“So you think you’re ready for Mt. Washington?” He turns his head quickly toward the back seat of the Prius as we cruise Route 1 toward New Hampshire. “I’ve done a lot of hiking this summer, so I think I’m ready,” I mutter softly as I struggle to stay awake at 6:30 AM. I let myself slide further into the leather seats and zone out to the Pandora Feel-Good Indie station that’s trying to keep us all awake. I’m in a car with two people I’ve never met before, and I’m about to go climb the tallest mountain on the East Coast. What the hell have I gotten myself into? One part of me is saying that I should feel pretty uncomfortable with this situation, yet somehow I am perfectly content. Slipping into a daydream, I think of the hikes that have led me to this point. The one that stands out most clearly in my mind is the day I climbed Cascade, the hike that drew me into the mountains and never let me go.

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The sun shone through the leaves above and soaked the boulders and forest floor with morning light, while the rhythm of one foot after another filled the silence of the woods. I was preoccupied, wondering what grade I might’ve gotten on the biology test I had taken the day before, and thinking about how a lot of my friends weren’t in the same classes as me anymore. As I navigated a section of trail jumbled with boulders, roots, and rock slabs, I had to carefully choose where to place each footstep. I supposed it could be seen as an art, a form of expression for a hiker—looking at the trail and being able to see your line through it. Where I placed each foot was intuitively calculated, balancing the material and surface area underfoot with the incline of the slope. My thoughts were focused intently on the trail below me, my eyes occasionally glancing ahead at the canopy of fall color that surrounded the path.

As I reached a new rock face to scale, I grabbed a tree limb and hoisted myself onto the boulder in a less than graceful way. As I took a break to catch my breath, I looked down at the messy section of trail I had just climbed and tried to gauge how much more we would have to go.

“You think we’re almost to tree line?” I asked down to my dad who was following just behind.

“We’ve got to be getting close,” he called out between breaths, as he made his way carefully to the ledge where I was standing.

After a short break to guzzle more water, I continued the relentless uphill climb, this time through an old-growth alpine forest where the familiar smell of balsam filled the air. My lungs ached, my muscles burned, and sweat dripped down over the mud already caked to my ankles.

“Why’re the trees so short?” I called back to my dad, noticing that the higher we climbed the smaller the plants became.

He said back, “there’s less oxygen up here, and it stays very cold, so it’s harder for the trees to grow.” Patches of blue sky began to peer around the hemlocks, and I could catch momentary glimpses out towards the other peaks. Soon the trees disappeared behind me, and I stepped out onto the first section of open rock. I looked back, but this time, instead of just seeing the trail behind me, I could see for miles, out towards the highest peaks in New York. I thought of what I had read in the Eastern High Peaks Area guidebook that morning: “This is the heart of the Adirondack Park— the largest forest preserve in the contiguous United States, larger than Glacier, Yosemite, the Great Smoky Mountains, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon combined.” These mountains were huge—massive, and they were right there for me.

I called back all in one short breath, “Oh my gosh this is awesome you need to see this.”

Looking ahead, the summit cone loomed above me, the last half mile to be climbed entirely on open rock. I dug the rubber soles of my boots into the inclined granite and continued up the rock, looking back occasionally to catch a glimpse of the view that was unfolding behind me. The trees had disappeared, and all that was left was the rock below and the sky above. My school world—the realm of classes, teachers, and grades—crossed my mind for a brief instant, and I recognized that somehow this place made all those things seem trivial.   Each step pushed me higher and brought me further into another world, a windswept landscape so entirely elemental and wild.

Before long, I had the sole of my hiking boot over the summit marker, the Vibram logo pressed into the copper bolt. I was twelve years old and had climbed my first high peak, one of the 46 Adirondack Mountains above 4,000 feet. From the summit rock I looked out over this vast wilderness, slowly turning and scanning all 360 degrees. In every direction peaks jutted upward, their rocky pinnacles cutting into the blue horizon as if reaching toward the sky. It felt like time had stopped, and I was overcome with this indescribable feeling—pure, overwhelming joy and wonder. I couldn’t keep myself from smiling. My heart pounding out of my chest, I stopped to close my eyes, let the sun warm my face and wind blow through my hair. I knew then I had fallen in love for the first time, but with the mystery and the stark beauty of these mountains.

My dad and I sat and opened up our lunches, and I ate the best peanut butter and jelly of my life. With a fold-out topo map we named each of the peaks before us, most of them higher and more challenging than the one we had just climbed.

“Marcy’s the tallest?” I asked. “I think Algonquin looks a little bigger.”

“I think because Algonquin’s closer to us and steeper. I always thought Algonquin was harder than Marcy,” he said back, as if revealing a trade secret.

“You’ve done Marcy before? How long do you think before I can do it?” I asked.

“We’ll wait until you’re a little older,” my dad replied. “These mountains are really powerful—you have to wait until you know you’re ready.”

In the silence, I was instantly reminded of something he had told me the year before, after I took a hard fall skiing too fast. I was hurt and confused and couldn’t come to terms with the situation. He had said to me, “Laura, you have to take what the mountain gives you. We all try to carve it, lay our line but eventually you have to let it do what it wants to you.” Sitting on top of Cascade, I realized that I had grown up here, but I was still discovering what this immense wilderness had to offer—these mountains were powerful and vast, had a life of their own. In a subtle way, the Adirondacks raised me, taught me all that I know about what it means to be strong.

Sitting on the summit ledge, my dad turned to me and said, “I think a lot of people treat ‘nature’ as a vacation spot, as a place they can go to get away from the world. I guess what you find out here is that you’re going back to it. It’s just a part of who we are, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

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As we reach Pinkham Notch trailhead in the White Mountain National Forest, the Prius comes to a jolting halt at the side of Route 16. My fingers run through the thick laces on my hiking boots, pulling them taught strand by strand. I pull out each telescoping pole to a length of 110 centimeters, and pack and strap my bag with five different water bottles. I remember the conversation I had with my dad the night before, his reminder to “make sure you pack at least two liters of water, and be careful please.” I pull out the drawstring underneath the main opening of my bag, and double check that I’ve packed a raincoat, extra fleece, and lunch. I pack everything back into its place and swing the bag around to my back, buckling the waist and chest straps. And so I find myself here at the base of Mt. Washington instead of doing my problem sets, and the mountain air fills my lungs and courses through my veins. It’s infectious, and keeps calling me back time and time again.

“You guys ready?” I ask.

“Yeah, let’s go get it,” they say, and we set off into the Tuckerman Ravine.