Liam has been asking me to take him mountain climbing and so i obliged.
errrr...i took him up Bear Mountain in
Salisbury, CT. For those who know, it is not the highest point in CT, just the highest summit in the state. (for a complete summary of the issue visit
CT Museum Quest.)
this 6.7 mile hike is one that i have taken innumerable times since being a boy scout. It rates as being a strenuous to moderately strenuous hike, but i figured that
Liam could do it pretty easily. He ran a 5K over the summer so this would be walking twice as far, but in a greater period of time.
on the morning of the walk, we got up, had breakfast and packed snacks for the hike. mom even made
peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches. (
Liam later commented while eating his sandwich: "is there anything that peanut butter doesn't make better?" truer words were never spoken and it reminded me of an old
nike ad.)
we started walking and were making descent time, but taking more breaks than i might have taken had i been by myself. at one point there was an opportunity to turn the walk into a loop or a
straight up and down walk. i gave
Liam the choice telling him that the loop was longer, thinking that he'd opt for the shorter trip, but i was mistaken. we took the loop (the
Paradise trail for those "in the loop"). it is a great walk, with a steep final
approach to the summit. Liam called it real rock climbing and he wasn't too far off.
at the summit we ate our
sandwiches and drank some water. we sat on the
monumet and took pictures. then hiked down. I should say here that I had an Anatomy and Physiology lab that night and was running late. the trail was about 2 hours away from school and i was getting pretty stinky from hiking. that said, i wanted to get off the mountain as soon as possible. we hiked and
liam got tired. the last hour of the hike was hard on him he lacked the real profanity, but his attitude was "F-you and F this F-
ing hike." I wanted to tell him that his mom has said that to me many times on hikes, but i didn't want to fuel his fire.
in the end, we got back to the car and i showed him how taking off his boots and socks feels so much better and i raced him home to put on
deodorant and a clean t-shirt and race to lab. i got to lab an hour late and people were actually almost done when i arrived.
a walk that takes me 3 hours by myself took us 6, but it was a great 6 hours and i hope that
Liam remembers it that way too.
