The 35 « Blog « Michael Kucinski.com

The 35

by Michael on 30th November 2019 @ 02:43 (Updated on 30th November 2019 @ 02:49)

Late Fall in the Catskills

There has been 916 days between the first time I summited a Catskill High Peak, and today, which is the day I hiked the last of the 35. I may have kept track of which mountains I have climbed, but I never once counted the hours I spent traveling to reach them, nor the miles I walked once I was there. I never thought about how many times I would return to climb a particular peak again, nor did I think twice about what I would rather be doing.

Throughout this time, I became compelled to capture the magnificence of what I saw, heard, and felt in the Catskills. To a certain extent, perhaps I have succeeded in sharing a portion of the visual beauty of the mountains. But a photograph is only a few words on an otherwise blank page when compared to feeling of the winter wind on your face, carrying the scent of balsam with it as it quickly travels by. A singular moment is something to behold, but when experienced in quick succession, a series of singular moments become alive.

I now accept that I can never truly encapsulate in one medium what I enjoyed over the past two and a half years. So I encourage you to extend the boundaries of what you know as home and include in your new boarders not only the places you find along the way, but also the people. Those you meet will guide you, compass in hand, to heights you never thought you could reach. That's what I have learned from doing the 35.