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