Indholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2022 i Adirondack Life

FINDING COMFORT Back when I was honorably discharged from the Marines, I found I was having trouble adjusting. Thank God for the members of the Albany Marine Corps League who came to my house and helped me. One of the solutions to my problem was to get away from civilization for a while. Remembering many happy summers at Floodwood Pond, I headed that way and beyond and lived in the Adirondacks for almost seven months. Similar to Brian Mann in “Comfort Zone” (October 2022), my time in the mountains helped me. Edward Spain via Facebook MISSED OPPORTUNITY Regarding “The Standoff” (October): In 1983 and 1984, I was transferred to a governor’s line item at the NYS Department of State (DOS) charged with developing an Indian Affairs program. I contacted other…

One unmistakable fact about Jim Kobak is that he’s into heavy metal. Among the 10,000 or so stickers on his Subaru Forester are Black Sabbath, Slayer, Overkill and Route 666 (also, Bernie Sanders). When he steps out of the car he’s wearing black pants and a black T-shirt with the slogan “Long Live the Loud.” And then there are the mountain-bike trails he has spent more than a decade creating near Ausable Chasm, all bearing the names of classic heavy-metal bands and tunes. “That’s what I grew up with,” he explained after we took a ride on Blackened. “I was a kid in New Jersey in the ’80s. I was a huge metal-head.” Music was not the only influence in his teenage years. He attended Pok-O-Mac-Cready summer camp in Willsboro…

An Airing of Adirondack Grievances “I GOT A LOTTA PROBLEMS with you people, and now you’re going to hear about it!” So declares the Seinfeld character Frank Costanza in the classic episode that introduced the alternative holiday “Festivus” to the rest of us. Celebrated December 23, the secular observance is relatively low-maintenance—subbing an aluminum pole for a bedecked balsam, and “feats of strength” rather than the traditional holiday over-extension of one’s credit limit. Most refreshing, at least for those who dread having to come up with a good reason to profess gratitude around the Thanksgiving table, Festivus instead calls for an “airing of grievances.” In these days of frustrations big and small, an epic kvetch session among friends can be cathartic. What is your Adirondack grievance? The seemingly eternal construction…

FOR 33 YEARS NOAH JOHN RONDEAU, the best-known Adirondack hermit of the 20th century, lived in a crude cluster of huts and shanties along the Cold River northeast of Long Lake. High Peaks hikers sought him out for conversation and amusement; they brought him fresh fruit, home-baked treats and word of the outside world. In 1947 he was invited to appear at the New York Sportsmens Show and gladly filled his packbasket with deer skins, handmade furniture, arrows and such for his trip to the Big Apple. There, he was the subject of newsreels and nationally broadcast radio programs and he turned a tidy profit selling auto-graphed pictures. Rondeau also starred in an outdoor expo in Albany. He journeyed to Buffalo, Tahawus and beyond, regaling crowds with stories of his…

Scientists say there’s a reason we think even the ugliest creatures, like blobfish and naked molerats, are kind of cute. According to University of Cincinnati psychologist Oriana Aragón, seeing an animal that looks ridiculous and finding it endearing—aka “ugly-cute”—is “a playful way” of appreciating something unconventional. I wish that applied to trees. Along my Adirondack hamlet’s sidewalk, past where the phone booth once stood and beyond the tangle of roses marking the site of the old general store, is an exceptionally unattractive tree. I’ve passed it on foot, bike and in the car thousands of times. The tree is a black locust. It has deeply fissured bark that looks like grotesque scars. Its small branches grow in twisted, witchy angles. In spring, when its clumps of flowers emit their pungent…

WHEN SCULPTOR TIMUR SI-QIN was commissioned to create an artwork for the new Manhattan offices of Meta—the parent company of Facebook and Instagram—he found inspiration in an unlikely place: the Adirondack woods. The artist spent several weeks last fall and winter taking hundreds of photographs of trees around Speculator and Pharaoh Lake, which he then synthesized into 3D models to create Sacred Footprint, a 50-foot-tall stainless steel and aluminum sculpture that is suspended in the four-story atrium of the building. The branches of the sculpture represent different tree species to suggest the idea of “coming together to support one another, just like in a real ecosystem,” Si-Qin says, while the helical shapes linking the parts, reminiscent of the structure of DNA, are “also a gesture to the braided quality of…

RECIPES Ta-ha-wus Turkey Stuffing Makes enough dressing to stuff a 10-pound bird. From our Winter 1971 issue. Giblets 1 cup butter½ cup chopped onion½ cup diced celery3 cups ¼-inch cubes day-old bread3 cups coarsely crumbled cornbread1 cup browned, crumbled sausage1½ cups walnut meats, chopped¾ teaspoon salt¼ teaspoon pepper1 teaspoon sage2 teaspoons summer savory2 teaspoons minced parsley½ cup dry white wine DIRECTIONS: Gently sauté cooked, drained and chopped giblets with onion and celery in butter for 5 to 10 minutes. Add bread, cornbread, sausage, walnuts and sea-sonings and mix lightly but thoroughly. Gradually add enough wine to moisten dressing nicely. Tourtière The late Cecile Garso, grandmother of Adirondack Life staffers Janine Sorrell and Joni Manning, of Au Sable Forks and Jay, respectively, was born and raised in the Trois Riviere area…

FOR NEARLY 75 YEARS, Santa’s Workshop (www.northpoleny.com) has transported the magic of the North Pole to Wilmington, with rides, shows and the big man himself on offer 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, November 12–December 18, as well as Friday, November 25. On December 4, 11, 18–23 and 26–30, the park reopens at 4:30 p.m. for caroling, a Nativity pageant and more during its Village of Lights celebration. Planning a table-groaning Thanksgiving meal for an army— while working around any number of schedules and eating habits—sometimes feels like a losing game of 3D chess. But chefs in Dannemora and the surrounding communities have another stumbling block to consider: the Turkey Bowl, a 60-year-old football tradition that starts at the village playground around 10 a.m. and wraps up after the…

MY EARLIEST MEMORIES OF THE LOCAL AMERICAN LEGION—POST 1619 IN WEST PLATTSBURGH, LESS THAN A MILE FROM OUR HOUSE—WERE OF WATCHING SLOW-PITCH SOFTBALL UNDER BUG-SWARMED LIGHTS ON MUGGY SUMMER NIGHTS. My father belonged to a league that played on the post’s fields, and in later years my brother and future husband took their turns at bat. I never spent much time thinking about the building behind the bleachers, or if I did, I imagined a dimly lit space where veterans swapped stories and sipped beer from juice glasses. That changed after I bought my parents’ house. Thanks to our home’s convenient walking-distance-to-the-Legion location, I’ve become a regular at the post as a guest of my husband, now a member of the Sons of the American Legion. It’s the kind of…