ANYONE WHO HAS HIKED THE HIGH PEAKS OF THE ADIRONDACKS knows that the trails were designed by demented trolls. Rather than take the landscape into account—say by using the tried and true method of switchbacks on steep inclines, as one does with other pathways such as wheelchair ramps and highways to ease the climb—the trails in the Adirondacks ascend every peak straight up, leaving hikers scrambling up shipping container–sized boulders and clinging to vertical water-slicked slabs while tiny flies feast on the sweat and tears pouring forth. Ironically, people actually go on vacation there.
My personal theory is that the trails of the High Peaks wilderness were designed to discourage visitors, thereby forcing all potential homesteaders downstate. That is why, my theory goes, New York City was invented, as a place to house some ten million frustrated hikers who gave up trying to enjoy themselves in the Adirondacks and settled instead for a scrubby island at the mouth of the Hudson full of pizza by the slice, street pretzels, and stockbrokers.
But camping is cheap, so I take my son, Finn, when we have the time. While some folks spend thousands on top-notch gear such as ultra-light tents, Vibram-soled boots, and wicking undergarments designed by NASA, Finn and I head out with stuff cobbled together from the basement and closets and strapped to our backs haphazardly, making us resemble some miner from the Klondike gold rush, clanging and tottering up the trail. My sleeping bag dates back to before the Kennedy era (I think it’s stuffed with dodo feathers), and we both have foam sleeping mats that are laughably thin and ineffective. My camp stove weighs roughly one hundred pounds, and given my skinflint nature I cobble together meals from stuff I can find in our cabinets, so basically we eat pasta three times a day.
Over the years we’ve been trying to bag as many of the “46er” peaks as possible. There are forty-six peaks in the Adirondacks that are over 4,000 feet, and this exclusive club of 46ers is populated by hikers who, either through sheer obstinacy or a deep-seated self-loathing, have summited every single one. There is even a more exclusive clique within the 46ers, those who have summited each peak during the winter, always distinguishable by the fact that most are missing multiple fingers and toes due to frostbite and spend mealtimes stumbling about and dropping silverware. Finn and I have climbed twelve so far.
Now, many reading this account may be scoffing right now. Harumphing, even, as they read about tiny little peaks only 4,000 feet high. After all, Everest is 29,032 feet, and peaks in the Rockies and the Sierras are often over 14,000 feet. However, I submit to you that there are few trails as unenjoyable as those in the Adirondacks and, by extension, the Green Mountains in my home state of Vermont, just across Lake Champlain. It is not unusual to ascend nearly 3,000 vertical feet during one of these hikes on trails that forgo any semblance of decency and respect for knees that are forty-plus years old. In addition, hiking out west in places like Colorado and California, the outdoorsperson is rewarded constantly by Instagrammable vistas: soaring mountain ridges, sharp peaks, blue skies, and attractive, tanned people. Hiking in the East, however, especially in the Adirondacks, there is nothing to see but the muddy, boulder-strewn trail at your feet as you heave your carcass up what basically amounts to vertical stairs in a dense tunnel of overhanging trees that block out all light and hope, and people who are angry, sweaty, and fly-bitten. As families grumpily pass by, you can hear snippets of conversation between couples: “I wanted to go to Old Orchard Beach in Maine by the ocean but noooo, you had to bring us here.” What I am saying, in a nutshell, is that yes, the mountains aren’t the tallest, but they are by far the cruelest.
Finn and I arrived at the parking lot for Rooster’s Comb—not a proper peak but a nice vista—and prepared our gear for a few days out in the High Peaks region. We planned on summiting a half dozen of the 46ers over three days, and our packs were stuffed and heavy. The trail began in a swampy little lowland, hugging the shore of a muddy pond, but soon enough began to climb upward. The vegetation changed from the more-leafy, deciduous type of forest to piney woods pretty quickly. The weather was hot but overcast, the perfect environment for blackflies and mosquitoes, both of which attended to us as we shuffled our way up the trail.
I sweat. A lot. Not just a bead or two of perspiration on my upper lip, but gouts of sweat pouring down my body. I sweat during all activities, regardless of exertion level: ice-skating, bike-riding, dog-walking, filing taxes. My shirt was instantly sopping wet, particularly my back, where my pack was pressed, denying any air circulation at all. The few other hikers we passed stared at me the way you stare at a fellow diner at a restaurant who begins choking loudly on a dinner roll. Their very expressions seemed to ask, Is medical intervention necessary? This man looks ill Finn took me in at a glance, and his thirteen-year-old expression was one of horror and disgust. “Dad, you’re really sweaty,” he said. “Yeah,” I wheezed, wiping a pint of sweat from my face. “A bit.”
