Going to Church in the Strawberry Patch

Trying to Grow Up In Spite of Myself

A Memoir by Tom Bessette

Copyright 2009 BessetteBooks

    Chapter 11
Stupid Jobs, Wasting Time

We had just reached the summit of Colden, one freezing, rainy afternoon.
New boots, fresh Vibrams, and a good grip on the trail. I stood at the top of the large slide and looked straight down
Two thousand feet  to Avalanche Lake below. One long, steep slide; smooth, bare rock all the way.
I edge closer to the brink, planting my feet squarely, leaning back against the gravity tugging at me.
Perched perilously, braced, I am drawn to the abyss.

My boot touches on ice and starts to slip…

Hiking, canoeing, camping and photography had become my life. I still tried to date, with very modest success, never meeting anyone particularly special to me and not experiencing much intimacy.  And, I still kept myself employed, though not on any trajectory anyone would call a career path.

I passed quickly through a continuing succession of short term nothing jobs, including a stint at a family run business in Latham that ffered office assistance to businesses in the form of mailing, packaging and printing services.  I got the job because of the experience I had at the retail distribution center operating their mail stuffing machine, which I absolutely hated doing, just hated it!  The employees were a group of related people from the Ukrainian area of Watervliet and were mostly somehow related to, or friends with, one of the two boss partners.  I got to drive the company van once in a while, when Timmy was out, which was a good day; most of the rest of the time I was stuck trying to make the Goddamn bastard stuffing machine work, which it seemed expertly designed not to do.  Getting a job completed and out the door was a lesson in stress and consternation and always required a level of cursing and invective that far surpassed anything I ever heard from my father during his most sullen drunk.

Timmy and I got to be pretty good friends.  He had just finished an Associate’s Degree in Criminal Justice at Hudson Valley Community College and was on the lists for the State Troopers.  You know, he looked like he’d make a good Trooper: tough, focused, unafraid.  We socialized a bit outside of work and he even went camping a few times with our group.  Once, at work, there was some conversation going on, of a kidding nature I thought, about how silly some of the women employees were about something.  One asked me what I thought and my reply was something like, “I don’t know, you’re all Ukies to me!”  Tony told me I was ignorant. I hadn’t yet developed the apologetic repartee to get myself out of the jam and explain what I really meant so as to be forgiven.  I walked away, so misunderstood, and Timmy and I cooled after that.

Finally, I got an OK job at the Albany Bausch & Lomb office.  I started as a driver, delivering completed eyeglass orders to local opticians and optometrists.  I loved the freedom of being in the delivery car everyday and was becoming one of those impatient, aggressive, hot headed drivers that are always tailgating and swearing at slowpokes and others who broke any small rule of driving.  GODDAMMIT, get outta my way you bastard!  Of course I reserved the right to pass on the right, speed, butt into traffic and run stop signs as I needed.

This was the era of the OPEC Oil Embargo and I had to budget a good amount of time waiting in long gas lines.  Luckily, most station owners who had a professional clientele gave us first dibs and allowed us to fill up while ‘rationing’ the gas to everyone else.  I was even able to sneak my personal car by once in a while if I knew the attendant really well, although often enough I had to wait at Nocella’s in Cohoes for my five gallon limit like everybody else.

After about eight months, one of the phone girls left to get married or something and I was offered to come inside at more money.  To get ahead, I said yes and immediately missed my freedom.  There was something about tooling down the road with the radio blasting, dropping in to deliver and pick up orders from the pretty secretaries on my route, and eating lunch where I may.  Not a cerebral job but definitely fun to do and not a drag.  The new job put me under scrutiny; not that I was doing anything wrong, but I just hated being on view to the boss and the other workers.  But, more money. Sigh!

The boss, Mike Kwaiswicki, was the first openly and obvious gay man I had ever met, and I found out that their gayness in fact did not rub off on us nor make us lisp or even cause us to start masturbating three times a day or anything.  We employees even met some of his friends, including his ‘best’ friend Larry.  Mike was a good guy, pretty forgiving and tolerant (of course) and even when I started to get irritable with the customers, he stood by me and mentored me.  A few complained about my edgy attitude and he called me into his office and I wussed out by saying that I thought I was going crazy.  I wasn’t, just didn’t want to talk about it or get in trouble about it and that seemed like a sneaky way out.  He let me off with a fatherly talk and I did better, working on my patience.

It was the summer I was nineteen and was still driving, that Bob died.  This brother who had been shot up in Nam, who I really barely knew and who hardly seemed to want to know me, drowned on Fourth of July weekend, July 5th, 1975.  He was distant to me, just like my oldest brother Pete, and I just didn’t have much to do with either of them.  They knew it all, I was a stupid kid, you know the way of it. His stoner buddies cried in our yard and bought me beers at Matty’s in his honor, but it was all so much melodramatic bullshit, and after a few months, we never saw them again.

