There is no easy way to get to the Cold River.  This fact grows increasingly plainer to me with each passing year.  Backpacking 13-14 miles per day on the Northville-Lake Placid Trail, you’ll get there around day 8.  You can pick up the spur trail along Route 28 in  Long Lake and hike 13 miles in to get to it, or you can paddle seven miles up the lake to Plumley Point, hide your boat and backpack another six miles from there.  

There’s nothing convenient about it.  But I had to say hello to a friend.  

I scattered Roland Crowe’s ashes up there with his son, Ian, and my brother Sean when I was 19 years old, just four years after the former ranger had brought us in on our first backpacking trip.    I remember each moment of that trip like it was yesterday: balancing across the wooden rails laid over the muckiest parts of the trail, perching on an island of packs as our tents flooded in a flash storm, fleeing for lean-to #3 on the river, then making that our home for the next three days while we cooked steaks over the fire, stewed dried fruit with boiled water and bourbon to warm ourselves at night; ate peanut butter and brown sugar on pancakes for breakfast; and ventured up and down the trail to swim at Big Eddy, visit the site where Rondeau the hermit lived, and splash among the rocks and waterfalls. 

Roland didn’t ask us to track our achievements in terms of miles logged or mountains scaled.  He just let us play, lay back on the big rocks to soak the last rays of summer into our teenaged bodies, or hop off the trail and strip down to our underwear to plunge in whenever we wanted to explore a new pool. 

His premature death shattered my world and brought Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring into laser focus.  I blamed the DDT that was sprayed in those regions when he was a young ranger for the cancer that later took him at age 54.  That was a dark time for me, when the world became too hard to comprehend.  One of the saving graces was when Darlene, his widow, charged us with the task of bringing his ashes out there.  Our chance to say goodbye while splashing again in those waters didn’t help me make sense of much, but it did form a salve over the wound.

And at first, I didn’t think it would take me 27 years to find my way back to that magical place.  I figured I’d go back with frequency to visit my friend.

But once children, the farm and the cafe became the center of my life, the Cold River got farther away. I learned to flip past the snapshots I kept of her rushing waters in my photo album, assuring myself such beauty can be found anywhere.  Ireland was only a five hour flight.  Quebec City just a two day drive.  And neither of those adventures required figuring out how to reduce my food and shelter needs to a backpack that wasn’t supposed to exceed 20 percent of my body weight. Any vacation was easier than trekking in to the Cold River, especially when the only time to get there was in the height  of the growing season.  Our family camping trips have to be kept short to keep pace with Sap Bush Hollow.  We do a one-nighter on the solstice, a two nighter mid-summer, and a three-nighter just after Labor Day.  Then it’s back to processing chickens, feeding pigs, changing guest linens and making egg sandwiches until things slow down in late fall, when we can slip away for a real vacation.   By then, it’s too cold to pack in to the Cold River.  

Darlene wrote a few years back to urge me to go back in.  She suggested it was time to take my own kids and Bob to that running water.  I wanted to do it; I just couldn’t see how.

But a pandemic has a funny way of showing us hidden opportunities.    This year, forgoing an urban getaway or a vacation across the border only made sense.  Living out of a pack for a prolonged period in the wilderness no longer seemed a trial.  It was an ultimate vacation destination:  a reprieve from the news, from the outrage, the fear.  

And so the five of us paddle up Long Lake, stow our boats, find our way to the trail behind Plumley Point and make our way in to the river.

And there we plunge into the waters and whoop and play in the September sun.  Time stands still.  At dawn the next morning,  I scramble out of my sleeping bag and onto the rocks to watch the sun come up and spend some time remembering Roland – thinking about how he influenced my life with his penchant for celebrating the moment.  I remember his quiet confidence to let kids play undisturbed in a beautiful place like this, free of didactic lectures and lessons.  He understood those moments would be among the grandest treasures of our lives.  And with wealth like that in our hearts, we go forward with urgency to protect the land, the water and the air,  the greatest riches on this earth.

Before long the sun is overhead and I hear my own kids stir from their sleeping bags and make their way out onto the rocks farther down stream, ready to greet an Adirondack morning with all fingers, toes and senses engaged. Another generation is discovering its passion for the mountains and streams.  And I am awed how one life, cut short long ago with no fame, no titles, and no fortune, has reached across three decades to touch these three kids and give them this moment.  I know these days will stay with them forever.  They are an investment in their souls, that they might carry forward with the important work of stewarding the earth’s treasures.  And I suspect the day will come when they, too, will take their children on a trek to find these waters because, while there is no easy way to get to the Cold River, no one ever leaves it behind.