Indholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2021 i Adirondack Life

MY NATIVE AIR—A DOCUMENTARY coproduced by Maury Thompson, a 21-year veteran of the Glens Falls Post-Star, and Caitlin Stedman, of Snarky Aardvark Films—traces the Adirondack ties of New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes (1907–1910). Hughes, a Glens Falls native who later became Secretary of State as well as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was an advocate for state land conservation, adding 115,000 Adirondack acres to the Forest Preserve during his tenure. In the picture at left, Hughes is seated on the porch at Lady Tree Lodge, on Upper Saranac Lake. Visit the My Native Air Facebook page for more information.…

I STARTED THIS WORK BECAUSE I WANTED TO CONNECT PEOPLE to our lakes, rivers and streams in a more meaningful way. Often, our appreciation for these ecosystems only goes as far as the beautiful reflections they provide of the surrounding landscape. This project is a chance for people to see what’s below the surface of our Adirondack waters. My biggest challenge was photographing brook trout. They tend to be in very shallow streams, making it hard to get in the water and move around without spooking them. My biggest surprise was getting a shot of a bowfin in Lake Champlain. They are an elusive fish, often referred to as ancient due to their evolutionary history. When I shared the image with some fish biologists, they couldn’t believe it. You never…

Behind a rack of reds at Adirondack Mountain Spirits in Au Sable Forks is a mural that spreads across most of a wall. Its paint is cracked and peeling, coated in layers of cigarette smoke and polyurethane and, after 81 years, dulled by the sun that streams in through the windows. To some, this picture might be easily overlooked—a quirky bit of art in an unlikely place. But to locals this mural, painted by artist Arto Monaco, is a treasure. Beginning in the 1920s, Arto’s dad, Louis, ran Monaco’s, an Italian restaurant in Upper Jay. While dining there, famed illustrator Rockwell Kent, who lived in Au Sable Forks, saw some of young Arto’s artwork and recognized his natural talent. Kent mentored Arto and encouraged him to study at New York…

On a silky-soft evening two weeks after the solstice, the sun low but its light sure to linger another couple hours at least, I push off from the Vermont shore, pointing myself toward the Adirondacks. Lake Champlain is a mere mile wide between Thompson’s Point in Charlotte (my childhood home) and Split Rock Mountain in Essex—an easy crossing. The goal isn’t to tag the far side though, not this time. At least once every summer I embark on the adventure of—well, how to put it? “Just being” smacks of spiritual pretension. “Paying attention” is accurate enough, but the phrase connotes a kind of effort, a kind of discipline, when fundamentally this is about idleness and drift. Actually, “drift” might be the perfect word. My aim is to cease aiming, to…

ROCKY PEAKS ARE A FAMILIAR FEATURE of Adirondack hikes—those bald, wind-swept domes that are the literal and figurative high point of many treks. But the 35-foot rock column that gives Chimney Mountain its name is unique within the Blue Line, looking more like the kind of jagged formation that might be found out West. The chimney sits atop the east wall of a rift that formed as recently as the retreat of the last glaciers. Those same forces left behind numerous caves, making it a popular destination for experienced spelunkers. The hike itself is a short one—about two miles round-trip—but fairly steep. To reach the trailhead, take Route 30 south of Indian Lake, turn left on Big Brook Road and follow it to the end, where there is a parking…

In our beginning, water. We followed the Genesee River north, veered east along the southern shore of Lake Ontario and climbed northeast through a land serrated with conifers and brindled with tannic brooks—the small and outdated engine threatening to overheat as the altitude rose—and finally reached our honeymoon location in the Adirondack Mountains. Margaret and I hiked and camped along the Oswegatchie River for most of a week. We left the river only to follow a tributary upstream, failing to find the source without going too far out of our way, pausing to drink on our hands and knees, frightening trout into the jagged shadows of boughs. One night we stayed up late on the riverbank, where in the tumult of a nearby falls I heard words. None were the…

What’s a wood frog, hoping to raise a family, to do? It needs water in which to lay its eggs—as many as 3,000 of them at a time—but fish consider its tiny, gelatinous bundles of joy to be a delicacy. That’s where vernal pools come in. Sometime in early spring, the ground thaws and rain starts to collect in puddles and form small ponds, creating the perfect fish-free and nutrient-rich environment for wood frogs and other amphibians to lay their eggs. According to Larry Master, who took these photographs on his Lake Placid property, wood frogs are known as “explosive” breeders. “The entire breeding sequence, from arrival at a pool through mating, egg laying, and departure back to their upland habitat, may take less than a week for the entire…

The Adirondacks, with its varied forests and numerous lakes and streams, is an ideal habitat for the only hummingbird species that breeds in eastern North America, the ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris). The region’s wide array of flowering plants provide essential nectar for their diet, along with protein from abundant insects and spider silk for nest building. The annual arrival of hummingbirds at my Jenny Lake camp, in northern Saratoga County, is a rite of spring. They readily come to feeders filled with sugar-water, where they put on unparalleled displays of aeronautic prowess—including flying backwards, as no other bird can do. They passionately defend their feeding territories and conduct their mating displays, with aggressive males drawing attention for bullying behavior. The ruby-throat is one of 340 known hummingbird species distributed across…

WHEN I WAS A KID, I ALWAYS LOOKED forward to visiting my uncle, who had a camp on Great Sacandaga Lake near Conklingville Dam. During those trips my twin sister and I loved boat rides and stops in Northville for ice cream. Back at camp we’d pick wild berries, and we’d fish and play in the water for hours, jumping off rocks and making what we called “mud donuts” by covering our tubes in the sand. Those memories have stayed with me. Today I’m a freelance photographer who recently returned to the area, exploring my favorite spots from back then, but also seeing the surrounding beauty through a different lens. CONKLINGVILLE DAM/HADLEY OVERLOOK The Overlook, a perfect spot to take in the landscape, is on a sliver of North Shore…

It was the early 1970s, and the recently established Adirondack Park Agency (APA)—signed into law by Governor Nelson Rockefeller in June 1971—was trying to figure out how it was going to protect and plan for the future of the nearly six-million-acre Adirondack Park. With responsibility for some 2.3 million acres of the state-owned Forest Preserve and 3.6 million acres of private land, all of which had to be inventoried, examined and classified, the APA was understaffed and underfunded. Into this developing drama strode two new players, whose appearance on the scene both justified the creation of the APA and threatened its viability and effectiveness. Corporate land developers Ton-Da-Lay and Horizon announced plans to carve out lots, golf courses and extensive infrastructure on huge parcels of forested land inside the Blue…