Bob’s death changed our family quite a bit.  He had life insurance and some kind of army benefit and my parents got about twenty-five thousand dollars out of it as a death benefit.  Also, with Bob dead, I was the only one in any way left home; yes, I was still living with mommy and daddy then.  Also, that was the year they made the last mortgage payment that paid off their house.  And, my father was retiring due to his knee injury.  So, they hemmed and hawed a year or so and then up and put the house on the market and had my uncle John build them an apartment in the carriage house he was converting in Waterford.  Lastly, since my father was retiring on some intricate Social Security rule and I was under twenty-one, I could get benefits, too, if I became a college student. The job was now nothing special, I had no one too important in my life, we had had a death in the family of someone who was not old and decrepit and there was some money available.  It was a weird and confusing time and we made the most of it.  The weirdness, I mean!

My parent’s only stipulation was that I had to attend for something that would help me get a better job.  They could help pay what the Social Security and grants wouldn’t cover only up to a point; I had to live cheap and keep my head down and study.  I didn’t even consider art school, not thinking of myself as an artist, and quite certain that I could neither draw a straight line, which I was sure was required, nor could I get a job being an artist after my degree.  My mother pushed business, like accounting, my father was noncommittal about the whole thing. 

Mom’s big thing was always to get a steady job, with a steady paycheck, so I could meet a steady woman and get married and live a steady life.  She didn’t think positively about risk, or changes, or adventure, and especially shied away from a bohemian attitude when it came to getting along in the world.  It was her who kept our family together and intact and eating all these years, in spite of my father’s immaturity and lack of drive.  Mentally, I was very much like my dad, but I had to grudgingly respect my mother for her tenaciousness and even temper.

I then hit on the idea of Environmental Studies of some kind, knowing nothing about the academic aspect of it, but knowing I loved the outdoors.  Back then in ’75, to my knowledge, there were two schools that I might attend:  the State College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse and SUNY Cobleskill for Fisheries and Wildlife Technology.

I had an uninspired high school transcript, modest test scores and a track record of never volunteering for anything, but applied to both schools anyway; hoping that my advanced age of near twenty would stand for something.  Everyone I talked to said no way I’d get into the four year college of forestry, my first choice, but I had a middling chance to get into Cobleskill, a two year Agricultural and Technical school, kind of a junior college for farmers, or so we thought.

Cobleskill took me with early acceptance, but with the caveat that I had to commit to attending.  Jesus Kee Ko, what to do.  Turn Cobleskill down and hope for Syracuse, where I wasn’t likely to get accepted anyway, or take the sure thing?  No gambler, me!  I accepted Cobleskill.

I had my answer in March and luckily had been saving money as much as my beer and photography habits would let me. I looked at my finances and decided to give notice that I would leave B&L at the end of June.  That would give me an extended vacation through a good part of the summer and be refreshed and ready for my academic adventure by late August.  Of course, in the meantime, the end of April came and I did in fact get accepted into Syracuse, but kept my word and made ready to attend COBY, as I came to know it.  My plan was to save lots of money by basically giving up any attempt to date, stay the hell out of Ralph’s Bar and the Grinch and be able to spend July and well into August in the woods hiking to all the places I had never seen.  My parents would feel that I should work right up to school, I was sure but, oh well, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Instead of giving notice, I took advantage of the fact that the driver who had replaced me really wanted to get off the road.  I cajoled and begged until Mike OK’ed me to switch jobs with the driver.  The ex driver was happy, I was happy to be back on the road and Mike was totally confused that I would want to cloud my future this way. Little did he know.  Thus, the spring and early summer flew by, and I planned and packed for my extended backpacking trip.  Bob was shocked about me wanting to go solo, although he had been doing it for a while.  I offered to meet up with him now and again and he was mollified by that.  July Fourth weekend came, the one year anniversary of my brother’s death; we celebrated with a picnic in the yard, arguing politics well into the night, and the next day I drove off with my camera and hiking gear, cash in a money belt and a huge load of anxiety.  I was going to really be on my own for the next six weeks.

I decided to start at Keene Valley and head up John’s Brook and do the Great Range.  I had my trail guide and map, my fears and my determination, and about two weeks worth of food and, hopefully, the right clothing and gear for an extended stay.  The three and a half miles to Johns Brook Lodge (JBL), owned by the Adirondack Mountain Club, was pretty easy for me nowadays because of the relatively good shape I was in.  Pretty much all the baby fat was burned off and my lungs had come a ways towards recovery since I had quit smoking a year before. 

