Giant Mountain

Again I stepped out of the door towards the Adirondacks High Peaks region, this time towards the summit of Giant Mountain in the midst of fall foliage. Beautiful reds and oranges burn the countryside with those green pines and spruce layered on the higher slopes. I have come to learn that, in fair weather or foul, the mountains of the Adirondacks never disappoint.

The brilliant colours brings to mind an excerpt from JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings which reads

“All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost."

Again we happened upon the cairn that mark the way for hikers along sections of the trail where there is either no clear path or the final ascension to the summit. Something about the cairn, as I wrote in the entry a few months back regarding the hike up Mt. Marcy, there is a poetic nature to the cairn that is only partially captured in photographs. What they represent, the process of their creation, and their ability to weather the mountain storms draws my curiosity in a way that few things do.

At the summit, we grilled steaks on a small propane grill and at them at the seat of the world's table.

So too at the summit I found the veins of the rock. All along the way, I saw them along the way. To me, they represent the roots of the mountain and all that gives the land its mighty strength.

This is now 2 of the 46 High Peaks.