Can God be found on the Appalachian Trail?

Long before the Puritans of the Plymouth Colony laid a lasting religious claim to the Appalachian peaks, Eastern Woodland Indians claimed those heights as the first residences of the supernatural beings of their religious traditions.

Then the Puritans arrived.

Colonists seeking religious independence from established churches and the religious mainstream moved into mountain valleys at the margins of the frontier. Certain sites along the trail route became associated with the story of Exodus from the Bible. And in this version, America was the new "Promised Land."

The American Romantics, including the Transcendentalist writers and the Hudson River Valley painters, visited the Appalachian peaks seeking both a deeper spiritual experience and subjects for their work. Benton MacKaye, a Harvard-trained planner, proposed the trail as a respite from the physical and mental impacts of industrialization and urbanization in 1921.

Walking the entire length of the trail, between Springer Mountain, Georgia and Mount Katahdin, Maine, has become a distinctly American pilgrimage, weaving through the religious roots of the nation, and providing stunning views of Eastern terrains ranging from isolated valleys to lines of blue-tinted mountains.

Mount Katahdin, Maine

The 5,268-foot-high Mount Katahdin (which means greatest mountain in Penobscot) is the home of Thunders, giants with eyebrows and cheeks of stone, who sometimes invite hunters into their home within the mountain to instruct them about nature, according to some Native American beliefs.

In the Passamamaquoddy and Penobscot versions, the Thunders, while powerful, are not malicious and mean no harm. But European immigrants turned the spirit of the mountain solely into Pamola (or Pomola), a demonic being, with a moose head, eagles' wings and feet and a human body. Henry David Thoreau, on a failed attempt to bushwhack all the way to the summit, declared that Pomola is "always angry with those who climb to the summit of Ktaadn."

Hudson River painter Frederic Edwin Church, having a more positive attitude, bathed Katahdin in the divine light of the Calvinist creator God in his colorful depictions of the Maine wilderness.

Today, Katahdin is the northern terminus of the trail. It's celebrated in hundreds of photographs of end-to-end hikers finishing their backcountry pilgrimage by the sign at the top.

Mount Washington, New Hampshire

Originally named Agiocochook, which means "home of the Great Spirit" or "home of the spirit of the forest" in the Abenaki language, Mount Washington in New Hampshire is the highest peak in New England at 6,288 feet.

Native Americans identified Agiocochook as the place where a Native American family fled to the top of the mountain to avoid a great flood, analogous to Noah's landing on Mount Ararat. Plymouth Colony leader John Winthrop reported that the Abenaki were afraid to climb the peak because it was where Manitou lived. Manitou is a universal spirit which, according to Native American belief, permeates all living creatures and natural objects.

A federalist survey expedition circa 1784 renamed the peak after George Washington, the new republic's Moses, who led the people to freedom from royal oppression. That reference associated the peak with the Biblical Pisgah where Moses had his vision of Canaan.

The Hudson River painters produced multiple canvasses of the ethereal mountain, where an inscrutable God ruled the heights, and divine providence flowed down the slopes and watered the pastures and farmsteads of the Promised Land below.

The trail traverses Mount Washington along the crest, through alpine meadows above the timberline. (It's a short side hike to the summit.) It offers panoramic views and some of the most unpredictable and dangerous weather in the Eastern United States, including dense fog and hypothermia-inducing summer sleet.

Mount Greylock, Massachusetts

The Berkshires have long been the terrain of philosophical innovators and religious nonconformists.

Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau climbed to the top of Mount Greylock in 1844 to meet the sunrise, and view "an undulating country of clouds...as we might see in dreams, with all the delights of paradise." Herman Melville's home Arrowhead (open for visitors), looks out on Mount Greylock. The humpback outline of the mountain reputedly inspired his description of the inscrutable and God-like Moby Dick.