Over the hill with the Geezer Hikers

Four self-described geezers fill their bellies with eggs and coffee at the Sunrise Diner in Sheffield, then make their way out into the parking lot. But something stops them dead in their tracks. Beside their own clumpy vehicles sits a shiny, red Mercedes Benz convertible, its top down like a girl gone wild.

They lean over it. They see their own reflections. They dream private dreams down puzzling roads. Phil Smith finally breaks the silence. “I could have a midlife crisis right now,” he says. They all nod in the affirmative, until they start doing the math.

“If I have a midlife crisis now, I’ll live to be a 140,” says Phil’s brother, Dave. (Actually, he’d be 148.) It’s time to move on. It’s hiking day for the Geezer Hikers, a club founded four years ago by Phil, who lives in Lee, and a group of Connecticut friends.

Every couple weeks or so, anywhere from three to eight Geezers — most of them mostly retired — trek into the woods with their walking sticks and their “Certified Geezer Hiker” T-shirts. They tell jokes (about vultures circling overhead, about how in the event they encounter an angry bear they’ll whack the nearest fellow Geezer with their hiking stick rendering him bear bait, then run for their lives).

Because the Geezers have bad memories, old jokes remain effective. They share stories about their kids and grandkids. And on the steepest, most grueling sections, they have visions of a God so benevolent that He’s placed a cooler of iced-cold Sam Adams beer for them on the trail up ahead.

They hike an average of eight miles with the clear intention of not setting any land-speed records. And because they’ve not yet once come across that cooler of iced-cold beer, when the hike is over, they pile back into their cars and meet at a pub, where they drink beer and eat burgers.

Except for Sandy Mazeau. “He orders something that looks like a lemonade and something that looks like a salad,” says Dave, with mock disgust. Sandy couldn’t make this recent hike up Mount Everett, so Bill Butler, 71, becomes Sandy’s stand-in stooge. Why Bill?

“Like Sandy, he takes abuse well,” says Phil.

“He’s got ostridge legs,” says Dave.

“And he’s got a bladder the size of a walnut,” says Jim Wakemin.

*

The Geezers gather at the trailhead in the town of Mount Washington. They all smell like Deet. They head upward in a forest alley lined with laurel, and they contemplate the meaning of the word “geezer.”

“The dictionary meaning is ‘old’ and ‘eccentric,’” says Dave. “And I guess that’s OK. Some of us have moss growing on our north side.”

They hike in a line of one-liners, with Dave leading the way along Guilder Pond — “named after Gilda Radner.”

“Fellas,” says Phil, “this is an area known for the eastern timber rattlesnake. So, Dave, if you come across one, use that tact and diplomacy you’re known for.”

“Now if Sandy were here leading us,” says Jim, “we’d be eating quiche by now.”

A little more than an hour into the hike, they reach the beerless summit, where the spectacular view is socked in by haze. “Too much hot air,” says Bill. “It’s us,” says Dave. “We’re like the Hawaiian Islands. We generate our own climate.”

*

The Geezers head — well — over the hill. “It’s one of life’s little injustices that downhill hiking is so difficult,” remarks Phil, who keeps the group mentally occupied by sharing some of the questions people ask him in his capacity as an employee in the tourist information booth in Lee.

“A guy came in and asked where he could get a cheap prostate exam,” he says. “A guy came with a real estate contract and asked us to look it over. We once had people come in and ask where they can go on a whale watch.”

On the last leg of the trail, in honor of Idaho Senator Larry Craig, the Geezers play a game of Washington-sex-scandal-name-recognition.

“Wayne Hays,” says Phil.

“Ohio congressman,” says Dave. “He had a secretary on his staff who could type four words an hour.”

And so it goes: with “Lucy Mercer,” “Megan Marshak,” “Kay Summersby,” and so on, until the Geezers come to the end of the trail at Berkshire School. They take a group photo for the archives, and Jim wonders aloud what eights miles would be in “dog miles.”

A half hour later, they’re all at O’Casey’s in Canaan, Conn., where they order those beers and those burgers, and they contemplate how so much more pleasant these Geezer hikes would be if they simply modified club bylaws so as to eliminate the hike itself.