I was carrying close to 70 pounds in my Kelty Sonora frame pack, sleeping bag and bag hitched to the lower part of the frame, interior holding food, clothes, gear and lightweight mountain tent.  Cameras and lenses and film. I had Space Blankets, wool clothes, extra socks, my Svea stove, a cook kit, days and days of freeze dried dinners, Pop Tarts and granola bars, instant oatmeal, a pure water pump, crackers, a can of Cheese Whiz and various other convenience food items and materials on which to subsist for the next few weeks.  Not gourmet food by any means, but I wasn’t out here to conduct experimental cuisine.  I needed to eat to live.

At JBL, I turned left and headed on up to Wolf Jaw Lean-To, which was empty when I got there, and there I made camp.  The Lean-To had a dirt floor so I spread two Space blankets as ground cloths and laid out my bag.   There were still three hours of daylight left, so I headed up the trail to the col between Lower and Upper Wolf Jaw Peaks and scrambled up Lower Wolf Jaw and sat up on top until about an hour before dark, feeling pretty damn proud of myself.  When I got back to the Lean-To, another guy had moved in.  His name was Frankie and he was on leave from the service; a big rangy guy, quiet, but friendly enough, and he was headed for the Great Range as I was, so we planned to hike it together tomorrow.

Next day we were up with the birds, a major feat for me, accomplished mostly because I didn’t want to appear lazy or wimpy in front of this hardened stranger.  Even back then, I was painfully aware of how I would go to great lengths to hide my habits from others, so as to look more impressive than I really was.  My tendencies were always to snooze for ‘just a few more minutes’ and take ‘one more break’ and wait ‘just a little while longer’ before starting something.  I always had difficulty going to bed at night and getting up in the morning.  But when someone that I wanted to look good to was watching, I could, at least temporarily, buck it up and look energetic.

So, Frankie and I packed up our gear and headed up to the col.  He hadn’t done Lower Wolf Jaw yet and I was tempted to wait comfortably at the col for him to run up and down the mountain alone, since I had done it last night, but I went with him out of courtesy.  After returning to the col, we headed southwest up to the summit of Upper Wolf Jaw Mountain.  These two were the northeastern terminus of the High Peaks of the Great Range which formed one rampart of Johns Brook Valley.  Frankie and I were both first timers doing these hikes, though I had been on Haystack that freezing September day last year with Bob, Joe and Jerry.  Both the Wolf Jaws were not much for views and we had a beautiful sunny day, well into the high 50’s already, so we pressed on.  Armstrong Mountain was next and we made it in less than an hour from Upper Wolf Jaw.  Again, at 4400 feet, it was wooded and there was not much of a view so we paused only briefly and pushed on. 

Less than an hour later, by mid morning, we had scrambled up to Gothics, possibly the most spectacular looking mountain in the whole High Peaks region. It was a formidable pile of granite with landslides on most flanks, a smallish summit and unimpeded views in all directions.  The Johns Brook Valley spread softly underneath to the northwest and the Ausable Lakes Valley dropped precipitously to the southeast, the long narrow lakes shimmering in the sunshine like long serpentine jewels on green carpet.  Marcy and Haystack cropped up to the south at the end of the jagged Range and the Giant of the Valley held court over the north. We lounged around on top for a good half hour, savoring the views and resting up for the difficulties the guide book warned were coming ahead.

As soon as we headed off the other side of the peak, we encountered the cables.  These were strung through steel rods that were embedded in solid granite to help hikers navigate the steep open trail; we were essentially descending an extremely narrow ridge down bare rock with seriously hair raising drops on either side.  Frankie had no fear, but I was shaking and sweating in no time, taking baby steps, trying not to look off the edge, and generally wishing I was already dead.  I took forever to get down to the col between Gothics and Saddleback Mountains and needed to sit and get my act together for over a half hour when I finally did, Frankie patiently waiting nearby.

The ramble up Saddleback was easy, and the semi-wooded double summit was a quick hop, skip and jump.  The guide book warned of a ‘rock climb’ on the other side, and sure enough we quickly found ourselves at the brink of a roughly two hundred foot jumbled cliff that we had to descend.  I looked in vain for an alternate route but the paint marks led right to the edge and straight down, dammit.  Frankie set off coolly and confidently and I quivered at the top, got down on my ass and started creeping over the edge, shaking and sweating buckets, literally leaving puddles on the rock, puddles which flowed in rivulets down the cliff, dripping onto Frankie, many feet below, to his consternation. What, was it GODDAMN raining, for Christ’s sake?  My heavy pack was pulling me off into space, so at a ledge we took off our packs, secured the rope that we carried and lowered the packs down as far as we could, resting them on protuberances that we could reach, a ways down the cliff.  Without the weight of the pack, I was a tad more light-footed, and was able to get myself about half way down to where it got really steep.  Frankie was about 6’2”, considerably taller than my stubby 5’7” and he was able to brace himself on handholds and ledges here and there, helping me down the steepest parts to our packs, which we lowered further down the climb until we reached the bottom of the cliff, and were able to re-saddle up and pretty much walk down to the col, my knees rubbery and unreliable.

