By GRP Runner, Stephen Kerr

My friend and I emerge from under the trees and the path transmutes into granite slab at 45% grade. I play, testing for the steepness point when my shoes will no longer grip. Flexed ankles, active core. Each step is a momentary game of balance. The more balanced and stable I am, the lower my workload becomes. For a steep steady stretch, I concentrate on saving energy. I approach a 3 foot ledge from below, so I use the saved energy to bound up and over, carrying on bounding for a bit after. Big moves are fun moves. I don’t pick my route too carefully. I want to be surprised, and to run reactively.

We are ascending Baldface Knob, near the eastern edge of the White Mountains, climbing 700 feet in a third of a mile. The sun is out, the sky is clear and blue, and we’re catching up on life, in bits and pieces.

There’s a special kind of energy that will underlay every moment of our adventure. It’s a many-faced thing that evades capture; writing about it won’t work. The energy is like a buzz, but it isn’t artificial, like the caffeine I had with our morning egg & cheese crumpets. Nor is it physiological, like endorphins and adrenaline. The energy is born of something higher and more abstract. It shows its many faces under some special words common to the vocabulary of adventure seekers. Words like stoke, vibe, and flow. The words attempt to capture feelings that are at the core of these adventures.

Scrubby spruces and balsams exhale the prior night’s rain. The bunchberries and huckleberries, not quite ripe, are nonetheless noticeable and encouraging, along the trailside. The last half mile takes us up another 700 feet, this time around 20% grade. We meet a veteran hiker at the top of South Baldface. I absorb views westward, where the Presidentials rise, rocky and stoic. I deepen my scope to the northeast, where a seven-layer multiplane of consecutive ridges illustrates a steady gradient of lime green to deep dark green, tinged with blue. Our man of experience shares his observation of two-score years of tree growth and its consequence on the visual landscape in his lifetime.

This guy understands. Stoked to be out here, rolling onward through the terrain for forty years and more; called back time and time again, when the mood strikes. Feeling the vibe; all the vibrations of sun and sky, stone and sand. The vibe we all bring to the mountains, and share with one another, unworried, knowing there’s enough for everyone and then some. The flow is our current, and our cradle, which we fall back into when the stoke temporarily ebbs, and the vibe can’t be found. Flowing through situations in the big picture and the present moment. The changes of life and the changes of trail. The flow will be there to bring you forward. This guy; he wears the badge of flow in his prodigious handlebar mustache. Against his otherwise unassuming khakis, boots, and cotton shirt, the mustache speaks for itself, a true flow-amulet.

Time to move again. It’s a ridge run now. Four miles of roller coaster along the spine. The trail leads to an eight-foot dropoff. I jump off a large flat rock and let myself fall, punctuating gravity with a brush of one foot along the wall of another rock, allowing me to pivot and my momentum to continue in a smooth arc onto the dirt below. I roll out the momentum, letting my speed flow when the energy is free.

When we were kids, my older sister was often so deeply invested in the book she was reading that she would risk skipping meals and sleep in order to get to the next word, and the next. She would be pulled inevitably toward the back cover, but never sacrificing her full attention to the word she was on. I want to run the trail in that same way. I won’t skip the meals or sleep, though.

We find our trail taking us under taller trees again, and the trail is spongy loam and sphagnum moss. My feet feel the give in the ground, and I do some more bounding. My toe catches a root, but I embrace the change in momentum. No mistakes today. Just opportunities to respond, to play, and to discover. I think about fawns and puppies that frolic, so different in comportment from their parents, who stand by and tolerate, alert and concerned with food and safety. I think about all the adult humans who, while properly concerned with life’s securities, are still able frolic and play, and I feel in love with humanity for that capacity.

The trail turns southeast, away from the former northeast path. If we continue in a relatively straight line northeast, we would eventually get to the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula, maybe to dive into the cold waters of the St. Lawrence Gulf. Instead, we follow the trail, which leads back, perhaps more comfortingly, to the car, and the promise of food, drink, and rest.

Down, steadily, almost unflaggingly - 2000 feet lower by the end of it. Not long before we reach that end, we pull off to a cascade, Brickett Falls, a series of crystal clear pools. It’s an easy choice to make. The water is invigoratingly cold, and there’s just enough to submerge completely. As it happens, the temperature is almost exactly the same as the ocean temp off of Gaspé, four hundred miles away.

Shoes go back on, and the remainder of the now-grassy trail and a brief stretch of pavement convey us to the end point, and the completion of a loop. We are happy and healthy. Life isn’t always this easy and clear, but for the moment, we are compelled by the stoke factor. The vibe is high, and we flow onward to the next adventure.

A reflection: Chase the Stoke, Trust the Vibe