Just Call Me Burly Mountain Girl

I went camping this week. There are some things I really don't like about camping. I don't like stinking for days on end. I don't like bugs and pollen. I don't like changing my clothes in a tiny tent 4 feet tall. I don't like sleeping in a 5-man tent packed with 6 girls. But there are some things I love about camping. I love the Adirondack mountains. I like being truly hungry, and campfires deep into the night with friends and marshmellows. I like how simple and raw it is. I liked coming home, in reeky bum clothes, and feeling too loud and too strong and too big for my house.

At one point we scaled the rock face of Avalanche mountain. A net of fallen trees (from the alvalanche of '91) created a 30-foot long bridge from our trail to the rock face. The 12 of us had to climb through 15-year-old loose timber to get to a section of mountain that was so steep that nothing could grow on it, and then we climbed that. I have never done anything like this in my life, and I'm not ashamed to say that I was terrified.

You learn a new kind of problem-solving quickly. The logs with moss on them are the sturdiest, but they're also slippery. Always be holding onto something with your hands, so when your feet slide or break through you can hang on. Sometimes you just have to jump and catch yourself as best you can. And never look down, ever.

Then came the rock face. From far away it looked flat and smooth, but up close it was gravely; hard on your hands and slippery under your boots. You used your hands and your feet to you bear-crawl up as quickly as possible. Sometimes your boots would slip and you would have to flatten up against the wall until you stopped. I was the last one up, and when I reached the rest of the group I slowly turned and perched on the moutainside in a sitting/squatting position.

The view was worth risking life and limb. Adirondack mountains, dark blue against a bluer sky. Green timber covering nearly every inch, and lakes covering the rest of it. Rocky mountain peaks past the timberline. It wasn't a scenic stop on the expressway; this is a view that very few people have ever had, a view that you had to earn. The kind of view you can't take a picutre of because a camera would never survive the journey. We were 500 feet higher than our trail- I could see my pack where I had left it and it was the size of the eraser on a pencil.

We picked gravel out of our hands and our knees, examined our scratches ("Alright, who's bleeding?") and started down. Down is much, much harder and more dangerous than up. Some people used a controlled-fall approach, tumbling down the mountain and stopping when they got going to fast. I slowly and timidly picked my way down the 500 feet. But when I jumped from that last branch onto the trail, and my boots landed with a loud thud that sent up a dust cloud, I felt about 50 feet tall. I felt like I had conquered the entire world. I had braved to go where only ants can exist.

There are some things that grow you up. Finding a college, cancer, last days of school. Climbing a mountainside with only your own body and some friends for life support does it, too. When I was sitting on that wall, looking over the mountains, I knew there would be nothing that would scare me for a very long time. It's the kind of thing you can add to your identity. I have started a life for myself, I have seen far-away places, I have met death, and I have climbed 500 feet of bare mountain wall with nothing but my bare hands and a pair of hiking boots.

Sometimes you need to risk your life to change your life.