Our theme for the month of October is “states.”
I remember listening to Lost on a Mountain in Maine sometime during my childhood, on a road trip, one of the long ones that felt interminable because each hour was, proportionally, such a massive fraction of my young life.
My family and I road-tripped A LOT; my dad loves camping, and traveling, and the ecology of Florida. Several times we drove down to Kissimmee, and Manatee, and Robert is Here, but we always eventually ended up at the southernmost point of the Everglades (usually Flamingo), where the mosquitoes are the worst you’ll ever find them.
Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park is still the place I say when I’m asked my favorite place on earth—I’ve only been a handful of times, but for some reason, my heart aches towards it. I remember a sunrise over a sawgrass prairie, washing dishes with my dad in those cold and echo-y tin sinks gushing with irregular streams of water. Mosquitos flitted around the red glow of headlamp light so quickly it was hard to clap them between your palms. We always tried.
On one trip, we had to buy a brand-new tent from Walmart. The nasty itchy bitey flies got in through everything but the very finest mesh. That same Walmart trip, my dad bought a sleeping bag, a light one that packed down pretty small, a perfect summer backpacking bag.
That sleeping bag is the one I’ve used for the past four years—most recently atop an air mattress on the floor in the house I’m now renting, located in Veazie, Maine. That warm day, August 2025, I moved into a place by myself for the very first time. My dad had retrieved me and my stuff all the way from Michigan, but it was my job to make the last six hour trek from Massachusetts to Maine. When I arrived, my brand-new housemates (I’d met them twice via video call) were gracious enough to carry in a few obscenely heavy boxes of books.
But anyway, Lost on a Mountain in Maine—I don’t remember much of the book, just that it was about a boy. He was lost. On a mountain. In Maine. He had to keep himself alive, alone in the cold and wet and hungry wilderness for days, and eventually, he was rescued. I think it was an autobiography?
Maine is where I’ve hiked the most mountains by myself. By most, I mean two, because Michigan doesn’t really have mountains, and when I hike at home, I’m always coming back to someone.
The first mountain was called Bald (I think). In Jackman, Maine, 16 miles from the Canadian border, I worked in a summer-camp kitchen with strangers. That summer, the year before my freshman year of college—I don’t think I knew it, but I probably had a hunch—marked the end of my time living at home with my parents and siblings in North Adams, Massachusetts, for any meaningfully long period of time.
We had days off at this camp in the middle of nowhere, and there was nothing to do but walk or bike or rest, which is to say, there was plenty to do. On one of my days off, I biked dusty old logging roads to a trailhead, mostly unmarked. I took a break to eat some wild raspberries, then hiked, up and up and up. My neon-blue sneakers with holes in the toes got a little muddier that day, and I ate the greatest turkey sandwich of my life on top of that mountain.
I hiked the second mountain, although I’m not sure if you could call it that, much more recently, about five weeks into my first semester of graduate school. The summits were called Little Chick and Big Chick, or the Peaked Mountains, or maybe both. (Online information was inconclusive.) At the first outlook, the near tops of surrounding trees, mostly pale green turning yellow, looked soft enough to jump into. A road wound through hills curving, picturesque, perhaps even cliché. I sent my dad a photo. The second outlook was higher, blurrier, the rolling red and yellow and green and orange sea glowed; the sun neared setting.
The next weekend, a few of my new friends and I decided to hike this trail again. I’ll save you the details, but it involved tweaked knees, invoked lots of collective comments about how we should really get back in the gym, and culminated with a trip back down the way we came (only ten minutes from the summit) because of a lost jacket, a jacket that had been tied around a waist, and the presence (or absence) of which had not been noted for over an hour.
I’ve never been lost, alone, on a mountain in Maine. My dad prepared me too well for that. And we didn’t get lost or stuck in the dark this particular time, either. But still, I texted my dad—ranting—because the little mishaps of unprepared people seem to disproportionally affect those whom I choose to hike with: “MAN! I CAN’T GO HIKING WITH PEOPLE EVER.”
His response: “I will hike with you at Thanksgiving! Acadia!!!! Not likely to be snow yet, but still cold.”
I’m excited for November.
Savannah Shustack graduated from Calvin in 2024 with a major in literature and plans to have the job of “books” one day. Rather like Ken, she is still figuring life out; the job “books” provides plenty of wiggle room, though she’s currently leaning toward being a librarian. Savannah is a New England native who enjoys watching hockey (Go Bruins!) and playing board games—especially ones she can win.
