I don’t remember when the woods started calling me. Maybe it was my whole life and I wasn’t listening that hard.
But I do remember when my insides started screaming and the woods made them quiet. I was working 80 hours a week for a company I hated and people that didn’t care about me. I worked through the weekends all summer long. I couldn’t see outside. All I knew was air conditioning and my computer screen.
I somehow heard about these things in the Adirondacks called the 46 High Peaks, and if you climbed them all, you could get a patch. I immediately made this list.
In a lot of ways this list saved my life. Not because I’ve hiked all of the High Peaks, or even all of the High Peaks on this list, but it started me on a path of doing hard things. And the more hard things I did, the more I found I could do. I hiked High Peaks alone, I quit my job and got another, better one, I started rock climbing, I started teaching outdoor education. I am learning and growing still where once there was a time I thought I was finished.
This week I took a foraging class and learned about edible spring plants, and then I helped as a teaching assistant for a wilderness first aid class. It was hard being stuck inside teaching that weekend when I knew my friends were out climbing. But looking towards all of the adventures to come, I was glad for all the ways the wilderness was continuing to save me.
