Retracing an Earlier Hike

My son Nathaniel and I are spending a few days in the Adirondacks. This morning, we climbed up Cascade and Porter mountains. Ten years ago, when Nathaniel was in the 4^th grade, our whole family spent the first of several summer vacations camping in this area, and we decided to try hiking. Just to warm up, we scrambled up Mt. Jo, a tiny peak overlooking Heart Lake. Then, we chose to ascend Cascade, because one of the locals informed us that the trail to the top was the shortest for any of the over-4,000-foot high peaks. The view at the summit is one of the best in the park, so it is an amazing reward for the amount of effort involved. For this reason, it is often the first (or only) Adirondack High Peak scaled by many tourists.

Well, ten years ago, we were new to this adventure, so that first trek up Cascade (2.4 miles with an ascent of 1,940 feet to an elevation of 4,098 feet) nearly did us in. But we made it, huffing and puffing, and once we witnessed the 360-degree panorama at the top, we pretty much forgot how hard it had been.

The next year, three of us decided to return up Cascade and then walk over to Porter Mountain, another high peak only a mile from the summit of Cascade. I remember that it took us about two hours to get up Cascade, and the walk down into a col and back up to the summit of Porter seemed like an eternity. But we made it.

Now, the Cascade hike feels easy. Nathaniel and I reached the top in 80 minutes, and the extra jaunt to Porter didn’t bother us a bit.

We started out early – before 8 a.m. – both to beat the summer crowds and to arrive at the top before the sun was so high it would wash out the iconic view to the south toward the Great Range. We had the entire open summit all to ourselves the whole time we were there. Same for Porter.

On the way down, we must have seen a hundred people. Given Cascade’s

reputation for being a “beginner’s” hike – at least a first foray into the High Peaks – it did not surprise me that most of these people had never passed this way before. I guess Nathaniel and I looked like we knew what we were doing. Just about everybody we passed wanted to ask us something. “You’ve already been to the top?” “What’s it like up there?” “Can you see anything?” “How much farther do we have to go?” (That one was hard to answer. Panting heavily and looking at me with wide, desperate eyes, they clearly meant, “how much longer” instead of “how much farther.” So I would ask, “How long did it take you to get this far?” and then make an educated guess at how long it would take them to reach the top. My answers were not encouraging.) The further down the mountain we went, the more we heard people say, “So this must be about halfway, right?” I didn’t mind all these questions. To be honest, I rather enjoyed the role of “trail elder.”

Most of these first-time hikers were donning tennis shoes. A couple of young ladies were wearing dresses. One poor man was wearing dress slacks and loafers. I saw a number of folks who were sweating profusely before they even reached the truly steep section of the trail, yet they had brought no water. (My favorite story about beginning hikers came from an ADK report about rangers stopping a couple who were headed up Algonquin Peak – the Adirondacks’ second-highest – carrying a full-size cooler full of picnic supplies.) I chuckled to myself wondering what I looked like ten years ago. Was I wearing tennis shoes then? I don’t remember, but chances are, I did. Why would I have bought hiking boots before I knew anything about hiking?

I’ve hiked so many trails in the Adirondacks that I no longer feel the need to find a new one every outing. I enjoy rediscovering places I’ve already visited, knowing that they never look exactly the same. This hike to Cascade and Porter was like a pilgrimage. It was gratifying to discover how much more stamina I have now than I did a decade ago, but it was thrilling to find that the breathtaking summits are even more magnificent than I remembered. That’s partly because I see things now I didn’t know to look for before. It’s also because every hike is its own unique experience incapable of being duplicated. (Actually, the only other time I climbed Porter, the summit was blanketed with pea soup fog.) Today’s hike carried special significance just because I shared it with Nathaniel.

Perhaps you can already recognize the strong parallels between hiking and spirituality – a connection I have noted several times before. I’ve been exploring, nurturing, sometimes ignoring, but consistently dwelling in, a relationship to God for a long time now. Much of my spiritual life today is about retracing paths I’ve been down before, rediscovering the richness of spiritual terrain I traveled when I wasn’t mature enough to appreciate its beauty. These journeys are easier to make, yet they also yield new insights. More and more, I find myself in the role of a guide rather than an explorer. I’m not a spiritual novice anymore. I don’t claim to be a master, but depending on whom I am with, I’m often an elder. In one sense, I miss the excitement of more youthful spirituality. On the other hand, I’m grateful that I can walk more attentively, more contemplatively.

There are new paths, of course. And they can be arduous. But I no longer have to be in an ambitious hurry to boldly go where I haven’t been before. Often, it is enough simply to experience a familiar place as though visiting it for the very first time.

Copyright 2013 by J. Mark Lawson