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