Athletics

A day after I summited the second highest peak in New York State, I sit sore and tired. My legs ached from miles of walking uphill, and I am exhausted from waking up at 6 am to leave for the high peak region of the Adirondacks. As I nurse my swollen feet, a map lays open upon the table. The ache has not yet gone away, and I am already planning my next trip, this time for the highest peak of Mt. Marcy, which I stared at in jealous want from the top of Algonquin.                    

I’m learning in Sustainability class not to value money. Money is outdated, our readings explain; it fosters a dependence on something of no concrete value while ignoring the immense value of a shade-providing tree or a network of life-giving streams. I buy into this, having almost worshipped the regal maple outside my window growing up. But sometimes money is pretty darn useful, especially when I plan to use it through an Innovation Grant to better my St. Lawrence community.

By this point senior year, my snow boots are no longer rainproof and my rain boots no longer have soles. Until today's freeze, then, snow boots in the morning meant soggy socks all day. And rain boots at night meant skating, duck-like, across what I thought were puddles. Senior year. You just can’t win.

The damp, cold wind greeting my arrival back to Canton January 4th did not remind me of my snowy freshman and sophomore winters. Neither did the prospect of almost three months of cold wind until March and spring break. So the swim team and I, like true ocean mammals, found a warmer place to swim. 

                    Courtney's masterpiece "sandman" there's not enough snow in Canton to replicate!

“Peak Weekend is traditionally an excellent recruiting tool” my swim coach, Bob Clemmer, likes to say. I can only hope our swim recruit this year’s Peak Weekend liked hiking through water as much as swimming through it. My favorite SLU tradition was more damp than usual this fall, to say the least.

my sunny sophomore Peak Weekend

To the breathless mountaineers who tackled a 46er (or way more than one!) this month, tradition might be enjoying October from a fiery peak.

On tour when I mention playing squash I often receive one of two responses:

"Squash? Like the vegetable?"

Or

"What a great game!"

At the beginning of the summer I was the first of the two responses. Until Al Gotsch, the admissions counselor for northern New York, VT and NH, made it his mission to teach all of the admissions interns how to play.