I’ve just returned from the archives of Sewanee University, where I have been researching the papers of Hudson Stuck. Hudson was a Victorian Londoner who flipped a coin to see if he’d seek his adventure in Australia or Texas. Fate or perhaps Providence chose Texas, and from 1885-1888, he worked on ranches in Junction City and even taught school here in San Marcos. His real claim to fame, however, came when he moved to Alaska, where he worked with First Nation people and went on to lead the first successful summit of Mt. Denali.
While sifting through numerous correspondence and articles, I came across a small booklet that referenced Stuck’s favorite trails at Sewanee while he was there, 1888-1892. After a side quest of trail archaeology and name etymology, I found that two of the trails were still in existence, and on the Sewanee property. Immediately, I left the library and hit the trails, because to know a person’s favorite trails is to know a person in a way no correspondence or interview can convey.
True to form, Stuck’s trails prefigured Denali as they descended precipitously into Appalachian hollows. Unlike more prudent options, he chose trails that eschewed switchbacks or ridge runs in favor of direct routes to caves and summits. In my taxonomy of trail types, Hudson Stuck was clearly a Pat Benatar. He wanted the landscape to “hit him with its best shot.”
