Call me a City Girl or a Beach Bum, but I've never considered the mountains to be my favorite place to spend free time. This might be because I grew up close to Boston as well as Revere Beach, the oldest public beach in the country. Growing up, my parents would regularly take my brothers and I into the city to gain an appreciation of what was around us. As we grew, this practice extended into the Massachusetts and New Hampshire coastlines. Naturally, I began to develop an environmental consciousness focused on these landscapes because it was what I knew and loved. I simply never understood the appeal of a sweaty hike up a too-tall hill when an afternoon of swimming or a visit to a museum was so accessible. Of course, I would make these claims without ever having really experienced the other; the mountains.
That is, until I actually got far out of my comfort zone and onto the top of a mountain. On our class field trip into the Adirondack Park, our walk to the summit of Whiteface from the Memorial Highway gave me plenty of food for thought. Although I still haven't spent much time in higher altitudes, I can understand why people fall in love with regions like the White Mountains in New Hampshire or the Adirondacks. Simply, being able to stand and see hundreds of yards in any direction is breathtaking. It is such a unique perspective to be able to see 60 miles, as was the case this past weekend atop Whiteface, that accurate description almost escapes me. Words like "beautiful" or "organic" do not accurately convey the scope of the view or personal emotions felt at the top of a mountain.
Beyond the view, I also noticed how many people were willing to wait in line and pay up to $11 a head just to have the opportunity to walk up a steep path and stare into nature. While this type of tourism is nothing new for me, it seemed somehow out of place. Aren't the tops of mountains, by nature, small? How could this many people feasibly interact with this tiny area without toppling the thing? Why was there such an emphasis on the top and not the entire formation? I don't have the answers to these questions, regardless I can still understand the inexplicable need to participate in the tourist phenomenon.
Similar to my feelings toward the mighty Atlantic on a summer day, these "Mountain People" needed to commune with nature by any means necessary. Is is this deeply personal need to connect with a massive landscape that drive beach goers to fight for towel space and mountain appreciators to wait patiently for their time at the top. For me, there is something comforting in the fact that in this age of increasing alienation from one's environment, there are still huge populations of people that cannot help but share an experience for the sake of nature.
Works Cited
http://reverebeach.com/
http://www.whiteface.com/activities/whiteface-veterans-memorial-highway
Thanks for sharing! I'm much like you in that I spent summer on the beach in Cape Cod, not ever close to the mountains. I fell in love with snails and hermit crabs in tidal zones, not the trees and plants of the forests. It's so interesting to have that perspective of how beach people and mountain people are so different, but at the core they're really so similar.
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