I had hoped to hike 5 high peaks this weekend to bring my total up to 15 instead of 12, but I only hiked 2.
It seems then that this post should be about success and failure, or about learning when to turn back, when to give up, but that’s not how it felt.
It felt like signs and sequences.
We say “it’s a small world” when we encounter the same people in unexpected places. We say “butterfly effect” to describe the interconnectedness of things. We say “guardian angel” when a sign comes at the right moment. But we don’t have a word for all of that, a word for all of the ways the world creates this wild and weird equation that is life.
Let me explain.
You get a late start on a 14 mile hike.
It’s possibly going to rain but the forecast has been in flux so it’s unclear.
You’re 7 miles into your hike climbing exposed rock along a waterfall.
It starts to thunder.You keep going but now you’re not sure what to do, you’re 7 miles into a 14 mile hike, after all.
Do you go back 7 miles? Do you go forward 7 miles? Do you hunker down and wait?
As the lightning and thunder shrink to 5-one-thousands apart a person comes down from the forward direction and his consensus is that it’s time to go down.
You turn back.
It rains the whole time.
On the way you run into someone you’ve only met once, 200 miles away in a different mountain range.
For the next 5 miles you think of all of the things that needed to fall into place for that chance encounter to happen.
You think about the encounter that caused you to turn back.
You think about how it’s raining and raining and even if you got to the top of three mountains, would you even have enjoyed it?
You think what a weird and wild world it is.
If you want to do what I did:
The two high peaks I completed were Street and Nye. They were muddy and there were no stunning vistas so I would only hike them if you’re trying to get all 46 Adirondack high peaks or if you like suffering without any rewards. Or both.
The peaks I failed to hike were Wright Algonquin and Iroquois. We took the avalanche pass loop miles 3-7 are GORGEOUS. I can’t say what happens after mile 7 though. There’s also a slightly shorter out and back version that doesn’t include Avalanche pass. Who knows what would have happened if we’d gone that way instead.
It’s a weird and wild world.