Indholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2021 i Adirondack Life

Hornbeck boats have been ubiquitous on Adirondack waters—and in the pages of Adirondack Life—for three decades. In January, dozens of the red-striped canoes were strapped to vehicle roofs and paraded through the central Adirondacks in tribute to Olmstedville boatbuilder Peter Hornbeck, who died of a sudden heart attack the day after Christmas. An elementary teacher at Johnsburg Central School for 23 years, Hornbeck retired in 1992 and parlayed his canoe-building hobby into a successful business. He was also known as a talented watercolor painter and a staunch advocate for the Adirondack environment who loved spending time outdoors with friends and family—including his daughter, Leigh, who wrote fondly of “Growing Up Minerva” in the August 2020 issue of this magazine. In his obituary, his family wrote, “Honor Pete’s memory with a…

It all started sometime the summer before last, when my son Nathan suggested he would come back East and we would both ski the Loppet. Held at the Nordic Center at Mount Van Hoevenberg, the Lake Placid Loppet is said to be one of the hardest distance cross-country-ski races in the country. I said something like, “Sure, good idea,” and thought nothing of it. Until, while in Colorado over Christmas, he told me the date of the race and reminded me that I said I would do it. One of those “Remember, you said, Dad?” conversations. I was stuck. I knew enough about distance endurance events (think 90-mile canoe races) to know I had better train for this thing. After a week of high-altitude and out-of-breath skiing in Colorado and…

It was not until I moved to Huletts Landing in 2016 and started exploring beyond my sweet little hamlet that I came to love driving Route 9. The highway twists and turns and shows the evolution of tourism. What was once the main thoroughfare through the eastern Adirondacks lost much of its traffic after the Northway was finished in 1967, funneling visitors away from the roadside mom and pops. Today, so many of those businesses are blending back into woods. Nature reclaims what we built. This fall, amid the coronavirus pandemic, my hamlet has seen its own shift as people flee densely populated areas to this quiet, remote community. Businesses and homes that were for sale or abandoned are now being reinvigorated. But how long will it last? See more…

Rob Picotte, of Diamond Point, was stunned when he saw this stump by a pond in the town of Bolton. Picotte is a skier, hiker and long-distance runner who is often in the woods—beaver lodges and the surrounding tree carnage are a common sight along the pond-strewn terrain he sometimes explores. But this spiral was something new. “I’d never seen anything like it,” he said. Ben Goldfarb, author of Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, agrees. When he saw Picotte’s snapshot, he said, “What a beautiful piece of work. I’ve seen some elaborate chewing patterns in my day, but never such a perfect spiral.” Beavers (Castor canadensis), according to Goldfarb, “whittle with their incisors—two upper, two lower.… These peerless cutting tools are self-sharpening: The outer…

With its purchase of 17 acres on Thirteenth Lake, completed in December, the Adirondack Land Trust has secured the future of the last unprotected property on the 4.5-mile shoreline. The tract, in the town of Johnsburg, will eventually be added to the Siamese Ponds Wilderness and open to the public for nonmotorized recreation. Thirteenth Lake is a headwater of the Upper Hudson River, with 13 primitive campsites and a public beach and canoe launch that are accessible to wheelchairs.…

Two blazes, six decades apart, helped shape the center of Westport into what we see today. Many of the town’s oldest buildings were built during the early 19th century on a bluff that rose sharply from Lake Champlain and then leveled off, allowing for neat rows of structures along what became Main Street. One of the first was a house for John Halstead at the southeast corner of Main and Washington, on the site of today’s Ballard Park. Another was a store erected by Charles Hatch across Washington from the Halstead home. Over the next few decades, several shops were built on the east side of Main, north of Hatch’s store. More went up on the west side, opposite the Halstead family home, along with a Baptist church. Many, though…

ACCORDING TO THE CALENDAR, APRIL 29 is squarely in the middle of spring. In the Adirondacks, it’s not always so straightforward, as photographer and avid hiker Nancie Battaglia, whose birthday falls on that fickle-weather date, can tell you. For at least 25 years, Battaglia and pals have marked the occasion with an early-season hike through rain, snow, sunshine—or whatever else fate throws their way. “It started pretty small and has gotten bigger and turned into a tradition, rite of spring, and welcome outing after a long winter,” Battaglia says. “One rather memorable year was 2018, when the hike was quite carefully planned to be Buck Mountain in Lake George,” she recalls. When the day dawned to four inches of snow at her Lake Placid home and a forecast for cold…

