Bear Dropping and Beef Jerky Do Not A Wildlife Expedition Make.

I took Rt. 3 straight into the Adirondack Forest. Everything started to look taller and more spectacular the closer I got, until I wasn’t even sure if I had entered the park or not. I wondered until I saw a sign that said so, and then I looked around. It was gorgeous. Rt. 3 goes up, down, and around the hills so you truly get a sense of just how big the range really is. There were little towns sprinkled here and there along the road and I wondered if the people there ever got bored of the scenery.

I did think that the maple trees would have been a bit more green than they were. Judging from the way the leaves had broken in Maryland, I was expecting that to be the norm up north as well, but the cold has kept the buds hibernating for a few more weeks. Even now there are many trees that haven’t sprouted yet. But the pine trees offered a starkly beautiful contrast against the tall brown sticks and an opportunity to see further into the forest from the roadside, which helped when scanning the layers of brush for deer and black squirrels.

Bubbi called and told me a hilarious story of the time his family went to their tiny Adirondack cabin and found a large black bear had broken through the back door and was asleep on one of the beds. It sounded like reverse Goldilocks! I hoped and hoped that I’d see a bear, although it was evident from the many, many signs once I entered the camp and hiking ground at Cranberry Lake that the forest rangers hoped no one would spot a bear. One sign close to where I parked to go hiking read:

Bear and Camper Guidelines:
1. Do Not Feed Bears
2. Do Not Taunt Bears
3. Do Not Leave Trash Or Food Remnants Where Bears May Access
4. Do Not Sleep In The Same Clothes Used To Prepare Food

I didn’t realize you couldn’t sleep in cooking clothes, which made me glad I wasn’t staying overnight, but when I read that the whole set of guidelines sounded more like the old "Happy
Fun Ball" parody from Saturday Night Live. It made me chuckle.

I cannot even describe how excited I was to go hiking!!! It was my first hike after the winter thaw and what better place than the Cranberry Lake, NY? It came highly recommended by Rose and Albert as well as Bubbi so I knew I couldn’t go wrong. Being by myself was a bit of a miff and I found myself wishing that Brian was with me, but then again, Brian is a bit of a pessimist sometimes, so ultimately I was glad I was alone. But that did nothing but give me more time to wish that Mikey or Kaitlin or Max were along for the hike.

Well, anyway, I had no idea where the hiking trail was so I made my own until I met up with it. The water in the lake was so clear and clean!!! I ventured out onto the large, smooth rocks sticking up from the surface and pretended I was The Last Algonquin like in the book I read some years ago. I pictured what the horizon of the lake must have looked like before the summer homes were built and little docks dotted the shoreline. I picked my way in and out of trees, low-hanging branches snagging my backpack as I ducked low to circumvent the trees near the edge of the water. I used my huge, huge backpack since it was the only one I had, although I only packed a bottle of water, a sweatshirt, two first aid kits (one regular and one especially for snakebites), a Bible and a bag of beef jerky.

I stopped and perched on a big rock halfway along the trail to eat the beef jerky, which was awesome, and accidentally dropped a piece amongst the dried leaves. I was hoping a bear would smell it and come eat my beef jerky with me, especially since I was looking around and saw bear droppings near the same spot. They weren’t fresh, but I still hoped real hard that one would come along.

I kept going up Bear Mountain (see, I really wanted to see bears!), which was a little difficult because the regular camping season hadn’t started yet, so the Forest Rangers hadn’t yet come back, post-winter, and groomed the trails. Meaning, there were trees that had been felled by beavers that were in the process of being picked clean by the animals and were blocking the path in several places, and in some of the steeper spots rainwater runnoff and winter thaw had eroded the path. However, that just made me feel more like a pioneer and I had so much fun challenging myself to keep going even though I was severely winded.

At one point early in the trail there were huge, moss-covered boulders along the left side of the trail. I decided to go rock climbing. As I approached them and started pawing my way in between them, my heart said, "Hell Yeah!" while my head said, "Your health insurance ran out a week ago" but I kept going. Getting to the top was easy and exhilarating. It was just getting down that was scary, because the rocks were still wet and slippery from the rain that had fallen days prior. However, I made it and just imagined how much cooler it would be to get to the top.

It was interesting because I’d never been on a large hike alone before. When I was in the Grand Canyon, I had John and Paddy to spur me on, dubbing me Sparky from the way I would go and go and go until I got winded and then stop, just start right back up at breakneck speed so they couldn’t think of me as a wimpy girl. This time I had to be the one to spur myself, which was really challenging and fun. I kept repeating in my head, "You didn’t come all this way just to half-ass this mountain!"

So I finally made it to the top and stopped on a nice flat rock overlooking the lake. I was almost exactly in the same spot I had started, only higher. The lake was gorgeous, shining pink and purple under the fog and dull afternoon sun. I stayed on the rock for a long time, skimming through the tiny Bible that Jean had given me in Pennsylvania. Again, some of it I understood and some of it I thought was a little far-fetched. But I did have a scary, scary moment when I asked, "Okay, God. If you’re so real and omnipotent, give me a sign." And I thought of a sign in my head, not saying anything, and suddenly the wind picked up and blew my pigtail against my cheek. Well, I was thinking to myself, "Make the wind blow right now." That was a bit unnerving.

Altogether it was an amazing afternoon. The hike back down the mountain was fun and didn’t take as long as I had thought it would. But by the time I got to the bottom I was starving and smelly, so I made a sandwich and applied a second coating of deodorant. Then it was time to move on, over the river and through the woods, to my uncle’s house in Vermont I went.