I’ve been talking to Jasmine Golphin about liminal spaces, lately, and the way Cleveland feels like a city in a liminal space. There is both possibility and unease, in liminal spaces, and her photography captures it so well. I mostly live in the space of hopeful possibility. I fill the uneasy spaces with books and cupcakes and tiny dogs. A year ago we started filling this vacant space with a bookstore, and we’re working every day to bring about a better future for Cleveland. Our grand opening was July 31st, which is also my birthday and Marlie’s Gotcha Day. Katahdin is a place of both beginnings and endings. If you’re through-hiking the Appalachian Trail southbound, you start by summiting Katahdin. You take your hopeful picture with the marker at the top. If you’re hiking the Trail northbound, you take the same photo,
But I have summited Katahdin. On my 10th birthday, early in the morning, my parents and I started up the mountain. We were ill-equipped and underprepared, with the beautiful pre-Internet confidence of people who haven’t ever visited r/hiking. I was wearing Keds and carrying my school backpack, with two bike bottles of water; my parents were in their normal clothes and Reeboks. We had granola bars and trail mix and absolutely no idea how difficult that mountain would be. It’s not a hike, exactly.
There is a lot of bouldering, which is where you have to climb directly up a rock and pull your friends up after you. There are areas that really require ropes and pitons and climbing axes. Although the trailhead signs say there is water on the mountain, that water is for people who have filtration rigs and iodine tablets, not just a couple of bike bottles that are emptied in the first hour. Which is a point my mother made, as we went up the mountain. Several times. My father had assumed he could drink the mountain water, so he finished his supply by ten a.m. Mom waxed poetic on the topics of giardiasis and cryptosporidium, and daydreamed aloud about how quickly an intestinal parasite might turn from a minor inconvenience to a $15,000 helicopter rescue. We did not drink the water. We scrambled and we boosted each other up and we dragged each other forward, passing Boy Scout troops and through-hiker groups, keeping an eye on the sun and our watches, making sure we were on time to check out by nightfall. (If you don’t check out by nightfall: helicopter rescue bill.) I remember getting to the top. There are four peaks: Pamola, Baxter, Hamlin, and South Peak.
I remember it. But this is the part that can’t be true. The Knife Edge is a ninety-minute trail, a mile long, with 365 feet of elevation gain. There are The Knife Edge is impassable. Almost impossible. It’s three feet wide, with sheer granite dropoffs leading to ravines, far above the treeline. Those ravines are a route to certain death or, if you’re lucky and you only risk your own life and inconvenience everyone else on the mountain: the $15,000 helicopter rescue. My mother is afraid of heights. We can’t possibly have hiked the Knife Edge. With no equipment or experience? It makes no sense to think we did. But I remember doing it. I remember standing on Pamola, looking into the fog toward Baxter, wanting to go touch the marker and take a photo. My parents were debating what to do next. And my memory…my memory is that I started off across the knife edge on my own. I was ten years old and had no concept of death. My center of gravity had not yet been complicated by hips or curves and I’d never had a serious injury. So my memory (and again, this can’t possibly be true) is that I started off along the Knife Edge trail alone. My parents called me to come back. But when I didn’t listen, they just shrugged and picked up their packs and followed me, and we made it across to Baxter in good time. That can’t possibly be true. I asked my mother. She can’t remember which trail we hiked but she’s certain she couldn’t have done the knife edge. Between the height and the slippery rocks and the altitude…it just can’t be true. I remember it. But it can’t be true. But what is true is: we did get to the top of Baxter Peak. Whether we hiked along the knife edge or not, we did manage to join all the serious hikers and touch the brass plaque and take a photo. The Serious Hikers were all very impressed (and concerned) about our foolishness in hiking up the mountain with, as mentioned, no real equipment and a ten-year-old. “Well, she’s only turning ten today,” my parents said. And then the second impossible thing happened. The Serious Hikers were absolutely flabbergasted. Everyone on that peak was living on dry soup and trail mix, and there we were with three pieces of rich, dense grocery store chocolate cake, thickly frosted, and a little pink birthday candle. They all gathered around and watched, betting on whether the candle would light, or if the air would be too thin to strike a match, so high up. It was windy but it lit. My parents blocked the wind with their bodies, and all the Serious Hikers sang Happy Birthday as I blew out the candle and made a wish. I don’t remember what I wished. I was ten years old, and I was already on top of Mount Katahdin. I was also, to my absolute shock, being fed bakery cake from a store, made with white flour and white sugar and real chocolate frosting. Not carob cupcakes or whole grain carrot cake but commercially baked chocolate cake from a store. I had never tasted anything so potent; I could not believe my luck. We got out forks and napkins and ate the cake, there on top of the highest peak in the state of Maine, with everyone marveling at our audacity. And then, although I don’t remember this part, we simply walked down the mountain and back out to the car. No helicopter, no intestinal parasites, no injuries. Just a beautiful day of enjoying the impossible: sweet and rich and unexpected and triumphant. So while Mount Katahdin is a place of beginnings and of endings, for most people, I also think of it as a place where the impossible comes true. The landscape is rough and dangerous and forbidding and beautiful; it’s a place of great risk and great opportunity. A day on the mountain might be the last day of your life. But it also might be the best day of your life. Or it might just teach you, the summer before fifth grade, to expect your best days to come from ridiculous, overconfident, underprepared, bold attempts. Here in the bookstore, as I’m writing this essay, a small dog is peacefully snoring under my desk. I’ll walk her briefly and gently around the spruce-shaded paths of Alger Cemetery this afternoon. And on that walk, I’ll think: Cleveland too is a place of beginnings and endings, a place of possibility.
My father pulled a Tupperware out of his backpack, opened it up, and stuck a pink birthday candle into the birthday cake he had hauled from the trailhead.
Our city is grey and gritty and lovely and lush; our spaces may sometimes be empty of people and of money but they are overflowing with potential and possibility. And every day, here in the shop, is sweet. Like an unexpected chocolate cake: rich and delicious, and the best day of my life. Thank you all for coming along with me, this past year; I’m very much looking forward to the next ones.
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