Summer is trail time across the region, and June has offered a celebration of Maine trails. So, I’ve often found myself “training” for possibility. The other day, while small-stepping along the trails that lead through the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust’s Crystal Spring woodlands, I got to thinking about footwork. A lifetime of trails has kept me reasonably adept at the juggling cadence needed for New England trails and their studding of rocks and roots, often disguised by leaf litter. But it was a short downhill that triggered this running meditation.

Not long ago, I’d heard from a younger friend who runs mountain trails. I’d asked for a report about a loop through New Hampshire’s Pemigewasset Wilderness that I like, and I had gotten back a detailed account of a daylight-long ramble, which I take to be part run, part amble. At its close he wrote, “the last five miles go by pretty quickly with a bomber descent off Flume and a flat mile out to the road.” “Bomber descent,” I thought as I short-stepped down the sharp, 20-foot drop off an esker; “no way no way no way no no way way … ” — this two-syllable no-mantra set up with my stepping.

All of New England’s mountains genuflect to their northern shaper, the glaciers, gone to water for now, but sure to cycle back at some point. The upended, frost-split rock is their residue, and everyone who visits our uplands, large or little, must contend with their odd angles.

As boy turned loose for the first time from parental supervision, I began to stride and run through New Hampshire’s White Mountains. I was 17; I was in a hurry. Beyond each summit was another, and that was where I wanted to be.

Memory’s scrapbook holds images from a summer day moving north along the ridge that joins Mt. Washington to Mt. Jefferson. I am with a 17-year-old friend who is new to these hills and their jumbled trails; I am his trail-tutor. “Look,” I say, eyeing the half-mile descent of Clay’s flank, “it’s more fun to run this.” “I don’t think so,” he replies, and he starts down in a stolid fashion. “At least take my pack,” I say, and he returns, shoulders it (only a day pack) and turns downhill again. I watch him grow steadily smaller.

The amperage loose in my system has me edgy, which is another way to say sharp. I plot my first five steps and figure the rest will appear as I go. They do. I land on various edges, listen to the hollow clunk of my boots and odd knocking stones, and when I can’t spot my next step immediately, I do what a mountain-running counselor taught me at age 14 — I “go up.”

“Going up,” jumping higher when you see no next landing, may sound counterintuitive, but it works. In those few airborne seconds, you discover your next step, even if it is a thin edge of stone; and then you quick-step on. You land and light out simultaneously.

This is rock-dancing, and in that stretched era of life that was my way.

That memory leads to appreciation for the ways our walking changes over time. I return to Crystal Spring and its richness of trails, where, as is often the case, I am on my own. Gravity joins memory and I begin a shuffle dance of descent; I feel rhythm set up to a little marimba in my mind.

And so, even as I walk and shuffle the same trails as my younger friend and my younger self, I leave the bombing to them and dance down now in short steps. They are my little feats.

Five thoughts for those who would “dance” trails:

• Never take one step where you can take two.

• Avoid, whenever possible, stepping on roots or wood in general; in various states of decay it can be very slippery.

• Learn to read mud — you can discern skim mud from bog.

• Follow the water — its downhill trace is usually the one of most grace.

• Stop whenever you want to take in the view; when moving, keep your focus on your partner trail.

Bonus thought: sing to yourself as you go.

Sandy Stott is a Brunswick resident, chairperson of the town’s Conservation Commission and its Steering Committee for the Restoration of Mere Brook, and a member of Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust’s board of directors. He writes for the AMC’s Appalachia and a variety of publications. He may be reached at [email protected].

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