Campfire Cooking

Hike, Interrupted

Memory can be an unreliable narrator. I realized this as I started on the trail up Hadley Mountain, where I found, instead of the wild, intimidating landscape I recalled from my last visit, 12 years earlier, somewhere welcoming and benign.

My first impression of this place, in the summer of 2005, was colored by its utter unfamiliarity to me—not just the trail itself, 20 miles from Lake George, but the entire Adirondack Park, whose existence I had only discovered a few months before.

Tangled

For my wife and me, Wanakena has become synonymous with relaxation, quiet reflection and family over the last 20 years. It is a place where we raised our children to love the outdoors. It has been a sanctuary from the day-to-day grind. It has been a gift.

Last summer, we set out from our home near Rochester for our week-long stay at the family cottage on the Oswegatchie River. In the past, packing two children, bikes, canoes, clothes, books, computers, dogs and all the unnecessary stuff that goes along with family vacations consumed the days leading up to, and finally, the day of our journey. But this year it was just the two of us. We intentionally took only a single duffle bag each and hit the road.

Dear Grace

In the not-so-distant past, every hiker who sought to climb all 46 Adirondack High Peaks had to carefully document each ascent if they wanted recognition for the ordeal. After detailing the snowdrifts, birds, bugs and fellow hikers they saw along the way, they would put their account in the mail, addressed to Grace Hudowalski, who served decades as the 46er historian. Hudowalski was the first woman to climb every peak above 4,000 feet in the Adirondacks and was the first president of the Adirondack 46ers, a club formed in the 1940s. She would send aspirants back a note, offering encouragement and always ending her letter with a “Good Climbing” instead of a “Sincerely.”