"Trevor" by Edward (Leo) Hasbrouck

Photo by author

The sign said, “You’re entering Maine’s largest wilderness.”

“Wait, what? Only now we’re entering Maine’s largest wilderness?” I joked as I strode proudly up Baxter State Park’s infamous Abol trail. This was one of the more challenging routes up Mount Katahdin with almost a four-and-a-half-mile ascent featuring a steep, rocky climb before a flat top. This hike was said to take ten hours, but I knew we could do it faster.

There were ferns on either side of us. Patchy light shone down through the early September leaves overhead, making them shine a light green. I jumped over a puddle.

“My name is Harold. I am a hippopotamus from…” I paused. “I can’t think of anything.”

“Haiti,” my friend Jack said. It really wasn’t fair–he had played this game with his mom and sister in the car before.

“How are you so good at this?” I said. “Haiti. I’m Harold, a hippo from Haiti, and I sell hamburgers.”

“I’m Ike,” Jack said. “I’m an iguana from Indonesia and I sell internet accounts.”

My backpack was heavy. I had two liters of water in it, four protein bars, a freeze-dried ice cream sandwich, some gummies, and some clothes that I did not want to bring but my mom had insisted I carry. But I was pumped. We were about a mile in on our four-and-a-half-mile ascent of Mount Katahdin and no one seemed to be tired. The parents–our moms and Jack’s dad–were all trailing behind us with Allen, Jack’s grandfather. The ranger told us to turn around no matter what before 1 p.m., but I was sure we’d make it to the top.

***

The hike had been easy so far. I wasn’t sore at all. However, it was only just starting to get rocky and steep. Jack and I were still quite a bit ahead of everyone despite being repeatedly told to stop and wait up for the parents.

“Oh jeez...” I muttered as we came across two big rocks in the trail. “This might be tough for your grandpa to get over.”

This was Allen, Jack’s grandpa’s second time climbing Katahdin. On his first attempt, he failed to reach the summit.  This time he was even more determined. Leading up to the trip, he trained with eight-mile walks almost daily. He seemed to see this ascent as his last chance, but I also had my worries. If he hadn’t been able to make it up last time when he was younger, I thought, then how will he be able to this time when he’s in his eighties? One of my friend’s moms, who is an experienced hiker, even said that she wouldn’t take her parents, who were also accomplished hikers, up Katahdin. And her parents weren’t even in their eighties.

***

“There’s no way we’ll be able to go down this way,” I heard my mom say from behind me. “We have to plan on another trail.” After clearing the treeline, the trail was rock after rock and boulder after boulder. Even I struggled to get over some of them.

Jack’s dad, James, and Allen were a few minutes and a short distance behind the rest of us on the trail. Jack and I stopped on a large, flat, platform-like rock and we sat down. The view looked like an endless ocean of coniferous trees, acting as a blind, preventing us from seeing the whole world underneath.

 “I wonder if we can see Orono from here?” Jack said.

 “I seriously doubt that” I replied in a jokingly snarky tone. I was on my phone, desperately scrolling at horribly made maps of the mountain, hoping that I could find a more gradual way down.

“The Hunt trail might work.”

“Here. Let me see.” My mom gestured toward the phone.

“How do you even have service up here?” Jack laughed.

A little further up the mountain of boulders, Jack and I came upon a lady. She was sleeping, using her backpack as a pillow, but when the adults caught up with us, she sat up and responded to our plans to go down a different trail.

“Do not take Hunt down” she strongly advised. “Going down Abol will be much easier than trying to go down Hunt.”

How could we possibly go down the same trail we came up? It was then I started to realize that we might not make it to the top. The further we went up, the harder it would be to get down. Plus, we had to turn around at one o’clock, and we would be cutting it too close trying to get to the summit.

“How about I take the boys at least to the top of the rocks?” James suggested.

 “Yes, yes, yes, please” Jack and I replied in unison.

But after going up almost thirty whole feet, James decided that we shouldn't split up with the rest of the group, so we turned around and joined everyone else to eat lunch.

***

“I can’t fricking believe this” I whisper to Jack. “I wanted to make it to the top so badly… and we were so close too! We were almost to the flat part at the top!” I kept scuffing my shoes on the ground and kicking rocks and pebbles by my feet. For a few minutes, the silence was palpable.

 “Want to play some more of the alphabet game?” I asked Jack.

 “Sure,” he replied. “I’ll go first this time.”

A few minutes in on our slow, and strangely tiring ascent, we heard people coming up behind us.

“Get over to the side,” my mom told me and Jack.

I said “Hi” to the couple as they passed.

They had massive, dirty backpacks jammed full of gear with sleeping mats, hiking poles, and shoes strapped to the sides. The lady just waved, but the man exclaimed: “I am so fucking happy to be done with this shit.”

After they got a little further ahead of us, I whispered to Jack. “Has it really been that bad?” We both chuckled.

After conversing, we concluded that they were on the Appalachian Trail, and after months of continuous hiking and backpacking, they were about to finish. It made me kind of embarrassed that I was so worked up after just a seven-hour hike up and down part of a single mountain.

***

“One bottle of beer on the wall, one bottle of beer, take it down, pass it around, you’ve got zero bottles of beer on the wall.”

“Oh thank god it’s over!” Jack said.

“One hundred bottles of beer on the floor-” I started as a joke.

“NO.” Jack blurted. We both laughed.

We were now well back below the treeline, and the air was warmer and thicker.

“Oh look! I remember this from this morning! We're almost there!” I pointed to the narrow point in the trail bordered by ferns, and raced ahead, hoping to find a spot to go pee before we got back to the campsite. I guess it is pretty amazing that we got as far as we did. Nearly six miles with an eighty-year-old! Geez. Not bad. 

***

“I can’t believe we packed everything up just in time before it started to rain!” It was the next morning after camping and rain was plunking on the windshield as we all drove out of the park.

“I know! The wind was crazy this morning though,” Jack said.

“It woke me up it was so lou-” The car jerked to a stop and I was cut off by excited screaming.

“What!?” I yelled, but then I saw it. Standing majestically a few hundred feet in front of us on the long dirt road was a beautiful, seven-foot-tall bull moose with a large pair of partially grown antlers.

“Oh. My. Gosh. I’ve never seen one before!” I squealed. Everyone pulled their phone out to take pictures, but mine was out of battery in the trunk. He was just standing there, motionless, looking at us just like we were looking at him.

“Let’s call him Trevor!” Jack broke the silence.

We unanimously agreed and proceeded to follow him down the dirt road for about twenty minutes. He kept stopping and looking back . . . then trotting along . . . then stopping and looking back. In my head, I compared it to a stop-and-go traffic jam or a game of red light green light.  I wondered what he must be thinking. “Why is this big thing following me?” or “Why are these stupid people interrupting my morning run?”

Once we reached the point where you exit Baxter State Park, he finally turned onto another road and then into a field. Bye, Trevor, I thought to myself. I’ll be back.

Edward (Leo) Hasbrouck is 13 years old; he lives in Orono, Maine and attends Orono Middle School. He loves to ski, play soccer, and play baseball for his school teams, in addition to a travel baseball team and travel hockey team. Leo has a loving family and awesome friends.