AUBURN — When Devon Daskey carries a stone Friday up the sometimes steep climb to the summit of Bradbury Mountain, the Edward Little High School junior will want to know the stone’s story.
It will be engraved with the name of a Maine service member who has died since 9/11. And Daskey, like the other 100 or so Auburn teens who will make the climb, hopes to learn about this person.
It won’t change his sense of obligation, though.
“It doesn’t matter whose rock I have,” Daskey said, “because anybody who serves this country to protect me feels like they’re part of my family. And they deserve the recognition because people don’t realize how much they put on the line to keep our country safe.”
He plans to carry his stone to the top of the Pownal hill and say a few words. More words will follow when he returns to school. He and the other teens will post their thoughts on a website meant to remind folks of the costliest part of war.
It’s an exercise for a new program called “The Summit Project.”
The idea was begun by Marine Corps Maj. David Cote, a native Mainer.
On Memorial Day, he led the first group of people with engraved stones to a summit near Mt. Katahdin. Since then, groups have been taking the stones to other peaks around Maine, including Bridgton’s Pleasant Mountain, to honor the veterans.
Jared Golden of Lewiston, who served as a Marine and sits on the project’s board, hopes the program will grow.
“We hope that this project will take on a life of its own,” he said. “And that 20 years from now, people are still going to be hiking and thinking of these people.”
Each climb is a “living history,” he said.
For Daskey and his classmates, it’s a history that most know only bits about. The 16- and 17-year-olds were only 3 or 4 when the towers of the World Trade Center came down, and the Pentagon was attacked.
History classes have covered other conflicts — Vietnam, the Spanish-American War and others — but have touched little on Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda or weapons of mass destruction.
Some hoped to learn about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the personal stories of the Mainers who sacrificed so much.
Katie Torres, another Edward Little High School junior, said she was already thinking about the members of her family who served and returned home safely.
“It’s scary to think that my family could have been there at that second. They could have gotten hurt or killed just as easily as these people,” she said.
Hiker Brian Zhang wants to learn about the service members’ stories. And Zach Danse hopes the effort of the hike might teach him something that reading might fail to communicate.
“I think it’s going to help us understand the real sacrifice that they’ve made,” Danse said.
dhartill@sunjournal.com
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- This stone, engraved for Marine Corps Maj. Jay Thomas Aubin, is one of the rocks students from Edward Little High School in Auburn will carry to the top of Bradbury Mountain in Pownal on Friday as part of The Summit Project. The group works to commemorate Maine service members who have been killed since 9/11.
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