Indholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2023 i Adirondack Life

PICTURE PERFECT I have been an Adirondack Life subscriber for at least 35 years. And I have been a one-time photo contributor, as a First-Place Color winner years ago. Compiling the June edition as “The Night Issue” was a great idea. I especially appreciate the collection of photographs on pages 38 through 43. Mark Bowie, Johnathan Esper and Carl Heilman II have inspired my amateur photography efforts for a long time. It was great to see a photo spread that included all three of them. I’ve seen many night skies, but none as great as those within the Blue Line. Thank you for sharing such great photographs and articles! Jim Mutschler via email DARK INSPIRATION Great issue. I thought you might like to see this painting I made of the…

One of the most beloved rituals in this, the season of campfire nights, is hunting for a proper roasting stick, whittling it to perfection, then charring your own bun-sized dinner over the flames. But here in the birthplace of the American vacation, our love for the most All-American of eats goes well beyond the campground. Whether you’re looking for a homegrown favorite (like Glazier’s “red snappers,” made in Malone) or you’re in the mood for something a little more adventurous (Mac-n-Cheese Dog, anyone?), you won’t go away hungry. A note before we proceed: The following roundup of hot-dog hot spots mostly ignores our region’s famous frankfurter, the michigan. Blasphemy? Perhaps. But if you’re interested in the history and whereabouts of those meat-and-mustard-laden wonders, you can find that—and an authentic recipe—in…

Looking back, I think my grandmother was luring me in. The way that birdwatchers hang suet to attract woodpeckers and chickadees. None of my brothers seemed interested in the clunky old Underwood, but I think my father’s mother sensed something in me. That’s why the door to her closet-sized writing room was always open. She was hoping that someone would discover the power of vowels and consonants and what can happen when they’re made into words. Her hands were the hands of a farmer’s wife, but her heart and her fingertips belonged to the keyboard of that old manual typewriter. She left it out for me. And I took the bait. Like a pump jack in West Texas, I’d peck away for hours, writing nothing worth remembering, other than a…

Anyone who remembers Lake Placid’s Main Street in the doldrum years that followed the 1980 Winter Olympics knows the village has seen a renaissance, fueled in part by hundreds of millions of dollars in public spending. These days most storefronts are full, with high-end shops, bistros and boutiques. Sidewalks and streets are busy most seasons of the year. ORDA’s convention center, museum and sports venues are state-of-the-art. Over the last decade, bed and sales tax revenues have grown steadily in the Olympic region, outpacing the statewide average. Property values soared. Tourism has always been at the heart of Lake Placid’s identity and ORDA has helped maintain the mountain village’s brand as a must-see destination. But other crucial indicators raise questions about the long-term impact of New York’s massive taxpayer investment…

I’m not good with a paintbrush or anything, but I’m pretty good with an excavator.” Luke Peduzzi cracked the beer he’d tucked in his coat pocket at the trailhead. It hissed, shaken from the pedal up. His loyal trail companion, Spud, patrolled the area for the perfect stick—a useful job site skill. “There’s a lot of creative expression in trail building. I think that’s part of why it’s a dream job.” Having just followed him up a climbing trail that he built last fall, I would argue that he’s more than “pretty good.” We carried on casual conversation, gaining over 500 feet on our bikes from the parking lot to the summit, switch-backing along the shoulder of Clements Mountain, in Keene, the home of East Branch Community Trails, a new…

Huletts Landing, Lake George. Clear water laps at the docks as I wait for Tom Conrad, owner of Huletts Landing Marina. The trees are bare and there are pockets of snow in certain shadowy corners, but it’s sunny and unseasonably warm for April in the Adirondacks. Save a lone fishing boat that drifts by with its motor off, the lake is empty. From the edge of the dock, I can see straight to the sandy bottom. As Conrad drives around the lake, he describes a spring night he spent watching smelt run under a full moon in his early 20s. He was so taken that he moved to Huletts Landing full time. We stop to watch a dark cloud of the tiny fish running through a stream near his house,…

*UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED When I go to see Mike Pratt at the Olympic Regional Development Authority’s glossy new state-funded headquarters in Lake Placid, the first thing he does is spread out photographs of Olympic sports venues and stadiums in Beijing, Berlin and Sarajevo that lie abandoned and in ruins. His message is plain: This almost happened here. Pratt’s an unimposing guy in his early 60s, a soft-spoken Lake Placid native, a veteran ski-mountain manager who looks a little out of place in the corporate boardroom where we meet. When he took over as CEO of the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) six years ago, one newspaper described him as “some random guy in a red baseball cap.” The description sort of fits. It’s still hard to see Pratt as a…

Folk Revival Schroon Lake celebrates its connections to legendary troubadours Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie at its 33rd annual folk music festival August 13. In the 1940s and ’50s, Seeger and Guthrie, along with Seeger’s group The Weavers, Cisco Houston and other well-known folksingers, entertained guests at a lakeside resort called Schroon Crest, where proprietors Leah and William Okun catered to a progressive clientele. The Okuns’ son Milt would go on to become a successful record producer who helped launch both John Denver and Placido Domingo to stardom. Decades after Schroon Crest closed, Adirondack musician Dan Berggren got to meet his childhood hero Seeger, who planted the idea of starting an annual folk festival, which debuted in 1989. Berggren and his band Jamcrackers are among the performers at this year’s…

Last summer, I was delighted to discover an article in this magazine about how the Caroga Arts Collective is bringing a musical revival to long-shuttered Sherman’s Amusement Park in Caroga Lake. Caroga Lake, my mother’s small hometown in Fulton County, has been dear to me my whole life. I lived there summers with my family when I was young. Many of my relatives were year-round residents; some still are. Sherman’s is also dear. The amusement park, in the center of town, opened in 1921 and was the chief business and main attraction for decades. I frequented it as a kid and worked in it as a teenager and young adult. With its large pavilion, midway ringed by rides, abundant colors and carnival signs, it made Caroga Lake special, a destination.…

Over the years, this magazine has featured countless photographs of Adirondack mountains and lakes, with the kind of dreamy and dramatic scenery that lures multitudes here. But the black-and-white images by renowned photographer Rodney Smith on these pages are different, treating the landscape less as the star than as a stage for the late artist’s signature whimsy and wit. Before his death in 2016, Smith traveled the world on commissions for top fashion brands such as Ralph Lauren and Bergdorf Goodman, incorporating what he found on location—hay bales in Alberta, sculpted hedges in England, Whiteface’s familiar profile on Lake Placid—as part of a meticulously crafted composition. With a nod to 20th-century surrealists like René Magritte, Smith played with context to create surprising images that could be seen as poking gentle…

Where to EAT, STAY AND PLAY SPA CITY CLASSICS Congress Park, bounded by Broadway, Circular and Spring Streets, was already a century old in 1875 when it got a Victorian glow-up from the famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Grab a sandwich from the Bread Basket Bakery (65 Spring Street; www.sara togabreadbasket.com) and find a scenic spot among this pleasure garden’s 33 acres to lay your picnic blanket. Then take in the sights: the handsome brick Canfield Casino, a gambling parlor turned wedding venue, where love is now the only game of chance; playful sculptures, like the iconic “Spit and Spat” fountain; the historic Marcus Illions carousel; and, of course, the Congress Park spring, one of the city’s 21 natural mineral springs. On Broadway, Saratoga’s main shopping street, every summer…