Bob Marshall (wilderness Activist) - Schooling and Early Exploring

Schooling and Early Exploring

Despite his urban upbringing, Marshall was drawn to the outdoors. He discovered his passion for exploring, charting, and a love of climbing mountains, in part through the writings of Verplanck Colvin, who spent the post-Civil War decade surveying northern New York's woods. Throughout his life, Marshall kept a series of hiking notebooks that he illustrated with photographs and demonstrating his preoccupation with statistical achievements. In 1915, Marshall climbed his first Adirondack peak, the 3,352-foot (1,022 m) Ampersand Mountain, alongside his brother George and family friend Herb Clark, a Saranac Lake guide. Through Clark, who accompanied them on most of their longer trips during adolescence and early adulthood, the two brothers learned the arts of woodcraft and boating. By 1921, they became the first climbers to scale all 42 Adirondack Mountains believed to exceed 4,000 feet (1,200 m), some of which had never been climbed. In 1924, the three became the first Adirondack Forty-Sixers, hikers who have climbed to the summits of all 46 High Peaks of the Adirondacks.

After graduating from the Ethical Culture School, Marshall spent a year at Columbia University. In 1920, he transferred to the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University. Marshall had decided in his teens that he wanted to be a forester, writing at the time about his love of "the woods and solitude" and that he "should hate to spend the greater part of my lifetime in a stuffy office or in a crowded city". For a while he was unhappy and withdrawn at Syracuse. However, he succeeded academically and stood out to his fellow students for his individuality. As one classmate put it, Marshall was "always doing something no one else would ever think of doing. He was constantly rating things—the Adirondack peaks, his best days with George, and dozens of others." Warming to his collegiate experience, he became a member of Alpha Xi Sigma, the forestry college's honor society; ran on the Syracuse University freshman track team; and participated in both junior varsity lacrosse and cross country running. Halfway through school, Marshall had become a class leader; he was elected as class secretary and appointed an associate editor of the Empire Forester, the College's yearbook.

During the early 1920s, Marshall grew interested in promoting Adirondack recreation. In 1922, he became one of the charter members of the Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK), an organization devoted to the building and maintenance of trails and the teaching of hiking in the park. In 1922, he prepared a 38-page guidebook, entitled The High Peaks of the Adirondacks. Based on his pioneering experiences on the peaks, the guide, which states that "it's a great thing these days to leave civilization for a while and return to nature", provides a brief description of each peak and arranges them in order of "niceness of view and all around pleasure in view and climb".

In 1924, Marshall graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in forestry, magna cum laude, finishing 4th of 59 at the College of Forestry. The senior yearbook described him as "the Champion Pond Hound of all time, a lad with a mania for statistics and shinnying mountain peaks, the boy who will go five miles around to find something to wade thru. And the man who is rear chainman for Bob will have to hump or get wet, and probably both." By 1925, he earned a Master's degree in forestry from Harvard University.