmers, as well as working a part-time job as a School Garden Educator for the Town of Black Mountain. “The farm pays for itself, but not for me…yet,” she explains. After a little weeding—ragweed is threatening her pepper plants, already stressed by a fungus—she drives a few miles down the road, where a mobile chicken processing unit is waiting. Thanks to the USDA, a farmer must process any chickens he sells on his own farm. It’s a labor-intensive job, so between neck-cutting, feather-plucking, and eviscerating the birds’ guts, it helps to have five on the job besides the owner and Carolyn.

Raised in Black Mountain, just east down I-40, Carolyn attended Macalester for two years, studying Geography and Environmental Studies. “It means a lot to me to be from a place,” she says, explaining her subsequent transfer to UNC-Asheville, where she completed her degree in 2007. Farming “is the culmination of many different threads in my life.” These include African dance—“A lot of those dances are based in celebration of harvest”—as well as her academic studies. “Within the Environmental Studies field there’s a negative paradigm of the human-environment relationship. Farming is something I can do to restore it.”

After graduation, Carolyn moved to Austin, Texas, where she interned with an ambitious young farmer supplying urbanites with organic produce. The summer heat was brutal, and the farmer, burdened by debt, worked his interns hard. “After Texas, I had still survived,” she says. “I figured if I could make it in that heat, then I can do it. But I wanted to be back home.” She learned about the small parcel of land available for rent in Swannanoa, conveniently situated near Asheville. Nestled among houses built for workers employed by the Beacon blanket factory, it has been cultivated on and off for 70 years. “This whole thing is only possible due to the community here. I’m supported by this whole group of family, friends, neighbors and other farmers. Everything I have on this farm is used. Some people buy from me simply because they know me. For a first year farmer, that’s huge.”

She hopes to work on this piece of land for four years and then take stock of her situation. “I think of this as my graduate studies.”

Back at Crossing Point in the late afternoon, Carolyn and her intern, a young engineer who recently quit her job, are weeding again. It’s work that makes the body stiff and sore, and unlike harvesting, it is peculiarly frustrating because it lacks finality: the weeds always come back. Tomorrow is pick-up day for the CSA, and Carolyn is thinking about how to fill out the bags she prepares for her customers. Most pay $25 a week (for a 15 week season), so it is important that she give them good value. But in this, her first year of production, yields are unpredictable, particularly early on in the season. Her neighbors are surprised that she is not growing more corn, beans, and potatoes, but arugula and bok choi are what customers want.

Finally, at 7, Carolyn and the intern return to the house. “It’s difficult finding balance between how long I actually need to work and being able to get away from it and have time for myself, especially since it’s right in the backyard.” She works later in the day than most farmers—“When I go to sleep at night, it’s looming outside the window.”

Tonight, however, she’s off to the Swannanoa Gathering, an annual folk and bluegrass music festival at the nearby Warren Wilson college campus. Knots of people sit here and there, starting informal jam sessions, while the curious and appreciative look on. Banjo left at home, she’s brought a kale salad and watermelon to share in a potluck with friends who are thrilled to see her away from the farm. Square dancing follows dinner, then more catching up. She doesn’t return to the farm until midnight.

In the morning, she comes in after breakfast bearing a cardboard box. “Here are the first tomatoes!” She is harvesting, washing vegetables, and bagging lettuce mix. Customers will begin dropping by around mid-afternoon. “My favorite thing about doing this work is my position in the community. I love going to the farmers’ market. I love it when my CSA members come to pick up…People who I’ve known for a long time meeting each other and getting to be friends through the farm. I feel like I’m creating something that people want to come together around.”

All photos are courtesy Ms. Fryberger

The Adams Slide Trail: A Short Walk in the Great Gulf

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the history and geography of the Adams Slide Trail on this blog. Its incline—“referred to as the steepest path of its length in the White Mountains,” according to the 1960 White Mountain Guide—and location on the south side of Mt. Adams continued to intrigue me, though I was not able to bushwhack it while working in the huts.

Last week, during a visit to Madison Spring Hut, I was lucky to have good weather and spare time, as well as two excellent friends—RD Jenkinson and Hillary Gerardi, both croo at Madhaüs)— with whom to attempt the climb. After RD and Hillary finished cleaning up breakfast and we had a chance to get some food into our own bellies, we began our descent from the hut along the Buttress Trail. It heads southwest, traversing the southeastern slopes of Mt. Adams before dipping down into the Great Gulf. After 1.9 miles, it intersects with the Six Husbands Trail just below Jefferson Ravine.

The Adams Slide Trail starts near this junction; I won’t say exactly where, but it shouldn’t be hard for anyone with access to a decent White Mountain library to find it. Luckily, RD has sharp eyes, so we quickly began scrambling up a small herd path. A handful of people must bushwhack the trail every year, as traces of their steps persisted until we reached the felsenmeer.

The trail is indeed extremely steep, but progress was surprisingly steady. While undergrowth has spread across the trail during the past forty years (little evidence of the trail’s original exposure on the bottom half remains), a depression is still clearly visible in most places where hikers wore down the earth. At times, we strayed to one side or the other, but between the three of us, we were always able to return to the original tread. Here and there, we came upon a red blaze, a couple of which were reduced to a tiny smear on the rock.

Popping out above treeline, about halfway through our ascent, brought us views of the Great Gulf and into Jefferson Ravine.
Since the south side of Adams falls away so steeply, we could see much more of the Great Gulf than is visible from Adams’ summit, and in greater detail. The waterfalls on the far side of the Gulf flanking the Wamsutta Trail were magnificent. Then we fought our way through a brief section of krummholz—here, crawling was sometimes easier than walking because the firs and spruce have not yet colonized the packed earth of the old tread, allowing us to wiggle through a tunnel beneath the branches.

We stopped for pictures and to look for cairns, of which many remained. They were not well built but were often topped by quartz, distinguishing them from the background of grey schist that makes up most of the felsenmeer. I was more aware of the trail’s steepness above treeline because we rarely had to slow down to get through branches, and thus I had no excuse to pause and catch my breath.

Near the top, the cairns disappeared, presumably scattered when the trail was discontinued so that hikers would not stray into the trailless region. But we scrambled along what appeared to be the most interesting route up the cone and were rewarded by coming across a substantial cave. Had anyone sheltered in it before us? Not far beyond, we came across the blue blazes of the Star Lake Trail. From here, as the old guidebook says, it is but “a few rods to the summit of Mt. Adams.”

All told, the trail ascends 2,308 feet in 1.26 miles. We did the climb in about two hours, with ample time to enjoy views and pose for photos. It was easier than anticipated; this is one of the easier bushwhacks I have done in the Whites, mainly because we did not have to fight through the spruce-fir forest. However, we were lucky to have access to the hut. If one were to begin and end at the base of the Great Gulf, it would indeed be a full day.

Finally, isn't RD a hell of a photographer?