I've hiked in the Adirondack Mountains before, day hikes, the occasional weekend hike, canoe trips of 1 to 3 days, etc. Often on those hikes the goal was to reach a summit that offered the "Grand Vista", a sweeping panoply of ridge on ridge fading to the hazy horizon, dotted with lakes and ponds reduced to small sparkly places by the distance. Hiking to those destinations I passed by the minutia of the forest, the things that scurried along or grew on the forest floor. They were there and I saw them but I often paid them no attention for the anticipation of the summit view.

Hiking the Northville to Lake Placid trail is different. The end goal, if there is one, is to reach a sign on the side of the road 133 miles away.  As I passed through the varied ecosystems I catalogued, mentally, the salamanders, the toads, the billions of mosquitoes black flies and "no-see-ums." Noted too were the variety of fungi, wild flowers, butterflies, trees, moss, ferns.  There were deer, wild turkeys, grouse, woodpeckers, ducks, hawks, and a few snakes. I am not a scientist trained in biology, botany, forestry, or ecology so I could name only a few of the things I saw, but I enjoyed them all.

Untrained or not, my hiking partner and I seemed to notice a strange correlation between the amphibians and the insects; when we saw many salamanders (I believe they were Red Efts) we were pestered by mosquitoes and no see-ums, when we saw abundant toads and frogs the bugs switched to the black fly.

I was impressed by the contrast between the tremendous forces and brutality of nature on the one extreme and the tenacity of fragile life forms on the other. Large trees were uprooted or shattered into tooth picks by wind and rain while delicate flower like fungi and gossamer butterflies seemed unperturbed by the daily showers we experienced.

Finally I spent some time thinking about human endeavor in hostile environments, about the seemingly limitless capacity of some and my own frailty. The guidebook mentioned a rule of thumb pack weight limit of one-third ones body weight.  For me that would have been a little more than 53 pounds and for Jerry (my hiking partner) it would have been something like 46 pounds.  Through prior experience Jerry was sure that he could