A Need for Wildness

Light shatters on a blanket of newly fallen snow. Soft powder that sinks, envelopes, and consumes. Snow that reveals the slightest touch of a feather and conceals the sharpest crag of rock. The light dances off it, not sure where to land. Fragile, it illuminates shards of ice, runs in confused and dizzying circles, then spirals off glazed bark and petrified streams before glancing back off into the bluebird sky above.

I shield my eyes, searching for somewhere to focus without going blind. It is cold, and the snow is producing sounds that could only occur at subzero temperatures. It crunches – almost squeaks – beneath my boots. My breath turns my hair white, and I can feel the miniature snowballs hanging off my eyelashes. My lungs protest in disbelief as I inhale, and I realize I can’t quite feel my fingers.

After donning sunglasses and a dry pair of gloves, I press on. My mind fills with amazement at how quickly the cold pulls heat from my skin; my warmth an uninvited intrusion to this frozen landscape. Even the trees seem aloof, their deep green branches weighed down with ice and snow. It is as if time itself has decided it isn’t welcome here, and left this pocket of silent white free from the tedious constraints of seconds and hours.

As the familiar burning pulses through my legs, I crest over a small ridge. My body stops and I stare in awe. My mind tries to comprehend the beauty of what I am seeing. The world is reduced to tones of black and white. Jagged mountains pulse through layers of ivory. Exposed rock and ice stand out against a snowy backdrop. It is truly inspiring.

I gaze at two mountains in particular. Two mountains that I had spent hours on in the less frozen months. Today, they look like foreboding monstrosities – a place where no breathing being should have the audacity to exist. I wonder what kind of madness had possessed me to hike those mountains almost daily for two summers, and why it felt so right that I had just agreed to return for another.

That feeling of wildness. The unimportance of time. I am fortunate to have felt this to a point of familiarity – almost an addiction. A sense that words would call a wilderness experience, yet the words describe intangibles that are difficult to grasp without an intimate understanding of the feelings involved. “Wilderness” – It doesn’t do it justice.

I have only been alive for 23 years, so my perspectives on how the perception of wildness has changed is likely different from someone who has been hiking for the past 50. I was first introduced to the words “wilderness” and “wildness” in May of 2018, when I trained to be a Summit Steward for the Adirondack Mountain Club. A job that would task me with educating hikers about fragile alpine ecosystems, and directing footsteps away from some of the rarest plants in New York State.

My decision to take the job was a moment that seemed insignificant at the time, but in hindsight marks a clear distinction of who I was, and who I would be. I didn’t know it then, but that little lodge, those people, and those mountains were about to capture my heart, steal my passions, and leave me shivering among alpine plants. The funny part? I had never been happier.

My first season stewarding I developed patellar tendinitis in both my knees, and after the summer ended I was in physical therapy for two months. It was another three before I could walk down stairs without discomfort. Stewarding, I decided, was an amazing experience – but one that I could never do again.

My second season stewarding I was “splashed” by lightning in a tent, charged by a deer, and spoke to even more hikers than the year before – somewhere around 8,000. This, I thought, was really it. It had been an amazing two summers and I had learned a lot. Perhaps now it was time for more of a “traditional job”.

Yet, as I hiked out of the woods for the last time that summer, it didn’t feel like it was over. Even as I worked five days a week, 9-5 with benefits, I was out every other weekend volunteer stewarding through the fall. Even when that meant speaking to 600 people in a day on one of the busiest hiking weekends of the year.

What could possibly be wrong with me?

One day I found myself sitting at my desk gazing longingly out the window at the white pines, their branches swaying in the most intoxicatingly dangerous fashion. It was in that moment that I realized I was desperately missing something.

I no longer had to worry about getting hypothermia on an exposed summit, and my water came out of a shiny silver faucet whenever I needed it. I was no longer concerned about twisting an ankle, and being hours from medical care. I was missing risk. I was constantly out on weekend hikes, but a couple days a week wasn’t enough. I felt empty. Filled with a sickening longing for a feeling that I struggled to come by in my day-to-day life. Risk, unpredictability, serenity, motion – wildness.

I soon realized that during my two summers spent in the largest wilderness area in New York State, I had fallen in love not just with the mountains, Diapensia, and Bicknell’s thrush – but with wilderness itself. I had become wrapped up in an insistent fascination for what wildness is, and how people experience it. The ideas wound around my brain, yet with all my time pondering it – I struggled to come to a conclusion.

My personal perceptions of wilderness involves removal from societal safety guards, and the opportunity to truly witness nature – but what does wilderness mean to everyone else? There has to be something that drives people to put themselves through the pain and effort of climbing to an alpine summit, or to seek out nature. It is evident by the numbers of people coming to our country’s wilderness areas that it means something significant to us.