The trail continued upward. We tramped gamely along, our pace slow and measured. Looking at the map earlier, I had planned a route that would take us over two of the 46ers: Lower Wolfjaw and Upper Wolfjaw. I realized, however, that it was unlikely we’d make it that far. Our pace was maybe a mile an hour, burdened by our packs and chugging along in the soupy heat. Finn seemed fine, the resilience of youth both a wonder and a source of deep resentment to those of use with gray hair; and Ruggles, our dog, bounded happily along, scouting the trail for us and finding many disgusting features of the landscape to roll in or eat.
We struggled on, but as the afternoon headed toward evening we figured we were nowhere near our goal. We broke off the trail, which snaked along the torturous ridgeline we’d followed all day, and headed down a valley to a lean-to for the night. After rinsing off in a river nearby, we prepared a meal of pure gluten and carbohydrates, eating in total silence and concentration, our mouths slurping the food while our eyelids drooped. We had brought little chlorinated tablets to treat our drinking water, but they gave the water a distinctly hot-tubesque flavor. So I boiled a large pot of water and filled our bottles, leaving the caps loosely screwed on to let the heat dissipate overnight.
Sleep came hard and fast, and despite the fact that the hard wooden floor of the lean-to was the antithesis of comfort, we both fell into a deep sleep almost immediately. Exhaustion is a wonderful sleep aid.
After rising in the morning and devouring chocolate chip pancakes, we slowly began packing up our gear. I had been so tired when I got into camp the night before, I had strewn my stuff everywhere—sweat-stained shorts hung from the rafters of the lean-to, and muddy sneakers were cast off in every direction. We gathered our gear and reluctantly stuffed our backpacks, preparing for the full day ahead of us. We hoped to summit Upper Wolfjaw, Armstrong Mountain, and Gothics, three more of the 46ers, before heading down to camp at another lean-to.
Once my lopsided and unwieldy pack was ready, I hoisted it onto my aching shoulders. Grabbing my water bottle, I took a big swig to pre-hydrate for the climb out of the valley back up onto the ridge. The water was still practically boiling. Apparently the heat had not escaped over the course of the night. There may be no greater misery than a hot hike during which, whenever thirsty, you have to slug down hot water. Unfortunately, due to the insulation properties of my water bottle, that’s what I ended up experiencing all day, which meant that I dreaded every break we would take, as I had to swallow gulps of water that resembled nothing so much as hot spit. Finn had poured his boiled water out and replaced it with chlorinated water, and came up with a strategy of sucking an Altoid as he drank to mask the taste.
We climbed up out of the valley back up to the ridge, even this little effort taking well over an hour. Once we were back on the trail, we began climbing up and down unnamed humps and spurs along the route, each one a densely forested, rocky landscape of steep ups and downs. Whenever the trail dipped into a saddle between peaks and we had to scoot on our butts down sheer slabs of bedrock, the relief of finally going downhill was tinged with deep bitterness—every step down would eventually have to be regained on the next peak.
When we hit the climb up Armstrong Mountain, the first ascent was on a ladder built from thick, rough planks that had been bolted to the sheer face of a soaring wall of rock. I had to lift Ruggles in one arm and climb one-handed while carrying my pack, an enterprise roughly analogous to juggling on a unicycle while holding a colicky infant. The trail continued up Armstrong, massive blocks of gray stone the size of minivans interspersed with rooty, muddy catwalks, all piled on top of one another. In a way it could be fun scrambling up the trail, sort of like nature’s playground. But with a pack on my back when I was already spent, it was tough. I’d lift my foot up and place it on the next ledge, located at waist height, grab overhanging roots and slender tree trunks, and with an intense, drawn-out grunt that sounded like I’d eaten a bowling ball and was now trying to expel it from my sphincter, I’d haul myself up a few feet. Finn and the dog would peer down from above, their expressions mirroring each other—one part concern, one part embarrassment.
It was at this point that I ran out of water, as did Finn. I had, in my deep reservoirs of unfounded confidence, figured that there would be little rivulets of water everywhere, happy burbling streams of clear, cold stuff we could refill with. This turned out not to be the case, however, for the simple reason that water, for those who aren’t aware, is subject to gravity. Thus, when you’re on a ridgeline and everything is, technically, beneath you on either side, there is no place from which the water can flow to get to you. Any moisture will flow downhill off the ridge. Despite the fact that this concept of physics is so rudimentary even Ruggles understands, it had not occurred to me. So we soldiered on, our saliva beginning to take on the consistency of saltwater taffy in our mouths.