Climbing Basin Mountain didn’t involve cables or rock climbs but it was one steep, muddy, rocky son of a bitch, and had us both gasping for air, scraping our knees on evil, broken spruce roots every few feet of elevation.  The view from the top was extra spectacular, we were now only a mountaintop away from Marcy and Haystack and the scene back over the Range was daunting; had we really traversed that cliff over there on Saddleback?  Jesus Kee Ko!

The descent of Basin started easy enough but we quickly got to the first of the ladders mentioned in the guide book.  I imagine that at one time these were new, strong, properly secured ladders, but right now they were old, disintegrating and shaky ladders.  Unfortunately, they were attached to mini cliffs, and without forging off in who knew which direction or how far to get around the cliffs, there was nothing for it but to trust ourselves to the ladders.  We eased down the first one, trying to avoid the obviously rotted rungs, and trying to ignore the fact that the ladder seemed to be trying to lean away from the cliff instead of towards it.  It would wobble and slap against the rock face, we holding on for dear life before taking one more gingerly step down.  Our faces were snapped at by branches, leaving welts and evergreen sap lodged in our nostrils and hair. Even Frankie was nervous on these because he wasn’t depending only on his own prowess but was subject to the whims of this inanimate object.  The ladders were slippery with moss and a few rungs, not yet broken, bowed threateningly as we put our weight on them.  I was wearing a headband to keep the sweat out of my eyes, wearing it close to my eyebrows even, and still the sweat being generated from my eyelids dripped saltily into my eyes, burning and impeding vision.

We got down to Snowbird pass eventually, and left our packs there, planning on staying there overnight and claiming a spot in the floorless Lean-To.  The hike up Haystack from this side was a relatively easy walk and, unlike the last time I was there, it was sunny, warm, and there was no ice to threaten my life.  The drop into Panther Gorge was exceedingly steep and deep and the view of Marcy, seemingly near enough to touch, was astounding.  In every direction was an unbroken vista of forest, valleys and mountains, with glints of lakes and ponds dotting the landscape.

It was getting on to evening, and we backtracked down to Snowbird Lean-To and unpacked our gear and shared supper.  It was a bit odd to be doing all this without Bob; we had been hiking companions for so long.  Frankie talked of being in the service as we reconstituted our supper glop; what it was like, how they treated you and where he had been and expected to go next.  He was heading off to Germany in a few weeks for a two year hitch and had to hike out tomorrow to start getting ready and see his family for a bit before he shipped out. 

In the morning, we hiked over the trail called the “Shorey Short Cut” towards Slant Rock; short cut indeed, a rougher, muddier, rockier, rooty-er excuse for a trail I had never seen.  A total bitch of a scrabble for a mile and a half of slanted walking.  We parted ways at Slant Rock; he heading out the Johns Brook Trail to his car and me to ponder my next direction.  Slant Rock is a huge Erratic, which is a large boulder left over from the ice ages, plopped in the woods.  About fifteen feet tall and twenty feet around, it was really two big rocks leaning together with small trees growing on them. The woods in this area were very open, with no place for privacy and, being right on a main trunk line trail to Marcy, was pretty well traveled.  There was no longer an outhouse at Slant Rock Lean-To and I had to take a crap really bad.  So, I did what others before me had obviously done, I crawled into the cleft between the rocks and crapped there, only unlike my predecessors I buried my stuff.  In fact I dug a hole big enough to bury all the more recent offal that had accumulated.  So much for the niceties of civilization.

The next day I packed up and headed up the remainder of the Phelps Trail to the Junction with the Van Hoevenberg Trail near Marcy.  If I had taken a right, I would have headed down the Van H trail to familiar haunts like the Plateau and Indian Falls, but I went straight up Marcy and lounged on the summit for a good part of the day, enjoying good weather and 360 degree views.  I had been reading about ‘Trailless’ peaks, and there was Gray Peak right below me, beckoning.  Alone, I dropped down below the summit of Marcy on the Gray side, encountered cliffs, edged my way down them and set off into the woods towards the Gray-Marcy col. Of course, my pack was scraping the brush, and branches slapped me in the face and scratched patterns on my legs, but I was exploring, GODDAMMIT, and this was what explorers did.  The climb up to the summit was actually easy; turns out there was a pretty obvious herd path to follow and it led me right up to the wooded summit and the summit can.  I opened the can to get the Forty-Sixer notepad and added my name to the list of those who had climbed this peak.

