What made these new lands different from most others, though, was undoubtedly the fact they were already occupied by hundreds of hunting camps. This was not simply opening up vast acreages of forest that had been previously denied to the public-at-large, but driving out the leaseholders who were already there. One can rightly argue that as public lands they will serve more people and provide all sorts of wilderness-based benefits, but I’m sure it still stings for the minority who find themselves at the losing end of the equation.
Cuomo’s Divisive Adirondack Legacy
The Adirondack legacy of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is more than just a land acquisition and a failed snowmobile master plan. The one project that can be fully attributed to Cuomo involved a mine, a protected wilderness, and a highly controversial amendment to the state’s constitution that allowed one to gain access to the other.
Cotton Lake: The Wilderness No One Knows
The preferred method for preserving the “Cotton Lake Wilderness” as a state-recognized wilderness is to remove the quotation marks – for the APA board to take definitive action and reclassify the land per the procedures set in place by the SLMP. Doing so would elevate Cotton Lake to equal status with the nearby West Canada Lake and Ha-de-ron-dah areas.
The Company I Keep
As he ate the moose slowly moved toward shore, unperturbed by his mucky environment, his ears occasionally flicking away a nuisance fly. From what I could make out through the camera’s viewfinder his bulbous nose spent much time in the water. Then he would lift his head up, displaying his broad rack like hands splayed in supplication. They looked ponderous, an evolutionary over-indulgence, even if I already knew that evolution had produced much larger racks on other cervids lost to extinction.
Remembering Paul Schaefer: Camp Life at the Cataract Club
The Cataract Club was not a formal organization with charter members and bylaws. There was no tar-paper cabin standing on a paper company lease. The camp was a surplus Army squad tent erected each season on the same campsite located high in a valley on the back side of Eleventh Mountain.
Wilderness in the Presence of History
The legal definition of wilderness in the Adirondack Park, since 1972, has in part read “an area of state land or water having a primeval character … [which] generally appears…
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A Very Brief History of the High Peaks Wilderness
The human history of the Adirondack High Peaks region is such a voluminous subject matter that it could easily fill an entire book. These mountains have been so scrutinized over…
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Old Roads on Old Maps
We are on the south side of the stream, and there is no sign of the old logging road. All around us are open hardwoods: mature maples and birches arching…
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Forty-Six: On the Occasion of the 2021 Presidential Inauguration
We started Adirondack Wilderness Advocates in 2016, a year with implications in the political history of this country. We weren’t anything close to a national movement then, nor do we…
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River of No Return
Over Lexie’s curled form, over the down sleeping bag and the spare coat that has kept us warm through the night, out of the tent and across the small campsite…
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Wilderness Drop Zones: A Poor Management Practice
Maintaining wilderness facilities such as trails, footbridges, and lean-tos is an important responsibility for the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), the agency in charge of managing the forever-wild Adirondack…
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When the Earth Was Wilderness
I wrote my first book in the second grade. Seriously. It was written and drawn in pencil, and it was colored in crayon. But it had thirty-two pages and a cover,…
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