Wandering Home

by Bill McKibben

  I got in less trouble from wilderness advocates than Cronon did,2 in part because I was clearly one of them, and in part because I was catching so much hell from oil companies for suggesting that we needed to overhaul industrial civilization. But the argument persists. It’s not easy to see what the idea of something apart from man, something untrammeled, will amount to in a globally warmed, genetically engineered world, a world totally reshaped by our recklessness and our shortsighted desire. Mightn’t we just give up on the whole thing and go play video games?

  For me, though, the idea that there’s no such thing as pure wilderness has made the relative wild all the more precious. Yes, Cronon’s right, and so was I—there’s no place that isn’t touched by man. I have a friend, Curt Stager, who teaches biology at Paul Smith’s College, the only four-year school in the Adirondacks. Curt spent years out with his students looking for a pristine Adirondack Lake, one that hadn’t been sterilized by acid rain, one whose sediment cores didn’t show telltale signs of logging or roadbuilding in the watershed. He never found one, and he had three thousand to choose from. And now it rains or snows or doesn’t on those lakes in some small measure because of the kind of cars we drive or the ways we heat our homes. In 2003, scientists summed up a review of many different studies—studies of leaf-out in the spring, of migration dates, of hibernation patterns—and concluded that because of global warming, spring was coming seven days earlier at this latitude than just a few decades before.

  But it’s precisely because of such things that we badly need more wild, not less. For pragmatic reasons: if plants and animals are going to need to move north against the rising temperature, we have to give them as much room, and as many corridors, as we can carve out (assuming, that is, that you buy the basic conservationist argument that plants and animals are worth preserving). But beyond that, we need more wild for human reasons: we need to set aside land from our use simply to prove to ourselves that we can do it, that we don’t need to be in control of everything around us. The battle for the future is precisely between those who are willing to engineer every organism for our convenience, who will countenance the radical change of our climate rather than risk any damage to our cosseted and swaddled Economy, and those who are willing to say there is something other than us that counts. Wilderness and Gandhian nonviolence were the two most potentially revolutionary ideas of the twentieth century, precisely because they were the two most humble: they imagine a whole different possibility for people.

  There’s another, less stern, reason we need the wild, too, of course, and that’s for sheer comfort. I’d hiked Giant several times in my life—the best was on the first anniversary of meeting my wife, Sue, when we walked up in a gray fog with a bottle of champagne, only to have the clouds instantly part as we sat on the summit, pulled away like stage curtains to reveal the late-September glory below. Probably because of that good memory, I headed back on one of the darker days of my life, the morning after the elections of 1994, when Newt Gingrich swept into control of the House on the strength of his Contract with America. It seemed to me as if the nation I loved had finally gone totally crazy, that it had settled for the most gimcrack and transparent kind of fraud, and that a kind of intolerance was settling over the land that would eventually make life scary for people like myself, who seemed suddenly not critics of the ruling order, but dissidents. Anyway, a hard day’s solitary hike was enough to restore a bit of equilibrium, and Gingrich landed harder than I did in the end—but a world without Giant Mountain, or a Giant Mountain with a toll road on it, or a gondola, or an ATV mosh pit, seems more worth fighting against than ever. “Forever wild,” as the New York constitution puts it, even if “wild” means a little less than it used to, and if “forever” seems somewhat shorter.

  THE GOOD THING about philosophical speculation is that it can carry you right up a mountain, even a steep-sided, mossy-rocked one like this. We spilled out on the summit before I’d expected it, and now for the first time could see way south and west across the expanse of the High Peaks and the spread of the lower Adirondacks far beyond. Mount Marcy and the Algonquin ridge and the Great Range beckoned across the valley of the Au Sable River; looking east, it was easy to trace the route I’d come right from the Breadloaf ridge of the Green Moun tains. And I could see the rest of my track laid out before me, too—Hunters Pass beneath the Dixes, and the Hoffman Notch wilderness beyond, and past that the deep and remote Adirondack forests of the Hudson head waters. I pulled last night’s storm-drenched tent from the pack and laid it across the rocks to dry, and ate my lunch, and congratulated myself on reaching the literal high point of the journey, 4,627 feet. It’s all downhill from here, I thought, which as it turned out was one of those brags you’re better off not making.