The Adirondack Forty-Sixers is a group of hikers who have climbed all forty-six of what were once thought to be the peaks above four thousand feet in elevation. A few have since, with better measuring, been shown to be under four thousand and one that formerly wasn’t, now is.  However, in deference to the men who first made the list, aspirants still climb the original ‘Forty-Six.’  To be honest I had (and still have) no interest in being a Forty-Sixer.  It seems too much to me like Peak bagging, the challenge of knocking off mountains as if they were trophies.  I’m just not impressed with the idea.  In fact, many of the smaller of the ‘Forty-Six’ have little or no views from their summits and further, the preponderance of people attempting the ‘Forty-Six’ have created herd paths to all the so-called trailless summits, so it seems less of a feat than it used to be. Ah, well, to each his own.

At any rate, I dipped south off the summit of Gray and headed down to Lake Tear of the Clouds, figuring that even if the Lean-To was occupied, one more would be OK.  I kept losing the path but have always had a good feel for direction so I blazed through the scrub and then boreal forest and hit the Feldspar trail just below the Lake.  I hiked the few short minutes up the trail and saw I had the lake and fine floored Lean-To all to myself.

Lake Tear is really a very small mountain pond but is the highest lake source of the Hudson River.  Out of it flows the Feldspar Brook, which then joins the headwaters of the Opalescent River, which, in turn, flows down into Flowed Lands and then down some more and turns into the extreme upper Hudson River.  The pond itself is beautiful in a rugged kind of way. In the right lighting, on certain days, Mt. Marcy is beautifully reflected in it. It sits at roughly four thousand, four hundred feet of elevation and so is actually higher than most of the Adirondack high peaks, which is a sobering thought.  Sitting here in this Lean-To, watching the ripples on the Tear’s surface while the breeze rustled the balsam, I was actually higher than two of the mountains I had climbed yesterday.

Keeping to my code, or actually Bob’s code, I had no fire and watched the stars awhile after dark and was probably fast asleep by 10PM.  I woke up in the middle of the night and felt pretty lonely, realizing that it was the first time I had slept out with absolutely no one anywhere near me.  I was at least a seven hour hike from the nearest road and had no idea where the nearest person was, although it was mid summer and the peaks were usually fairly populated with hikers.  In fact I was shocked that I had this place all to myself, although it was a Monday and most hikers stuck to the weekends.  I listened to the mysterious forest sounds:  that might be a porcupine foraging, that was some bird that croaked overhead, now there’s a barred owl hooting, pretty high up for him, I thought.

Morning came, I peeked out, and there was a marten up in the branches of the balsam fir growing right in front of the Lean-To.  The weather looked good, so I packed up my gear but left it in the Lean-To and set off on the trail to 4 Corners and the Junction with the Skylight Trail.  Skylight’s summit was a mere half mile up and the trail immediately started climbing steeply.  The guidebook told of the legend that if a hiker failed to carry a stone to the top, to place on the cairns at the summit, it would definitely rain.  I didn’t want to screw with that, so I stopped below timberline and added a few extra rocks as insurance and scooted up to the top.  I found myself in a large broad alpine and granite meadow, covered with Edelweiss and Sandwort and Sedge grasses.  A stupendous close-up view of Marcy was at arms length, and right over there was Haystack.  Unbelievable!  Just off the summit, too, were Mts. Redfield and Cliff, they sure looked easy.  In the guidebook, there was a described, through trailless, route to Redfield from Lake Tear and then supposedly a way from Redfield to Cliff, ending on the Uphill trail below Uphill Lean-To.

I was taking Kodachrome Slides all along, documenting my trip, seeing the beauty and capturing what I still thought was Art for the Ages, or at least great magazine and calendar shots.  Absolutely fine!  Of course I couldn’t take too many pictures because I only had so much film and wanted to stay in the whole two weeks before I headed out.  So, I tried my best to be selective, taking only those sure fire pretty pictures that had a chance of being published.

Redfield was beckoning, so I descended to 4 Corners, just about ran back to Lake Tear through the swampy area between those two places, and started scouting for the path to Redfield.  It wasn’t obvious, but with map, compass and guidebook, I set off towards that trailless peak.  All alone, of course.

I think I was following a path of some kind.  I’d lose it and then think I found it, not really sure I was on THE path, just on A path, then lose it again and trust the compass and topo map to get me there safely.  The summit was purportedly about a mile from the lake and sure enough, when I had walked about a mile or so, found a small swampy pond that I hoped was Moss Pond, and then found I was definitely climbing.  I had turned around a bit and had hiked more towards the col between Skylight and Redfield but I adjusted and soon was at the top, deciding against signing the pad in the can, I guess, as a wimpy and purposeless protest against peak baggers, somewhat hypocritically.

