Skinny Dipping in the Adirondacks

July 25, 2023

TL;DR? - Check out my daily #1SE Video Vanlife Diaries on Instagram @rollsbudmotel

After leaving The Shire, I found myself in the middle of the Adirondacks with absolutely no cell signal. What was meant to be several productive days of working on my voiceover business, turned into an impromptu wilderness retreat.

Side boob: If you want solutions to avoid the off-grid grind,
check out my last blog post: Wi-Fi in the Wi-ld

Armed with a paper map from the little kiosk at the entrance of the Moose River Plains Wild Forest Recreation Area, I set off to make the most of the beautiful day sans internet. I earned a gold medal in Orienteering as a Girl Scout, but it’s been a few years.

I like a destination when I hike. Sure, “it’s all about the journey…” but…I need something to journey towards. The last “real” hike I went on was during the pandemic when I was living in Colorado. While people were baking bread and binging Netflix, I was hauling ass up 14ers. My hikes were spelled with a Capital H and all the vistas were Capital B Breathtaking.

Rachel Dilliplane at the summit of Mount Elbert. At 14,439 feet above sea level, this is the highest peak in the state of Colorado (and the second highest peak in the continental United States)

Colorado’s 14ers, Leadville, CO (2021)

But again, it’s been a few years. And the highest elevation in all of New York State is Mount Marcy (5,343 ft above sea level, and about 100 miles West).

Rachel Dilliplane (narrator) at the summit of Mount Marcy. At 5,343 feet above sea level, it is the highest peak in the state of New York. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Stay tuned for this adventure story.

High Peaks Wilderness Area, Keene, NY (2023)

Looking at my map, I spy a little blue bubble labeled Mitchell Pond. A pond sounds like an adequate substitution for a summit and the trailhead appears to be just a little ways away from my campsite.

Destination enough for me. Let’s go.

Trailhead for the Mitchell Ponds Loop trail in the Moose River Plains Wild Forest Recreation area. Adirondacks, NY.

The three mile loop trail is mostly covered. All dark and humid and buggy. Any creek crossings I come across feature big clumsy 2x6 board bridges suggesting that this trail gets most of its use from snowmobilers. A bead of sweat wiggles down my forehead and into my eye. Wiping it away with one hand, while swatting swarms of mosquitoes with the other, I find myself wishing it was winter.

Snowmobilers use caution when crossing this bridge on the Mitchell Ponds Loop trail in the Adirondacks.

Then again, the ferns are so lush it feels like I’m on a different planet. The canopy above me is dense enough to block out most of the sun so the trail is a dark tunnel but the ferns are such an electric shade of green they seem to radiate their own light. Photosynthesis in reverse. Glowing like something Homer Simpson might encounter at the Springfield Nuclear Plant. Mushrooms also line the trail. I don’t think I see the same one twice.

I make a mental note to get a foraging guide
or take better notes from Alexis Nicole (aka Black Forager).

Here and there I see evidence of animals having passed through the slippery trail, sloppy hoof prints streaked through the mud.

Other than that, I don’t see a single soul on the trail. I have this otherworldly forest all to myself.

I’m certain I’m on the right trail headed in the right direction but my sense of distance has never been strong.

Surely, I should have made it to the pond by now…

Check your map. And don’t call me Shirley.

Reaching for my map mid-stride, I come around the bend and see a shimmer. The dense tree cover breaks open to a bright, cloudless sky and the sun dances across the surface of the pond.

To my left I see a picnic table and a fire ring. It makes me wish I had hiked in with my full pack so I could spend the night.

I make another mental note:

Next time I camp in the Moose River Plains Wild Forest Recreation Area, I should pitch my tent at Mitchell Pond.

Will I ever be here again?

Maybe with someone next time?

Will there be a next time?

The dock at Mitchell Pond, Moose River Plains Wild Forest Recreation Area in the Adirondacks near Inlet, NY

A tiny dock leads out to a shallow shore. The first thing I notice are the lilies, minuscule and many (maniscule?) compared to the single pink one at Nick and Rex’s house.

A pang of loneliness rings out from somewhere deep in my gut. I wish they were here to see this or, better yet, that I was still with them back at The Shire floating in their private pond.

But I’m here.

Alone.

All…alone…

Fuck it. Let’s go skinny dipping!

“What’s the worst that could happen?” I think to myself.

For a moment, I imagine the embarrassment of a stranger ambling up the trail and witnessing my bare ass on the dock. But I’m also a romantic so of course my imagined stranger is devastatingly attractive and our made-for-Netflix style meet-cute begets an evening of passionate love-making.

