Who would have thought
contentment was in the cards
ascending three thousand feet
before 10:30 a.m.
on a Snickers bar
and a few sips
in the rain,
glasses fogging up abruptly
at the gray ridge-line
as a warm front from out West
swept across?

Any vaunted views
of cliffs of slippery granite
are lost
in a rippling forest of clouds.

Like ants a-march
on a fallen sequoia,
my son and I scale the bumps,
or aim to do so,
making the best of the glowing window
of his visit home.

As the weather tanks,
we scale three four-thousand footers.

Inside our cotton envelope
we can feel the shoulders of each peak
first broadening then narrowing
the path of our hasty traverse,
each summit a near afterthought
so rapid is our pace.

Below Mount Lafayette
the AMC hut offers scant shelter
on our descent,
its staffers mute
in a fog of their own design.

Back in the weather we clamber down
respectful of the Whites anew
and drive home,
cell phones dry,
to clam chowder,
steaming.