After a leisurely breakfast most of the group elect to tackle the high peak. Bob and I dissent with a brisk but bracing swim in water that had only an hour before been skimmed by ice at the shoreline. Actually, swim may be too elegant a term for the desperate flailing that describes my personal effort to get out of the life-sucking cold approximately a half moment after plunging headlong into it.

The swift dip is followed by a lengthy hike up the valley to Titcomb Basin, which becomes our retroactive goal when we finally figure out we’ve missed the trail originally sought. Soon we are above the tree line in a landscape turned elemental: Bare mountains, low vegetation, crystalline water and blue heavens. It is a stunning day. We remark on how unusually clear the cobalt sky is, with nary a contrail in sight. It is late morning.

After a time we come upon a group of four friends who, like the majority of our entourage, gather yearly for a sort of mobile college roommate reunion. Three of the four are doctors and all are fit as aerobic instructors. This is not surprising. Out here there’s an inverse correlation between the distance you hike into the wilderness and the weight of the people you encounter there.

The six of us chat for awhile, remarking on the splendid day. Before moving on they ask us to take a photo of their group. In our blissful ignorance we thus inadvertently capture one of the last innocent moments of an infant century.

A couple hours later we come to the end of the valley. Here there is nowhere to go but up, very steeply at that, and then only with proper equipment.

Four taut lads in their early 20s are sunning themselves on a wide expanse of flat rock. Strewn about are the implements of their sport. They not only climb insanely vertical peaks, they do so at night. Any quaking they may feel at the prospect of plunging a thousand feet though blackness to a splattering end on the rocks below is buried under an avalanche of youthful bravado. While death is inevitable, I personally see no point in accelerating the date. These guys still suppose themselves immortal. I half wish I felt the same – then acutely realize it will never happen.

Back in camp that night, we review the very agreeable hours we’ve spent far from the madding crowd. As we bask once again under starlight, Bud remarks, in what turns out to be prescient understatement, "We’re so far from everything that the world could end and we’d never know it."

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