These sexy cinematic moments dance in my head as I make quite the show of removing my pack, untying my boots, and peeling away each layer of clothing.

Strippers and Hikers - we know the importance of layers.

My mental movie score swells, the sunlight on the water backlights my body like I’m a Bond girl. My sports bra tan-line and cellulite have been corrected by CGI and flattering camera angles.

Daintily, I step into the water feeling like Disney’s Pocahantas, I’m about to burst into a glorious rendition of “Just Around the Riverbend” when my foot sinks straight through the pond “floor” up to the ankle with a sickening squelch. The bottom of the pond is soft awful layers of leaves and who knows what else.

Dozens of large frogs bellow at me as they abandon their secret hiding spots for the safety of the water. Their sudden movement startles me and I take another lurching step into the mud.

I laugh at them (and myself) for a moment:

Funny frogs… I never would have even known you were there. It would have been safer to keep still.

By this point, I’ve accepted that my entry into the pond will be anything but graceful and there’s no Handsome Hallmark Hunk™️ watching anyway so why bother? I swamp waddle my way forward, hating the squishy sensation between my toes but loving the temperature of the water.

The mush is too much so even though the water isn’t quite deep enough, I crouch down, then spring forward, belly-flopping through the lilies towards the center of the pond.

At Nick and Rex’s we lounged in the water with pool noodles.
I’ll be treading water again in no time once I reach the middle of this mess.

…No such luck.

I lower my legs to test the depth and it’s worse than before. My toes touch the damp detritus and once again my feet sink straight through, this time up to my mid thighs. It feels like pulling on stockings made of scum. I panic, trying to float again, but the lily pads have closed ranks around my flailing limbs. My arms and legs get tangled in the neural network of their…stems (?)...roots (?)

The pads make cartoony popping noises as they get ripped below the surface as if they were carrots in a garden being plucked from below ground by Bugs Bunny. There are so many of them and I’m flailing so desperately it sounds like a children’s marimba orchestra or a forest of bamboo wind chimes in a hurricane.

Everything else around me is completely still and beautiful. Dragonflies glide effortlessly along the shore. I am a manic maelstrom of chaos at the center of it all. The trees, the dock, my backpack, my abandoned clothes are all indifferent to my struggle.

I thrash and I splash and the lilies go:
pop! pop! pop! pop! pop!

After what feels like centuries, I hobble my way back to the dock, stomping through layers of yucky mucky nonsense.

High-stepping like some deranged, bow-legged prospector swamp thing rather than the Alpine Instagram Model I would have the internet believe me to be.

Exhausted, I heave myself onto the dock like an Elephant seal. I’m soaking wet, muddy from the knees down, my hair is a nest of flyaways. The pond is tranquil. Downright serene, showing no evidence of the mutual assault that took place just moments before.

I lay back on the dock hoping the sun on my skin will restore my composure as quickly as it restored the pond’s.

Closing my eyes, I feel the sun’s warmth on my belly. The only sound is the wind in the trees.

The wind comes and goes in great gusts, the sound building to a crescendo. I listen to it long enough that it becomes a roar in my ears. It doesn’t even sound like wind anymore. It sounds like…tires on a gravel road.

Oh fuck!

You naked idiot!

That snowmobile trail is obviously also an ATV trail.

Forget about your Netflix original romance.

Some mass-murderer on a 4x4 is coming up the path to stare at your boobs and kill you.

Or maybe it’s a park ranger.

The water lily must be the state flower or some kind of endangered species.

Being naked is illegal in New York and your dumb ass is going to jail!

For the second time today, my limbs fly in all directions. I scramble to get to my feet and find my clothes. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! I’m hunched over desperately trying to pull on my socks (the most flattering position to be in when greeting a police officer/serial killer) when the wind dies down. My panic subsides and I realize I imagined the whole thing.

The frogs laugh at me:

Silly hiker… no one would have known you were there.
It would have been safer to keep still.

Naked except for one sock, I turn to look out at the pond, placid as ever… then I hear it. A long loud wail ripples across the water.

WaaaaaWOOOOOOOO!

A tell-tale tremolo, almost a yodel. I recognize the call and know the bird it belongs to.

WaaaaaWOOOOOOOO-oooooooo!

Having witnessed both of my panic attacks, the bird cries out to me again as if to ask, “Ya good?”

It seems one Loon recognizes another…

Rachel Dilliplane is a self-professed Loon.

Much love,

Rachel & Rollsbud