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One thing is certain when the members of the Santa Fe Chili and Marching Society convene for their Wednesday hikes. The hike will start at 7,000 feet altitude and it’s usually uphill from there.

A light breeze lifted leaves of mountain-ash and heart-leaved birch still in the dark shadow of Katahdin while morning bird songs mingled with sounds of water running from a thousand clefts and ravines overhead.

Hike up to an alpine meadow in peak flowering season and take in the magnificent view. Then stop and listen. Can you hear the buzz resonating from blooms all around you? Watch for movement darting between one flower and its neighbor, or whizzing by to a distant patch of plants. Up here, you’re deep in pollinator country, and what you see and hear before you is an intricate network of plants and animals that have coevolved over millennia to ensure each other’s survival and success. Now focus more closely on the insects landing and feeding on the flowers, it’s likely the first ones you’ll notice are among the biggest and loudest—the busy, buzzy bumble bees.

As a kid I wanted be a forest ranger. You know, climb a mountain, go to the top of a fire tower, view the landscape as far as the horizon, and here we were, living on the edge of the Taconic Range.

Room 231, Northern Exposure Motor Inn, Gorham, NH.
I'm surrounded by annoyingly fit-looking young adults with strange names: Beehive, Puma, November, Little Toaster, and Calves. Peter Pan is farther up trail. Calves is my son Jonas.

Up on North Traveler Mountain in Maine wild blueberries grow everywhere, along the trail and across the wide open ridgeline. Once you are out in the open above the trees, blueberry bushes brush right up against your legs as you move along the trail, and the ripe fruit hangs in bunches so uniformly blue and numerous you must stop in your tracks.

Those engaged in search and rescue in New Hampshire's White Mountains represent the thinnest fraction of all who come to enjoy the freedom of our hills. But, despite their small numbers, one can argue that they are among our mountains' primary users and in that use they shape what we seek and what we find there. They are its guides, its most skilled travelers, and most celebrated characters. How they come to our hills and what they do there unites practice and path, and almost everyone else follows along, or walks under the wing of their presence.

Changes in our climate are exacerbating hikers' impact on trail erosion, and are contributing to the frequency and ferocity of storms, forest fires, blowdowns, and other destructive natural forces. Simply put, increasing traffic on the trail is outpacing our ability to maintain it, given the environmental conditions we face today.

I consider myself fortunate to live in Maine, and to have the opportunity to raise my son near Acadia National Park, where he first developed a love for hiking on the dramatic boulders and slabs of granite. The park is justly renowned for its outstanding hiking and scenery.

We hike in the black of morning. It's a little spooky. I cannot say what lies beyond the arc of my headlamp. As the well-worn trail turns into the uncertainty of rocky debris, I find myself treading carefully, even repositioning rocks that I think could harm the person behind me, my husband. Ridiculous, I know. Stars squint and sparkle through the darkness above. Headlamps from other climbing groups caterpillar along below us. Today we are climbing the Grand Teton in the heart of Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park (GTNP).

A wonderful way to share our knowledge and love of the land with the next generation is to take them hiking. Many of us, as grandparents, great aunts and uncles, friends and mentors, know young ones who are eager to explore the outside world—to climb rocks and wade in streams, follow paths to treasures in the forest, and glimpse wildlife through the trees. Planning before we head out and patience on the trail help to ensure that young hikers come home excited with their discoveries and ready for more.

When my oldest son, Casey, was seven years old, a biologist friend took us on his airboat deep into the Florida Everglades. Casey sat on a high perch five or six feet above the water. I sat to his right, below him. My friend gave us ear protectors to shield us against the bawl of the engine. For almost an hour, while the airboat skipped like a seashell across miles of open sawgrass, we rode in joyful silence, watching birds and the shadows of birds peel off the Everglades. Whenever a limpkin or an ibis flushed in front of the boat, I'd glance up at Casey, who, momentarily transformed by the experience, craned his neck, stretched out his arms and began to flap to the beat of each bird's wings.