Hiker Genesis

“We’re going to Lake Placid,” my mother announced excitedly.

We didn’t take very many vacations, so this was newsworthy. My grandmother had saved some money from a laundry side hustle she had going with some of her busier neighbours. She was spending the dividend on us.

Lake Placid was the site of both the 1932 and the 1980 Winter Olympic Games. About 2 years before the 1980 games, my mother, my grandparents and myself piled into a shiny new Chevrolet Malibu sedan and set out to drive from Montreal, Canada to Lake Placid, New York, 112 miles (180 kms) and one international border crossing to the south.

We would stay the weekend, 2 nights, at the Howard Johnson’s (HoJo’s for short) of Lake Placid. Swimming, canoeing, souvenir shops, American restaurants, what could be better? By the end of this fateful weekend, I would have a pretty solid idea of what could be better.

The central Adirondacks are prone to traffic jams on weekends. Cars plod along the single roads into Saranac Lake and Lake Placid. Our voyage was no exception. As we crept along at a walking pace, I spotted a group of what I would have called ‘older kids’ but were really probably mostly 16 to 25-year-olds. They had pulled their cars off the to the side of the road and were gathering in large numbers.

“They’re hikers,” said my grandmother. They are getting ready to climb the mountains.”

“Can we climb the mountains too?,” I didn’t hesitate to ask.

“Oh, I’m sorry dear. Your nanny’s mountain climbing days are behind her now. But where we are going is much better. We have a hotel!” she assured me.

I was unconvinced. I may have been only 11, but was old enough to spot imminent adventure when it was forming, and those older kids where gearing up for big things.

The uncontested heros of 11-year-olds are so-called ‘older kids.’ Those teenagers who have slipped the surly bonds of ‘parent’ on a voyage of personal growth totally out of site from any responsible supervision. It is the unquestioned ‘next step’ in child evolution, and we were driving past it at an inexorably slow pace. I could hear the laughter and the ‘woohoos’ see the high fives. I was, for a couple of minutes, only a car door away from my golden future.

I had felt this feeling before. When visiting relatives not long before, my sixteen year old second cousin showed off his new used red 1960’s vintage Ford Mustang. It seemed like not long before he was sitting with us at the kid’s table for Thanksgiving, but suddenly his ‘Hot Wheels’ were real. I was green with envy. Five years to my driver’s test could not come soon enough.

The Howard Johnson’s at Lake Placid was void of any surprises, pleasant or not. That was kind of the point of HoJos – predictability. The hotels all looked the same. They had mostly the same layout. They were painted the same, and had the same menu in the restaurant no matter where you were. Your stay would be comfortable, if unremarkable.

This Howard Johnsons was a cut above though. It was not strategically located near a highway exit to grab those last minute travellers who have lost their will to press on further. This was in Lake Placid proper, and it had some special amenities. You could swim in the lake, or sign out a canoe, and on Saturday morning, when my family had decided to walk up and down main street, I decided to stake my claim to type 1 fun and sign out the aluminum Gruman canoe laying on the lawn behind the hotel. 

I wrote my name and room number on the form, grabbed the sorry looking paddle, and faded orange life jacket and walked out the back door of the lobby towards the lake.

I had bona fide canoeing experience. Summer camps and scouting had trained me well in this watercraft. Frankly, canoeing was a staple of any Canadian kids summer. I was also a strong swimmer, not so much by choice. Swimming lessons were a great way for our parents to get rid of the kids for a few hours each week, so my brother and I were re-enrolled all the way to the expert class whether we liked it or not. In hindsight, I should have been more enthusiastic as swimming is a necessary survival skill to outdoor living, but I never connected those dots until much later in life.

After donning my life jacket. I placed the canoe in the water at the mini artificial beach created by the hotel. There was a small swimming area outlined by a rope kept afloat by red and white football-shaped plastic floats. The swimming area at summer camp had been similarly demarcated but was a boat-free zone, so I felt a bit awkward passing through the swimming area in the canoe. It was my only option to reach the lake and nobody was swimming at the time. Actually, the whole recreation area was void of anyone. I felt it must pick up in the afternoon, and felt lucky to snag the canoe before there was a lineup for it.

The town of Lake Placid is bracketed by its eponymous lake and the much smaller Mirror Lake. The Howard Johnson’s where we were staying was on the smaller Mirror Lake. It’s not huge, but it is an almost perfect size for a nice one hour paddle to melt away your troubles.

