46 Forever
Jamie spent several summers at Camp Treetops in the Adirondacks where he developed a love for hiking. It’s a big deal there to become a 46er, which means climbing all 46 peaks above 4,000 feet. It’s a very difficult challenge, involving hundreds of miles of hiking over some very remote terrain. Jamie, with his competitiveness, became completely obsessed, and climbed all 46 by the time he was 14. Some of these hiking trips he went on were insane, like hiking 25 miles, 8000 vertical feet, and 5 peaks in one day. The camp called these Idiot trips, and they truly were idotic. But he loved them. In terms of the hikers at his camp, only the best of the best were allowed to go on them.
Our friend and poet, Dan Chiasson, wrote this poem to remember Jamie, his love of nature, and the time he spent in the Adirondack mountains.
Peaks
James Tufts Pener, 2004-2022
Basin, Colden, Skylight, Dix:
A young man climbed all forty-six.
Marcy, Gray, Algonquin, Cliff
Dawn touched the maple leaf
On Esther, where an owlet cried
On Porter, since she wanted food
On Seward, and a redstart sang
That it was spring, and morning
When a warbler answered back
From high up in a tamarack
And volleyed songs from Rocky Peak
To Hough, Armstrong to Saddleback
To Whiteface blushing at the dawn
(It saw, across the lake, its twin)
Then Gothics brought the morning in
And bobolinks on Redfield sang
Since it was spring on Tabletop
And (campers blushed) on Nippletop
Couchsachraga spelled out its name
To welcome wrens and kinglets home
To Emmons, Nye, and Colvin came
A sparrow and a grackle home
Or far from home, but welcome, here
On Dial and on Blake, to shelter
And to nest, and rest, and sing
On Cascade: here it was, the spring-
The orange streak became an oriole
The oven bird an oracle, a rustle
In the brittle understory
As a squirrel salutes the pageantry.
On Sawteeth, Grace and Santanoni
Dawn blurted out its story
The whispers turned cacophony
On Street and Big Slide, Iroquois
Upper to Lower Wolf Jaw grinned
To hear the riot on Donaldson
Quieted by noon, quiet at the peak
Of Panther, Giant, Haystack–
Where Jamie led the way for Katie,
Or camp friends, or Mark and Bisi
Up Wright Peak, Marshall, Macomb,
Towards home, though far from home–
Last November when I was home
I stood on the shore of Lake Champlain
And saw the Adirondacks, cold steel
Between two bands of blue, cold metal
Ridgeline where, when I was nine, Olympians
By ski, luge, bobsled, barrelled down
The diagonals like veins in marble
Across the lake, on my walk to school:
The Great Escape–or so it seemed to be–
A landscape designed for gravity.
I never thought to go the other way.
I never sought the summit or the sky.
But the ordinary force of gravity
Was nothing, no match for this boy–
Seymour, Allen, Phelps, South Dix–
Jamie climbed all forty-six.
—Dan Chiasson
