Inside the blue line, the mapmakers'
boundary that encloses the Adirondack Park in northern New York,
lives a man to whom each detail of the natural world around him
is as familiar as the bearded face he sees in the mirror.
The face he sees is not the one he was born with, and the mountains he loves are hundreds of miles and many years away from his native Tappan, N.Y., 20 minutes north of Manhattan.
Paul Gibaldi '83 nearly died on January 22, 1984, when a high-speed car accident left him with horrific injuries and a flat brainwave scan. Lying motionless in a Florida hospital bed, he knew that people were in the room with him, but how he came out of a two-month coma remains, as with all traumatic head injuries, a mystery.
"I should have been in the grave," he recalls. "The doctor told my mother, 'If it was my son, I'd pull the plug.'"
Months of surgery and physical therapy restored Gibaldi's body to near-normal appearance and functioning—the damage to his psyche took longer.
Before the accident, Gibaldi at age 23 had a great job in
sales. He had been athlete of the year at his high school, and
at WVU he played soccer as a walk-on who earned a scholarship
by proving himself to the team. Under the tutelage of Professor
Walter Rockenstein and others, he had excelled as a WVU communications
major, achieving a 4.0 GPA in his major courses as an upperclassman
and working as a teaching assistant.
There was something missing, he says now. Something that even his miraculous escape from early death did not readily make clear. One night, he went out for a few beers with some softball buddies. He ran a stoplight driving home, and was arrested for driving while alcohol-impaired.
Sentenced to take alcohol awareness classes, Gibaldi considered the value of his life. "I started to recognize that the Lord had saved my life," he says. "Now I had to do something with it."
His first step toward a better future was volunteering as a camp counselor in Appalachian Kentucky. The camp nurse, Laura Pruett, became his wife.
Before they married, the couple made a momentous decision. They planned to move to the Adirondack Mountains, where Gibaldi had spent pleasant summers as a youth, fishing in wilderness trout streams. "I loved the beauty of the place," he says.
Gilbaldi didn't just up and move to the mountains. He studied them, every plant, animal, and geologic formation. Exercising his still-recovering mental capacity, he memorized the names of hundreds of Adirondack lakes and ponds. He passed the New York State exam certifying him as a licensed Adirondack guide—a rare achievement, incredible in Gibaldi's case, as such guides are responsible for leading people safely into and out of some of the most remote, rugged country in the eastern United States.
By 1989, five years after his escape from death, Gibaldi and his wife had built a log home on an 18-acre site along the Schroon River, in Chestertown, N.Y. It's the kind of setting where deer come up to the back door, and inspiration and contemplation happen daily.
As operator of Gibaldi Guide Service, he guides visitors by
canoe deep into the Adirondack wilderness. "Some come for
the 
fishing," he
says. "Some come for the spiritual enrichment the Adirondack
beauty brings."
The man who, 15 years ago, had the verbal facility of an average six- year-old now gives slide presentations about life in the mountains to all sorts of civic and church groups and educational organizations. He has produced a book of original photographs, The Spirit of the Adirondacks: A Guide's Journey, and is featured in a videotape documentary, The Adirondack Wilderness Experience. Parade and Outdoor Life magazines have profiled him.
Gibaldi has indeed been blessed with life. He is the father of three daughters: Alison, 9, Mariana, 7, and Damaris, 5.
"I love sharing the beauty of what God created," he says. "I see it every day and others don't."
—Tony Cook
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