Hike aids transition to new year

It’s the same every New Year’s Day, but different. As the day approaches, I start planning for my New Year’s resolution.

It’s always the same, simple strategy, really. I load up the pack, dress warmly, and leave early in the wee hours between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. and climb Cadillac Mountain to watch the sunrise. Every year since 2000, I’ve managed to keep the resolution. It’s different, because I never know what will happen.

That first year was the last year that Acadia National Park opened the Cadillac Mountain Auto Road to cars so late in the season. They wouldn’t have done it at all if there had been any ice or snow. All the media were there, as well as about 1,500 people, who drove past me about 30 minutes before sunrise. That year I took the road, because as many times as I had hiked it, it was never at night or in January. I left the summit before the crowd and saw dawn on the way down.

Prior to my first year, I wasn’t very good at keeping resolutions. For years, I was so certain I wouldn’t keep one, I didn’t make any. Then came the turn of the millennium and I just had to celebrate the huge moment with something equally momentous. So I picked a hike up the highest point, if not the first place to see the dawn (Lubec has earned that honor), on the East Coast. So, Cadillac Mountain was, geographically, huge for a 1,500-foot mountain.

The day and the year symbolically, if not chronologically, begins at dawn under the first light and on my first year, a new millennium. So, the hike itself should signify something, too. It would be a way to walk away from the past year, a little farther, with each purposeful step. I would start hiking in the dark of night toward a beginning day.

New Year’s 2001, I took the same auto road route up and down the mountain, but on snowshoes, and there were no cars and far fewer people. Last year was the first year that I actually hiked a trail, the North Ridge Trail. There wasn’t much snow and it was the best year yet. I had a couple of friends’ company on that hike, unlike in other years. Although the sunrise was less than spectacular, we all had a great time and made it back safe and sound.

For this New Year’s Day hike, I started on the South Ridge Trail, across from Blackwoods Campground.

The conditions were mercifully gentle. The storm front which had socked the state in a fury of freezing drizzle had continued out to sea. When I began hiking, on crampon-equipped snowshoes to negotiate the snow and ice which I expected to encounter, the night sky was clear. Venus rose over my shoulder, out of the east, and shone with the brilliance of a beacon. Soon I was in the forest, heading away from the past year and into a new one.

The air temperature hovered a little above freezing, so the few low places along the way were filled with more water and slush than ice. The snowshoes acted a little like floats and kept my feet from getting too soaked. As I hiked upward, the lights of the village of Otter Creek and the Cranberry Islands blended with the stars above.

My thoughts turned to those symbolisms raised by the trek itself. Figuratively, maybe a year becomes what this hike has become, a march through time, encountering obstacles and negotiating them. Occasionally, while hiking, I had to stop and locate the trail, like in the past year, when events caused me to search for my way. There were small encounters during the days that made my year and, fortunately, infrequent large obstacles. But, small or great, all were dealt with and gotten through.

The time passed uneventfully as the sky grew lighter on my way out of the forest. Up on the exposed ridge, the wind blew strong out of the south. I zipped up my outer shell, which I had kept open to keep from overheating. With less snow on the surface of the rocks, it looked like I could take the snowshoes off. As soon as I did that, I discovered that the ledge had been surfaced with a thin, slippery, layer of ice. The snowshoes went right back on just for traction.

The passing of a year isn’t always an uphill climb and the same is true of this hike, most hikes really. The ridge levels off after leaving Featherbed, a lovely, little feature of a marshy break in the water table about halfway up. By then, the light of the impending sunrise had grown strong enough so I could turn off the headlamp and stow it away. Soon, the sun would be up and the first light of the New Year would shine.

Hopefully, and with a sense of urgency, I quicken the pace. The next thing I knew I was on top with enough light to see the full forms of the surrounding mountains. The sun had begun to show its colors filtered through and reflected by the clouds from the previous night’s storm that had been racing out to sea.

Then, the moment came when the first yellow glow of the sun actually appeared on the horizon. Just as that happened, a thin, misty cloud formed on the summit, threatening to obscure the view. It didn’t, though. Instead, as the sun rose, it shined through the mist, which created a veiled, sublime sight for the eyes. Finally, there it was, the bright, first light of a New Year. It shined across the dull steel color of the Atlantic. The ocean reflected the beam of the sun ahead of it as it rose, all too quickly.

With the big event past, I turned to start down toward the truck. Another year had begun.

Brad Viles in an avid hiker and backpacker.