23 Summer 2016 LOCALadk Magazine
LOCALadk
merely because there wasn't enough room for them to fall over.
Their branches reached out around every corner to grab our
clothing and packs, to poke and prod, and to scratch and slap any
unprotected body part. The trees even managed to unzip the
brain (top lid) of my pack, while turning my mind to an exhausted
muddle. The forest held us back at times and inhibited us from
any hint of forward motion. Inches felt like feet, feet felt like
yards, and yards felt like we were finally getting someplace. The
pen cannot convey the thickness of the terrain that surrounded
us.
We started to dream of real food and dinner in Lake Placid,
but we could not talk about it, the trees would not allow that.
Corenne would be at times 20 feet in front of me and all that
would award me this knowledge was a slight movement in the
trees and possibly a grunt or her attempt to increase her vocab-
ulary; mine was already full of new and fun word combinations.
But the summit was getting ever closer and we were drawn to it
as if baited. We would not relish in our accomplishment until we
stood atop.
Just below the summit proper who do we see waving to us, our
friends from earlier. They had, during the time of us bush whack-
ing up, summited Gray and Skylight. They waved and bid a silent
adieu and pushed on to Marcy; we did the same and dove back
into "the krumm." The krumm is a shortened version of krumm-
holz, the German word for "twisted wood." The krumm is diffi-
cult to hike through and its strength is so dramatic from high
