Taking A Hike

It is my time to eschew technology, to reset and embrace all things analogue.  I will take a couple of books, my journal and fountain pen, and sketchbook.  (My phone becomes an alarm clock and occasionally a camera.) It is a quiet time, but not a silent one.  I usually book a week in early July, when guests come to play old music every evening after dinner.  Conversations are entertaining, amusing and often informative.  

The camp has been a destination for revivification since the 19^th century. One gentleman, a retired college professor, told me he’d been coming to the camp since he was five years old. In fact, the visitors book from 1919 has signatures from famous guests: Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Sandor Ferenczi.

Ultimately it is a time to be in Nature. Let me leave you with an anecdote from last year:

Last July, when my son and I were driving to the Adirondacks, we made our way into New York at quiet border crossing.  The thirtysomething immigration officer asked where we were going. I said we were hiking the Adirondack High Peaks.  

Which ones? he asked. 

I thought he was quizzing me to see if we were really going hiking. It made me a little anxious.  I named two or three mountains we’d likely climb

“Ok,” he said, “but don’t let them make you hike Gothics! My cousin told me we were going for a ‘little walk.’  It almost killed me!”