Go East by Majka Burhardt

Go East | Alpinist Article

Read Majka Burhardt’s article (Alpinist) chronicling “one westerner’s season of rediscovery.”

What if the darkness of winter can trick you into knowing what is forgotten? It’s February 2008, and I’m driving to New Hampshire. I leave Maine at six o’clock on two-lane roads in a cheap rental car with a blown-out dome light. My scribbled-down directions would be illegible even if I could see them. They consist of three turns over eighty miles. I’ve already taken six in eight. I maneuver around invisible knolls and farmhouses. As I get deeper inland, I sense winter laying claim to my surroundings. There is something familiar about these roads, something comforting about a horizontal entrance to the outdoors, instead of a vertical one. I pass plowed-out parking spaces big enough for one or two cars and wonder what might lie just out of sight. READ MORE >>