"Camping With Henry David" by Will LaPage

CONTENTS A LONG TIME AGO THE O'BRIENS HAVE COFFEE
CAMPING WITH HENRY DAVID THE MAKE-UP ARTIST AUTHORS

Backpack checked. Raisins, cheese, chocolate,
water bottle, hardtack, binoculars, and one well-worn copy
of Henry David's notes, aged one-hundred and thirty-five years.
Not exactly Henry's list of camping supplies,
but all that really matters is his list of observations.
Being present for the event is what it's all about.

Henry admired this mountain, and so do I.
He liked its mosses, dwarf black spruces, blueberries,
and mountain cranberries. So do I.
He liked its wildness, its special air,
its sunrises and sunsets, as do I.
He disliked the hammer and stone-chisel crowd.
I dislike the spray painters and litterers.

Henry's Monadnock is still there, but it is also gone.
The last wolf on the mountain was killed in his lifetime.
In the evening, camping at the summit,
he could hear the sheep baaing high on its shoulders.
The sheep that the wolves were killed to save.
No trace of the pastures remain —
but the wolves are inching back.

We hike together, Henry and I,
to his favorite camping spot, set up camp,
then hike the hundred yards to the summit
to watch the sun go down. We'll return in a few hours
to be present for its next performance — the event.

I will treasure my indelible mental print of mountain sunset —
long shadows on soft granite, surrounded by pink light —
mesmerized by a mountain getting its goodnight kiss from the sun.

Back at the campsite in the light of dusk,
I crawl into my sleeping bag and silently criticize
as Henry blithely clips soft new foliage from an ancient spruce
for his bed. I fall asleep, the booming nighthawks
competing with falling stars, for last memory of the day.

During the night, the wind comes up. Faintly, hauntingly,
the mountain begins its song, a single chord played in arpeggio,
slowly rising to a low roar, and just as slowly returning,
proudly proclaiming itself the original wind instrument —
new variations built on the melody
it first heard when its ice cap came off.

Seeing nature with Henry is seeing it anew.
Long-dead sentinel snags of a widely scattered forest,
gaunt, rock-hard, silvery-gray, ghostly, naked, skeletons,
locked in place by once-thirsty, and still-powerful, searching roots.
Air still purer than that I am normally condemned to breathe —
wildly intoxicating, naturally addictive, impossibly primal —
breathing it, a sacrilege, necessary to purify tainted lungs.

Since that day, Henry and I have walked
many of the same paths,
but none so memorable
as returning to the summit in the pre-dawn light
to watch the sun fulfill its promise to a mountain.
Being present for the event is what its all about.

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