Slides On Colden Mountain

The Adirondack Park is a venue of arresting beauty.  With a surfeit of lakes, ponds, streams and  waterfalls, to cliffs, peaks, ledges and boulders, the park's labyrinthine network of trails offer every hiker a wide range of difficulty, challenge and visions of beauty.  In the esoteric parlance of the down hill skier, the hiker can draw a parallel and compare them as green circles, blue squares and black diamonds.  There is another trail, not man-made, which could be delineated as the rare yellow diamond trail:  The slide. 

Slides not only offer a visual scar on a mountain which can make it easily recognizable from a distance, but they also offer an alternative ascent up a mountain for those brave enough to tackle one and determined enough to bushwhack their way to the tumbled resting place of a slide.  Almost cliff-like, many of these trails can be so steep that from a standing position you can reach out in front of you and touch the ground.  Slides offer that rare posture in the repertoire of hiking positions between climbing and scrambling on all fours.  Quite often you can experience a double fall line where gravity is pulling you in two directions at once.

The Trap Dike on Mount Colden is one of my favorite trails to hike.  Colden, a middling peak between Marcy and Algonquin is also host to several beautiful-awful landslides.  The newest occurred last year during Hurricane Irene right down my beloved Trap Dike Trail.  Included here on this page are a before and after picture. 

I wrote the following poem back in the nineties when my hiking pal Nancy and I would drive up to the Adirondacks each week to explore the many nooks and crannies of the park.  This poem is about the slide on the Marcy side of Colden ("Tahawus" is the Native American name of the mountain which WE renamed "Marcy" shortly after we took it from them.  The Native American name means "Cloud-Splitter."  More on the Cloud Splitter and the Tear-In-The-Cloud in another post).

Colden Slide

On descent from Tahawus mountain,
peers a streak of quiet healing
pallid cut from rocky fountain
hurling tree and boulder reeling

Seized with visions to inquire
this track of slide, so quick to tear
fears unfettered I now inspired
to know what had existed there

Through twining woods and logs enmeshed
I made my way to see reposed
the granite muscles and mountainous flesh
that Colden’s torrents of stone exposed

The path advanced close to the scar
plunged manifold headlong to base
trees crushed under enormous rocks
the primal forest’s coat defaced

This irresistible and awful force
broke through the woods with foaming path
dashed wildly down a rocky course
its very flesh with pealing wrath

A pebble mashed declivity
with massive logs peeled by decay
thickly scattered skeletons
of gray dead trees from slide affray

Piling at its base a mass
of debris from its crowning seat
filled the eye with awful chaos
rocks from lap now at its feet

This slide, a path that wanted walking
lures on up the failing trail
where once in time, its woodland stalking
left its warning, below, impaled

How humble on this force immortal
lurking in the earth beneath
that eased itself of shrub and soil
and showed to all its iron teeth

This median mount of fallen masses
bends its vassal-knee to none
the only witness to its ravage
were frowning Tahawus and the sun.

Fearful at the time of launching
terrific slides that gash and rush
Still, Colden Mountain on its haunches
waiting, lurking, to ambush

-Malcolm Kogut.

Storytelling

My mother, of Cherokee descent, was a great storyteller.  Although she didn't employ the use of character voices, she instinctively knew when to go into head voice, chest voice or rumble from the diaphragm. She was an artist at knowing when to pause, rush, or look left then right.  Storytelling is becoming a lost art form.  Today, the purpose of a campfire is for making smores or burning stuff up so we don't have to carry it out.  We don't gather around it to tell tall tales, to remember our history, our culture or heritage.  Most of us don't even realize that many of our greatest bible stories were passed down from generation to generation beside the warmth of a campfire.  Here is a "true" Adirondack story my mother told me which I turned into a poem. 

Tall Tale of a Shelter Seeker

With setting sun, the shadows claim
and black bats dart and tumble
the mountain campers seek the flame
lest specters claim the humble

With reckless breath the zephyr flings
the frisky spark up with the smoke
‘neath leafy arch, near flames that wink
legends are often spoke....

A wandering scout, off course was blown
as the lengthening shadows grew
he wandered round in woods unknown
aware that night ensued

A tempest crashed out her mighty chords
the scout, determined, remained staid
with the faithful compass trail, bereft
he sought for sheltering, vaulted cave

Wandering in the wildest most
impenetrable forest
where axe or saw had never rung
in tune with nature’s chorus

A crag sprung forth above a lair
whose shadowy claim held shelter
he lit a torch to enter there
to leave the untamed welter

He saw a gun against the wall
beneath some writing there
with illumined torch he read the scrawl
“Today I shot my very first bea...”

-Malcolm Kogut.