SILVER LAKE, NEW HAMPSHIRE
ALDEN HARKEN AND I IN AN UNEXPECTED RETREAT
IN A COOL RAINY WEEKEND,
EXTENDED BY CIRCUMSTANCES
STILL WELL BEYOND OUR CONTROL
Sep. 13-16, 2001
Random Thoughts on Moving on By Surface Transport-
The Only Kind Available Just Now-
To Do Some Pleasant Usual Things (Although Plans May Be Disrupted)
In Unusual Times
Alden Harken met the Acela Express Amtrak train as it pulled in late into South Station Boston about the time the rain began. We had both hoped to be joined en route to the New Hampshire retreat by later flights in by Laurie and Tabby Harken (unlikely) and Virginia (now impossible). I had completed the Sep-B-4 chapter as I rode through Manhattan, staring out at the dust and smoke-filled sky that made for a spectacular sunset-as it once had before my eyes in the great Yellowstone National Park then-destructive fires. I looked out at the toothless grin of the cityscape, shooting a picture of the city profile, as I once had so eagerly the week before my first New York City Marathon in flying a ring around Manhattan in approach to La Guardia, and then, on the marathon run across the Verazano Narrows at the artificial "Twin Peaks"-declaiming "What hath Man wrought!"
If it was not the hand of Almighty Allah, as declaimed by today's newest incarnation of the devil himself, Osama bin Laden-a term on everyone's lips to stand for the Powers of Darkness-I think it was not a demon, but again, the absence of the unnatural towers can be as well as their presence an expression, again: "Look what Man can do if he puts His devious mind to it!"
Our conversation, of course, was of the national events, as we drove out to New Hampshire. We passed the place I had been both in 1969-when Michael was a few days old, and had climbed "my first mountain" in my arms-Mount Monadonack-and again in 1997, when I had done the highest peak in Washington State, 14,411-foot Mt. Rainier, and New Hampshire, Mt. Monadonack, again, in the same month (see "My Life in the Mountains, and the Mountains in My Life" on my home page, under "Climbing" in "Adventures" http://home.gwu.edu/~gwg) Now, we have another mountainous watershed to measure our lives against, Black Tuesday September 11, 2001.
Now, this new mountainous event has created watersheds in our lives. The nationwide disruption in the security people have not only in our airports but in our minds-the vulnerability that comes of the knowledge that many of the important elements of our lives, despite our seemingly best efforts are "outside our control" may be a valuable lesson. This lesson is something we knew well when we were infants, and as the standard practices of civilization have been inculcated in us, we began to think otherwise: "If only I do what needs to be done, fire, famine, numbing cold, floods, winds, and disease can all be controlled"---and now this. A valuable lesson is the unlearning of behavior that is repeated so often as to be self-deceptive. Thank God, not everything is in our control, or we might make a real mess of it, having our own self-inflicted Armageddons on a semi-regular basis. Just when the threat of nuclear terror had receded from the public mind as the Super Powers negotiated or faded away, we see what just one or a few men can do with a distortion that "God will have to think our thoughts after us." They were armed with little more than the audacity of taking over our own conveniences to turn them against us, in the name of something worse than selfish-the arrogance of deciding that each of us can determine what is best for our own use or destruction of the world and the other inhabitants in it. The final utterances on the flight recorder once found in the only one of the four that was perhaps not vaporized on impact may have been "Allah Akhbar" ("God is Great"), but what that really means is "But I am Greater!" I can pretty much force God to see things my way, and he will have to take the credit for my great and daring deeds by which I call His attention to myself.
AND HERE WE ARE-IN THE SYLVAN SETTING
OF SILVER LAKE, NEW HAMPSHIRE-
AS I CONSIDER THE NEW WORLD "WALDEN TWO"
This may be a better place to consider the place of man under God than New York City just now. If Walden was the place for a Deist to escape from the others of the "mass of men leading lives of quiet desperation," this other New England pond has potential as well-a setting in which to straighten out the kinks in Thoreau's misinterpretation of a good book into which to read meaning.
Even in a cold rain, sitting at a roaring fire in a stone fireplace under the eclectic accumulation of Dwight Harken's ancient arms collection, plundered every winter during break-ins of the unattended house in the woods, it is the right place to retreat in this week of national shock, horror, mourning, and now the impotent rage of saber-rattling with modern weapons, every bit as effective against evil as the matchlock rifle hanging above me just now. A carrier-based task force is under way to throw the whole inventory of million dollar cruise missiles at a barren mountainous land, which can hardly be much changed from the pre-strike ruins that Afghanistan is now. But, at least these expensive fireworks-which may pass overhead when I am working there nearby, assuming that I can fly out there any time soon when flights resume-give the sensation that "at least we are doing something." Probably doing some serious damage all right, mainly to ourselves.
