The tourist guide to Camden, Maine listed the walk up the trail to the top of the Camden Hills in Maine as the second most popular visitor's activity in the community. It will also probably be my last mountain.

I've walked to the tops of other mountains, and taller ones, so the half-mile walk to the top of a hill didn't sound very challenging. I found the long-established trail leading up from the dead end of a back street towards the inland side of the charming little town which embraced a harbor filled with boats and a millrace which ran down into the salty water.

My 18-year-old son Jackson had already been to the top and moved on to the next, higher hill. He was already busy headed down to the cliffs and the trail along the coast.

I found the gently sloping trail leading up from a cul-de-sac at the end of Megunticook Street. I would have been better warned had I approached the trailhead from the adjacent "Mountain Road."

About 200 feet in, the trail sloped sharply upward. Residents of the Lowcountry are always surprised by a rise in elevation. For us, they are temporary deviations from the almost universal flatness of where we live. We have the occasional bluff and sand dune, but after 20 feet or so even the highest possibilities of elevation in Charleston are usually exhausted.

I dug in and huffed my way up that rocky section of the trail to a smoother spot and congratulated myself. After another 200 feet of upward walking there was an even longer, steeper section of rock. I started applying all that Discovery channel stuff about holding on to broken places and going around the smooth areas.

While I was doing all of this, neighborhood children were scrambling down the rocks, already having been to the top as part of their morning play. It didn't appear to be much of a challenge. A few were bounding down in sandals with the happy confidence of people who have never been to an emergency room for an X-ray.

The hill was listed as having an elevation of about 800 feet and I believed the bottom of the trial had to be at an elevation of about 200. I was still confident it was manageable.

The fourth really rocky section didn't look to my flatlander eyes like a trail at all. It was a bare spot which ran over boulders, a few of which were marked with blue paint. I struggled over them, assuming that this surely must be the worst of it.

When I got over that, I understood that what people consider a walk on a trail in Maine is a "climb" to someone from Charleston. What they consider a "hill" is actually a mountain. However, the look down had become truly frightening. If going up was hard, when you could see where your hands and feet needed to go, going down looked even worse. I had to finish.

Around the world, from Costa Rica to Italy, people who live in mountainous regions simply don't regard the issues of elevation the same way people from flatlands like East Cooper do.

Here in Mt. Pleasant, two steps down warrants a handrail.

Modest highway ramps are hemmed in by massive guard rails. We regard every edge as something to fall off of.

In Maine, as in those other places, people clearly don't see it that way.

The children don't grow up in terror of dashing themselves on whatever is downhill.

They have what seems to us an utterly unjustified confidence that they will stay where they step and the magnetic pull of the edge of things does not seem to affect them.

I finally made it to the top with a lot of friendly help from the locals. One girl brought me handfuls of tiny Maine Blueberries, scampering up and down the inclined rocks as if it were a playground. Her father, an experienced climber, spotted me up the rocks, indicating where to go and where my hands could find a grip.

The view from the top was wonderful, reaching far across the blue bay and its green islands.

From the monument tower honoring the town's soldiers in WWI, you could see for miles.

However, I was exhausted, feeling old and very glad I could get a car ride down the back side. It may have been my last mountain, but it helped to have good people and blueberries to get me over it.

(William Hamilton (www.wjhamilton.com) is an attorney who lives in I'On Village.)