On July 15, 1932, two giants of wilderness preservation met on top of Mount Marcy: Bob Marshall and Paul Schaefer. Marshall was partway through a marathon hike that would take him to the summits of thirteen High Peaks. Schaefer was taking photos for a campaign against a proposal to allow cabins in the Forest Preserve.

Schaefer’s account of the chance meeting appears in an appendix to my book Bob Marshall in the Adirondacks, a collection of Marshall’s writings. When told of the cabin proposal and various assaults on the Forest Preserve, Marshall became agitated and paced back and forth on the summit of the state’s highest mountain.

“We simply must band together — all of us who love the wilderness. We must fight together — wherever and whenever wilderness is attacked,” Marshall declared to Schaefer. A few years later, Marshall founded the Wilderness Society with some like-minded colleagues

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Photo: Greenleaf Hut below Mount Lafayette, by Phil Brown.