I got into backwoods trout fishing decades ago, after reading an article in a national outdoors magazine about a couple of state biologists who hiked into a remote pond in what is now the Siamese Ponds Wilderness Area. The author told of map-and-compass bushwhacking adventures and encounters with beavers, bears and huge brook trout. One of the story’s photos showed a trout too big to fit in a large frying pan. That was challenge enough for me. Over the years since, I’ve been to many remote ponds and experienced the same kinds of things, many times over. A trip I’ll never forget was to a Warren County pond. It was a fairly tough one, uphill most of the way, with hordes of blackflies getting into my eyes and ears and…

In the cosmos, a terrestrial truism is reversed: darkness reveals, and light obscures. The Adirondacks’ relative lack of light pollution makes it a perfect place to observe International Dark Sky Week, April 5 to 12. Go to idsw.darksky.org for night-sky activities, to do a home-lighting assessment and to learn about the nocturnal lives of animals. The Adirondack Sky Center, in Tupper Lake, has suspended in-person stargazing activities due to COVID; check www.adirondackskycenter.org for updates and virtual programming.…

Decades ago Lyon Mountain was known for producing some of the purest iron ore in the world. Now the northern Adirondack community has another claim to fame, as home to the largest birch-sap and -syrup producer in the world. And not just the largest, but one of the best. Last year, Forest Farmers’ New Leaf Tree Syrups won first place at the World Birch Sap Festival, in St. Petersburg, Russia. (Yes, that’s a thing.) CEO Michael Farrell, who cofounded the business in 2016, was formerly the director of Uihlein Forest, Cornell University’s sugar maple research station in Lake Placid. His 10,000-acre operation—about 7,000 in the Adirondacks and another 3,000 in Vermont—looks beyond maple to sustainably harvest birch, beech and butternut sap as well. Its state-of-the-art steam evaporator, which produces 800…

In November 2007, I headed deep into the McKenzie Mountain Wilderness, using the last few hours of daylight to hunt. I’d hunted in these woods before, during the same month, only to find myself in knee-deep snow. But today it was in the mid-40s and I didn’t need gloves or a hat. As I left the cabin my wife reminded me that she was making chili for dinner and not to be late. Since I was headed west, the sun appeared bright for the time of day. But I really didn’t know the time because I had gotten out of the habit of wearing my old mechanical diver’s watch. Since I almost always had my cell phone, I used it as my timepiece. But since there was no cell service…

WINNERS OF OUR ANNUAL PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST Tony Oehler snapped this grand-prize winner at one of his favorite places, the Moose Pond lean-to at the northern end of the Northville–Lake Placid Trail. He visits often—for both pleasure and as a caretaker for Adirondack Mountain Club’s Adopt a Lean-to program—but this visit was special. It was the first time he’d introduced the spot to his kids, 16-year-old Jackson and nine-year-old Sophia. “They loved it,” he says. And after he’d started the campfire and began tidying up their quarters for the night, he turned and saw Jackson and Sophia’s silhouettes against the sunset. As he captured the moment, he remembers thinking, This is what it’s all about. “They won’t be children forever,” he says. “It’s a good memory.” A beautiful one, too. Congratulations…

Lonnie Monroe was in his early eighties and slowing down by the time he sat for these recordings. He lived out along the Saranac in a nice old clapboard house surrounded by piles of salvaged metal roofing, barn siding, two-by-fours and random boards, and a corral containing two Morgan bay horses. He drove a Power Wagon he’d assembled from scavenged parts, and always wore nattily pressed green slacks, a khaki work shirt, and a rakish Moose River hat. On those afternoons, we sat at the table in the bar where the old people usually kept to themselves or received the entreaties and inquiries of the young—new arrivals mostly, who were searching (as I was) for the distilled human essence of the place they had adopted and idealized. Usually they sat…