By breviews

January 1, 2004

Time was when fire towers punctuated many an Adirondack peak. From these spindly steel skeletons with glassed-in boxes (called “cabs”) on top, observers would spend their summers looking for signs of suspicious wisps of smoke that might balloon into a forest conflagration. They would also welcome hikers, point out the sights and dispense wallet cards…

By breviews

January 1, 2004

You’re out on skis, crossing a field of powder. Or maybe it’s a warmer time of year, and you’re paddling along a muddy lakeshore. You think you’re the first one there. Then you spy footprints. Who made them? If the tracks don’t reveal the imprint of skis, snowshoes, or Vibram soles, odds are you’re following…

By breviews

January 1, 2004

You’re out on skis, crossing a field of powder. Or maybe it’s a warmer time of year, and you’re paddling along a muddy lakeshore. You think you’re the first one there. Then you spy footprints. Who made them? If the tracks don’t reveal the imprint of skis, snowshoes, or Vibram soles, odds are you’re following…

By breviews

January 1, 2004

You’re out on skis, crossing a field of powder. Or maybe it’s a warmer time of year, and you’re paddling along a muddy lakeshore. You think you’re the first one there. Then you spy footprints. Who made them? If the tracks don’t reveal the imprint of skis, snowshoes, or Vibram soles, odds are you’re following…

By breviews

November 1, 2003

The Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) has a history book of its own. In 1997, ADK published With Wilderness at Heart:A Short History of the Adirondack Mountain Club to commemorate the organization’s 75th anniversary. It was written by Bruce Wadsworth, who also has authored some of the club’s guidebooks. Read it to find out what a…

By breviews

November 1, 2003

They were first. At the dawn of the 20th century, before the Adirondack Mountain Club, before the Adirondack Council, before the Adirondack Nature Conservancy, the only organization dedicated to safeguarding these mountains was the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks. The association’s leaders were watchdogs who rose to the occasion at a critical time…

By breviews

November 1, 2003

Making a living in the Adirondacks has never been easy. Long winters, rough terrain and biting insects keep out or keep poor most who would make the Park their home. Too often, those who stick around do so by taking too much from the land—extracting non-renewable resources or renewable ones at non-renewable rates. My friend…

By breviews

July 1, 2003

Buried in the middle of this long recipe collection, there’s a two-page spread devoted to Nettle Meadow Farms, a goat dairy on the Thurman- Johnsburg line. It’s a small place, just a few dozen goats, and owners Ronald Hebert and Laurie Goodhart do all the work themselves— milking, cheesemaking, packaging, delivery. The chevre is unbelievably…

By breviews

March 1, 2003

One day early in the summer of 1942, Bill Touhey, on duty in the Salmon Lake Mountain fire tower in Whitney Park west of Long Lake, took a phone call from the observer on Mount Electra, not far away in Nehasane Park. A stereotype of the gruff old Adirondacker, he was perhaps a bit more…

By breviews

January 1, 2003

There is not much humor in Half the Way Home. In its 236 pages, not one anecdote directly involving the author elicits laughter. Whereas Lewis Spence describes a loving if fundamentally Victorian relationship between a boy and his grandfather, Half the Way Home is a search for understanding of a father-son relationship where love was…