Whatsoever thy hands find to do, do it with all thy might.
ARRAM DAVIDSON, “THE MAN WHO SAW THE ELEPHANT”
LET’S LOOK AT an example of what we mean by stewardship, as revealed by a day in the life of some people we know.
Wind-driven rain sweeps the ridge leading to Yellowbush Lodge all Friday afternoon as we hike up. If you have been on an exposed ridge in a driving rain, you know how thoroughly the wet penetrates, breaks through every defense, infiltrating to the very marrow and systematically soaking everything you have on. The only effective strategy is to keep enough clothes inside the pack thoroughly dry—triple-bagged in plastic, we say—and otherwise be prepared to get just plain wet.
Regardless, the nine members of the Northern Uphill Trail Society (NUTS) slog up the trail in groups of twos and threes, starting as work schedules and driving times permit, each succeeding party being wetter than the preceding one. When we all arrive and shed damp clothes for dry, we warm ourselves with hot cocoa and cook up our communal supper. The conversation runs to black humor as we exchange trail tales with each other and with the score or so of other wet guests at wet Yellowbush Lodge. Otherwise conflicting weather forecasts agree that the storm is to get worse for a few hours, then blow clear. What stage will it be in tomorrow morning?
The night is unbelievable, if you have not been in a small building perched atop an exposed knoll at treeline in the teeth of a full-scale storm. Apparently the mountain gods have lost their tempers. They are yelling and throwing things. The noise outside is a confused shout of primal elements, the building palpably shaken; rain slashes by the windows, penetrates the glazing; water runs along the floor beneath each windward window. Having brought clothes and sleeping gear appropriate for June, not January, we have to commandeer everything we can lay our hands on to stay warm through the night, sleeping as much as one is inclined to sleep when accosted all night by mountain gods in high rage on the Barbarossa Ridge.
The Barbarossa Ridge is an impressive alpine upthrust of high peaks, beautiful in summer sunshine, wild and terrible in storm. As this weekend has begun as a violent storm, our group, the NUTS, is more than happy to enjoy the primitive luxury of the American Mountaineering Club’s hostel, Yellowbush Lodge, a simple four-room closed cabin right at treeline on the western flank of the Barbarossa Range.
The NUTS consists of nine volunteers who have agreed to maintain the hiking trails on the Barbarossa Ridge and its satellites. We are mostly members of the American Mountaineering Club (AMC), but we work independently. Each of us maintains one trail on our own all year long, but twice in the spring and once in the fall we get together to work as a group so we can blitz any outstanding problems with all nine of us in force.
It is the spring of the year, and time to clear all the winter blowdown and scrape clean all the drainage ditches. On this particular weekend the plan is to stay Friday night at the AMC hostel; to clear the trail over the north end of the Barbarossa Ridge and northeast along the connecting Arthur Ridge to Mount Arthur; then return to the hostel building for Saturday night.
The tradition in NUTS is that whoever’s trail we happen to be working on at any particular time, that person is The Boss. The Arthur Ridge Trail is officially the responsibility of Tom and Betty Alkuk, so Tom and Betty were to be in charge of our work that Saturday.
The Alkuks are a couple of contrasts. Tom is big (6 feet 3 inches, 220 pounds), bearded, in his late 30s at the time of writing this, his hair and beard prematurely silver, a very impressive figure on the trail, especially moving large rocks or blowdowns. Of Russian descent, his taciturn and almost dour exterior conceals a wry sense of humor never at rest. He is the sort who, if told that nuclear bombs had just destroyed Washington and New York, would respond with a slight widening of the eyes. At his office job, he’s an innovative social engineer, making waves within his company and the industry. In his community he wins awards for organizing community volunteer efforts. But your first impression meeting him in the mountains is of the strong, silent type. An earlier generation of Hollywood directors would have wrangled over whether to cast Burl Ives or Sydney Greenstreet in the role.
Betty Alkuk is the perfect contrast to her mate. The smallest of the NUTS, she is a miniature dynamo of energy, voluble and unquenchably cheerful, quick to laugh and to spark conversation. Where Tom might brood over a half-empty canteen, Betty would beam on seeing a half-full one. A keen observer of people, she has gradually but unobtrusively become the chief organizer of the schedule of NUTS work weekends, the scribe who sends us all reminders of upcoming assignments.
The Alkuks’ plan on Saturday morning is to divide the nine of us into two groups. Tom and three others will arise in the dark, eat a quick cold breakfast, and leave at first faint light to hike directly all the way to Mount Arthur, 4.5 miles of rugged mountain trail distant. Those four should then be in position to start working back from Mount Arthur at just about the time (about eight o’clock) that the other five, led by Betty, will start working from the hostel toward Mount Arthur, having slept a bit later and eaten a leisurely breakfast. Of the two of us (your authors), one is to go with Tom’s group, the other with Betty’s.
All night long the hostel building is pummeled by mountain winds, slashed by relentless rains. The noise is impressive: some of the guests genuinely fear that the hostel building may be blown off its moorings. No one is as warm as he or she would like to be, not having brought winter sleeping bags.