  WE SET OFF on our descent, against a steady stream of hikers climbing up on the more usual route. Many were would-be 46ers, checking off another of the peaks on the list first compiled by Bob Marshall when he was a young man spending his summers in Saranac Lake. A staunch hiker, he and his friends tried to climb every high mountain in the park. Forty-six, he said, topped 4,000 feet, and these became the grail. (Better measurements showed he included four that didn’t belong, and missed one that did—but myth proved more rugged than mere measurement, and his list still holds.) Many of the peaks on the list, Giant included, are glorious; others are grim marches to flat-topped mountains with no views that would never be climbed, were they not on the official itinerary. It’s simple to make a little sport of the 46ers, especially since some people, upon finishing the list the first time, set in trying to climb them all in the winter, or to stand on every peak at midnight, or to visit each in the rain. But the quest serves two purposes: by providing that American necessity, a goal, it gives people a good excuse to get out into wild country; and it makes sure that the other thousand or so mountains are almost totally ignored simply because they’re too low. If you know an Adirondack summit is 3,950 feet high, then you know you’ll have it all to yourself.

  In fact, as is often the case, describing something turns it into a magnet. Marshall was a born salesman—on top of one Adirondack peak he came up with the idea for The Wilderness Society, which in turn led the drive for the 1964 federal statute, relying all the time on the inherent appeal of the word. The 3 million acres of “forever wild” land in the Adirondacks are divided into two main designations, “wild forest” and “wilderness.” The differences are very minor, having to do with grandfathered jeep trails and the like—but because wilderness sounds sexier, those areas almost invariably draw more hikers. Some conservationists worry that the High Peaks Wilderness in particular gets too much use, and there are periodic attempts to limit the number of hikers going up mountains like this one—require permits, some say, or build more parking lots and facilities elsewhere in the park to disperse use. But in fact one of the glories of the Adirondacks is that the high granite vacuums up most of the visitors, leaving the rest of the park to the creatures.

  There were more than enough visitors wandering up Giant today, including at least one group communicating very loudly over walkie-talkies with other members of their party who were roughly, oh, forty feet away. I fear I must have been thinking of some cutting remark to make to John, because bad karma grabbed me by the ankle and sent me down hard on a steep rock shelf. Actually, the first part of the fall wasn’t so bad—but a half-second later the full weight of my pack slammed into my back, sending me eight or ten feet farther down the slope and leaving me with blood streaming from both knees. No permanent damage, but I was sore and hot and grumpy as we plodded down the trail. I was, I think, feeling my age, which is the only bitter thing about hiking peaks you’ve hiked many times before. The trail never seemed this long before, and it didn’t help that granola-fed John was leaping lightly from rock to rock.

  Thank heaven the path spills out on Route 73 right across from Chapel Pond, which is among the loveliest places in the park. In the nineteenth century, apparently, ranks of artists would
stand by its shores almost every day, lined up behind their easels, trying to capture the rocky slides and steep, birchy draws above the pond itself. In our time this spot speaks most loudly to rock climbers—whatever the season, there’s always a van or two alongside the road, and a few specks moving up the pitches. In winter, when a dozen waterfalls ice up, the crowds of climbers really gather. But today I wasn’t paying much attention. All I wanted was to take off my pack and go for a nice long swim in the pond, kicking just fast enough that the blood trailing off my knees wouldn’t attract too many leeches.

  John had to be somewhere the next morning, so he actually allowed a friend to come pick him up in an automobile. I reminded him how such a contraption worked—the seat belt, the window crank—and then, feeling virtuous, gimped off to the east on the two-lane for half a mile till I came to the next trailhead. This one led south, and in less than a mile passed Round Pond, where I made camp for the night.