I can’t answer the question of what wildness means to you, or them, or us. Only that it must mean something. And that something may not be static.

Many people believe that the wilderness experience is changing. The group that seems to get the most blame? The younger generations.

It would usually happen when a hiker decked out in full Gortex, top brand hiking poles, at least two GPS’s (and every square inch of their pack covered with hiking patches) witnessed a member of my generation pulling out their cell phone to take a selfie.

Or even worse, summiting in jeans and sneakers while facetiming their mom and letting their dog run rampant through the alpine vegetation.

“Hiking isn’t the same as it used to be.”

“They just want an Instagram photo.”

“Back in my day….”

We all started from somewhere. I’ll be the first to confess that there is a picture of me standing on top of an alpine summit in jean shorts, with a cotton sweatshirt in my pack, wondering what the heck a summit steward was and why they just told me not to step on gravel.

I am fully aware that I am a young millennial, bordering on Generation Z, taking pictures with my phone on summits. And yes, posting on social media, even though I strive to include a conservation message.

I’ve even been told that I don’t fully understand what wilderness is, because I have only ever hiked with the existence of cell phones and cell phone service.

There is an odd sense of superiority among hikers who were hiking “before hiking became as popular”, a sense that no one today can experience the same thing they did.

In a way, they are absolutely right. Although that may not be something to be proud of.

The concept that younger generations have less of an appreciation for the natural world than older generations is something that has always baffled me.

After all, “Kids these days” are growing up in a world where we might not be able to hike a mountain in the Northeast and see an alpine summit. The climate is warming, and although we don’t fully understand the effects – change seems inevitable. The concept that nature will always be there, and that wilderness will always be there is changing.

The liquid trill of a Bicknell’s thrush will likely disappear from the Northeast, and spruce-fir forests may no longer grace ridges of the Adirondacks. Our winters are becoming milder, lowland plants are creeping upslope, and mercury from factories is found in our lakes, streams, fish, and even runs through the blood of our boreal birds.

The long-held believe that nature is constant no longer holds true. In fact, it seems to be more under threat than ever before. Of course the perceptions towards wilderness and wildness are changing.

Nature is resilient, but it is also fragile. The rock beneath worn hiking boots was formed inside the planet 1 billion years ago, but it is also eroded daily by wind and rain. The twisted spruce that has endured 100 sub-zero winters could be snuffed out by a single gust of wind. The collection of arctic plants has persisted for the last 10,000 years can be killed by a single human footstep.

It is a perfect paradox. This world is beautiful, but it is being poisoned. Wildlife and plants are going extinct, forests are being cut down, sea levels are rising; the entire pattern of our weather systems has been thrown off balance. Deforestation, habitat loss, pollution, climate change – the list goes on.

The notion that anything can remain unchanged in today’s society is laughable.

That is why I don’t believe that the wilderness can withstand the test of time, in fact I would argue that it already hasn’t.

Perhaps that’s why older hikers blame the younger generations for changing their perception of wildness. To them cell phone service on a summit, and the increased number of hikers is a drastic change to what they grew up with. To me, that’s all I’ve experienced.

As I gaze out on the frozen landscape below me, I wonder how many more generations will experience winter days as subzero as this one.

I think of my decision to return for a third season of summit stewarding, and wonder what the future holds for those hardy alpine plants that so many people have worked so hard to protect.

I wonder how many Bicknell’s thrushes will return in the spring, and if the last bit of snow will melt just a little bit sooner this year.

When I decided to return for my third season of summit stewarding, I knew that the plants I was dedication so much to protect are under threat from forces that can’t be curbed with education alone.

A hiker once asked me why we work so hard to protect the alpine zone when the plants are under threat from climate change. My answer to her was relatively simple, they are still here now – and as long as they are here we will work to protect them.

This is also my mindset towards wilderness. These areas may be under threat, but they still exist, and we need everyone we can to recognize that and be their voice.

I believe that the increased visitation in these areas reflects that people care, that we as a society place value on experiences in nature. The younger generations give me hope that we will have passionate conservation leaders fighting to protect the feeling of wildness.

I do not doubt that wilderness as I know it is going to change, but I am hopeful that the wilderness experience will still exist. Even if it does not, I know that I will have fought for it.

In the meantime, I will value every moment that I crest over a snow-covered peak in January, and look forward to returning for yet another season as a summit steward.

I’ll watch the light as it glances off of the snow, shooting off into the sky above, and treasure the moments of solitude in a world of ice. I’ll talk to another 8,000 hikers about alpine plants, and probably swear I’ll never come back by the end of 2020. I know that no matter where I end up, and how much the world around us changes – I’ll forever be in love with alpine plants, and I’ll always have a desperate need for wildness.