Art Richardson used to time himself on his way to the top of Mt. Major, but now that he’s 70 he’s stopped going for speed.
Now for motivation he thinks about hiking to the popular Alton peak enough times to equal the elevation gain of the Mt. Washington auto road. That means hiking up and down Mt. Major four times in one morning.
“I’ve done it five times, but I’m happy with three to four,” he said.
I started hearing about Richardson soon after the Forest Society and the Lakes Region Conservation Trust started a fundraising effort to protect Mt. Major and the surrounding mountains in the Belknap Range (near Lake Winnipesaukee.) I was immediately intrigued (why would anyone do such a thing?) It wasn’t long before I was calling him up at his West Alton home and asking to go with to find out why.
After a sweaty, 90-degree, blueberry-gorging day of hiking to the summit with him three times , I think I know the answer, and it’s so much more than mere fitness.
But just looking at his lean frame and thick, hard calves tells you that fitness is definitely part of the package.
“I call this my health insurance policy,” he told me while we sat watching the sun rise above Alton Bay. It seems to be working. The last time he saw a doctor was at his Medicare introductory checkup five years ago, and he has no plans to go back until he’s 75, if even then. “When I’m 75, what do I have to worry about?” he says.
To stay cool in the summer, Richardson starts early, at 4:30 a.m., and hikes with no shirt (it just gets all wet and sweaty, he said) and no bug spray. He gets up at 2 a.m. so he has time to cook himself a big breakfast , usually oatmeal sprinkled with flax seed washed down with a few cups of coffee. He tries to eat healthfully, but he says he could do a lot better. For dinner, he usually makes himself a stew of some sort. He jokes about how long he just keeps adding vegetables, beef or chicken to it without having to wash the pot.
Richardson has hiked Mt. Major all his life, especially since getting out of the Air Force at 27 and buying land in West Alton, where he built himself a house. It was an occasional hike at first, because he worked in Littleton as a broadcast television engineer and focused on 4,000-footers of the White Mountains. He switched to Mt. Major and other mountains in the Belknaps because they were as close as they were beautiful.
“Rather than drive two hours to the Whites, I’d rather come down here and get a good hike in and be home in 10 minutes,” he said.
He started hiking multiple times about six years ago, just because he was enjoying the best part of his day so much he wanted to keep going.
“If I’m by myself, the second is my most invigorated hike. If I drink water after the second time, eat a little peanut butter and a small bag of M&Ms, I get a little boost. Then I’m good for three or four,” he said.
But Richardson is often not by himself, because the real draw, he said, has been the friendships he’s found on Mt. Major.
“All of my friends now are hikers. I’ve met 90 percent of them on this hill,” he said.
Over the years, about a dozen hikers have formed a morning community on Mt. Major, with a core group hiking every day. They come whenever they can, and use trails that are off the beaten path. One of them, called the Express, is known as the “meet up trail,” where they eventually will run into each other and start hiking together.
Fellow daily hiker Allen Collier met Richardson at the top and walked down the mountain together after hitting it off.
“We got down to the bottom and he said, ‘Let’s go up again.’ I never thought to do it twice… who would?” Collier said with a laugh.
Tom Charnecki, another frequent hiker we met on the trail last week, said his son hiked Mt. Major multiple times daily last year like Richardson in order to train for endurance races requiring altitude training.
“Art was our inspiration,” Charnecki said.
And the conversation Richardson inspires on the trail, he said, is often of the interesting, not superficial, variety.
“Religion, politics – all the taboo things you’re not supposed to talk about – we talk about them all here, but always in a respectful way,” Charnecki said.
“Nothing’s off the table,” Richardson agreed. “Some people just want to talk about the weather, and that’s fine, but that doesn’t satisfy my need to be acquiring knowledge.”
Indeed, when Richardson is hiking alone, it’s often valued time to think, aided by the steady exertion of multiple trips to the summit.
“It’s like a runner’s high, but kind of a meditative state when I hike alone,” he said. “My brain is going 100 miles an hour. I can’t wait to meet somebody to start talking about it.”
All the benefits he gets from hiking, Richardson said, have everything to do with the place that makes them possible, and that place is Mt. Major.
“I love this mountain. It just seems to have it all,” Richardson said. “The hiking experience, the friendships, the beauty, the fresh air, the great views. It’s all here.”
To find out more about the effort to preserve the hiking experience on Mt. Major and in the rest of the Belknap Range, go to www.forestsociety.org.