I thought hard, looked hard and decided that there really wasn’t a path from Redfield to Cliff and so decided to head back the way I came and approach the next mountain from the Uphill area.  I got totally messed up on the way back and ended up well down the Feldspar trail, which would have been fine if I had my pack, but I had to trek all the way back up that long bitch trail to Lake Tear to get it.  Jesus Kee Ko, how did I manage to do that?

By the time I got back down to the Uphill Lean-To, it was near dark, the Lean-To was a mess, the outhouse was seriously decrepit and there was evidence that a bear had been visiting recently.  Crap, I’d have to hang my food. Damn those bears for stealing our food when we came into their territory to camp.  I got my rope out and found a heavy stick and a likely branch and tossed the stick, with an end of the rope tied on, up over the tree branch; it went over on the third try, I’m such a bad shot, but swung down, and I grabbed the other end and tied it off.  I reconstituted some glop, I think it was chicken stew tonight.  No matter, it all tasted the same anyway, salt and sawdust. You just add boiling water, let sit for some ridiculous time, usually until it got cold, then spooned the shit into your mouth.  Chewy noodles, rock hard peas, grit and dust, yum!

I was in an area of wild streams, waterfalls and a few stands of huge virgin timber, but I was saving my film for the important mountain documentary scenics that I was intent would bring my fame and fortune.  No concern that the primordial looking wilderness around me was at all worth documenting, nor any idea how to do it if I had thought.  Wasted.  Oh well, next time.

Next morning, I rolled out of bed, retrieved my safeguarded food (I had lain awake most of the night worrying about bears and hearing unexplainable sounds), boiled water for oatmeal and choked down a granola bar.  I was sore this morning, and scratched up from my bouts with the scrub brush yesterday.  I slooowly packed up my gear and stashed it all in the Lean-To and headed down the trail to where the Cliff herd path was supposed to start.  I looked for the landmarks and thought I found them, but wasn’t sure.  It’s not like I could see the mountain and thus know which way to go or anything.  But the guide clearly named the height of land on the Twin Brook trail (since abandoned) as the start location.

In time I was pretty sure I was at the starting point and struck off trail and into the woods.  I was able to follow a murky path and came to the steep section that indicated the bottom of the mountain’s cliffs; bore along below until I could follow a stream bed up and into a col between the north and south summits.  I found the can on the south summit, and again didn’t sign it, just to show ‘em!  I headed back the way I’d come and then dropped down the Opalescent to Flowed Lands and Lake Colden where I grabbed space in the same Lean-To we’d frozen in, in winter.

I spent the next week or more traipsing around the woods, bagging peaks, walking through rain, eating freeze-dried glop and generally finding myself and the woods and mountains.  I hiked over the entire McIntyre range, climbed Phelps and the trailless Tabletop near Indian Falls, slogged up Mt. Colden, got scared shitless attempting the trap dike and backed off, camped in Avalanche Pass and at Lake Arnold and religiously stayed away from Marcy Dam, except to pass through when it couldn’t be helped.  I stood at the top of Colden, staring down the slide to the water below. The trail up Algonquin from Lake Colden was one steep bastard, following a stream with many beautiful waterfalls that I was too sore and tired to appreciate.  On Iroquois, I was hit by driving rain and the wind was so strong I could literally lean into it.  On Wright Peak the same day, the temperature dropped and I had some wet, spitting snow gunking up my hair and taking away traction from my boots. Towards the end I took the Klondike Notch Trail over to Johns Brook Valley and climbed Big Slide and the Brothers, just passing through.

At the end of fifteen days, out of food, dirty, smelly and sore as hell, I got back to the Garden parking lot, retrieved my car, and drove towards Lake Placid to get a motel, rest up and get the scum out of my creases.  Luckily, people in these parts, motel and restaurant owners and such, were getting used to greeting filthy young men like me, smelling of wood smoke, bug dope and bodily fluids, who sidled up to their counters asking for a hot shower, clean bed and a comfort meal.  What kind of a mountain man needs such a respite?  Civilized ones, I guess.

I spent two nights in that motel, ate as cheap as I could, used the intervening day to restock my kit from the EMS in Lake Placid, got some of the ingrained dirt out of my clothes in a Laundromat and then headed over to Heart Lake and the Hiker Building parking lot to set out into the woods again.

