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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UPDATE: Development Continues on AWA’s Visitor Use Management App
Earlier this year, I wrote about a proof of concept app we had started working on to produce better data about visitor activity in the Adirondack Park. The concept was…
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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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Protecting the Wilderness with Positive Reinforcement
The busy season in the Adirondacks is winding down, but with a bang. The Coronavirus pandemic, which depressed visitation for the first part of the summer, has clearly caused a…
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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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