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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The Future Forest
Part 4 of 4 It has been a slow process, but it has been a privilege to observe these changes over a twenty-year period. Now instead of imagining the future,…
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Wilderness by Description or Proscription?
Part 3 of 4 When you walk through the woods for miles at a time, it stimulates blood flow throughout your body. The brain is often a passive beneficiary, and…
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A Wilderness of Roads
Part 2 of 4 The year 2000 was memorable for two reasons: I had met Barbara McMartin that winter and became her newest guidebook assistant, and in the summer DEC…
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Roads of Recovery
Part 1 of 4 – Introduction Recent news that the remaining portion of Whitney Park, one of the last surviving private parks erected in the 1890s, is on the market…
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Cathead Mountain: Where Public Safety and Wilderness Meet
The evening of Halloween 2019 brought strong winds and torrential rains to much of northern New York. The storm caused widespread damage over a vast region: significant flooding in communities…
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A Brief History of the Pepperbox Wilderness
The Pepperbox Wilderness occupies a little-known corner of the western Adirondacks, a place with few official facilities and some of the lowest visitation levels in the park. Those who have…
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The Wilderness beyond Mohegan Lake
The snow before us was virginal, and it covered an entire road that extended for several miles into the backcountry. Beyond the mountainous snowbank that marked its beginning, the ribbon…
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AWA Conducts its First Board Meeting
On Saturday, November 10, the principal organizers of Adirondack Wilderness Advocates gathered in southern Hamilton County. Snow had fallen the previous night, blanketing the forest in wet, new snow; and…
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