There is one very long section in the Lord of the Rings trilogy by Tolkien where Strider, Legolas, and Gimli chase a band of hobbit-napping orcs across miles and miles of landscape. This part of the novel goes on and on and, for a book chock-full of action, is pretty boring on an objective level. But for anyone who’s ever backpacked, especially in a place like the Adirondacks, there is such a feeling of empathy for the warriors of Middle Earth as they run, mile after mile, day after day, across Rohan. The very act of reading it mirrors the experience of the characters, drudgery in motion. As their legs persevere across endless hills and plains, the reader’s eyes gobble up sentence after sentence like:
The sun climbed to the noon and then rode slowly down the sky. Light clouds came up out of the sea in the distant South and were blown away on the breeze. The sun sank. Shadows rose behind and reached out long arms from the East. Still the hunters held on.
And then:
So the third day of their pursuit began. During all its long hours of cloud and fitful sun they hardly paused, now striding, now running, as if no weariness could quench the fire that burned them. They seldom spoke. Over the wide solitude they passed and their elven-cloaks faded against the background of the grey-green fields; even in the cool sunlight of mid-day few but elvish eyes would have marked them. Until they were close at hand.
And on and on:
The sun was sinking when at last they drew near to the end of the line of downs. For many hours they had marched without rest. They were going slowly now, and Gimli’s back was bent Aragorn walked behind him, grim and silent.
Bent backs, resentful silences—yep, sounds like a hike in the Adirondacks.
After summiting the Gothics we made our way down the steeply pitched rock slabs, clinging to huge cables someone had bolted to the rocks to assist in the descent. It was early evening, and the sky was clouding over even more darkly; rain looked possible. According to the map, it looked like about a mile down the valley there was a river and a lean-to. We were parched and exhausted, and the thought of fresh, cool water and a place to sleep nice and dry seemed almost erotically appealing.
Stumbling and quiet, we made our way down the slippery trail toward the river. Finally, after about an hour, we came to the first trickles of water, but they were choked with reddish effluent (some kind of mineral) and smelled like a rhino’s ass. Despondent, we kept walking, our pack straps now feeling like iron bands wrapped over our shoulders. The light was fading and the air was changing; it was definitely going to rain.
Finally, we found a mossy little stream in a deep, shady gorge. We filled our bottles, dropped in the chlorine tablets, and waited the twenty minutes required to kill any bacteria or cute little squiggly-wigglies that might be residing in the water. Finn stretched out on his back on a flat slab of rock near the stream, and I stared mutely at the trickling water, checking my watch approximately every seven seconds.
That first sip—manna from heaven. We chugged and slurped, our desiccated bodies loudly demanding more. We both felt better almost immediately, and headed off down the trail, knowing we must be within spitting distance of the lean-to.
Finally, after more stumbling in the gloam of the forest, we heard voices. Lean-tos in the wilderness of the Adirondacks are first-come, first-served. Most have additional tents sites nearby in case of overflow, so we didn’t worry much as we made our way toward the sound of folks camped at the lean-to.
The structure was just off the trail up a little hill in the thick trees. I headed up, Ruggles bounding happily ahead of me to meet whoever was camped there.
The lean-to was packed with teenage girls. They were all gabbing happily, looking clean and scrubbed, their packs neatly leaned up against the inner walls of the lean-to. They looked organized, as though they were in the middle of some sort of planning session, and one of the young women stood facing the group as though she’d been addressing them before I showed up.
Ruggles began spastically insinuating himself among them, whining and wagging and begging for pets without any pride whatsoever. I addressed myself to the woman who seemed to be in charge.
“Hi, how’s it going? Is there a good place to get water here?”
“There’s a river right down there,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder.
We chatted; I learned it was an orientation trip for counselors at a Christian girl’s camp. They did have that squeaky-clean, holier-than-thou sort of vibe, contrasted sharply by our own filthy, trail-muddied appearance. In any case, there were about a dozen of them, so it was pretty clear that the lean-to, at least, was full.
Finn and I extracted Ruggles from his undignified efforts to lick every face and went down to the river. We began filling our bottles and treating the water, and tried to figure out what to do.
“Should we stay here? I can ask them if there’s any tent sites open,” I said.
