Subject: why mah or part 3<br/>
Date: Sep 05, 2005 @ 21:09<br/>
Author: aletheia kallos (aletheia kallos &lt;aletheiak@yahoo.com&gt;)<br/>
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<div id="ygrps-yiv-1142858772">after waking up in the church parking lot in adams<br/>
mass yesterday still weary & stiff & a bit roughed up<br/>
by all the previous days veggies<br/>
i wondered <br/>
while scarcely managing to make my morning coffee <br/>
how i could possibly find the strength to resume my<br/>
quest for the elusive 22nd or halfway point <br/>
out of the 44 berkshire tripoints<br/>
<br/>
at this point i was thinking any one of them would do <br/>
so long as i could actually find it<br/>
<br/>
& the day too was still locked in gray<br/>
but it soon dawned on me that my best & seemingly only<br/>
possibility at that point would be to make my way as<br/>
gingerly as possible toward whichever tripoint it was<br/>
that i recalled having recently previewed as a 240<br/>
foot cake walk<br/>
hahahaha<br/>
yes i would play my cake walk card<br/>
tho i had since forgotten its name & location<br/>
<br/>
a little rifling thru my topo collection & voila<br/>
chlane<br/>
cheshire lanesborough new ashford<br/>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://topozone.com/map.asp?z=18&n=4715635&e=647569&s=25&size=l&datum=nad83&layer=DRG25">http://topozone.com/map.asp?z=18&n=4715635&e=647569&s=25&size=l&datum=nad83&layer=DRG25</a><br/>
& for kickers <br/>
it doesnt appear to be very far away from where i find<br/>
myself<br/>
<br/>
so with that i am already feeling some git up & go<br/>
<br/>
but then i look at the road map<br/>
& realize the best access to chlane from where i am is<br/>
actually not so simple & appears to involve a pass<br/>
over mount greylock<br/>
the highest point of massachusetts<br/>
which was itself an object of some curiosity to me<br/>
& an anticipated high point of my total adventure as<br/>
well<br/>
around which several tripoints are clustered<br/>
<br/>
& adams i recall thru the morning fog is directly &<br/>
dramatically at the foot of greylock<br/>
so all i have to do is find the road signs to the<br/>
state reservation<br/>
& proceed up the approach road to what announces<br/>
itself as<br/>
war memorial park<br/>
firearms prohibited<br/>
<br/>
good one i thought<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
tho the entire mountaintop is still fully socked in by<br/>
fog<br/>
i get the impression that it is surmounted by a<br/>
lighthouse tower<br/>
<br/>
i can see its base ok as i enter it but not so far as<br/>
the lightbulb on top<br/>
<br/>
with not much difficulty i climb the 100 steps to the<br/>
observation level<br/>
from which i can barely see the ground<br/>
<br/>
but clearly enough i am high above the highest point<br/>
of massachusetts<br/>
<br/>
aka mah<br/>
<br/>
or so i imagine most highpointers would call it<br/>
insisting as they usually do that the high point must<br/>
be on the naked ground & not on any natural or manmade<br/>
object rising above it<br/>
<br/>
& then i get to wondering my old question<br/>
<br/>
how can the highest point in anything manmade like<br/>
massachusetts not also be allowed & seen to be<br/>
something manmade<br/>
<br/>
i look up at the ceiling & thru a crack can see up to<br/>
the lightbulb <br/>
atop the apex of which i figure the true mah point<br/>
must nest<br/>
<br/>
i watch the sun trying to burn off the gray locks of<br/>
the mountain<br/>
<br/>
i wonder how long i will have to wait to see the full<br/>
360 panorama<br/>
<br/>
after an hour of peering thru the gloom <br/>
i tire of waiting & decide to give chlane a try <br/>
& perhaps return to the tower in the afternoon <br/>
<br/>
once on the ground level again <br/>
i look carefully for the highest natural earth point<br/>
which appears to be at the foot of the stone steps on<br/>
the south side of the tower under a pathway of lightly<br/>
oiled pea stones<br/>
<br/>
i scrape away the soft covering with my foot to reveal<br/>
the bare earth<br/>
<br/>
so called natural mah<br/>
<br/>
except i created it myself when i scraped it bare<br/>
hahaha<br/>
naturally enough<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
i then also noticed there was a competing faa tower<br/>
just west of the memorial tower<br/>
whose top was also hidden in the clouds<br/>
so i would surely have to come back & check this out<br/>
just to lay eyes on the point that i myself would<br/>
prefer to call mah<br/>
wherever it lay<br/>
<br/>
but it was off to my chlane cake walk in the meantime <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
