Creature Discomforts

height of 1,270 feet above sea level. Cadillac, the highest peak on Mount Desert Island, soars to 1,532 feet. By the standards of the Rockies, it’s an island of hills, of course, but these are granite hills, and many rise not merely from sea level, but directly from the breakers of the Atlantic. In other words, I have to make the disappointing confession that although I’m crazy about those books of the “How I Stupidly Went to Some Godawful Place and Almost Died” genre, Acadia National Park is the opposite of godawful. Also, I now realize that I hadn’t come all that close to dying.
    Still, bushwhacking across and down the face of the little mountain was out of the question; the descent was impossibly steep, and the remains of ancient rock slides lay everywhere. The guidebook map showed trails running up and down Dorr. I found one only by blundering after the dogs, who headed uphill, stopping occasionally to sniff undergrowth or mark territory. The female lifted her leg almost as high and often as the male did. To my annoyance, when we reached a stretch of damp earth, both dogs began to scarf down mud with apparent enjoyment. Lingering as the dogs feasted on their disgusting snack, I could hear hikers on what was evidently one of the trails up Dorr’s east face. The brightening sky was hatching a crop of tourists. Refreshed and energized from glutting themselves, the dogs took the lead. If I intended to stay with them, I could do nothing but cling to their taut leashes and follow.
    In almost no time, we came to a trail paved with beaten earth and smooth rock. With no hesitation, the dogs turned right and, only a minute or two later, hauled me past a fork in the trail and a cedar post that bore wooden trail markers. Feeling frightened and confused, I knew I should read the trail signs and consult the guidebook, but I lacked the strength to stop the dogs. The trail rapidly became more a piece of monumental outdoor sculpture than a woodland path, a massive staircase that melded into the land as if Nature herself had constructed it, with each wide stone step neatly and solidly set between its higher and lower neighbors. Trees, both evergreen and deciduous, loomed overhead, and wild vegetation edged the stones as decoratively as a tasteful gardener’s carefully selected groundcover. The effect was at once cozy and otherworldly, as if gentle giants had lumbered out of the pages of a fantasy novel to carve an enchanted route through this sloping mass of shattered boulders.
    Now and then, the trail ran uphill, and I worried that my guides were leading me in the wrong direction, but we eventually reached an intersection, where the dogs decided all on their own to take a short break that they devoted to marking another cedar post. Fastened to it were wooden arrows. One confirmed my guess that this was the Dorr Mountain East Face Trail. According to two arrows marking the right-hand turn, it led to the Kurt Diederich Trail and, at a distance of only four-tenths of a mile, The Tam.
    The dogs selected that trail. Happy with the route, they charged at a dangerous pace down flight after flight of stone steps, which proved damp and treacherous. Ignoring my near-falls, quiet gasps, and frantic entreaties, the beasts bounced and dashed downward. At moments, I may have flown through the air. To the surprise of a pair of tourists, a man and a woman, these maddeningly agile dogs dashed down the final flights of steps and exploded into a picturesque clearing where giant, flat stones formed a naturalistic mosaic. A little stream passed beneath the stone trail to empty into a pond: The Tam. Close behind the dogs, I frantically fought to stay upright while maintaining my grip on the leads. The first thing I noticed about the woman tourist was that she was not Asian and therefore not the dreaded Holly Winter hellbent on stealing her dogs back. In *act, she was a Caucasian woman in her mid thirties who ad prepared for what was apparently going to be a hike by protecting her feet with open-toed, high-heeled sandals. She wore yellow shorts and a T-shirt that read Cool as a Moose, Bar Harbor, Maine. She carried a small straw purse decorated with artificial flowers. Her friend wore the same T-shirt over the men’s version of her yellow shorts. His sandals had flat soles. He carried nothing but a video camera. I was back in civilization.
    It was the man who greeted me jovially by asking, “Who’s taking who for a walk here, huh?”
    I