For years, woods like this have just been something we walk through before we start the climb, or something we drag our feet through on the way down. There aren't any views, the trails are always muddy, and we spend 90% of the time staring at our boots move quickly down the trail.

It’s always been about the mountains. The lowlands never really interested me as much until we climbed Allen. That was our first taste of the real woods and of real miles. Of just walking, flying down a wide rolling trail without the physical and mental burden that you’re forced to bear while climbing.

Hiking like had been a curious activity for me, totally different and still completely the same as climbing.

Climbing is anguish. It’s a test you put yourself through to find your breaking point. It’s the price you pay for the selfish glory and personal satisfaction of the summit, of completing something. It’s about the finish.

Hiking is about the journey. When you free yourself of the burdens of climbing, you allow your mind to wander, and to explore, not only more of your surroundings, but of the entire universe. Anything and everything is up for grabs. Obscure thoughts come and go, ideas develop from thin air. Bottoms-up, free thinking.

Climbing is about focus. The determination that climbing demands, forces your mind to stay in the moment and on the mountain. Hiking isn’t a test, it’s an experience. Your mind is free to wander and relax.

I’ve seen some of the most amazing and beautiful things the world has to offer, from high on mountains. Expansive, hallucinogenic sunrises behind the silhouettes of an entire planet of faceless stone giants. Towns and buildings shrunk to the size of the dirt we stand on. The woods are equally as beautiful, but in a different way and on a vastly different scale.

Everything about the mountains is big. The peaks themselves, the climb, the views. The woods are much more confined. You’re within them, instead of on top of them. You’re small. But, the beauty is still there. It’s in the dark encapsulating trails and in the small quiet streams meandering through grassy fields and over rocks. It’s when you emerge through the trees onto the shore of a pond that, as far as you can tell, has never been seen by human eyes. A blue island in a sea of green. It’s in the rainy lean-to bound afternoons, relaxing in a sleeping bag with a notebook.

They’re two very different beauties that nonetheless exist in the same place. They’re two very different activities but they follow the same desires and, fundamentally, follow the same patterns. (June 10, 2013, 9:45PM)

This is an excerpt from my notebook, written on the third day of Adirondack Traverse 2013 at Hamilton Lake Stream Leant0 during our first weather day. It has been edited only superficially.