“Or we could just walk all the way back to the car,” Finn said. This, while deeply appealing, was a near impossibility; we had at least six miles to the nearest road, and then several miles of walking the road until the car. It was almost dark; we’d be walking in pitch blackness. Still, I have to admit I considered it.
“Look, we’re tired, and it looks like it’s going to rain. Why don’t we just grab a tent site, and we’ll camp here for the night?”
Finn looked wan and hungry. He stared back up toward where the lean-to was hidden in the trees. “Okay,” he said.
I left him there by the river and headed back up toward the lean-to to see what the story was with tent sites. I got to the base of the little hill and started up.
I was met with a disturbing sight. The troupe of Christian counselors-in-training had been told, clearly, that as cleanliness was next to godliness it was time to brush teeth. They were all scrubbing away, frothy foam erupting from the sides of their mouths. They were also slowly walking downhill, away from the lean-to. So as I approached, what I saw was a slow-marching army of shark-eyed Christian teenage girls foaming at the mouth heading straight for me.
“Oh my god, I’m sorry, didn’t know I was interrupting tooth-brushing time,” I said awkwardly, feeling a bit weird at barging in on what is usually a semi-private act. Also, I was fully aware that I was a forty-seven-year-old man, stinky and grimy, approaching a cluster of Christian teenage girls. Give me a machete and a hockey mask and we could’ve been cast in a horror movie.
I’m also aware of some subconscious sarcasm here. After all, I said, “Oh my god,” which is taking the lord’s name in vain. And on some level I did that on purpose. It just slipped out.
The weirdness of the moment was broken as Ruggles, ever eager to jump up, muddy-pawed, in someone’s face, came wriggling and whining with tail wagging furiously up to one of the girls. She stared down with undisguised contempt at him.
“Ew. I don’t do dogs.”
Now, I get that. Not everyone is a fan. But the sheer disgust she demonstrated seemed a bit severe for the situation, I thought. I grabbed Ruggles’s collar and pulled him away, and made eye contact with the young woman who seemed to be the mentor. I put on my nicest “I’m not a weirdo kidnapper” face and smiled brightly. “Is there a tent site that’s open? I think we’re just going to camp here tonight. Looks like rain.”
Her face instantly set like stone into a severe countenance devoid of emotion. She didn’t look angry, just hard. “There’s no more sites. They’re all full,” she said.
There was an awkward pause; the girls around us stopped brushing and watched silently.
“Oh, okay. None?”
“All full.”
I stood for a moment more, as about a thousand responses bubbled up. In the end I said nothing, just smiled and nodded, and headed back down the trail, feeling the stares of a dozen righteous Christians laser into my back. I squatted down next to Finn and told him there was no camping to be had. We were out of luck, and would have to walk down the trail and find somewhere else to camp. It was now twilight; the forest was growing dark.
We packed up and began picking our way through the gloom.
“Not very Christian of them, was it?” I said.
“What?” Finn asked.
And it was here that I launched into a furious diatribe about the hypocrisy of religion. It was the sort of fiery speech that will, no doubt, send Finn to therapy as an adult.
“I mean, I understand the impact the Judeo-Christian mindset has had on the world. I’m a professor, right? The whole point of the gospels, and the basic message of Jesus, is to help those in need, am I right? Well, we’re kind of in need of a place to sleep. And those girls just wouldn’t help. They just wouldn’t! What kind of Christianity is that, huh? I’ll tell you what kind. Greedy Christianity. Poseur Christianity. I mean, who do they think they are? I thought the whole Christian creed was to help those in need of charity. Well, look at us? Bug-bitten and tired, and they couldn’t even offer us a wedge of ground to pitch a tent!”
It went on in this way for quite some time. I veered into a long discussion of how Christian greed manifested itself as the desire for eternal life in heaven, as if this life, this world, wasn’t good enough for them, and I believe I may have compared the Christian desire for a second life of celestial joy in heaven to a grossly rich person buying a golden toilet because a regular toilet just wasn’t good enough, a clunky metaphor that may have confused Finn into thinking that heaven was somehow related to plumbing and nouveau riche gaucheness.
