To the Mountain

My hometown of Morrisonville, on the Saranac River, is a five-minute ride away from the stores and fast-food joints of Plattsburgh. But follow the river west and those same five minutes bring you to the brink of the vast Adirondack Park. It was an odd way to grow up, balanced between what seemed—to mini-me, anyway—like two different versions of nothing much. I gave myself over to books and daydreams, barely registering the natural world around me. The park was just a brown and yellow sign I passed on my way to school.

Except on Sundays. On Sundays my family went “to the Mountain,”