Next morning the glimpsed view out the fogged-up windows is unworldly. (Tom’s eyes widen slightly.) The stunted treetops resemble the waves of a stormy sea in a state of continuous agitation, the upper branches torn and whipped about. As far as you can see—but you can’t see very far—all is violent motion and hubbub, clouds scudding by, rain nearly horizontal. The whole world up there is wet, but it also seems in a state of high energy and instability verging on disintegration. This is our view from inside a building at 4,000 feet, on a bare knoll still within the realm of spruce and fir trees. We can only conjecture what lies upward of treeline, in the land of rocks and dwarfed alpine vegetation, where no protection lies between you and the arctic wastes from whence originate all these violent forces.
Tom, ever the imperturbable, inscrutable Russian, has no words to say as he silently drinks tea, dons rain gear, and assembles trail tools in the dim dawn light of the lodge. The other three of us whisper and giggle about what madness this is to venture into such a world. More than a mile of our trip across the roofline of the Barbarossa Ridge and over to Mount Arthur will be above treeline. Is Sydney Greenstreet really suggesting that we go out into that? Apparently he is. Somewhere on the far side of that crazy, violent mountain ridge are blowdowns to be cleared, water bars to be scraped, a job to be done, a work ethic to be fulfilled. Cowed by the wall of silence from our leader, the rest of us don our gear, divide our tools. Fortunately all four of us have training in winter climbing above treeline. This is, of course, not winter but summer, not snow but rain—but just barely on both counts: The temperature, we later learn, is in the mid-30s.
That first hour—roughly 5:30 to 6:30—is a grim struggle to make first upward, then lateral, then downward progress in the face of the storm. We are unceasingly staggered by winds, blown against rocks, yelled at by angry mountain gods, unable to talk to each other in the roar and confusion and sense of urgent haste about our itinerary. By the time we are into the trees on the Arthur Ridge, we are, needless to say, once again totally and thoroughly soaked. We stop for water and conversation now that we are out of the wind. When we stop moving, we get cold quickly. Still, we note, the rain seems less punishing—is it letting up? Spirits pick up as we derive some pride from having crossed such a wild high ridge under such demanding conditions. Jokes flow freely. We wonder how many of the other guests at Yellowbush Lodge will attempt the crossing—even the other NUTS.
On we slosh down a trail that is mostly running water. We withstand temptation to clean water bars on the way; that would deprive the other half of the NUTS their assigned task. Our first goal is to get to Mount Arthur, then work back toward the Barbarossa. Soon we encounter blowdowns, the residue of winter’s cruelty. We climb over their slimy trunks, dive through their water-soaked branches. Sure this is wet, but we are already wet to the skin. Wet is the word for this day. We reach the top of Mount Arthur about 8:30, just about the time the other group might be starting out from the hostel.
At this point we notice a pleasant surprise. The rain has definitely stopped. Though the wind is still stiff, it appears to be dispersing, not gathering, rain clouds. We have something to eat, shiver every time we stop moving, clammy in our wet clothes. Then Tom silently rises, grips his hoe, hoists his pack. We turn back down the trail we just ascended. Two of our group wield cutoff garden hoes, scraping each water bar, leapfrogging each other down the trail. The other two go ahead with ax and saw. The first blowdown is simple, a single dead and largely branchless trunk. One saw cut and a two-person heave of the upper section, and the trail is clear. One down, about 59 to go. The second is not much worse, a leaning live spruce with thickly clustered branches. A few ax blows to clear a space for the saw to work, then tumbling the sawn top, end over end, to the downhill side of the trail. The third blowdown is a mass of half a dozen trunks that came down together, their upper branches a chaos of interwoven circuitry. When the water bar cleaners arrive here, they discard their hoes and join in the common effort to deal with this obstruction. Half an hour of hard labor ensues, with spirited cooperation and teamwork, each person leaping to do the little piece of work necessary to support the other’s effort. One by one the trunks are driven from the trail. Unsmilingly Tom nods his approval of our accomplishment, picks up his hoe, hoists his pack, and moves down the trail. We follow immediately—we would follow him to clear the good intentions from that famous path to Gehenna. Leadership by example.
At this point, step back to Yellowbush Lodge and see an entirely different wake-up and breakfast, almost as though it were on a different mountain. When the other five of us, awakened by Betty, rise at 7, we see the last of the rain dispersing, clouds driven off by the wind, patches of blue appearing above, glimpses far down into the pastoral valley below. While we leisurely breakfast and pack, the wind continues strong, but it sends a different message. It is clear to everyone that the storm is over, the mountain gods appeased for now. A cheerful buzz of anticipation enlivens not only our group but the others at Yellowbush Lodge. This will be a splendid, exciting morning on the Barbarossa Ridge, windy but exhilarating, not threatening. True, we wonder if Tom’s group might have got a bit wet perhaps, but that’s not our problem. So we dress in shorts and light tops, donning wind parkas only at treeline, kept warm by the exertion of the climb. We make speedy work of crossing the Barbarossa Ridge, and soon turn east and down along the Arthur Ridge.