Night was falling, and soon we were walking with only our headlamps’ beams illuminating our surroundings. Finn, poor guy, was tired, but I was still going on about the cyborg Christian girls who’d denied us a chance to camp. I was on a roll now, and couldn’t be stopped. I was talking about how, obviously, there are decent Christians out there who did a lot of good. But many who were just full of themselves, posturing as pure and innocent souls when they were anything but. I then started regaling Finn with stories of Christian-run “Indian schools” in the United States and Canada, and how these institutions systematically destroyed native culture, and often murdered children as well, as a means of stamping out Indigenous populations. How Christians were responsible for upholding the very idea of Indigenous genocide, and that Finn’s ancestry—on his mom’s side relatives came from Indigenous communities in the Sonoran Desert regions of Mexico—was subject to a crusade of wholesale cultural and actual slaughter by missionaries and a large-scale Christian ethos that plowed over Indigenous sovereignty and dignity.
“I know Dad, jeez,” Finn said, as the light from our lamps illuminated skeletal tree trucks and slick rocks.
At this point, emotionally exhausted, dehydrated, and hypoxic, I really let it rip. I began telling Finn that, in fact, the story of Adam and Eve was really just a mythology-cloaked manual for an Indigenous pogrom. Adam and Eve—living in the garden of Eden, naked, unashamed, and happy—are the perfect substitutes metaphorically for Indigenous cultures. And of course, Adam and Eve got kicked out, punished, and replaced by Cain and Abel, murderous farmers.
“The whole thing was just an elaborate scheme to divest native peoples of land and autonomy, and what we just experienced is so indicative of the sort of false Christianity practiced by so many people, just a performative superiority over others that has no real grounding in empathy or sympathy. And just like missionaries and early settlers used Christian values to validate the theft of Indigenous lands, those Christian camp counselors used them to rob us of a place to sleep!”
Eventually, I tired myself out ranting against teenage Christian girls. We clomped onward in full darkness. After about an hour, we finally found another lean-to that was uninhabited by selfish zealots and got ready for bed.
In the morning, after a leisurely breakfast and packing up, we hiked out and back to the car. The day was hot and sunny, and when we finally made it back to our little parking lot, the act of pulling our packs off and hurling them into the back of the car was a pleasure so deep it nearly brought me to tears. Finn had the bloom of youth, so he still looked fresh and healthy—looked even brighter for all the fresh air and exercise—whereas I looked like I’d been living in the trenches of World War I for a month, eating rats and staving off gangrene. I smelled rancid, my body muddied and scratched.
We drove straight to a gas station, and walking into the air-conditioned splendor I was struck by the abundance of it all: Little Debbie snack cakes and Pop-Tarts and Pringles and every single soda you could ask for. Snickers and Reese’s and Slim Jims and you name it. All under the shimmering fluorescent light, it was like a citadel built to worship at the feet of the god of corn syrup. I’ve always loved gas stations and convenience stores, especially on road trips. I think the American roadside gas station satisfies some primal foraging instinct we’ve hung onto since our days as hairy savannah dwellers. We scrounge up and down the aisles, tuning into our libidinous, calorie-hungry id, grabbing to-go meals we’d never eat at home. “Dinner tonight? Well, looks like I’ll be having Cool Ranch Doritos, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a thirty-two-ounce cup of coffee that could take the paint off a barn, Sour Patch Kids, and a family-sized bag of jalapeño and cheddar sunflower seeds, all washed down with Strawberry Muscle Milk.”
We loaded up our arms with donuts and Gatorades and potato chips, went back out to the car, and began stuffing our faces with junk food.
It had been a long trip—at least spiritually. I kept thinking about the Christian campers and how steamed they’d made me. Maybe I was being intolerant, I thought. Anti-religious. After all, they were entitled to their views and beliefs. And maybe my annoyance at them was driven simply by the smugness of their youth, the way they claimed both tent sites and their identities with such absolute surety. Like any time spent out in the wild, it already seemed like a long time ago. Only three days and two nights, but I felt we’d come so far. We’d seen so much, pushed ourselves to such extremes.
I tried to think of something to say. Some way to capture the experience in words, put a stamp on this moment in time when father and son are together, burn these minutes in Finn’s memory before he grows up and leaves behind his youth, heads off to have his own adventures and independence. Say something that offers us both a hook to hang our collective memories on. Perhaps offer Finn, and myself, a few words to commemorate this time together, celebrate the bond of love that had borne us through the wilderness.
“Forgive, and you will be forgiven,” I intoned.
“What?” he said through a mouthful of donut, looking at me suspiciously, picking up on the possible moral implications of what I was saying and immediately becoming wary of a lecture. He had a Gatorade in his fist and a bag of chips on his lap. He had looked dirty and happy, but now a quickly darting cloud of skepticism crossed his face.
“Never mind,” I said. And began the long drive home.