This time I headed down the Indian Pass Trail, directly towards He-no-do-aw-da, past Rocky Falls, Scott and Wallface Ponds and up into that primitively stunning narrow pass.  Inside the pass it was a jumble of boulders strewn about haphazardly, the trail winding around, and sometimes underneath them.  In mid July, there were still crevasses with snow and ice, un-melted.  It was a cool, drizzly day, and everywhere was an atmospheric, primal feel, as if I had unwittingly stepped into a time just after the last ice age. I climbed up into the pass itself, picturing how it got its Indian name, clearly envisioning how thunderstorms could echo through this narrow pathway, the rumbles bouncing around off boulders.  I got up to Summit Rock in a gray mist with just enough visibility to see the Wallface Mountain cliff just off and to my right.  I wanted to sit for a while, so I pulled out an extra poncho and strung it up just over my head on a few branches and sat and watched the spit of rain bounce off summit rock as the mist gradually obscured Wallface and settled in for a long haul.  As my father liked to say when the rain and clouds lowered, it was really socked in.

On one hand I wasn’t cold or concerned, but in the back of my mind were the thoughts: Am I good enough for this? Am I getting into trouble?  Will I be able to get dry and not get sick?  My mother’s worrying rubbing at me, always just under the surface.

After a while I rolled up the poncho and gingerly climbed down the southern face of Summit Rock, towards Tahawus.  The abandoned village of Adirondack is down there at the end of the road that snakes up from Newcomb.  It is a true ghost town; everyone moved out about fifteen years or more ago. They just seemed to have up and left, doors open, debris scattered, now everything moldering away, floors rotting, windows broken.  The iron mine ceased operation and even though they were still sucking titanium out of the hills, I guess there weren’t enough jobs to keep anyone here.

I didn’t have to hike all the way to Tahawus but instead took a right at the trail junction that headed up past Preston Ponds and ended up at Duck Hole.  Good trail, though wet with the rain, and my good Dexter boots and wool socks were keeping my feet comfortable.  No blisters yet, anyway.  All this time I had seen no one, it being the middle of the week.  Which week?  I was starting to lose track.  I thought it was a Wednesday but wasn’t completely sure.  Third week in July?  Weird feeling.

It was still raining when I got to Duck Hole in late afternoon.  No one there, I took possession of the better of the two Lean-To’s, right on the shore overlooking the pond, which was actually a small, dammed lake. Gorgeous shoreline, a few islands here and there, misty rain, dripping leaves, gray clouds; I didn’t realize just then how beautiful this all was.  I was hoping for sunshine to take pictures with my color film; was just starting to get a vague inkling of what this world would look like in black and white.  I was stuck on my magazine and calendar shots and so didn’t break out the camera, and instead got into dry clothes, hung mine from the Lean-To rafter and nestled in my sleeping bag with my book, Walden of course, and looked up once in a while to gaze out over the spattered lake, cozy and content, if not just a little bit lonely.

About three hours later, two guys hove in sight and advanced up to the Lean-To, wet and miserable, and made a good impression on me by asking if they could share the Lean-To with me.  Darren and Mike were actually not hiking together.  Darren had come in from Lake Placid via the northernmost section of the Northville Placid trail and was intent on doing some trout fishing along the Cold River, which flowed out of Duck Hole and headed west until it emptied into the Raquette River just above Long Lake, about sixteen miles away.  Mike had come in from Tahawus and was just here to camp out a while and drink scotch.  He had a few good sized bottles and happily offered some all around.  I declined because I was still feeling the after effects of a small ulcer I had developed a few years back (although I continued to drink my beer) and Darrin seemed offended by the offer, not sure why.

Not long after, a young woman came to the Lean-To.  She sat down and said confidently that she was meeting her boyfriend here tonight and took a spot near the wall.  This was absolutely the first time I had ever seen a woman hiking up here alone, in fact I saw so few women hiking at all back then that I wondered what the hell was going on, and what kind of a clod would ‘meet’ his girl eight miles into the woods for a date, for Christ’s sake?

Her name was Debbie and because of her, Darren and I got up and foraged the woods for relatively dry wood, Mike assuring us that he had lighter fluid to overcome the wetness. Maybe it was really scotch he intended to use, but as long as it worked I didn’t care. We got all chivalrous and each secretly determined to take care of this waif in the woods and make sure we kept her safe for her asshole boyfriend’s arrival, Goddamn him, stupid jerk!

After much ado, we were able to get a good fire lit. The smoke helped keep the mosquitoes at bay, and the heat wafting into the Lean-To helped dry all the drenched pants and socks that were now gracing the rafters.  Dark came and we all reconstituted our glop and choked it down, all except for Debbie who had brought raw materials to make a really nice supper which she intended to share with her James when he showed up.  I think it had tofu in it, or something granola-like. I was content with my Mountain House reconstituted Beef Stew glop and some crackers.

Darren fished from shore and had no luck even though we all thought that light rain was good for fishing.  The night was fun, we all had stories to tell and time went quickly, which was just as well because it became ever more obvious that Debbie’s James had not shown up yet.  Was he just late?  Being an insensitive clod?  Or had something horrible happened and he was even now dying somewhere on the trail.  Debbie became more and more concerned and ended up sitting up well into the night, perched at the edge of the opening, staring out into the blackness.  Mike snored his scotch fumes away and I zonked out in no time.  Morning came and still no James.

