Indholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2023 i Adirondack Life

Like snow, night blankets the landscape. When the sun goes down in my little hamlet, houses, no matter how simple or grand, look the same. You can’t see the state of front yards or who drives what. In the dark my worries howl. That’s when I look up. I’ve done it plenty with friends and family around a campfire, but in the backyard at four a.m., alone with my dog circling me like a satellite, nothing compares. All those stars and the bigness and possibilities of the universe swallow my stress. In more than a half-century of Adirondack Life magazine there’s never been an issue dedicated to what happens from dusk until dawn. We’ve overlooked a side of Adirondack life There’s our stunning celestial show, thanks to minimal light pollution.…

Some night this summer when the sky is clear, pick up a pair of binoculars, step away from the fire pit and open your mind to celestial high-drama echoing down to us from the Babylonians, the Greeks, and from the phantasmic beginning of life and time itself. After your eyes adjust to the dark, look to the south and follow the gauzy light of the Milky Way as it rises from the horizon to a bright yellow star, Antares. This is the pulsating heart of the mighty scorpion, Scorpio, who at the behest of the goddess Gaia stung Orion, who had vowed to hunt down and slaughter every animal on Earth. Each spring, as the weather warms and the animals wake, Scorpio appears, chasing the winter constellation Orion from the…

“Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.”—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Evangeline” “With every wave and brightening of the aurora a sighing, whispering sound was heard, like the rustling of great folds of silk, which my guide assured me was the ‘noise of the northern light.’”—Verplanck Colvin, “Ascent of Mount Seward and Its Barometrical Measurement” LEARN THE DARK ARTS Discover the magic of night photography with a workshop taught by Adirondack Life contributor Mark Bowie through the Adirondack Photography Institute. Learn more at www.adkpi.org. MILKY WAY AND NIGHT LANDSCAPE Tupper Lake, July 16–20 MILKY WAY AND PERSEID METEORS Inlet, August 13–17 “You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars,…

WHEN STEVE REYNOLDS’S GRANDMOTHER went to her reward in 1942, her last words were, “Oh dear, can’t I have another summer on the island?” For years she arrived on Lake George’s Recluse Island in May and stayed until October. And since her death, many guests and family members have experienced the strangest occurrences in her old upstairs bedroom. Some have described waking in the morning to see her face watching them from her mirror on the chest of drawers. Though Reynolds has remained a skeptic, he related the day in 1974 his skepticism suffered a severe blow, when he brought a young woman and her four-year-old son to the island. “We docked—I tell you, this is weird; you’re not going to believe this—I docked the boat down there and I carried…

Trail cams are the ultimate for natural-world voyeurs. They’re a window into what happens in the Adirondack woods when the sun goes down, capturing roving raccoon gangs, lumbering porcupines, mother moose love and—the indignity!—an Ursus americanus scratching its back (or more likely, marking a tree). Some folks use the cameras to track monster bucks. Others rely on them to monitor private land. But what we hear from most people, like the Adirondack Life readers who sent us the above shots, is that trail cams are a fun, nonintrusive way to get to know their wild neighbors. Anne Sander, whose camera in Piercefield caught the bear with the itchy back, says, “I just about fell out of my chair when I downloaded the pictures. They felt like a gift.”…

LONGTIME ADIRONDACKERS get attached to places the way they knew them, mostly for sentimental reasons. In my case, more than 20 years ago I met my now-husband in the second-floor lounge of Lake Placid’s old Northwoods Inn. That hotel has been around a while, before Placid hosted the ’32 Winter Olympics, as Main Street began filling in with accommodations and shops, precursors to the bustling strip we know today. The Northwoods Inn, originally called Hotel Marcy, was built with brick in 1927, the community’s first fireproof hotel. When it went up along Main, it elevated the lodging game. Marcy’s imposing exterior, its soaring Great Room, massive ballroom and more than a hundred guest suites gave it landmark status, and for decades it was a fashionable place to stay in Lake Placid.…