Note that the world's biggest, most deadly and expensive terrorist action had very little capital expenditure, using "found parts" for its implementation, and all of this was carried out still without the single most obvious and chilling instrument of multiplier madness---a small thermonuclear device. The homing device that was the guidance system in each case was the willingness of the perpetrator to die, in the carrying out of their own will attributed to Allah, knowing that he could not get away, making no effort to do so to distract him from his carefully pinpointed target---against which assassin there is no defense, and never has been.
SILVER LAKE RETREAT
CHESHIRE, NEW HAMPSHIRE
Alden and I warmed ourselves twice by finding wood downfalls and cutting it for the fireplace. It was cold and rainy for the first day and bright, sunny, but still cold for the second day. Alden swam both days. I was a wuss, so I watched the first day, but cheerfully both swam and canoed the second day. As I was gliding as motionless as possible, a great blue heron whooped in and back-paddled, after first attempting to land on the prow of the canoe. He instead dropped on the rocks that look like "Three Sisters" off a glaciated rock point on the island where there is a rope swing to dive off the rock into the clear cold water. It is an idyllic lake, and reminds me of the youthful times I had spent on northern Michigan's Horsehead Lake, especially looking up at the edge-on view of the Milky Way galaxy and a few passing satellites-a new thing back then, and now old hat since the heavens are filled with space junk-and most especially hearing the night time tremolo of the mournful loons. This is a thrilling sound to hear once again, in a kind of "north woods habitat with which I grew up familiar.
Circumstances in the outside world kept us checking by sell phones as to which airports were closed and what movements were impossible-essentially all air traffic until late in the weekend, if then. When we heard that Alden could get a flight on Sunday morning from Logan in Boston if it opened, with a back-up on Monday from Newark, if it was flying, we resolved upon a plan. Elizabeth Yellen was so kind as to carry my Nepal MAP packs to Boston for my flight out of BOS to FRA on Saturday night, which was not going, as the airport was still closed. If she could carry those down to DC in the drive she plans to do with a medical student friend on Sunday and we might rendezvous somewhere in DC, and IF, I can get to and into DCA to reclaim the India medicine packs and the big duffel with my gear for India, Nepal, New Orleans and Colorado in it (and the checked in rifle case, which now has nowhere to go but back home!) I might be able to drive Alden's Enterprise Rental car back down to DC to avoid all the overcharges they were going to assess to return it since Enterprise has no one-way rentals. Further, I will have to open the duffel bag and take out the Colorado hunting gear and pack it into a box and mail it to Gene and Sara Moore's home address, so that it might be awaiting me there when I come in to Colorado after the ACS meeting in New Orleans. I will have to carry all the slides and talk materials I have packed in that duffel with me around the world so as not to risk not having them, but I DID give my hanging suit bag to Alden to return to Denver from which he can carry it to New Orleans, so I will not have suits and ties with me on the Everest trek route.
This may all work out yet-no thanks to the demonic disruption of those who have a special revelation that orders them to kill.
RETURN TO DC AS ALDEN RETURNS TO DENVER
It is true-Logan had opened for limited service. But, when I tried to drop Alden off and see that he was going to be able to fly, I was immediately swept out of the Logan road approaches by several radio carrying guards who said there was NO parking in all of Logan, but for sure I was not going to pause one second longer but must get a move on or I would be doing so behind a tow truck. I had to leave the airport and [passed a Hilton hotel where I sneaked into their parking lot and ran back to check on Alden who had in fact got an earlier flight through ORD to DIA, so he is set. We shook hands as black-jump-suited security teams with M-16's guarded the check-in lines and brown-uniformed "US Border Guards" watched us at the security screen. These are strange times, in which the domestic flights here at Logan resemble the international boarding between hostile states, as I had seen it in Beirut, in Baghdad, and in African countries at war, such as Nigeria. You no longer have to go abroad to get your fill of automatic weapons all around civilian populations
I drove out of Logan and onto I-93 and down I-95 without a wiggle out of the way despite having no map in the vehicle. When I got to New York City, I drove across the upper deck of the George Washington Bridge, under a huge American flag. Every other vehicle was waving a flag. I drove around the still smoky gap-tooth grin of lower Manhattan with a still thick smoke hanging like a pall over the still air of the lower island. Bedsheets were labeled, "Thank you NYFD and NYPD" and another "America: God Shed His Grace on Thee!"
I made the 470 miles to Derwood in eight hours with a half hour refueling and McD's large coffee stop, and began the round of phone calls to see if I could pull it off tomorrow. The team is mostly in Europe, since a number of them started as labor Day tourists, but they cannot go on to set up clinics without me, the medicines, my license and my supervision for the medical students and PA's. So, I hope to find Elizabeth Yellen tomorrow morning as I go to DCA if it will allow me to reclaim bags into the Enterprise rental car, then quickly unpack the duffel, and the gear I will need for Colorado will be mailed to Gene and Sara Moore as I am also mailing some items to Alden, and then will try to carry the whole of the boxes and bags (minus the rifle case-which will be locked in the Bronco at GW-and a substitute will have to be borrowed in Colorado) in the rental car which I will turn in at Dulles and try to talk my way onto any Eastward bound European flight tomorrow.
Try, Try Again.