Darren and I were both heading into Cold River country and decide to hike it together.  Mike was planning to slob around the Lean-To for an indeterminate time, probably constrained by his scotch supply, and Debbie was determinedly waiting for James.  Just as Darren and I were pulling out, sure enough James showed up, muddy from head to toe.  He’d gotten a late start and ended up sleeping on the trail, wrapped in ponchos, and got up stiff and sore this morning to finish the hike in.  He was full of plans to hike the Sewards, and intended to set right off on it, Debbie in tow.  They headed off up the old fire trail that leads to Ward Brook Lean-To and to the herd path for Mt. Seymour.  Mike sipped some scotch and Darren and I hit the trail towards Ouluska Pass and Cold River.

Mike and I spent three great days in Cold River country, feasting on trout and wild greens that he knew all about.  We didn’t charge up the mountains nearby and instead explored the valley, seeing Cold River Canyon, the hermit Noah Rondeau’s settlement, one rotting remnant of one of his stick huts still apparent, swimming at Millers Falls and Big Eddy and getting all the way to the Lean-To’s and suspension bridge at Shattuck Clearing.

We got back to Duck Hole and Mike was still there.  Darren was heading back up the N-P trail to Placid where he’d left his car and said if I hiked out with him, he’s run me over to Heart Lake to pick up mine, so we did.  I had only been in a week, but decided to clean up and get a nights’ sleep in a bunk room at Adirondack Loj at Heart Lake and a good cooked meal.  Next day I restocked a bit in Placid and then drove over to the Ausable Club at St. Hubert’s and trekked into the Ausable Lakes and explored that area for two weeks, climbing Colvin, Nippletop, Blake Peak and even Pyramid and back up to Gothics from that side.  In a saddle near the summit of Nippletop I found a clear, clean spring bubbling out of the ground, lined with sphagnum moss, with the best tasting, crispest water I’ve ever had.  I dumped everything from my water bottles and refilled with this and had a refreshing two days of pure water.

After the initial façade of enjoyment of the fact that I was out hiking by myself, I started to really see and feel the mountains and passes and streams that I was living amongst.  I found I could hike up a summit and sit all day, watching clouds roll by, thinking a lot about living far away in the woods like Rondeau, forsaking people and modern convenience, living a purer life.  I would seek out locations less traveled, sometimes going three or four days seeing no one else, fancying myself an intrepid explorer, gold seeker, pioneer, scout, and hermit, always laced with a strong feeling of self sufficiency, my store-bought supplies and freeze dried glop notwithstanding. 

I started sleeping on the summits of favorite, less visited, peaks, taking care to set my sleeping pads on rock outcroppings, so as not to trample fragile alpine grasses, and watching full blown star displays the likes of which could no longer be seen in more civilized worlds. So many stars that the shapes of the constellations melted into the celestial tumult and the galaxy shone as a snowy snake stretching to the horizon.  I would wake up at first light and watch the sun come up over the Green Mountains of Vermont and be packed and on my way down before most hikers had opened their eyes, safe in their tents and mummy bags.

Ultimately, it was well into August, I hadn’t seen my parents for a while and I struck the trails and got out to my car for the three hour drive home. As I got to the Capital District area I was struck by the sheer volume of noise everywhere and all the frantic activity going on; was it always this noisy or had something changed while I was gone?  Radios blasting, tools clanging on floors, people yelling, trucks backfiring, Jesus Kee Ko, what bedlam.

Once home, my parents a bit miffed that I had spent my time in the mountains and not earning more money, I was suddenly nervous.  Why not get a nice, safe, simple, undemanding job instead of going back to stupid college.  I remembered Ron talking about the ‘overeducated asshole’ engineers and managers he had to deal with in his job at GE.  My father had supported his family and never even finished high school.  Maybe Ron could get me into GE and I could be set for life.  I interviewed but didn’t get hired and in the end packed up for Cobleskill.

I started daydreaming about meeting smart kids who stayed up all night drinking beer and talking about life, politics and philosophy, about joining clubs and learning new things, and mostly about meeting beautiful, available women from whom I could get some of that ‘intimacy’ that I craved, but was obviously so afraid of.  I had butterflies in my chest and nervous knees and actually, at almost 21, still wanted my parents to bring me out and get me settled. Shit, was I a baby for Christ’s sake?

I sold my car, wasn’t worth much anyway, and packaged up my framed photos, you know all the great sunrise, sunset and mountain pictures that would win me admirers and worriedly drove the hour to COBY and saw my first dorm room.  I was growing up!