just where i figured the lane town line crossed the<br/>
approach road <br/>
or actually a little beyond where it seemed to fall on<br/>
the topo<br/>
was a large white cross painted on the roadway<br/>
<br/>
i had never seen such a symbol & doubted that it<br/>
really was a boundary marker<br/>
& later found others like it that convinced me it<br/>
wasnt at all<br/>
but headed off directly east from it & at right angles<br/>
to the road <br/>
on my anticipated 240 foot cake walk<br/>
<br/>
i was soon stopped in my tracks by the densest & most<br/>
aggressive veggies i had yet encountered anywhere<br/>
<br/>
falling back & regrouping while looking for other<br/>
openings along the roadside<br/>
i tried several more times before finally being able<br/>
to count off 80 paced steps<br/>
or what i figured would have been paces if i had been<br/>
actually been able to walk them off rather than eke<br/>
them out by inches<br/>
<br/>
this brought me to a dilapidated stone wall that i<br/>
figured might equal either chla or chne very near the<br/>
trijunction <br/>
but i couldnt be sure which if indeed either<br/>
so i followed it first in one direction with<br/>
difficulty but without success<br/>
& eventually turned back in the other direction<br/>
which was the right direction<br/>
for there i finally caught sight of a diagonal chlane<br/>
slouching in the gloom<br/>
much to my excitement & even disbelief<br/>
<br/>
so much for cake walks<br/>
<br/>
photo attached<br/>
<br/>
i ran my hands up & down all her entire surfaces &<br/>
edges<br/>
trying to feel or intuit exactly where the tripoint<br/>
itself might lodge<br/>
amid such reduced circumstances<br/>
<br/>
& i came to a new understanding of slouching stones<br/>
<br/>
generally their axis must dilapidate from the original<br/>
tripoint position<br/>
i figured<br/>
which will thus generally still be occupied by their<br/>
base center point <br/>
wherever it can still be inferred or found beneath the<br/>
ground<br/>
<br/>
an exception might be one like the latxus rock<br/>
which is presumably being pushed & displaced by tree<br/>
roots along the full extent of its buried shaft<br/>
& thus eventually loses all contact with the original<br/>
tripoint<br/>
which must be sought instead much closer to the center<br/>
of the trunk of the younger tree that is dislodging ?<br/>
breaking it up<br/>
<br/>
perhaps the very center of the trunk is the very best<br/>
guess in that case<br/>
<br/>
for such a tree seems to become the new marker itself<br/>
even as it pushes the old one away<br/>
<br/>
but that wasnt the case at all here<br/>
for chlane had simply been pushed over by the weight<br/>
of the stone wall it was lodged in the end of<br/>
so its base was presumably still in the right spot<br/>
<br/>
& so i imagined the point where the base of the 6 or 8<br/>
foot tall marker must lie beneath the ground & ran my<br/>
hand over the corresponding spot on the face of the<br/>
earth<br/>
which was actually a foot or 2 beside the visible part<br/>
of the marker<br/>
or at about the lower left corner of my photo frame<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
so with 22 tripoints finally down & 22 others to go it<br/>
was now halftime<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
back to the tower next for a little celebration <br/>
where i got the full 360 view in full daylight at last<br/>
& could also finally see the pointy little lightning<br/>
rod on top of the bulb<br/>
visible in second photo attachment<br/>
but had to concede the faa tower was much the taller &<br/>
higher object<br/>
<br/>
you can see it from the tower partly hidden by fog in<br/>
the 3rd pic<br/>
<br/>
its pinnacle however wasnt a single point<br/>
as you may almost be able to see in the 4th pic<br/>
<br/>
instead it was crowned by a symmetrically balanced 4<br/>
pointed object<br/>
such that there was no way of figuring which of its 4<br/>
tips stood highest<br/>
<br/>
so i had to figure there was no simple mah<br/>
unless one had a microaltimeter to check them all with<br/>
but rather a complete mah news tour <br/>
of mahn & mahs & mahe & mahw<br/>
<br/>
& it looked as tho the only way to reach these would<br/>
be to hang on a sky hook from a helicopter hovering<br/>
above the tower<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
i could go on<br/>
but too much mah already<br/>
dont you think<br/>
<br/>
this is a tripointing miniexpedition<br/>
even if it is halftime intermission<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
concluding epidose of this episode to follow shortly<br/>
<br/>
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