Whenever I am in a canoe on a lake for the first time, I am always struck by how the better, cooler side is always the ‘other’ side. Or maybe I just want to cross the lake? In any case, this day was no exception. It looked quieter and had some nice cottages and docks. I selected a point of dead reckoning on the other side and set off toward it.

Once there I hugged the coastline mostly and looked at the cottages that lined the shore. They were simple, and nicely maintained. Most had docks. Some had boathouses. While it wasn’t the northern wilderness, the weekend was clearly looking up.

My thoughts drifted to those hikers I had seen the day before. They had, no doubt, tented in the mountains that night. I was sure they enjoyed a campfire and the camaraderie that goes with it. But I was enjoying myself in the moment. Life was good.

I soon heard a motor boat breaking the silence of the moment. There were others, but this one was drawing close and headed straight for me. I was close to the shore, so there should not have been the risk of collision like on open water. Can’t they see me? Why don’t they correct course?

The boat cut its engine and drifted towards me aggressively from behind. The boat was marked Sheriff!

“Are you the lost boy from the Howard Johnson’s?” asked the larger officer.

“It’s him!” replied the smaller one, no doubt reading ‘Howard Johnson’s’ clearly written on the canoe, the paddle and the life jacket.

Their boat came up on my gunwhales aggressively.

“Yes, I’m from the hotel. But I’m not lost? I signed out the canoe at the desk.” 

“It was the desk that contacted us. The canoe is not allowed to leave the designated hotel area outlined by the buoys and are clear on the other side of the lake son!”

“Well, thanks for letting me know officer. I will return immediately. I was just about to head back anyway.” I said, fully expecting this to resolve the issue.

“Well it’s a bit late for that m’ boy. You’re going to have to get into our boat and we’ll tow the canoe behind us. Now, I don’t think you were trying the steal the canoe, so let’s just call this a rescue”

Steal? Rescue? How had this sojourn gone so sideways, so fast! I was speechless, a rarity for me.

“We’ll just tow you back and say you lost control of the canoe and ended up off course, I’m sure they’ll understand,” the Sheriff explained.

Now, in my family, the worst thing a well intentioned 11-year-old could do was “create a fuss.” This was definitely fixing to be a “fuss” of the first order of magnitude. Police were involved. Police in a foreign country at that. This might even be not just a fuss, but a full-blown international incident.

The officer’s plan was probably a reasonable strategy, but it meant pretending to be an entirely incompetent canoeist, so utterly clueless that he drifted across the lake and required rescue. It meant rolling back any trace of responsibility in adolescence and returning to the state of helplessness more associated to a mere child. My least worst option was total humiliation!

The trip back across the lake took no time at all. Before I had time to collect my thoughts or fully absorb the situation we were approaching the HoJo’s beach area and my grandparents and mother were standing on the sorry excuse for a beach looking very disappointed in their approaching progeny.

I examined the designated canoe area again. It could be crossed with 3 light strokes. The canoe was more intended as a prop for photos than an actual vehicle for outdoor adventure.

While my grandfather tried to downplay the incident, the women in the family would have none of it. This was clearly going to be classified as a fuss. No matter what other amazing events that might transpire this weekend, it had already been decided that the voyage was a fiasco. I needed to show remorse and be thankful I was not tossed in youth jail.

Whatever else happened that weekend has slipped my memory. I’m sure we had nice meals. I’m sure I got some interesting souvenirs from my grandmother. Museums and gift shops were, no doubt, visited. But nothing eventful remains in my memory besides the ‘fuss.’

Leaving Lake Placid by car is as slow as your arrival. Cars inch along every single lane road leaving the area in all directions. Sunday night, heading back to Montreal we passed by the trailhead that had so captivated me on Friday. The hikers were there, but they looked different this time. Their shoes were caked in mud, their hair was stringy and uncombed. They moved slower. Some just lay on the hoods of their cars staring up at the late afternoon sky. The high fives were hugs now. All of them looked every bit of a tribe of adventurors who just spent two nights in the woods. They had scaled the mountains all around us and crossed the wild rivers we were driving over in our car. They had cooked over campfires, exchanged stories and drank water from fresh mountain streams. I knew it must be true, and I wanted in!

I am quite sure, that without that trip to Lake Placid I would have formed a love of hiking and nature trails anyway. It is a case of inevitable discovery. But I know for sure that it was on that trip that the seed was planted. Without even setting foot on trail I had chosen my future path from a car window. It would one day be great. And it couldn’t come soon enough.

Copyright © 2024 All rights reserved