There are few better things in life than donning and sturdy pair of boots and a pack that feels as though it was custom built for your back and roaming off along winding trails to a windblown peak. Beyond the scenery that draws many to mountaintops and woodland trails, the sheer joy of movement over an ever-changing uneven path through a crisp breeze - and mountain air is seldom completely still - is simply exhilarating. It's only a side bonus that when, as often besets a field tech, means are rather limited, hiking remains entirely inexpensive.
Hiking Acadia's hills and trails is no exception. Though Acadia's mountains are small, some barely qualifying in height as mountains and others not at all, restless sea winds flow and rush incessantly over their summits, stunting and gnarling resident trees and scouring bare granite ledges until they resemble the tops of inland mountains thousands of feet higher. From innumerable rough-hewn stone steps winding steeply through spruce forest up the back of Beech Mountain to the tumbled pink granite sides of Acadia Mountain, from clear views of Sound and ocean to the two-legged cairns that mark Acadian trails, no two hikes have been quite alike, and none have disappointed. Here, in pictures, are few:
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| Somewhere between Valley Peak and Acadia Mountain, Acadia NP |
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| A mountain seen from a mountain: looking out from Norumbega Mountain. |
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| An Acadian cairn |
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| Somes Sound, from above |
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