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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.