  Round Pond is a lovely sheet of water set in a perfect forest bowl, and tonight it was graced by three loons, not to mention a small band of Christian college students. Nice as it is, however, it must be said that its name leaves a bit to be desired. I mean, come on, Round Pond. I’ve swum in at least four Round Ponds in the Adirondacks, and I bet there are fifty more. Not to mention dozens of Mud Ponds, and Loon Lakes in every direction. As a rule, Adirondack place names lack distinction. The problem, I think, is that there simply weren’t enough people to create enough history; even the Indians mostly used the central Adirondacks as a hunting ground, preferring to site their villages in the warmer, more fertile land around Lake Champlain to the east, Lake Ontario to the West, the St. Lawrence to the north, and the Mohawk River to the south. They gave good names to some things—Tahawus, or Cloud Splitter, may have been their title for the Adirondacks’ loftiest peak (or it may have been dreamed up in the nineteenth century by some romantic writer). But the first white guys who climbed it didn’t bother with romance at all, naming it for the undistinguished governor William Marcy who had paid for their trip (and coined the phrase “spoils system”).

  At least Marcy was a name, though—for the most part, this is anonymous land, much of it named as if it had been inventoried by a warehouse clerk. There’s First Lake, Second Lake, on up at least through Fourteenth Lake. There are so many Blue Mountains and Clear Ponds that the map index reads like a Beijing phone directory. As a result, I take it upon myself to occasionally rechristen particular spots with names I can remember. Tonight, tuneless hymns were drifting across from the campers on the far shore of Round Pond, an off-key bleating shamed by the pure clear laughter of the loons. “Shall We Gather at the River” is one of my favorites, but not in a Gregorian chant. From now on, I’ll call it Bird-Beats-Baptist Pond.

  THE NEXT DAY’S destination was Elk Lake, and I’d been looking forward to the hike. But that’s because I’d misread the map. From the top of Giant, I could see straight through Hunter’s Pass, which crossed the height of land on this day’s journey. It was a low pass—3,200 feet on the map, which meant that my high point for the day would be almost 2,000 feet lower than the summit of Giant. And I knew much of the trail—I’d gone winter camping along the Boquet one Christmas week.

  A longer look at the map, however, would have reminded me that the trail didn’t actually go through Hunter’s Pass. Because of an intervening piece of private property, hikers are forced to climb almost to the summit of Dix Mountain, fifteen hundred feet above the pass. And what a climb—this little-used trail was essentially hand over hand, a shinny up roots and cracks. Kind of fun, I’m sure, on a cool fall day with your lunch in your pocket, but kind of not fun on a hot and humid morning with too much crammed in a backpack. I went through most of my water on the ascent; then the climb down was very nearly as tough, especially since I was still gingerly from yesterday’s fall. And then the long walk out. I should have stopped at one of the creeks and pumped myself some more water with the filter I’d carefully carried all this way, but I’d dropped into a kind of walking stupor. I’ll just keep going till Elk Lake, I’d tell myself—there’s water there. Hell, there’s a big lodge there. They probably have ice water. Maybe ice cream.

  And indeed by two-thirty in the afternoon the trail spit me out onto the access road to the Elk Lake Lodge, one of the Adirondacks’ finest hostelries. What I’d forgotten, however, was just how fine. There were signs everywhere reminding hikers that they should stick to the trails, that the lodge was For Guests Only, that they shouldn’t pass this point without permission, on and on and on. I have no doubt—well, not too much doubt—that they would have received me civilly if I had walked the half-mile to their porch. But I was suddenly conscious of just how smelly, muddy, blood-flecked, and dusty I actually was. So I headed the other way, walking the four-mile road out to the Blue Ridge Highway. That dirt road, essentially the driveway to the Elk Lake Lodge, passes a couple of lakes, but these too are plastered with No Trespassing signs. In fact, in under two miles I counted 155 posted signs along the road—Guests Only, No Stopping. There was not a spot along the road out of sight of such a sign, and it worked—I just kept trudging, parched and a little sullen, thinking the kinds of thoughts that English peasants must have thought when nobles fenced off all the good hunting grounds.

