What the blue blazes!

 

I’ve been thinking about blue blazes and mountains and how we find our way. A few days ago, Scout and I were running some new trails on Little Ragged Mountain out in Camden and heading over onto Bald Mountain. Scout was familiar with the area, but not the particular trail we were running. When we came to a road, she didn’t remember seeing a road crossing on the trailhead map. We crossed and started up the mountain when I said, excitedly: “Oh, I think we’re okay because we’re still on the blue trail.” And that’s when Scout broke the news to me. “All the trails are blue.” Say what?! New to me, this was a thing - painting the majority of trails in Maine with blue blazes. It felt sort of like the day I found out that there isn’t an actual parachute under your airplane seat, but just a flotation device, which I’m pretty sure wouldn’t do me much good. 

Scout asked if I was familiar with the expression “What in blue blazes!” (which we later found out is more commonly known as “What the blue blazes! - What the hell!). I wasn’t. But as a non-native English speaker, I get giddy whenever I learn a new expression, even after over 30 years in this country. There’s also: “Where in the blue blazes have you been?” - Where the hell have you been? I love this one in particular because it feels very Wild West. Apparently, there’s no real relationship between blue blazed trails and blue blazes expressions, which I find SO disappointing. Blue blazes slang derives from “the flames of hell.” And, as we all know, the flames of hell are always blue. 

Where all blazes are blue

We went up the mountain following the blue blazes - the same blue blazes we had followed earlier, but on a different trail. Why would anyone think this made any sense? How could you possibly know which trail you were following? What if you came to an intersection of four blue blazed trails? I couldn’t possibly be the only one to think this was confusing. In our case, it didn’t seem to matter. Scout  seemed pretty sure of where she was going, and surely enough we got to the top of Bald Mountain. I had absolutely no doubt that she would lead us there. Had it been me leading, I’m not so sure. 

We tried following different blue blazes to circle back to the other side. We came across a hiker who had tried to do the same, but said the trail had stopped and he hadn’t been able to find any more blue blazes so he turned around. Scout thanked him for the information, looked at the mountain across the way, and said: “If there’s a mountain, that’s where I’m going to go.” This felt pretty heroic to me, and I might have yelled an internal “Hell yeah!” And on we went searching for the blue blazes that would lead us to the mountain on the other side, but eventually concluded that they must have been buried in the snow, because the trail was nowhere to be found. We later learned that the trail is an out-and-back, so there truly wasn’t anything to follow.  

Looking for blue blazes to the other side

In the last few days since our run, I’ve been thinking of Rumi’s quote: “Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.” Perhaps that’s the story behind blue blazes. I’ve learned very little as to why so many trails are blazed blue, except that maybe it’s because blue is an easy color to see on trees, maybe it’s cheaper paint, maybe it’s tradition. No one seems to have a definite answer. And that’s okay. Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.