Over the Mountain

Over the mountain.

My relationship with Big Savage Mountain started over ten years ago. I had just moved to Frostburg from Rockville. I was 20, extremely naïve, idealistic and adventurous. It was super bowl Sunday and the Redskins weren't in it, so I didn't care about the game. I didn't know anyone here, really, not one person, and back then I wasn't even half the fluttering social butterfly I've become. It was cold, but not bitter. Snowing, but not heavily. I didn't know the geography, the roads, the trails. I knew North and West. I knew what I wanted to do.

I got up early. Put on the winter clothes I had, which by mountain standards were hardly late summer attire. They were clothes capable of getting you from your car into a building in the suburban DC climate, but I didn't know that; they were winter clothes. I walked out of my Main Street apartment and went west..

The bank thermometer said 24. I thought nothing of it. West, then North, that is what I thought. Before the day was over, I was going to find PA. I was going to go west until I found a road that went north, then I'd go north until I saw a sign that said, “Welcome to Pennsylvania”.

I knew nothing of orographic lift and adiabatic cooling; of “winter”. I walked. Over Big Savage. Walked north through Finzel. No food, no water. PA was close, I knew it. I was cold, but I was determined. The snow was falling heavier, the drifts deeper. I walked.

“Welcome to Pennsylvania”, I had made it. I was cold, tired, hungry, thirsty. Time to go home. I walked fast. I was frozen. I walked as fast as I could to stay warm. I walked south. I walked down the mountain, it was easy. Too easy. I got colder. Painfully cold. I remember trying to comprehend that kind of prolonged cold, it was something I had never felt before. I remember when I got back into town, that feeling of “A few more steps, just a few more”. I remember jumping into the hot shower and thinking the water was fire—it burned. I remember thinking, “hello mountain”.

Now, we are as well met as a boy and a geological formation can be. I learned how to put the right clothes on too.

Since that day I have walked, biked and skied over Big Savage hundreds of times. Today me and my bicycle got to say, “hello again” for the first time this year, and it felt pretty damn good.