“Wild Fears & Franconia Ridge”
This excerpt is from a personal essay I wrote three months into sobriety, after a solo hike along Franconia Ridge. The experience made me reflect on my relationship with hiking during the years I was drinking, as well as the emotional weight I was carrying from a recent breakup.
Every traffic light has been green for me, and I remind myself to be careful of this feeling when things are going right.
Lafayette Place Campground is plugged into Google Maps. I’ll park my 4Runner there and hike Franconia Ridge—one of the most sought-after loops in New England. This trail often earns a place in online articles with titles like “World’s Best Day Hikes.”
It’s a nine-mile trail day (give or take). I’m always a little nervous before a solo hike, for obvious reasons. What if I get lost and they have to send SAR? (I have a map and a fully charged phone, but still.) They’ll search the notch for weeks before finding my decomposing body slumped against a rock.
Or what if there’s a serial killer on the trail? Of course he targets tall brunettes. He’ll walk back to the parking lot with me—might even make charming small talk. My legs will be tired, my mental state foggy. Suddenly, he’s slamming my head into the hood of my car and shoving me into his trunk. My decomposing body (again) will be found deep in the Franconia wilderness, doused in bleach, unidentifiable.
Or what if I have a run-in with a black bear, and it just so happens to be one of those rare encounters where the otherwise elusive black bear is deranged or hungry or on cocaine? The (ridiculous, unlikely) what-ifs always make me a bit nervous. It’s a buzz I’ve come to enjoy.
Green light.
I turn onto the Kancamagus Highway and follow it west toward Lincoln. June came with early rain, hydrating the White Mountains in preparation for days like this. The trees are at their greenest. The Swift River is high, its steady flow shimmering in the morning sun.
As I drive deeper into the woods, the worries I had seem distant—too small to matter here.
*
The first 1.5 miles of the Franconia Ridge Trail come with many stream crossings and waterfalls. When I step on a wet rock at the center of moving water, I’m always prepared for it to shift and thankful when it doesn’t. I love the stream crossings because I get to choose my own line. It’s just me in my head. The next step, whether it’s successful or not, is entirely my own.
I can smell myself: sweat, sunscreen, DEET. My heart is knocking. There’s a faint grumble in my stomach.
I stop to pull a snack from my backpack: a flour tortilla slathered in Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter and rolled up like a taquito. This roll method makes it easiest to eat while I walk, because I don’t like to stop.
With the roll in my mouth, I pass a French-speaking mom with her two sons. I’ve seen them several times at this point. We’re about three miles in and have been leapfrogging the whole time.
I don’t really know French, but I know enough to tell when someone’s talking about me. The mom turns to her sons and says, “That woman’s beating us.”
It would be ridiculous to feel competitive against this middle-aged woman and her children. But I feel a sense of pride at her comment—her concern that I am beating them. I am hiking faster than others, faster than I once did.
And I do move quickly. Without three or four cans of beer weighing it down, my daypack is lighter than it used to be (peak beers were a normal part of my hiking routine). I’m lighter than I used to be, too. I used to drink—a lot. I lost a decent amount of bloated drinker weight once I stopped for good.
Sometimes I drank for the wrong reasons, but in my head, I mostly drank for the right ones. Life was a party, and every adventure was worthy of celebration. There was something about the outdoor community and heavy drinking that came together naturally, no matter the activity.
For example, a good hike always included a peak beer (or two, or three), along with a stop at some local brewery post-trail. On a seven-day river trip down the Middle Fork of the Salmon, our crew loaded the floor of our raft with over a dozen thirty-racks. Ski jacket pockets were mostly used for nips of McGillicuddy’s. Dirt roads to campsites welcomed unspoken rules about open containers in lawless lands.
It was a lifestyle, and my ex and I were good at it. He could party, and I could almost keep up. Our relationship was fun. We were fun. Drinking was fun. There was a long span of time when I don’t remember not feeling hungover. But even the hangovers were whimsical, because we’d wake up next to each other and hold frozen packs of peas to our foreheads. We’d crack a Miller Lite and chug the first few sips to make room for a splash of orange juice, and we’d pack up for the next adventure. The effects of this lifestyle crept up slowly—and then all at once.
One weekend in early fall, we set off on an eight-mile hike up Mount Chocorua. The New England foliage was exactly how you’d picture it—crisp golds contrasted with rich reds on deciduous branches, ready to shed. The air smelled of damp pine. The sun felt further from the earth.
We’d spent the previous night at Jigger Johnson Campground, getting wine-drunk and swimming in the river. We stayed up until 2 a.m. playing cards next to the fire.
Morning came with a pounding headache and a desperate need for water, which only made me nauseous to drink. We hiked anyway, as we always did.
I felt puffy and bloated and suffocated. My stomach stung with pain as I moved uphill. My head was stuck in a fishbowl—echoing, sloshing with each step. All I could think about was getting off that mountain and back to camp. There, I could drink another beer.
Our ascent was slow and unsettling. I was feeble on my own feet, jittery from the alcohol, and sickly with dehydration.
I don’t remember the summit or the views.
Long after that hike—and after the breakup—I was still feeble. With the aftermath of the party came a divine conclusion. It came to me quietly. I realized I was always thinking about the next drink—not because I wanted it, but because I needed it to feel better.
I needed it.
It was a concept that sufficiently scared me. I admitted it to no one. I barely admitted it in my own head. But the awareness of it floated through my heart and my brain every day, like a mosquito that never dies no matter how many times you swat. I was one of those people. I was an alcoholic.
So I slowly pushed myself to drink less with the expectation that it wouldn’t work. It was a wild fear, similar to the buzz of an unknown solo hike. Can I do it on my own? Will I make it out alive? Who will find me and peel my body off the hard ground in the case of a horrific “what if”?
But I’d try anyway. I gave myself limits. It was something I’d never done before. “Only four drinks tonight,” I’d say. Then, “Only two.” These rules weren’t only applicable to nights out. I had to make them (and struggle to succeed) when I was home alone, drinking by myself. By the grace of God, I made progress.
Eventually, having only two felt silly. What was the point? It was harder to manage a reasonable drinking limit than to just quit for good. That’s when I decided to try Dry January. I made it to the end of the month with a bottle of white wine in my fridge, just in case. It was never opened.
I cried a lot—about all the things I would have otherwise pushed back down with each sip. They say this part is normal—the emotional rollercoaster you embark on when you lose the tool (the bottle) that has tamed the parts of yourself you’ve carefully suppressed for so long.
January turned to February with three slip-ups, and then—stillness. Drinklessness.
Sober singleness was serene and otherworldly.
I had awakened a piece of myself that I happened to like quite a bit. On top of that, I’d done it all for myself.
Soon, I was sure-footed, tender, and alive. More alive than I’d ever been before. With sobriety, I felt superhuman. I grew more confident in life and on the trail. My mileage came easier to me—moving steady and efficient through the mountains.
I walk stronger now.
I guess I’ve done a lot of things right since then.
When I look up, the woods have closed in on me, the trail narrowing ahead. I see granite slabs in the form of a winding staircase. I’m working my way above tree line now. The wind has picked up. The sky is turning from blue to gray. A gust of air brings with it that familiar smell—ripe with damp forest musk, old fur, a lingering scent of whatever the animal has been eating or rolling in. Bear.
I check my AllTrails map. One more good push and I’ll be peaking Little Haystack; the ridge is right around the corner.
*
