1. I now live in Central Vermont, near Montpelier.
2. There are lots of mountains in Vermont
3. I like hiking mountains
4. I have a 16-month old puppy named Arya
5. Arya loves hiking mountains
So here we are. We've had the little bundle of brindled energy for almost a year now, and after we got her used to her surroundings and who we were (and got her started on some basic obedience classes), I took her out hiking for the first time in June 2014. It took some coaxing and a couple of cut up hot dogs but we got there, and she's been nuts for it ever since.
My reasoning behind doing this was that, having grown up spending my summers in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, hiking became second nature to me and my family, and really was THE thing we did on vacation each year. Specifically, my Dad got me hooked on hiking the 48 4,000 footers in New Hampshire, and I set out trying to hike all of them before I turned 16. And I did.
After that, though, there didn't seem to be much point in hiking; bagging the 48 peaks was always my primary goal, and I often had to shrug off going on hikes on smaller mountains that, in my mind "did not count". I went on hikes with other people in the White for sure, and was there when both of my brothers finished their 48 4,000 footers, but it wasn't something that I ended up doing a lot. Which, in retrospect, is a shame.
Flash forward 14 years, and living with my fiancee and puppy surrounded by the Green Mountains, it seemed like a fresh challenge. Though I went to college in Vermont, I hadn't gone hiking very much when up here, and in the intervening years after I graduated, I basically moved to Boston (notably devoid of mountains) and didn't look back.
"But!" I hear you cry, "You said that you didn't care about hiking mountains unless they were over 4,000 feet!" And yes, you would be correct. The thing is, I'm trying to get better at that and enjoy the little things about hiking (the stillness of an alpine morning as the sun rises, river valley fog, the fresh smell of evergreens) and not just the sense of artificial accomplishment that comes with peak-bagging. Also, Vermont has 5 mountains above 4,000 feet.
That's the thing! Why settle for the 48 New Hampshire 4,000 footers when you can go for the New England 67 4,000 footers? Yes, granted most of them are in New Hampshire, and I'd only have to hike 19 more mountains to finish. But still! And now that I have a dog, I can go peak-bagging with her. Which is exactly what I've done. I made a Big Board with all of the mountains on it (color-coded by state of course), and added Arya's name to it pretty much the day we got her.
So here's what I'm going to do. Since we started the better part of a year ago, Arya's climbed two 4,000 footers in Vermont (Killington and Camel's Hump), and three in New Hampshire (Monroe, Washington and Eisenhower) plus some smaller mountains both here and there that lend credence to my "try to enjoy climbing ones that don't count" effort. And I'm going to write about each of them. Of course after I catch up with all the mountains she's climbed (and since it's March and the mountains won't be hikeable until after Memorial Day), I think I'll dive into preparations and planning for future hikes, and then reporting and writing on them in real-time once the happen. So should be a nice summer (and Arya still has 62 mountains to go!)
See you out there!
-M
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