Prologue

It all started the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college—the Fourth of July, to be exact. My best friend, Curtis, and I were accompanied by our other best friend, Jason, on the tenth or eleventh iteration of my family’s annual vacation to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It was the third time that Curtis and Jason made the trip with us, something my parents had started to encourage after coming to the realization that there was too much yelling and screaming when it was just our family. Back in those days, my brother and I would sit in the back seat of the car with our headphones on, playing Pokémon while we tried to avoid pissing anyone off. It was a formidable challenge for a confrontational child like me. But all the nonsense ceased once we began to invite friends to join us. For the most part.

On this trip, we planned to tread new ground. For too many years we had idled around the hotel pool, screaming obscenities in the sauna for no apparent reason when we got bored. For three teenagers, this was the only excitement available on vacation aside from the crappy all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet down the street and sleeping in as late as we wanted.

To make amends for our withering adolescence, we wanted to go on a new kind of adventure—one that amalgamated the endurance we had developed as high school cross country and track runners with the common sense we purported to have. Our friend Nel had told us on myriad occasions that we needed to start hiking, and on myriad occasions we had brushed off his advice. Today was different.

***

The Franconia Ridge Loop, a hike over Mount Lincoln and Mount Lafayette, is a breeding ground for inspiration. It turns some of the most sedentary people into believers. It’s almost impossible to find yourself alone up there. And for good reason. It screams primal beauty—raging waterfalls, calf-burning inclines, winding alpine pathways, and interminable, sweeping vistas—the kind of attraction that has drawn humans to the mountains for millennia.

It wasn’t convenient to set up civilization among the frigid slopes of the White Mountains. It was more of a spiritual pilgrimage. Archaeologists have estimated that around twenty-one Native sites existed in what is currently the White Mountain National Forest. People have been in the area for over ten thousand years. We weren’t the first posse of explorers to be lured into these mountains. Nor the first posse of idiots.

***

“What the hell, Curtis? We’re going to die of hypothermia up here!”

I was half-kidding, but the other half was growing steadily more convinced that we were in trouble. The sky was absent as we climbed higher and higher into obscurity. In its stead, thick, leaden clouds swept above us and blanketed the horizon.

We had passed a handful of waterfalls on our way up the seemingly endless and aptly named Falling Waters Trail. Our legs were not prepared for nearly four thousand vertical feet of elevation gain that day. Neither was the rest of us.

At this point in the hike, I had removed my cotton sweatshirt. The material was drenched in moisture from the heavy rainstorm dumping buckets of screw you all over us: take that you morons, and maybe next time you’ll come prepared!

“Give me that sweatshirt, I’m freezing over here,” Curtis replied. Of course, the old adage in the mountains is never wear cotton. We hadn’t gotten the memo.

Meanwhile, Jason was only somewhat happier with his moisture-wicking sweatshirt, which was holding up moderately well. Surely though, it was ineffective in comparison to a proper rain jacket. After all, who hikes on a New Hampshire ridgeline in just a hooded sweatshirt, especially with forecasted rain?

Well, a lot of people. Many hikers go into the Whites wearing sneakers, sandals, and even jeans. Comparatively, we weren’t that unprepared.

As we trudged further up the steep incline to who knows where, the fog insisted on following us. I felt as if we were ever-so-subtly being flipped off by Mother Nature. This bold experiment in the hills was proving to be everything we didn’t expect and then some.

“The summit is right there, guys!” Jason yelled over the strengthening wind.

Yes, believe it or not, the dinky White Mountains of New Hampshire can bring with them brutal and tenacious storms. You wouldn’t guess it based on their insignificant elevations, with Mount Washington being the highpoint at just under 6,300 feet. But Washington is the proud owner of the second highest ever recorded surface wind speed at 231 miles per hour.

“This is terrible,” I muttered, as I found shelter from the gales underneath a rocky platform on the summit of Mount Lafayette.

“Yup,” Jason responded. “The wind must be like seventy miles per hour up here!” He plopped down next to me and tried to cuddle with me. I swiftly nudged him away with my shoulder.

“What are you guys talking about, the views are great!” Curtis said, glancing at the dark, opaque skies on either side of him.

“Sure, says the guy who has the sweatshirt,” I mumbled. I reached my trembling hands into my backpack and rustled around for something edible. It wasn’t even worth the effort to shove Jason away as he inched closer to me. It was too damn cold.

The rain withdrew itself momentarily, but soon came crying back like a clingy Tinder match you should’ve swiped left on.

“Next time we do this we need to check the weather,” I proposed, but quickly reversed course as I began to shiver uncontrollably, and my teeth started to chatter. “Then again . . . w-w-who knows . . . if there will be . . . a next time.”

With my body practically inoperable from the cold and wetness, we rose from our perches and began to head down the trail to complete the loop. Typically, one descends the west side of Mount Lafayette, passes the Greenleaf Hut, and finishes on the Old Bridle Path. But we’re not typical, and due to an absent-minded effort, we found ourselves on the Greenleaf Trail going north.

It wasn’t until we popped out next to I-93 that we realized our mistake.

“Uh, GUYS,” I yelled, as I emerged from the forest first.

“What?” Curtis fired back. As soon as he reached me, he gave me an earnest look of defeat.

Jason was the last to grace us with his presence.

“Where the hell are we?” He blurted out.

“I guess we’ll have to see if we can hitchhike,” Curtis instantly realized. I wasn’t so sure.

“We could always call my parents.” I looked down at my phone only to discover that we had no cell service.          

We began to walk toward the parking lot for Cannon Mountain, which was across the street from where the trail had deposited us. When we reached it, Curtis confronted a couple and asked them if we could hitch a ride to our car, which was several miles south on I-93. Against my better judgment, we shoved our gear into their trunk and hopped into the back seat, unsure if we would make it out alive. Well, I was unsure.

***

The Quebec license plate should have been an indication that we weren’t going to make it home that night in one piece. Oh Lord, please don’t let them take us over the border. Why are we driving northbound, the car isn’t this way!

Our silent pleas went unanswered, as Hans and Francine sped off into the countryside—well, the mountainside, I suppose. Who cares anyway, we were going to be dinner that night if we didn’t do anything quickly.

“Um, Hans, I think you went past the ex—err, went the wrong way,” Curtis yelled over the couple who were yelling over the yelling on the French radio talk-show.

“Oui, oui!”

I wondered at the time how stupid three people had to be to get themselves into a situation like this—hitchhiking with random tourists. Well, that’s what happens when you don’t know how to read a map. One wrong turn is disastrous.

But lucky for us, our gamble to hitchhike, which initially promised only a fifty-fifty rate of survival, turned into a worthy roll of the dice. We made it out relatively unscathed, excepting the temporary loss of hearing invoked by our French-Canadian saviors. Bless their souls for bailing us out of our own stupidity. Contrary to my sarcastic account of the encounter, they were a pleasant couple that instilled in us the concept of “paying it forward.”

“Merci!” Curtis yelled, as we frantically removed our belongings from the trunk and escaped toward my car.

“That was a terrible experience,” Jason remarked, as we shoved our backpacks in the car and took off back toward the hotel.

“You mean the hike or the hitchhike?” Curtis inquired, as he took off his filthy boots to expose his even filthier feet which began to produce a repugnant smell.

“Both.”

“Yeah, it kinda sucked,” I responded, “but I’d do it again.”