  On the other hand, it reminded me to be truly thankful for the 3 million acres of public land in the park, a landmass half the size of Vermont open to absolutely everyone, no questions asked. By tonight I’d be back on that land, and I could stay on it pretty much all the way home.

  Anyway, my weariness set me up for one of those moments that you wouldn’t fully appreciate under any other circumstance. Reaching the highway (if that’s what you want to call the Blue Ridge Road—it is two lanes, but it’s about as busy as the post office on Sunday), I turned left because in the distance I could see a low building with a sign out front. Real estate? Chain-saw-carved bears? Or, just maybe, food and drink? It took me twenty minutes to get there, but when I did—well, it was like some kind of desert mirage that turns out to be real. Odd but real. The establishment was called the Adirondack Bison Company, and indeed there was a herd of bison out back, in a small meadow carved out of the woods that stretched for miles in every direction. That was queer enough, but there was also a deck overlooking the bison pasture, and on it was one of those telescopes like you’d see at Niagara Falls, where if you put in a quarter you could watch the bison standing in the dust very close up. You could make out every bison hair! But I didn’t do any bison-gazing for about half an hour. Instead, I went into the tiny store, which featured four things: vast quantities of bison jerky, a cooler full of Snapple, some garden produce, and a table piled with homemade desserts on Styrofoam plates wrapped in Saran Wrap. Without saying a word I drained three lemonades and ate two slabs of chocolate cake and a piece of blueberry pie (fifty cents apiece)—it was as if every food dream of the last few days had somehow managed to assemble itself here on this lonely road, with a herd of bison thrown in for good measure.

  My belly comfortably distended, I sat on the porch and chatted with the proprietors, who manifestly had not been born in California. They were not New Age bison-herders. They were people who had lived here all their lives and thought there might be some money in bison. Or maybe they just liked bison—abstract questions didn’t get very far. So we chatted about the news of the central Adirondacks (“A bear climbed a power pole over to Long Lake last night. Electrocuted himself. Knocked out power to the entire town.”) and discussed the peculiar buying habits of tourists (“city folks like big kernels on their corn”).

  So, I said, is there a restaurant around here somewhere where I can get a bison steak?

  The rancher looked at me a little funny, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. And then he said, “Well, they have it over to Vermont.” Which struck me as the punch line for a long, complicated joke I’d been telling for the last ten days.

  I CAMPED THAT NIGHT on the northern edge of the Hoffman Notch
Wilderness, along a stream known locally as “the Branch.” It began to rain around midnight, and it was still coming down with some vigor the next morning, when Chris Shaw joined me for the day’s trek.

  The Hoffman Notch wilderness is quintessential Adirondacks, much more typical than the High Peaks country I’d been traveling the last few days. It’s pretty big—36,000 acres—and it’s very lonely. Because the peaks stay under 4,000 feet, the trail register shows just fifty or sixty people a summer hiking the one trail that bisects the area. Except during hunting season, I imagine that the number who wander very far off that single trail might be counted in the single digits. It’s empty, trackless country, unless you count the tracks of other creatures. Predictably, the main point of interest along the one trail carries the compelling name of Big Marsh; the biggest lake in the wilderness is known as Big Pond.

  And Chris Shaw was the perfect person to hike it with, for there’s probably no one who’s traveled more widely and lived more deeply in these mountains. He came to the Adirondacks as a young man, and over the next decades worked as a camp caretaker, raft guide, ski-lift operator—always in a different town, a different corner.3 All the time he was writing stories and novels and articles, and eventually he ended up as editor of Adirondack Life, turning what had been a low-wattage tourist rag into an award-winning regional magazine. One of the ways he did that was to encourage actual reporting, which of course got him fired eventually, when he offended one (subsequently indicted) local power broker—but no matter, since he’s gone on to write fine books since, and explore ever more deeply into these mountains.