Right at treeline we encounter our first water bar, one that is not functioning as it ought. Water from the storm is escaping down the trail. Betty looks on the water with mild reproach, like a schoolteacher at her first-graders who have strayed once again into a long-suffering neighbor’s backyard. This water must be brought back where it belongs. I don’t want to have to speak to it again. All five of us pitch in, first with a babel of suggestions how to fix; then, once Betty has pronounced the decision, with labor—hoeing a deeper trench, breaking down a barrier of earth and stones on the downhill side, repositioning some rocks on the trail. As our work nears completion, bubbling gales of approval burst from Betty’s cheerful soprano. Never has such a small piece of work been more lavishly praised or more proudly admired.
Then we move on, deploying ourselves as follows: one with hoe on the water bars, two with ax and saw on the blowdowns, and two with the humble clippers. Betty and Tom had observed that the first part of that trail was growing in too much and needed brushing back. Clipping is slow, but it is the bread and butter of trail work. The sign of an effective trail maintainer is one who takes pleasure in the slow, meticulous job of clipping brush, and who does it well, thoroughly, and thoughtfully. So the two who are clipping lag behind, while the other three make rapid progress through the water bars and blowdowns, propelled by Betty’s infectious chatter and humor.
The work of cleaning blowdowns and scraping water bars, when described on the printed page, sounds like a tedious and repetitious task. To be out there doing it is to discover that each downed tree and each drainage ditch is unique, presenting initially a mental challenge of deciding how to approach it, then a satisfying physical effort, enriched by the pleasures of teamwork, rewarded for the one group by little Betty’s bubbling enthusiasms, and for the other by an unsmiling grunt of approbation from big Tom.
Gradually the trail opens up and drains properly, and at about 12:30, in a low col somewhere on the Arthur Ridge, the two groups meet. Here is an extraordinary contrast. Tom’s group had begun the day in that spin-rinse cycle gone mad, and our bodies had geared down to being soaked wet at 35°F. We had worked hard now for several hours, but we still felt cold, still wore our wet wool balaclavas, our wet polypro underclothes, wet wind pants, wet rain parkas. To us it is still a wet, cold day, even if the rain had stopped. It is accordingly like meeting visitors from another planet to encounter our three friends (three, because the two clippers were back a ways) dressed in shorts and T-shirts and pleasantly warm from their exertions. Tom’s group is at first reluctant to believe the story of strolling comfortably across the Barbarossa Ridge from 8:30 to 9:30. Betty’s group, on the other hand, is genuinely concerned that some of Tom’s workers appear borderline hypothermic. Tom’s group is urged to return now to the warm hostel, having put in seven hours of hard exertion already.
So while Betty’s group remains in the trees of the Arthur Ridge to finish some detail work and get the patch of clipping completed, Tom’s group ascends back to the top of the Barbarossa Ridge. There Tom mentions some problems in defining the trail better above treeline, with a view to deterring hikers from wandering indiscriminately over the alpine vegetation. Immediately proposals blossom about where a new cairn could be placed, an existing one moved, a piece of scree wall pushed back here or angled in there, some loose rock meticulously removed from one place and littered randomly over another. Busy hands fly at the work. Forgotten is the warm hostel below. One of Tom’s party, Sara, has an artistic bent, an incurably creative impulse, and a contagious imagination. Cairns built with Sara in charge are no shapeless heaps of rocks; each becomes a unique artistic expression, carefully shaped to fit its special niche in that mountain landscape. Have you ever seen a cairn with soul? A cairn with a sense of humor? Try one built by Sara. On this afternoon on the Barbarossa Ridge, one cairn leads to another, then another. Other touches are added to channel hiker traffic unobtrusively but effectively, it is hoped. In a couple of hours, a 200-yard stretch of trail has been completely refashioned to provide a more easily discernible footway and to guide the traveler more helpfully and with less impact on the alpine surroundings.
Now, at about 4 P.M. of an energetic day that began with a stiff tussle against the mountain elements and proceeded through jumbles of blowdowns and scrapings of water bars to elegant cairns and wrestling with large rocks, Tom’s Gang of Four heads wearily back across the Barbarossa Ridge and down to Yellowbush Lodge. Betty’s group too straps their clippers to their packs and heads back. The one of us who had been with Tom’s morning group sits a long while on the summit of Barbarossa, warm at last, then realizes that Betty herself has not yet passed to descend to Yellowbush. By now it is well after five. So we turn back and, half a mile along the Ridge, encounter Betty cheerfully directing two of her co-workers on the reconstruction of a partially knocked-over cairn. The two good-humoredly chide Betty with not letting them go, the slave driver, mercilessly pointing out unfinished work. When that cairn is done, we all turn and head for Yellowbush—and dinner!
But we carry to this day a vivid image, in that late afternoon slant of sun on the Barbarossa Ridge, of Betty coming slowly along, well behind everyone else, her concentration riveted on every detail of her trail, using her hoe as a broom to remove every loose rock, stopping to replace a heavy stone in the scree wall, critically eyeing a cairn to judge if it was doing its job properly, never once looking up from the job at hand. That trail is going to be right before Betty goes down for dinner.
Thus ends a day in the life of the NUTS.