Lake Champlain Monster DESCRIPTION: A Captain Crum, who navigated the lake in 1819, told a tale of an almost 200-foot-long black monster with three teeth and a star on its forehead. Sandra Mansi, the photographer behind a hotly debated 1977 image of “Champy,” compared the creature to a dinosaur. SIGHTINGS: More than 300 have been reported since 1819, including a 19th-century railroad crew whose possible group hallucination was covered in The New York Times. (Samuel D. Champlain’s purported 1609 sighting of a huge critter with sharp teeth and silvery scales seems to have happened outside of his namesake waters.) BOUNTY: P. T. Barnum offered $50,000 for Champy’s hide in 1873 and $20,000 again in 1887. There were no takers. LEGAL STATUS: In the 1980s, Champy was given protected status in…

History is a slippery thing. It can be tempting to accept local lore as fact or take the written word as gospel, especially when the same snippets have been recorded in multiple sources. But the past remains unknowable, and its recorders have more in common with scientists than transcriptionists. Some theories are indisputable (think: gravity) and some, like dark matter, remain educated guesses. Still, taken together, a historian’s tools—documents, physical evidence, even generational memory and other less reliable sources—can get us close to the truth. Take one of the stories that Tom Calarco, author of The Underground Railroad in the Adirondack Region, uncovered in Edinburg. The tiny community a couple dozen miles northwest of Saratoga Springs—itself a hive of antislavery activity—boasted a strong abolitionist bent in the years leading up…

Cast off your winter blues at this spring’s lineup of concerts around the Adirondack Park: On May 5, singer-songwriter Dar Williams brings her blend of folk and pop to the Lake Placid Center for the Arts (lakeplacidarts.org). Roots reggae takes the stage at the Waterhole (saranaclakewaterhole.com), in Saranac Lake, on May 20, with Hudson Valley outfit The Big Takeover. Vermont jam rockers Twiddle and friends return to Lake George’s Charles R. Wood Park (festivalcommons.com) for the Memorial Meltdown, May 27 and 28, before going on “indefinite hiatus.” The Whallonsburg Grange (thegrangehall.info) hosts folk duo The Rough and Tumble on June 3. And North Creek goes country June 29 with Saratoga Springs band Grit N’ Whiskey at the Tannery Pond Center (tannerypond.org). Grow a Moon Garden Dedicatea space in your home…

Teeny saw-whet owls swoop from the cover of thick trees.You might look at a satellite map of our country at night, like the one above, and assume there’s not much happening in the black sprawl that’s the Adirondack Park. But where there’s darkness, there’s magic. Male peepers serenade potential mates. Bobcats mark their territories and cecropia silkmoths flit over meadows. Nightlife’s hopping—and flying, swimming and crawling—in the Adirondacks because our dark skies aren’t as polluted with the streetlights, big-box-store signs and illuminated structures you find in other places. At night, just about anywhere within the Blue Line, you can see the Milky Way, a breathtaking display the International Dark-Sky Association says almost 90 percent of people in the world will never know. Excessive use of artificial light harms wildlife, disrupting…

Sometimes an extended getaway can seem like such a commitment. What if you’re only in the mood for a quickie? Whether you’re down for some easy-access backcountry or you prefer a bed at the end of the trail, we’ve got you covered with these onenight outings—just enough to recharge your batteries with a dose of vitamin nature without a long-term engagement. Backpacking Lite Pine Lake Essex Chain Lakes Complex This 3.7-mile trek into Pine Lake is light on drama—more of a pleasant stroll through the woods than a hike—but the journey leads to a beautiful backcountry lake that you’ll probably have all to yourself. There’s one designated tent site at the shore, with a picnic table and open-air privy. (A site across the lake is reserved for floatplanes.) Bring your…

Yellow-green sparks shimmer among shadowy pines overlooking my backyard on the outskirts of Saranac Lake. It is a warm June evening, and the humid air hangs heavy with the fragrance of mountain maple blossoms and last year’s fallen pine needles. More such flashes beckon from the quiet tree-lined road that circles Moody Pond, and I follow. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, the smooth pond on my left becomes smoked glass with a ragged black rim of mirrored forest that is sparsely dotted with porch lights and the occasional streetlamp. Above and below the rim, countless stars glisten amid the spilled milk of our galaxy, where fireflies who stray from shore resemble wandering meteors. Frogs call from dark beds of pickerelweed along the shore, their voices bouncing up from…