Tag Archive 'backcountry'

Aug 25 2023

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Going Deep

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With all the rain that has fallen lately, I was a little worried about driving the 6-mile, unimproved dirt road all the way back to the trailhead parking lot and leaving it there for the next three days. I could handle anything on the trail, but a washed-out culvert on the way out could confound me. All the same, the Whitehouse trailhead put me within a day’s hike of Canary Pond, and I really wanted to go there.

When I hiked the Northville-Placid Trail through the Adirondacks back in 2006, I passed a beautiful little pond and vowed to go back and spend some time there someday. So that’s what I set out to do three days ago, crossing the suspension bridge swinging over the West Branch of the Sacandaga River then plunging deep into the woods.

It was a 7-mile hike back to the Canary Pond, nestled in the heart of the Silver Lake Wilderness. I figured I could handle that and the 700-foot climb directly ahead, with only a 30-pound pack tugging at my shoulders. I was half right about that. Yeah, I managed to do it, but I arrived at the pond late afternoon completely wiped out. “What’s wrong with me?” I wondered as I slowly set up camp. Oh yeah, I’m 67-years old.

I crept from my tent the second day aching from head to toe but limbered up a bit after puttering around camp. That’s when the fun really began. A whole day doing a lot of nothing: watching dragonflies patrol the shoreline, listening to the faint summer breeze barely rustling leaves, and taking pictures of the many different kinds of mushrooms. I scribbled in my field journal until my mind went blank. Then I stripped off all my clothes and slipped into the surprisingly cold pond to swim around. After that I sat cross-legged in camp, completely lost in the moment. When I snapped out of it, I said: “Ah… now I get it, Buddha.”

Owls kept me awake the most of the second night with their incessant hooting, but I didn’t mind. I packed up early the third day as rain clouds gathered overhead then got back on the trail. Mostly downhill, it was an easy walk out despite the many bogs and mud holes. I saw no one, realizing that I’d seen no one since a couple of thru hikers passed me two days earlier. Yeah, it was a good outing. And the drive out of the woods was no problem. No rain fell until I returned home.

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Jul 19 2021

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Deep Woods Solitude

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A few days ago I hiked five and a half miles into Five Ponds Wilderness, located in the western Adirondacks, and set up camp at Cat Mountain Pond. I got there early in the afternoon, hoping to be the first person there. I was. In fact, I was the only person there well into the next day.

After a quick swim to wash away sweat, I settled into a rather pensive frame of mind. This is normal for me. As a philosopher of wildness, I often contemplate existence and meaning while sojourned in the woods. The wild seems to me like the best place to do so. The wilder, the better.

With no one to talk to, all my elaborate philosophical arguments seem rather moot. The wild isn’t interested in my version of reality. It is reality. I can babble all sorts of logical theorems to myself, but that’s pointless. I can scribble down my thoughts in a journal, but my thoughts are dominated by the wild. That is, if I’m paying any attention to my surroundings, all I can do is take dictation.

Are my journals the gospel according to the wild? Hardly. There’s a big difference between experiencing the reality of the wild and being able to articulate it. After forty-odd years of scribbling I’ve come close perhaps, but deserve no cigar. There remains some aspect of the natural world that eludes me. There remains some aspect of it that is beyond words.

All interpretations of the Real are sadly lacking. The wild teaches me this time and time again. It teaches me this when the sun sets, a barred owl hoots and the hum of insects fills the forest. It teaches me this as a great wild silence settles over a still pond. All I can do is listen, and this listening borders upon being a mystical experience, for that’s all that we mere mortals can do.

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