As a kid growing up in Hoboken before Hoboken was haute, the closest I ever got to the great outdoors was the patch of baggy plane trees and crabgrass they called Church Square Park two blocks from my house. It wasn’t until I was in college that a night under the stars awakened in me a sense of all that I had been missing, and I was immediately hooked. My trips into the wild quickly grew more adventurous. Car camping gave way to backpacking, and, with rudimentary equipment, I tested myself on foot from the Appalachian Trail to the Grand Canyon.
Early in my journalism career, I heard that a school in Newark required its first-year students to backpack the Appalachian Trail, and I had to find out more. I got in touch with the monks at St. Benedict’s Prep in 1981 and wrote about their postriot decision to stand fast in Newark and reimagine their school. They explained that the backpacking project was a way to help their street-smart kids bridge the gap between who they were and who they might become.
A year later, a friend and I joined the monks’ next hike. If our backpacking kit was basic, the equipment of these Black and Latino teens screamed junkyard. We squeezed into the ragged line of hikers with untied boots and listened for hours to the pots dangling from their packs. After several days on the trail, we ended up at a small wooden bridge at the Delaware Water Gap where they were awarded badges affirming their right to join the St. Benedict’s community.
We received badges, too. “Not bad for old guys,” one hiker declared.
I was 29.
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Four decades later, I returned to St. Benedict’s, this time to write a book about the school’s remarkable success preparing kids for life’s challenges and opportunities. Unheard of for an inner-city school, almost none of their kids drop out, and nearly all go to college.
And freshmen still have to hit the Appalachian Trail, so for my book, I hiked with them. By then, my pack, boots and sleeping bag were first class, but the kids’ gear hadn’t changed. Pots still clanged, boots still went untied. But within minutes of setting out on an exquisite April morning, I realized that I’d forgotten how much energy 14-year-olds had. My normal trail gait was a saunter. Theirs was a dash. I was determined to keep up, but I lagged behind. Following hiker protocol, they waited for me, but I told them to just keep going, and I’d catch up.
The next day, it seemed prudent for me to start hiking well before they did. They still passed me. It took time, but eventually, we all crossed the little wooden bridge and received our badges.
Afterwards, it was clear that the monks’ strategy had worked. These kids had learned something important. Each one of them told me the same thing: “If I can do this, I can do anything.”
I thought, the same goes for me. I can’t hike as fast as I used to, but I proved that I could still make it to the end of the trail, still encounter beauty, serenity and even wisdom, out there in the wild where the pavement ends.
Not bad for an old guy.
